Chip Monck – the Voice of the Woodstock Festival
The lighting Man Turned MC Who Didn’t Say ‘Don’t Eat the Brown Acid’
Aug 15, 2009
In fact, Chip Monck didn’t say, ‘Don’t eat the brown acid’. What he actually said was, ‘The warning that I’ve received, you may take it with however many grains of salt you wish, is that the brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. It’s suggested that you do stay away from that. Of course, it’s your own trip, so be my guest, but please be advised that there is a warning on that one, OK?’
How Chip Monck got the Woodstock Gig
Chip Monck was officially only the lighting man for the festival, but in the absence of an MC (the organisers had just forgotten to hire one), Monck took on the role following a request from Michael Lang just before the festival opened on 15th August 1969. As dawn broke on Monday August 18th, just after Jim Hendrix’s electrifying set (including a version of The Star Spangled Banner that would change rock music forever) had concluded, Chip Monck closed the Woodstock Festival with the words, ‘Good wishes, good day and a good life’.
Who is Chip Monck? Today he lives in Melbourne Australia, where he still involved in the lighting design business, but he was born Edward Herbert Beresford Monck seventy years ago in Massachusetts, USA and has a long history of being involved in events and happenings many people will be aware of. His start in the entertainment business is almost a cliché given that it began when he ran off to join a circus where he got his first experience of operating stage lights.
Chip Monck’s work in Jazz, Folk and Rock
Eventually he moved to New York where he worked at The Village Gate Jazz Club in the city’s Greenwich Village, providing the lighting for some of the jazz greats. While there, Chip Monck lit Count Basie, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington amongst many others.
His work also involved him in helping to light the legendary Newport Folk festival in 1965 where Bob Dylan first plugged in an electric guitar in public and divided the audience by playing Maggie’s Farm and Like a Rolling Stone with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band which included Mike Bloomfield Al Kooper as a backing band.
Two years later, Chip Monck was lighting director at the Monterey International Pop Music Festival and shortly after Woodstock he played the same role at the infamous Altamont Speedway Free Festival organised by The Rolling Stones at which a spectator was killed by the Hell’s Angels the Stones had hired to act as security.
He was also the lighting director at the Concert for Bangladesh staged by The Beatles' George Harrison and also starring Bob Dylan.
Chip Monck’s Work Outside Music Festivals
Monck’s work wasn’t limited to music festivals. He was the stage manager for the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, the heavyweight boxing championship bout between Muhammad Ali and George Forman held in Zaire. He also worked on the Broadway premier of The Rocky Horror Show and counts work on the Olympics and papal masses amongst his many gigs.
Chip Monck has a tremendous resume as a lighting director with many successes to his name, but it is ironic that he will be remembered for something he didn’t say, although its still probably good advice that you ‘don’t eat the brown acid’.
