Three months after Woodstock, the hippie scene shifted south.

To the boondocks west of West Palm Beach.

On Thanksgiving weekend, 40 years ago.

See anyone you know in the crowd? (Courtesy Ken Davidoff)

And the local ruling class didn’t like it one bit.

Then-Palm Beach County Sheriff Bill Heidtman vowed to make life miserable for the free-loving, pot-smoking, anti-establishment youngsters who gathered at the Palm Beach Pop Festival. He threatened to herd alligators toward the crowd, gathered at the Palm Beach International Raceway. And he swore he’d have his good ole’ boys dig out fire ant colonies and relocate them at the venue.

Yet, 50,000 people showed up for the three-day event, the only one of its kind ever in this area. And they got to calling Heidtman “Sheriff Eichmann,” after Hitler’s henchman, Adolf Eichmann.

Mick Jagger at the 1969 Palm Beach Pop Festival (Courtesy Ken Davidoff)

The lineup of bands was nearly the same as the earlier New York state rendezvous. Except that Jimi Hendrix couldn’t make it. He was replaced by a little band known as The Rolling Stones. Janis Joplin belted out a few tunes, as did The Byrds, Sly and the Family Stone, Johnny Winter, Grand Funk Railroad, Spirit and Jefferson Airplane.

Florida rocker Tom Petty was there, too, after hitch-hiking south from his hometown of Gainesville.

Palm Beach society shutterbug Ken Davidoff remembers the festival well. At 19, he scored a gig as the event’s official photographer.

Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter at the 1969 festival (Courtesy Ken Davidoff)

“It was rainy and freezing cold and people were ankle deep in mud,” Davidoff said. “There were 50,000 at the beginning, but by the time the Stones got on stage on Sunday, there were maybe 3,000 left. The weather and delays just drove people away.”

Among the delays, Davidoff cited the Stones’ arrival after authorities forced the band to wait on their jet on the tarmac for six hours, sorta, kinda, on purpose.

Davidoff recently built this Web site for the anniversary and stuffed it with some of the 600-plus pictures he took that weekend. He’s also interviewing festival-goers, roadies and promoters for a documentary.

“The festival was definitely a historical event that very few residents knew about,” Davidoff said.

For more photos, click here. And for some of the sounds, click here.

Stewart

Part-time Palm Beacher Rod Stewart this week got sued for not paying $3.3 million in legal fees to a Los Angeles firm that represented him in three cases.

What is it about the rocker and IOUs?

Back in 2001, the Palm Beach interior designer Kemble Interiors was stiffed by Stewart. To the tune of $168,000, according to records. The firm decorated his three homes — Palm Beach, London and Los Angeles — and charged him $1.4 million.

But when the last payment came due, Kemble waited for months. Then the business sued in a Palm Beach County court.

‘He’s at it again,” said Mimi McMakin at Kemble.

She declined to comment further because the firm and Stewart settled then signed a confidentiality agreement.

Funny thing, the singer of Maggie May and Baby Jane also was sued by the Boca law firm that represented him in the Kemble case, Proskauer Rose LLP, for $20,000. Seems that Stewart, 64, had forgotten to pay those attorneys, too.

The latest lawsuit on the Left Coast claims Stewart, a multi-millionaire who’s notoriously cheap, owes for legal work on three cases, including one involving the cancellation of a gig in Las Vegas. A federal jury ordered Stewart to pay the Rio hotel-casino $2 million for canceling the Christmas 2000 concert.

Stewart’s manager could not be reached.

With the NFL more than a month behind last year in announcing the halftime entertainment for the Feb. 7 Super Bowl at Land Shark Stadium, rumors are rampant that the league is considering one of two solutions.

The first, according to a source close to the host committee, is that the Miami Dolphins’ new co-owners — salsero Marc Anthony, hip-hopper Jennifer Lopez and Latin star Gloria Estefan — would combine forces for one of the world’s most-watched halftime shows. It’s unclear whether Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, who agreed to purchase a small share of the team but hasn’t paid for it yet, would participate.

“Gloria appeared in six Super Bowls,” said Estefan publicist, David Naranjo. “She enjoys helping showcase the city. But I haven’t heard anything about her doing it again.”

The Who's Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend

The other avenue, according to a report in Sports Illustrated’s online version, it that the British band The Who may be thisclose from receiving the nod. While the band’s music is going through a renewal of sorts with the soundtracks of TV series like CSI: Miami, The Who aren’t touring and have no new CD to sell. The band’s frontman, Roger Daltrey, is in the states on the tail end of a solo tour. He appears at the Seminole Hard Rock and Casino in Hollywood on Nov. 29.

“The committee feels that it’s strange that the NFL hasn’t made an announcement yet,” the source said. “Last year, they did it (it was Bruce Springsteen) during a Sunday night game in September. “

At the NFL headquarters in New York, a spokeswoman said there’s no timeline to announce halftime shows.

“When we have something to announce, we will,” she said.

 Loading ...

Dion and her elderly husband, Rene Angelil

There’s a good reason why Canadian songbird Celine Dion has been flying below the radar over the past few months.

Holed up in a rented house at the Bear’s Club in Jupiter while her waterpark-outfitted castle on Jupiter Island is being finished, Dion suffered a miscarriage, according to her husband.

And the singer of My Heart Will Go On then went through another unsuccessful attempt at artificial insemination, he told the French Canadian Journal de Montreal.

A third attempt is scheduled this weekend in New York.

The 41-year-old Dion’s hubby and manager, Rene Angelil, told the newspaper that Dion became pregnant in August but lost the baby a week and a half later.

Said Rene, who’s 67: “We are living the same reality as the majority of couples who face these techniques of procreation. The road can be long and arduous. It doesn’t always work like it did the first time with (their son, born at Palms West in Loxahatchee in 2001) Rene-Charles. In August, the doctor believed that the pregnancy had started well. It wasn’t the case. We were in shock.

“But you know Celine. She doesn’t let go. We are not discouraged.”

Hey, guys, here’s a novel idea: How ’bout an adoption?

(Courtesy Mavrixphoto.com)

Roger Daltrey, frontman of The Who, enjoyed a perk of stardom on the Palm Beach sand recently: A white-haired gentleman named Gordon sprayed suntan lotion all over his 65-year-old body! And Roger seemed to appreciate the tan assistant’s work thoroughly! (Read more about Daltrey’s Palm Beach vacation here.)

Straight out of the 1990s, but looking more beautiful than ever, singer/songwriter Jewel appeared as relaxed as if she were performing in a friend’s living room Tuesday night at the intimate Fillmore Gleason in Miami Beach. Now 35, the singer is on tour to support her latest album, Lullaby, which includes her a capella rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

(Splash News/Special to Page2Live)

So, this is why Canadian songbird Celine Dion has been drilling wells all over her Jupiter Island property! Now that the water can flow, worker bees are laboring extra hard on her double-wide beachfront home’s lazy river and main pool, according to these aerial pictures taken Monday. Still to come, the water slides!

(Splash News/Special to Page2Live)

All leather and lace, Mexican cutie Paulina Rubio rocked the Gusman Center in downtown Miami over the Halloween weekend. Known for her daring outfits, the singer of the chart-busting Causa Y Efecto outdid herself. Not that anyone was complaining!

Celine Dion using some of the precious liquid

Calling Celine Dion a water hog did have some effect after all.

Now that she’s having a water park installed on her Jupiter Island property — that’s two giant pools (one for the guests, of course), several waterslides and a lazy river — Dion’s doing it somewhat sensitively.

(See exclusive pictures of the construction here)

Last year, as the area suffered through one of its worst droughts, the Canadian songbird became the area’s heaviest user of drinking water. About 6.5 million gallons flowed through her nest, and that was just during construction. Cost the singer of My Heart Will Go On $36,343, and beaucoup public scorn, even if it was partly due to a broken pipe.

Now, La Dion told Martin County she’s having American Drilling Services drill wells on her $12.5 million beachside property. That’s three wells to extract water, and three to re-inject some of it, post use, back into the ground, according to the paperwork.

The water will not only be used for the waterpark but also to cool the home’s air conditioning units.

By the way, Dion is having a reverse osmosis system installed to purify the water 98 percent on its way to her water park.

Water flowing without scrutiny? Priceless!

 Loading ...

Roger Daltrey in the surf near the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan this week (Mavrixphoto.com/Special to Page2Live)

For all the evil at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach earlier this week, when a Holocaust denier’s lecture was disrupted by a bloody fight between two followers, there was plenty of good will.

That came courtesy of Roger Daltrey, the voice of the British rock band The Who.

The pop culture icon, 65, who’s been resting here while on break from his solo tour, met a couple from New Jersey staying in the hotel lobby and ended up in a hour-long conversation that the duo, Joe and Joan Vrola, won’t soon forget.

The topic was the Vrolas’ 22-year-old son, Joey, who just came out of a bout with cancer. Teen cancer happens to be what Daltrey calls his life’s work. He started the Teenage Cancer Trust in England and funds the work of the foundation yearly with a week-long series of concerts at the famous Royal Albert Hall in London.

By the end of the chat, Joan Vrola was in tears in Daltrey’s arms. Finally, someone understood!

“This was probably the most therapeutic conversation we had with anyone since our son was diagnosed (three years ago),” Joe Vrola said. “Our son is doing much better physically, but he’s not the same kid. There’s an anguish associated with the disease that teens, especially, need to deal with.

“Bad things happen to them when it comes to drinking and drugs and isolation. The hospital may be good at curing, but they provide no psychological counseling. No one in this country seems to understand that, but Roger Daltrey does.”

Daltrey’s Trust indeed provides counseling and moral support to afflicted teens.

Hours later, Daltrey was on the phone with the Vrolas’ son, who at first didn’t know anything about Daltrey. Hope, Vrola said, is what Daltrey was passing on.

“Besides close family, there aren’t too many people who actually care,” Joe Vrola said. “But here you have this total stranger who does.”

“That’s Roger,” said his friend in West Palm Beach, Realtor Leslie Linder. “He wants to change the world one person at a time.”

Joe Vrola wanted to know why Daltrey made teenage cancer his cause, so he asked the singer of Behind Blue Eyes, Who Are You and Pinball Wizard if any of his nine children ever had the disease.

“He said no,”Vrola said,“but his answer had the hair on the back of my neck stand straight. He said teens made him what he is. They were his biggest fans. He said he just wants to give back to those who supported him all these years.”