So, in 1969 I bought a ticket to attend the Woodstock concert that everyone was talking about. Ultimately, however, I decided it was going to be too crowded for my liking and I did not attend what turned out to be a generation-defining event.
Bob Grimm and the rest of the Light band drove up to Woodstock in the LIGHT Bus and they camped out in the bus the whole weekend. They got through the gates by claiming to the guards that this painted bus was part of the art exhibition, and he believed them and let them through.
They ended up parked up on a hill near the ice cream trucks in full view of the stage. They often sat on the roof of the bus throughout the weekend, and several photographers from the big outlets took pictures of them up there on that curiously painted bus.
The Associated Press photo which has become associated with the Woodstock Festival.
(Image by “Image from It’s All In the Mind by Hieronimus & Cortner) Details DMCA
The one photo published by the Associated Press, showing two barefooted members of the Light band holding an umbrella while perched on the roof of the bus, has become associated with the Woodstock Festival as one of those pictures that stands for a thousand words.
You may have seen this photo on the cover of the New York Times, USA Today, or on Dateline NBC or countless other newspapers across the country when they print a retrospective article about the Woodstock generation. Sometimes they use the photos that were published in Life Magazine, or Rolling Stone, but usually it's the one from the Associated Press.
After Woodstock, the bus came home to Baltimore, and when Bob Grimm left to pursue his solo career with a recording contract in England, he sold it back to me, and I shared it with my community living at Savitria and the AUM Esoteric Study Center. We used it as one of our many painted VW busses to pick up groceries or fetch the kids from school, and over the years it began to fall apart.
What happened to it in the end remains a bit of a mystery.
As the years passed and nostalgia took hold for the Peace and Love era, people began looking for the "light" again. The search continues for the original's skeletal remains, but meanwhile, we recreated a brand new LIGHT bus. As Ben Franklin would say, the new LIGHT bus is: "In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended By the Author." It's a 1962 bus, but otherwise an exact replica that we created in 2018 with the help of a film documentary crew in time to be part of the official 50th anniversary celebrations at Bethel Woods.
The documentary film of our search and recreation is showing now on HBOMax, CuriosityStream and Amazon Prime and is called The Woodstock Bus.
The bus itself is now on display at the Jimi Hendrix exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for about a year, and then we will tour it around to several other museums until we find its permanent home for sharing the light.
LC: The Woodstock LIGHT Bus symbolizes Woodstock, which in turn symbolizes the generation that shifted consciousness.
Finding the light within and manifesting it without is the journey all humans share.
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