http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/28854001/review/29237276/santana_the_woodstock_experience
DAVID FRICKE
Jul 20, 2009
If it had all been sun-shine and clockwork, with a tidy profit on the
morning after, no one would have said another word. Instead, the
Woodstock Music & Art Fair, held August 15th to 17th, 1969, near
Bethel, New York a refugee-camp experience officially declared a
state disaster area on the second day became an anniversary industry.
And business is booming. In addition to these six new releases, the
1970 documentary, Woodstock, is out as a deluxe DVD set. The 1970
soundtrack and its 1971 sequel, Woodstock Two, are back on CD. Then
there are the books, replica tchotchkes and commemorative events,
mostly drawing on an artfully massaged memory of that weekend's
accidental wonder: That amid the frozen traffic, stressed food and
medical services, and oceanic mud, "Half a million young people can
get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing
but fun and music!" as the late Max Yasgur, the farmer who welcomed
the horde on his land, said from the stage on Sunday morning.
Yasgur's breakfast speech, edited on the Woodstock album, appears in
full on Woodstock 40 Years On, a small but telling example of the
box's documentary detail and momentum. Its six CDs contain virtually
all of Woodstock and Woodstock Two plus tracks from a 1994 box, then
another 38 previously unreleased songs and actualities. All but three
of the 32 acts that played are represented (the exceptions, because
of licensing issues, include the Band and, strangely, Ten Years
After, who are on the 1970 album). Everything is in the order it
happened, as it happened. There are bum notes (musicians were high,
burnt or both) and bumpy mixes (recording conditions were just shy of
wartime). But the result, combined with the full-length performances
in the Woodstock Experience packages, is the most comprehensive and
satisfying account so far of the main reason why Yasgur's acres
became an instant city of freaks, including me: the music.
Some of the history gets a valid rewrite. The Grateful Dead's set was
a notorious disaster, beset by equipment problems. But the salvaged
19-minute "Dark Star" is good trippin', one of the mostly heavy-rock
weekend's few truly psychedelic flings (especially considering the
bad acid MC John Morris keeps warning the crowd about).
Singer-songwriter Bert Sommer was left out of the movie and the
original albums. But the folk-rock strains of "And When It's Over"
and Sommer's high, rippling voice suggest a Tim Buckley-in-waiting.
(That, sadly, is where he stayed. Sommer died in 1990.) And,
honestly, Country Joe McDonald's "F-U-C-K" cheer never felt as
mutinous and euphoric on record as it did that Saturday in the open
air. The bigger gas is a long excerpt of acid-flecked garage rock
from his later appearance with the Fish.
There is a solid shot of Creedence Clearwater Revival's roots-'n'-TNT
set and more of the Who's enraged dead-of-night assault, if not
enough of either. Pete Townshend's amp-gutting solo in "Amazing
Journey" at least partly explains why he didn't hesitate to whack
Abbie Hoffman into the pit when the yippie bolted onstage after
"Pinball Wizard." (Hoffman: "I think this is a pile of shit while
John Sinclair rots in prison!" Townshend: "Fuck off my fucking stage!")
That exchange underscores a dirty, overlooked truth of Woodstock. The
biggest massed-youth moment of the decade was also the least
political: straight-up capitalism (if you bought a ticket, like I
did) and hip escapism. The most direct comment on the real state of
the nation Vietnam, urban riots, civil protest only came on
Monday morning, as most of the mob headed home: Jimi Hendrix's
wrenching firefight guitar adaptation of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
If it hadn't been in the movie, most of the Woodstock Nation would
have missed it altogether.
Hendrix's uneven but epochal finale was finally released in its
near-entirety in 1999. Three of the full sets in the Legacy series
are even better. (Each volume is a double CD with the act's 1969
studio LP, a drag if you already own the latter.) Sly and the Family
Stone were the only deep-R&B act on the bill, and from the shotgun
start a scat-and-gallop "M'Lady" into the smiling swagger of "Sing
a Simple Song" Stone is at the height of his party-politics
command. (A year later, he was sinking into drug-and-paranoia
twilight.) Jefferson Airplane's Sunday-dawn show is truly "morning
maniac music," as singer Grace Slick famously put it: fast and
gnarly, spiked with crossed-sword vocals. The convulsive jam out of
"Wooden Ships" would have blown minds at any hour.
The Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter shows are, in turn, uneven and
near great. She sings with familiar fire but leads her big band with
less assurance. He goes overlong on the solos but locks in with his
original Texas rhythm section: drummer Uncle John Turner and bassist
Tommy Shannon.
But for pure shock, nothing beat Santana's 45 Woodstock minutes. It
was one of their first East Coast gigs; the set was their
then-unreleased debut LP. And I still clearly remember guitarist
Carlos Santana's furious trills cutting the Saturday-afternoon heat
over the band's Latin-railroad charge. As far as I'm concerned, for
that alone, the rest of the mess was worth it.
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