Carson Daly On The 'Dark Turn' Woodstock '99 Took: 'I Thought I Was Going To Die'

Thanks to the recent Netflix documentary series “Trainwreck: Woodstock ‘99,” “Barmageddon” star Carson Daly is looking back on his time at the disastrous music festival in 1999.

Daly was working with MTV’s “TRL” at the festival, billed as a celebration of the famous 1969 show. However, days into the concert, a combination of poor planning on the part of the organizers along with aggressive egging on from some bands led to an almost riotous atmosphere. 

Looking back during a recent episode of “Today," Daly explained what happened to him after the concert took a “dark turn,” which he had a “front row seat” to more than two decades ago. 

“Everything that could go wrong went wrong,” he told his co-hosts. “The infrastructure wasn’t built right. They were trying to make money. The two stages, east and west, were two and a half miles apart with no shade. So, imagine these kids are slowly getting dehydrated and angry. It was male toxicity at its worst.” 

Daly said it reached a point where even security guards there to protect the crowd from mayhem called it quits and walked off the job. He too faced some real danger when he was pelted with bottles and other objects from rowdy concertgoers while trying to host “TRL” from the stage at the time.

The host elaborated on that weekend in an Instagram post, describing the scary moment when his bosses at MTV told him things had gotten out of hand at Woodstock.

“I’ve been getting asked about #woodstock99 a ton recently due to the @netflix doc that’s out,” Daly began. “All I can say is I thought I was going to die.”

He continued: “It started off great, TRL live from the side of main stage interviewing all the bands (like Jay from Jamiroquai) & then started getting pelted with bottles, rocks, lighters, all of it. It got insane, fast. Nightfall, Limp plays ‘Break Stuff’ & the prisoners were officially running the prison.” 

Daly said things got so bad he and his MTV crew were forced to fend for themselves and make a hasty retreat from the Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York. 

“My boss @MTV Dave says to our staff/crew backstage, ‘We can no longer guarantee your safety, it’s time to go!’” he concluded. “I remember being in a production van driving recklessly through corn fields to get to safety. It was so crazy & a blur now. I just remember feeling like I was in another country during military conflict. I have so many fun memories from that era, this was not one of them. Needless to say, I haven’t taken the fam back to Rome, NY for a vacation.”

Daly isn’t the only USA Network personality who was at Woodstock ‘99, but his experience was certainly different. WWE Superstar and face of “Miz & Mrs” Mike Mizanin recently confirmed that not only was he at Woodstock ‘99, he was featured in Netflix’s documentary series in a shot of the crowd. 

However, he said that he didn’t experience the same issues everyone else did and actually had a great time at the festival. 

"Barmageddon" airs later this year on USA Network. In the meantime, fans can catch "Miz & Mrs" on Peacock.