LOOKING FOR A NEW MYTH? YOU HAVE TO GET DOWN IN THE MUD.

SAUGERTIES, N.Y., AUG. 13 -- SAUGERTIES, N.Y., AUG. 13 -- The spirit of Woodstock walked up to me at a Mobil station off the New York State Thruway at 1:52 this morning and asked: "Are the fences down? We don't have tickets and we've got to get in. We'll walk 10 miles if we have to."

The kids' names were Suzanne Catalano and Jill Badalamente, they came from the middle-class suburbs on Long Island, they were 20, and they were chasing a myth, just like everyone else here this weekend. They wanted to capture a blithe magic genie, one they had personally never known but imagined was here. It was the same one that drew a half-million young people to the Catskills with bedrolls, love beads and dopey grins 25 years ago. The same one that corporate America has eagerly bottled and sold ever since.

The genie really never did anything more than play loud, often bad, rock-and-roll music, but its power is undeniable. It lured Suzanne and Jill and 225,000 other Woodstock '94 pilgrims here with the promise of something cosmically significant: community, harmony, Utopia, revolution. This is the Woodstock iconography, as unattainable as ever.

"Yeah, I know it's definitely a very commercial thing," said Jill, the tall, lanky, nose-ringed one. "I know it's not the real thing. But just to be there would be so cool -- to feel that gathering, all those people."

And Suzanne, the short, well-permed one: "It's an experience of a lifetime that I did not want to miss. Like the old Woodstock, we figured everyone would just break down the fence."

There were fences down at the 840-acre Saugerties concert site, I told them, but the area was aswarm with thousands of cops and security guards, manning checkpoints, demanding that everyone show a parking pass or residency permit. Parking was a nightmare, so forget about your car. Hike to Route 212, then find Churchland Road. Start looking for the holes in the chain-link.

By now a skinny shirtless dude had wandered over with the same question, same quest. Jill and Suzanne gave him a wary eye, but he was ticketless too, a brother. Gotta get to Woodstock, man.

And then a graying local in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt appeared and said, "I know the back roads, I'll drive you there." Somehow, the genie of Woodstock Nation was working his old magic again. I wished them all good luck and good trips as they drove away toward a magnificent illusion on Winston Farm.

"Many reporters are Yippie agents." -- Abbie Hoffman, "Woodstock Nation," 1969

Hoffman may have been a infantile leftist clown, but he was also a formidable prophet. I was 12 when first I read his meandering acid-trip Woodstock screed, so I had no idea what he was babbling about. Now I understand how, 25 years ago, Abbie had foreseen that his beloved youth revolution would become a "salable commodity." He nailed the focus-group management strategies that would do the packaging and selling -- even then, merchandising execs were paying $3,500 for two-day crash courses on how to "dig the kids." He railed against rich rock stars who arrived in helicopters, displaying the "amorality of the rock empire."

But more important, Abbie also got whacked in the head by Pete Townshend and thrown off the stage at the first Woodstock for preaching politics in the middle of the Who's set, an enduring metaphor for the notion that corporate-sponsored art and radical politics do not -- cannot -- mix.

People tend to forget that Warner Bros. and Atlantic Records and a team of venture capitalists (led by Michael Lang) put on that first groovy free peace-and-love expo on Yasgur's farm. The scale of corporate exploitation was smaller then -- no two-liter plastic Pepsi jugs with the Woodstock logo, no pay-per-view for $50 -- but the impulse to make a dollar was exactly the same. And everyone was guilty.

"Most of the big figures at Woodstock in 1969, whether onstage singing, or promoting the concert, or writing about it like Abbie Hoffman, were hucksters," says Thomas Sugrue, a University of Pennsylvania historian who likes to explode the fables of the '60s. "They were trying to make a buck and trying to make a name."

The Yippies thought they liberated Woodstock I and ignited a cultural revolution. But all they did was help to forge another '60s icon to be pitched on the youth market. Twenty-five years ago, Jimi Hendrix's mangled rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was condemned as commie Negro blasphemy by conservative America. Today, Hendrix songs are used to sell Chevy Camaros.

We've heard the old lefty idealists -- joined by new X-generation cynics -- whining about this weekend's festival, calling it "Woodshlock" and "Greedstock." Talk of profit centers and revenue ancillaries at a Woodstock concert soiled their myth. Eventually, promoter John Scher, president of PolyGram Diversified Ventures, had to wonder whether it wasn't a mistake to co-opt the mystical name, even as he blasted his media critics for being a gang of hypocritical aging hippies. "Maybe we should have titled it something different," he conceded.

Why? Because the myth is potent. Woodstock still helps the '60s baby boomers resolve the horror of their own hypocrisy. "The first concert attracted overwhelmingly white middle- and upper-class youth from the suburbs, kids from Westchester," notes professor Sugrue. "As much as those kids were rebelling against their parents, ultimately they followed the same trajectory as their parents: a house in the suburbs and kids. Most people were not thinking about politics at Woodstock. They were wanting to get in the mud, pop some acid and have sex."

His view, as a 31-year-old PhD minted in the age of Reagan, is more bitter than most. But it is perhaps the most truthful. "The whole debate about the 'purity' of Woodstock is bogus," says Sugrue. "It was just a rock concert, and it was memorable for two reasons: because there were gate crashers and because the weather was bad." 'Let's Root for Chaos'

Undeniably, the first Woodstock found success in disaster. But still it symbolized something more. There was optimism and unity; the youth culture was making a statement. "You realize that you're not the only one in your city doing the things that you are doing," said a young woman interviewed at a nude swim-in for the Woodstock documentary, released in 1970. "We're everywhere. We're taking over."

That August 25 years ago, when the rains came and the food and fresh water ran out, the hippies banded together and survived. They triumphed -- with a little help from the Establishment. Military helicopters -- the same Hueys that symbolized the shame and terror of the war in Vietnam -- were welcomed when they arrived bearing emergency medical supplies. "There's a little bit of heaven in every disaster area," said the anarchist Hog Farmer Wavy Gravy (who provided "security" at that '69 festival).

Last week, before he left San Francisco to attend Woodstock '94, Gravy, also known as Hugh Romney, said: "If it becomes a disaster area again, it could become interesting. I'm going to pray for rain. Then all the classes disappear, and everybody pitches in."

"Let's root for chaos," said Elliott Roberts, onetime manager of Crosby Stills & Nash and Bob Dylan. Roberts wasn't returning for this Woodstock, but said by car phone from L.A.: "I'm hoping for an event. Hundreds of thousands of people going in, cars littering the highway, fences coming down. Because after all this hype, is it worth it if it's just another rock festival? If it's all so orderly ... who gives a {expletive} ?"

Sixties types see the Woodstock magic through their own retro filters, but significantly, many young people today wear the same hippie lenses. They have borrowed the '60s fashions, borrowed that era's causes, its ideals and its dope. At Woodstock '94, they borrowed it's nudity -- though the sight of a naked guy on a cellular phone creates a cognitive dissonance weirder than any LSD trip. (And yes, there was bad acid; warnings came from the stage about strychnine-laced doses.)

There was a "Generation Xposition," where twentysomethings working for Woodstock Ventures hosted a "Multi-Cultural Harmony Gathering Place," whatever that is.

There was a nod to environmental activism in the Eco-Village, where Greenpeace representatives flailed impotently against Pepsi, the sponsor of this whole event, for its alleged crimes against the earth. Festival organizers, the Greenpeaceniks charged, have employed "greenwash" to cover up the tons of plastic jugs that Pepsi shipped to the site and the non-recyclable polystyrene containers that were used at the organic food stands.

But the most hardened revolutionaries found themselves accepting the helping hand of Big Capital. Gregory "Joey" Johnson -- a Maoist best known for winning protection from the U.S. Supreme Court after he burned the American flag -- took a break from denouncing fascist pigs and selling copies of the Chairman's Little Red Book to praise the capitalist concert organizers. "They wanted to put on a festival that was going to make a statement to the world, and to do that they needed backers," Johnson said pragmatically. "Mike Lang is putting on a festival in the spirit of the original. In the main, it's positive. We don't think they're the enemy."

When you've co-opted the Revolutionary Communist Party, you've pretty much won the war. Goodbye to the Outlaw Days

"We are obscene, lawless, hideous, dangerous, dirty, violent and young / Everything they say we are, we are / And we are very proud of ourselves." -- Jefferson Airplane, "We Can Be Together."

There was a time in this country when you could get stopped by a cop for walking down the street if you had long hair and wore an American flag patch on your butt. I know. It often happened to me, when I was 13 and pretending to be a hippie like my older sister. The pigs were a real hassle in 1970, and when you chorused "Up against the wall, mutha {expletive} ," along with the Jefferson Airplane, you were actually saying something meaningful.

There was also a time in America when an earring and tattoos proved your outlaw status.

Now, nobody's a real outlaw, even with 10 earrings, a pierced belly button and eyebrow, and 50 tattoos -- you're just "alternative." But of course the rebellious, harsh, "alternative" music you listen to is as much a part of the corporate music Establishment as Top 40 and MTV.

At least these kids have music, even if it's been mainstreamed and warmed-over from the '60s. At Woodstock I, music was the main totem that gathered the tribes, and it's also true here. Metal heads coexist with Dead Heads, ravers with new wavers, shaved-head punks with dreadlocked rastas, wasted teenagers with button-down yuppies and burned-out old farts. This Woodstock has leveled whatever generation gap still exists. In the end, the kids -- from 12 to 16 to 24 to 37 to 54 -- are all right.

In the '90s, everyone wants to remain young. America has worshiped at the alter of adolescence since the '50s. We dig those images from Woodstock '69 and '94 because they provide comforting psychological continuity. Those sinewy young men with their flat torsos and sexy wisps of hair just below their navals; those lean nymphs with their perfect champagne-glass breasts and tan legs.

Maybe you were once like that, and maybe in your mind you always are. The youth culture is bought and sold so earnestly because it is the most potent currency we have. We cling to and traffic in the teen spirit because it's really the only way we can ward off our inevitable decay.

Consider promoter Michael Lang, who 25 years ago rode his dirt bike around Bethel, N.Y., commandeering the universe's biggest-ever rock festival, shirtless, muscles taut, topped with an unruly mop of curly hair. Look at him now: The man's in his 40s and still sporting the same unruly mop, still a smug, hip-capitalist wonder boy, except for those deep crevices of age showing on either side of his pouty mouth.

Look at Crosby, Stills & Nash, with their '60s freak-flag hairdos and bushy sideburns and mustaches. They're all graying, or balding or fat, but they still tend the flame of youthful looks. They, like us, are the prisoners of Woodstock mythology. We are stardust, we are golden ...

Throughout the weekend, promoters and bands were paraded before the 1,000-plus representatives of worldwide media here to repeat the festival line: This won't be a replay of '69. The heavy security and tight logistics are necessary to ward off the disaster of original. The kids will make their own Woodstock happen. And this isn't only about money -- even though that's what everyone has been talking about.

Can a $30 million festival, built around merchandising, stay true to the ideals of the '60s? Is it a sell-out?

"Not at all," Michael Lang says evenly. "Without Pepsi's involvement, we probably wouldn't have a festival because it would have been too expensive."

Is any money being donated to good causes -- like the homeless, AIDS, refugee relief, the environment?

"There will be some donations, but we have chosen not to publicly announce what our intentions are," says PolyGram boss John Scher.

Is the festival in the black?

"We're certainly a capitalist society, and we certainly hope to make a profit," Scher says.

Can there really ever be another Woodstock?

"The nature of a live event is that it only happens once," David Crosby said quite logically. Then, cosmically: "This will be something else, but there's a real good chance for some magic to happen."

The Skies Open Up "Maybe it's just that money sucks," Abbie Hoffman wrote in "Woodstock Nation," grappling with the knotty ideological contradictions that began in '69 and have never left us.

He was right. Money sucks. But we need it.

Mud and chaos and broken fences and ditched cars can also suck. But we need them too. And that's what the heavens delivered late this afternoon, in the form of glorious buckets of rain, turning Woodstock '94 into something a little like Woodstock '69, with nudity and muck and a little bit of heaven in a disaster zone.

Somewhere, somehow, I know that Suzanne and Jill, those two suburban girls from Long Island, are digging it, finding the meaning in the music, rolling in the thick of the myth. They'll love it and always remember it, and someday, teach their own children well.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.