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• ISBN13: 9780757003332
• Condition: New
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| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Elliot Tiber | | Paperback:
| 215 pages | | Publisher:
| Square One Publishers | | Publication Date:
| June 01, 2009 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0757003338 | | Package Length:
| 8.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.9 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.55 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 13 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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More than I expectedJul 10, 2010
I thought it would be just about the movie Taking Woodstoock. However, it also is a biography of Elliot Tiber who provided the place for Woodstock. Tiber is gay so you learn a lot about the gay scene in New York up to the time of Woodstock.
 History It's NotJan 02, 2010
Having just finished the book I'm struck by how little of it is about Woodstock and how most of that is wrong. What you really get is like the surreal comedies written by Tom Robbins.The first half of the book is about his youth and the realization that he was gay.Be warned there are some fairly graphic portions including at age 12 his willing encounters with pedophiles.Finally Woodstock is mentioned, though the only part that agrees with some of the fine histories that have been written about the event, was the fact that Elliot Tiber called Woodstock Ventures and offered them a location and permit.The location he offered was actually a swamp and some of the party went back to New York in disgust. I was 19 and living in northwestern N.J. at the time and did attend Woodstock.There is just too much in the book that I know from personal knowledge simply wasn't true.
If you are just looking for entertainment it does have plenty of action and adventures and a weirdly wacky cast of characters, although some like the mafia are 40's Hollywood stereotypes. I gues that's not surprising with how much time Tiber said he spent in Times Square movie houses.If it was billed as a novel I would have given it 4 stars, but as history I was generous with one star.
 UnbelievableDec 19, 2009
I missed the movie when it came through town, so the book was the next best thing. "Taking Woodstock" is the story of how Elliot Tiber, whose parents owned a run-down hotel in Bethel, NY, became the center of the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969.
By the time I got halfway through the book, I was starting to have reservations. First, Tiber paints his parents as stereotypical Jewish types, with Mom guilt-tripping and scheming and hard-working Dad dropping the occasional Yiddishism and meekly taking Mom's baloney. The pair run a joke of a hotel, with make-believe TV sets, phony air conditioning and non-existent service. The sheets are dirty and the prices vary based on Mama's sense of how much you can pay. Tiber, an interior decorator based in New York, motors upstate to help his parents run the place on weekends. When the Woodstock Music Festival loses its permit to play in a neighboring town, Tiber sees his chance and steers the concert to his sleepy town of Bethel. And the rest is history.
Kind of.
Tiber puts himself at the middle of so much of the action that it gets harder and harder to believe him. He wrangles heroically with bigoted, small-minded townsfolk who want the "dirty hippies" to leave town; he beats up Mafia goons and other local thugs; he passes bags of money to local pols; he steers the concert organizers to his "good friend" Max Yasgur, on whose farm the concert takes place.
But there's more! Tiber has a secret life. He is a homosexual with an attraction to the gay S-and-M scene, of which we get rather more graphic details than I cared to read. He hobnobs with luminaries like Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Robert Mapplethorpe, among others. And -- sakes alive! -- on the one weekend when Tiber decides to stay in New York rather than help Mom and Pop with the hotel, he is caught up in the Stonewall Riots -- the seminal event in American gay history.
I have no doubt that Tiber was present at Woodstock in some capacity,. But even a cursory look at Wikipedia suggests that others don't remember his role as being central to the concert. I suspect that the same can be said about most of the events that Tiber describes. The sparse Stonewall scene could have been written after a glance through an article on the web. The best I can say about "Taking Woodstock" is that it is a highly-mythologized personal history of a young man's coming to grips with his sexual orientation during a time of social change in America. The worst I can say is that it is 25% truth and 75% self-indulgent fantasy. Why else the odd disclaimer at the book's start asking not to be humiliated by being exposed, a la "A Million Little Pieces," on "Oprah"?
A book to avoid if searching for the true back-story to the biggest concert ever held.
 Woodstock Saved and Stonewall PavedSep 18, 2009
What a treat! Not only did Elliot save Woodstock, but he paved the way for future Gays by being at Stonewall!
Along the way he has some WILD times with the likes of Robert Mapplethorpe, Marlon Brando and Wally Cox!!
What an amazing time he had and we have by reading this fun, fast paced book.
He got a front row seat to one of the most exciting summer's of love! We get a second row seat by reading!!
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Be PreparedSep 13, 2009
Be prepared for long passages of slice-of-life gay young man in NYC with your hippy memorabilia. I was willing to give Elli the stump time in exchange for his insight into the nexus that was the Macombo Motel. In the end I felt shortchanged. I feel that the reader has to listen to too much sexual psycho-babble to get the reward of what went on behind the scenes before the scene at Yasgurs dairy farm happened.
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