Carson Daly talks about the disaster that was Woodstock ’99, admitting, “I thought I was going to die.” (Photo: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Carson Daly thought he was “going to die” at Woodstock ’99.
The music festival gone horribly wrong is the subject of another documentary. Aptly titled Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, the three-part Netflix streamer is about the mayhem in Rome, New York, more than two decades ago. Daly said that since the doc came out, he’s had a lot of questions about being there, as the host of MTV’s TRL at the time, so he addressed it.
“All I can say is, I thought I was going to die,” said Daly, who now covers entertainment news on the Today show. “It started out great, TRL Live from the side of the main stage interviewing all the bands (like Jay from Jamiroquai) and then he started getting bottles, rocks, lighters, everything. It got crazy real quick.”
Daly, who included photos of things being thrown at him, said on the night as Limp Bizkit, featuring Fred Durst, performed “Break Stuff,” “the prisoners were officially running the prison,” referring to the angry crowd. His MTV boss told staff and crew backstage: “‘We can no longer guarantee your safety, it’s time to go!’ I remember being in a production van driving recklessly through cornfields to get to safety.”
He said it was all “so crazy and a blur now”, saying he felt like he was “in another country during a military conflict”.
Now a father of four, Daly ended by writing, “I have so many fun memories from that time, this was not one of them. Needless to say, I haven’t taken the family to Rome, NY, on vacation.”
The documentary, directed by Jamie Crawford, looks at how the festival was the antithesis of the 1969 original with its message of peace over love. It was toxic on many levels: from the mud on the grounds that were actually human waste to the many sexual assaults. There was more violence, looting, vandalism and arson.
Spin reported at the time that festival-goers, fueled by anger at the conditions but also just performing, hurled gay slurs at Daly and derogatory sexual comments about his ex-girlfriend Jennifer Love Hewitt. One person “threw a cup of water in Daly’s face, and the beleaguered VJ muttered, ‘Tell me, man, that wasn’t your pee.'” Daly’s face was the target of many bottles expensive plastic water bottles.
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Earlier this week, WWE wrestler Mike “The Miz” Mizanin confirmed he was part of the crowd after a picture of him shirtless and yelling “Woodstock ’99, baby” into the camera was included in the document .
“Before the real world, 18-year-old Mike still knew how to find the camera. Never knew these pictures existed, had to do a double take,” she wrote on Instagram, looking as surprised as the d-eyed viewers. ‘eagle they saw. he
Daly was featured in the 2021 HBO Max documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage last year. He spoke about it at the time on Today, saying he has referred to the festival as “the day the ’90s died”. He continued: “Before there was the Fyre Festival debacle,” that other colossal mess that landed organizer Billy McFarland in jail, “Woodstock ’99 was known as one of the biggest festival failures of all time. time”.