Carson Daly Opens Up About Woodstock ’99: ‘I Thought I Was Going to Die’
The chaotic Woodstock ’99 is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, which delves into how the follow-up to the famous 1969 festival went from a “millennium-defining celebration of peace, love and great music” to a dangerous environment full of riots, allegations of sexual violence, health hazards and more.
Carson Daly, who was on the grounds at the festival as the host of MTV’s TRL, took to Instagram on Friday (Aug. 12) to open up about his own traumatizing experience at the July 1999 event. “I’ve been getting asked about #woodstock99 a ton recently due to the @netflix doc that’s out,” he wrote alongside screenshots of himself from the documentary. “All I can say is I thought I was going to die. It started off great, TRL live from the side of main stage interviewing all the bands (like Jay from Jamiroquai) & then started getting pelted with bottles, rocks, lighters, all of it. It got insane, fast. Nightfall, Limp plays ‘Break Stuff’ & the prisoners were officially running the prison.”
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He continued, “My boss @MTV Dave says to our staff/crew backstage, ‘We can no longer guarantee your safety, it’s time to go!’ I remember being in a production van driving recklessly through corn fields to get to safety. It was so crazy & a blur now. I just remember feeling like I was in another country during military conflict. I have so many fun memories from that era, this was not one of them. Needless to say, I haven’t taken the fam back to Rome, NY for a vacation.”
Held on a former military installation in upstate New York, Woodstock ’99 was wildly different than the original 1969 event — a generation-defining triumph. Instead of the peaceful event featuring the most inspiring acts of a generation, the ’99 festival features a mix of hard rockers (Limp Bizkit, Korn, Creed) mixed with some throwback favorites (Mickey Hart, Willie Nelson, The Who’s John Entwistle), hip-hop (DMX, The Roots, ICP), jam bands (Moe., String Cheese Incident) and pop stars (Sheryl Crow, Moby) playing to an increasingly agitated audience.
Watch the Netflix trailer below.
