A Conversation with Wavy Gravy
One of the sudden stars of Woodstock was, and is, a lovable and generous soul
ournalist and humorist Paul
Krassner described him as “the
illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and
Mother Teresa.” At 83, he remains
the clown prince of the counterculture, a
warm, earthy spirit who embodies the
generosity and mischief of the hippie
ethos. Born Hugh Nanton Romney, which
sounds rather like a buttoned-up banker,
he is known to the world as Wavy Gravy,
a nickname long ago bestowed by
B.B. King. Wavy’s résumé reads like a map
of late-20th-century bohemia. He was a
Greenwich Village poet and roving
monologuist who was managed by Lenny
Bruce when he made a live album in L.A.
while he was opening for jazz immortal
Thelonious Monk. Wavy was an auxiliary
member of the Merry Pranksters, the
peripatetic LSD-espousing cohorts of
author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest). He’s a founding member
of the Hog Farm, a California collective
that is one of America’s longest-running
communes, which helped set up stages
for rock concerts and put on carnival-like
shows of their own.
In 1969 the Woodstock organizers
enlisted Wavy and his Hog Farm
compatriots to help serve as a kind of
benign security force; the commune
insisted on also providing a free kitchen
for concertgoers. Wavy was recruited
to make public service announcements
during the festival—and immediately
became a beloved figure, immortalized
in the Woodstock film. Since then he has
been heavily involved in charity work.
Wavy helped start the Seva Foundation,
which helps underserved communities
around the globe receive medical help,
especially eye care and surgery; and for
more than four decades he and his wife,
Jahanara Romney (a former TV actress),
have run Camp Winnarainbow, teaching
performance arts to kids. And... he is the
inspiration for Ben & Jerry’s Wavy Gravy
ice cream, sold from 1993 to 2001.
How did you and the Hog Farm get
involved with Woodstock? We had
started driving across the country putting
on these shows called “The Hog Farm
and Friends: An Open Celebration,” and
we would set up a palette for amazement
to occur—we might have hundreds of
people working on one painting and had
these inflatables we’d blow up and you
could walk inside them. We’re trucking
along and the phone call came in from
Stan Goldstein [who hired production
staff for the festival]: Would you do this
thing at Woodstock? Stan was aware of
what our touch was—that we could work
with people. We said we’d be delighted
but we’d like to do a free kitchen. When
we got off the plane at Kennedy there’s
all the world press and klieg lights and
cameras going. Someone says, “Oh,
the Hog Farm—you guys are gonna do
security.” So I said, “Well, do you feel
secure?” And the guy said yes. And I
said, “See it’s working.” Then he asked,
“C’mon, what are you gonna use for
crowd control?” And I said, “Cream pies
and seltzer bottles.” The reporters all
wrote it down.How did you get public-address duty?
I was spotted by Chip Monck, production
coordinator, and he grabbed me to
make support announcements. I never
announced a band, but I did talk about
what you could do, where you could go
if you were hurt or you’re having trouble
with your psychotropics, or whatever.What was it like making
announcements to all those masses
of people? I just let it roll over me—it
made the hairs of my arms leap to rigid
attention and that’s one of my favorite
situations.At one point you addressed the fact
that there was some bad LSD floating
around the place. Yes. I said, “It’s just
manufactured poorly and if you’re in
doubt about your acid, give some to the
guy who sold it to you and see what he
does.” And that kind of eased tensions.And of course, you set up the kitchen.
It was run by my wife, along with [Hog
Farmers] Lisa Law and Peter Whiterabbit.
We set up a feeding station where we
could feed hundreds of people, which was
probably enough to cover the ones who
didn’t have any money and were really
hungry. My morning announcement to
the big multitudes was “What we have
in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000.”
That’s when we introduced hippies to
granola. They’d never seen it before; they
were in the mud in their sleeping bags
and we brought it to them in Dixie Cups
and they looked at us and said, “What
is this s--t, gravel?” But they tried it and
they liked it. The granola manufacturers
of the world owe us a tremendous debt.
We also established a tent for if
you were having trouble with your
psychotropics. I went down there and
there’s this guy going, “Miami Beach,
1944, Joyce, Joyce!” and there’s this
300-pound Australian doctor sitting on
top of him. I asked the guy, “What’s your
name?” And he said, “Bob.” Then, I said,
“Your name is Bob. Guess what Bob?
You’ve taken a little acid, and it’s gonna
wear off.” He said, “Oh, thank you, thank
you.” He just wanted to know it was
gonna wear off and when he was near
normal, I said, “See that sister coming
through the door with her toes in her
nose? That was you four hours ago. Now
you’re the doctor, take over.” And that way
the scene regenerated itself.Did you feel the sense of community?
There were all these kids from all over
America and let’s say they were not
too thrilled about the fracas going on
in Southeast Asia. But they were kind
of alone, and suddenly there’s a half a
million of them in one place and they
know that they’re not alone. It was utterly
amazing, and everybody pitched in and
helped everybody else and there was a
great beauty to that.