Joan traveled with a friend from her home in Bloomington, Indiana to New York’s Catskill Mountains, and although her friend had a ticket, Joan decided to risk going without one. Because it was the first major rock festival, “I knew it was going to be historic,” she says. When they arrived, having a ticket ended up being irrelevant, as the drowsy farm was flooded with half a million people—no ticket-takers in sight.
Even between the scheduled acts, music abounded. “There were people jamming and playing instruments in the crowd,” Joan says.
During one of these impromptu sessions, she bumped into a very distinctive friend, a musician named Fantuzzi. “He stood out on the street,” she says, “because he only wore a loincloth.” When they saw each other, they both began dancing, and the moment was captured by rock photographer Jim Marshall. His photo of the pair was featured in a 1969 issue of Life Magazine. Afterward, Joan returned to her family and her self-described “hippie” lifestyle, until 1994, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the legendary festival. “A friend said to me, ‘Have you seen Newsweek? Your picture is on it!’” Sure enough, the iconic picture was on the cover, and Joan ended up fielding interview requests from people all over the world who wanted to know the story of the exuberant girl in the picture. Woodstock’s fortieth anniversary has brought the photo back into the spotlight yet again.
