Fatboy Slim recalls Woodstock ’99 horror: “I did what I was told and ran”

nme.com:

This story contains discussion and descriptions of sexual assaultFatboy Slim has recalled the “terrifying” moment a van drove into the audience during his set at Woodstock 1999.The DJ and producer looked back on the incident during an interview for the three-part Netflix documentary series Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, which was released yesterday (August 3).“Woodstock 1969 promised peace and music, but its ’99 revival delivered days of rage, riots and real harm.

Why did it go so horribly wrong?” an official listing reads.As Mixmag notes, the 30th anniversary edition of the event, which had an estimated attendance of 400,000, failed to provide basic facilities such as water, food, toilets or on-site security.Fatboy Slim (aka Norman Cook) was booked to headline the ‘rave hangar’ on the Saturday night but was unaware of the out-of-control crowd that was heading towards the venue.“I’d been closeted in my dressing room all afternoon with people just going, ‘Oh it’s a bit chaotic out there’,” Cook remembered. “But no one had told me there’d been any damage – that there’d been any violence.”The docuseries includes footage of Fatboy Slim taking to the stage and opening with ‘Fucking In Heaven’ before noticing something was wrong.“I became aware of something that I thought was a kind of floating dance platform, like a podium with about 20-30 people on it, which turned out to be a van,” he continued.The vehicle had been stolen by a gang and was travelling through the rave hangar crowd towards the stage. “Then I got the tap on the shoulder, and it’s like, ‘We gotta stop the music.

The vans gotta go’,” Cook said. “[And I said]: ‘Aw, not tonight’. You know this is Woodstock. It was all going so well.”Later, an archive clip from the.