By the time we got to Woodstock
Landmark rock festival became symbol of a generation
Sunday, August 2, 2009
By Gary Graff
The New York Times
Woodstock was three days of peace, love and music.
And rain, mud and mayhem.
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair turns 40 this year, riding a renewed
wave of memories -- often selective -- about the experience between
Friday, Aug. 15, and Monday, Aug. 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's farm in
the upstate New York town of Bethel.
Some recall the disorganization, the fields of muck, the heavy
rainstorms and the seemingly random schedule of music that stretched
the three-day festival into an unexpected fourth morning -- on which
Jimi Hendrix played his famed rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.
Others remember the communal spirit of a generation of youth showing
the world that it could join hands, enjoy its music, protest a war
and, yes, take some drugs, all with genuinely positive results.
For guitarist Carlos Santana, who played on Saturday, Woodstock was
"an ocean of collars, hair, teeth, eyes and hands."
"If you closed your eyes, you could forget the impact of seeing a
moving ocean of flesh. Then you could just feel the sound, which had
a different kind of reverberation when it bounced off the people and
came back at you."
Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang still revels in its continuing
notoriety and impact.
"It's always interesting how much it resonates today and how present
it still is in so many people's lives," said the 64-year-old Lang,
who also produced Woodstock sequels in 1994 and 1999. "It was like a
gathering of the tribes, if you will, the youth of the world coming
together to hear some great music and be together, peacefully. It was
a kind of utopia, and I think people still yearn for that."
Some think that this summer's anniversary hoopla is unnecessary.
"It was a good time, but it was 40 years ago," said Graham Nash, who
played the festival with the fledgling Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
"Who gives a (bleep) anymore?"
Plenty do, notably Lang.
He got the idea for Woodstock after moving to upstate New York from
Coconut Grove, Fla., where he had produced the Miami Pop Festival in
1968. In Woodstock, he attended regular open-air music gatherings
that would occasionally feature big names who lived in the area.
Wanting to make the gatherings "bigger," he partnered with Capitol
Records executive Artie Kornfeld and young, Ivy League-educated
businessmen John Roberts and Joel Rosenman.
They overcame one problem after another, from the last-minute
withdrawal of the off-duty New York police officers who had been
hired to man the security force -- they were eventually hired under
assumed names -- to battles with the food concessionaires and
problems with facility construction that ultimately led to the
festival being free, simply because gates and turnstiles remained unfinished.
"It was chaos, wasn't it?" said Pete Townshend of the Who. "I mean,
what was going on off the stage was just beyond comprehension --
stretchers and bodies and people throwing up and people having bad
trips. And all they could say was 'Isn't this fantastic? Isn't this beautiful?'
"I thought the whole of America had gone mad at that moment."
The music has remained Woodstock's most enduring legacy, whether it
was superstars such as Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the
Grateful Dead, Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, or
emerging acts such as Joe Cocker, Melanie, Santana, Sha Na Na and Ten
Years After, whose careers were boosted by their appearance at the
festival and in the film that followed.
When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young took the stage at Woodstock, the
band was making only its second public appearance.
Even Townshend, who famously smacked activist Abbie Hoffman off the
stage when he tried to speak to the crowd during the Who's set,
acknowledges that Woodstock helped his band.
"It made us rich," he said. " Tommy (1969) was finished, it had sold
maybe a million and a half copies. Woodstock put it back on the
charts, and then the film came out and Tommy sold another 4 million copies."
Richie Havens had the dubious honor of starting the festival on Aug.
15. Though scheduled to play fifth that day, he was tapped to lead
off when the planned opener, Sweetwater, couldn't go on because its
equipment truck was caught in the festival traffic.
"I thought, God, three hours late! They're going to throw beer cans
at me. They're going to kill me," said Havens, who actually hit the
stage barely an hour after the planned starting time. "Fortunately,
the reaction was 'Thank God, somebody's finally going to do
something,' and they were happy."
The Grateful Dead's set was marred by sound technician -- and famous
LSD manufacturer -- Owsley Stanley, who decided to rewire the stage
for the group's performance. Not only did it take three hours to
accomplish, guitarist Bob Weir recalled, but Stanley completely messed it up.
"Nothing was grounded, so any time any of the guitarists touched
their instrument, they were getting a low-voltage shock, about 15
volts. It's enough to rattle your nervous system," Weir said.
Hendrix's closing performance, before an estimated crowd of only
40,000 who had remained through Monday morning, became one of the
festival's iconic moments, but Lang had tried hard to put the
guitarist on before a larger audience.
"Jimi at that point was the biggest rock act in the world," said
Lang, who had paid Hendrix $5,000 for Miami Pop and $50,000 for
Woodstock. "I wanted him to open the show with an acoustic set and
close with the band."
The acoustic set never happened, and, when it became apparent that
the festival was running considerably late, Lang offered to have
Hendrix play at midnight on Sunday instead of in the final spot.
"His manager said, 'No, no, no, Jimi's got to close the show,' " the
promoter said. "And I said, 'Are you sure you want to close the
show?' and he said, 'Absolutely.'
"So he went on at 9 o'clock in the morning," Lang said, "and what
amazed me about his performance was that he was unfazed. It didn't
bother him at all."
--
Inside • Books, discs, films and more to mark the Woodstock
anniversary E2 Online • To see more photos, visit Dispatch.com/multimedia.
--------
AN ENDURING SYMBOL OF THE '60S
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/ticket/story/799686.html
Woodstock wasn't the only large festival of its day, but it marked a
turning point
By Patrick S. Pemberton
Jul. 30, 2009
In the summer of 1969, Jere Sullivan and nine buddies squeezed into a
Chevrolet van headed for history.
At the time, however, they had no idea how big the Woodstock Music
Festival was going to be.
"It was being advertised on alternative radio all over the East
Coast," said Sullivan, a San Luis Obispo attorney and musician. "But
their ticket sales were lagging badly."
As it turned out, the festival which celebrates its 40th anniversary
in Augustnot only drew the biggest crowd to see a concert, it also
became a benchmark of the times. Consequently, images of dancing
hippies and a sweaty Joe Cocker are symbolic of an era of the
Vietnam War, counterculture, long hair, civil rights, and, of course,
drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll.
"In hindsight, it is more than just a concert," said Paul Kingsbury,
co-author of the new book "Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the
World" (Sterling Publishing, $35).
While Sullivan was one of perhaps a half-million people to attend the
three-day festival (crowd figures vary), the ripple effect carried
clear on to California. So even if you weren't there, you still sort of were.
"We were all into the music scene and hippiedom and the love power,"
said Cayucos musician Tommy Nunes, who was in Los Angeles when
Woodstock happened. "To read about (Woodstock) and feel all that
stuff was kind of affirming."
Part of a trend
Woodstock was just one of several large music festivals in the late
'60s. The Monterey International Pop Music Festival
launched the trend in 1967.
Local musician Craig Nuttycombe had traveled to the Monterey festival
with his girlfriend at the time.
"It was a blast," said Nuttycombe, of Los Osos. "It was the first
time I ever saw Janis Joplin. It was the first time I ever saw Jimi Hendrix."
While the Monterey festival featured a crowd maybe a tenth the size
of Woodstock, it set a precedent.
"Monterey is clearly a watershed," Kingsbury said. "It showed these
festivals could happen. And they could happen peacefully."
Just like Woodstock, Monterey created legends, with stellar
performances by Otis Redding, The Who and Hendrix, who famously lit
his guitar on fire.
Still, Woodstock would be the festival that symbolized the '60s.
The organizers, headed by 24-year-old Michael Lang, chose the rural
town of Bethel, New York, because of its proximity to Bob Dylan, who
lived in nearby Woodstock. (Ironically, Dylan would not perform at
the festival.) Being relatively close to New York City helped draw a
crowd, Kingsbury said. But the organizers were also savvy, assembling
an all-star lineup that included Hendrix, Cocker, The Who, Creedence
Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, and impressive newcomers such
as Santana and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
An iconic poster featuring a dove and a guitar promised "3 Days
of Peace&Music."
As word of the event spread, masses of people flocked to Max Yasgur's
dairy farm, where the festival was held. By the time Sullivan arrived
Friday night the first night of the festival the crowd was
already overwhelming.
"The only thing you could do was park two miles away and walk in," he said.
Once opening act Richie Havens took the stage just after 5 p. m. on
Friday, Aug. 15, the festival began, with some acts playing in the
early-morning hours.
"I didn't sleep a whole lot," said Sullivan, who saw The Who perform
at 5 a. m. "I think I got three hours of sleep each night max. But,
you know, at 18, you can do that."
Those who weren't there read accounts about it.
"I think there were a lot of people who wished they would have gone,
" Kingsbury said.
But not everyone.
"Even back then I didn't do well with large crowds," Nuttycombe said.
"I mean, it definitely was a happening. But the Monterey one was just right."
While Nuttycombe wasn't at the festival, he would cross paths with
many of the acts that performed there. As a member of the promising
duo Lambert & Nuttycombe, he opened for Canned Heat, which performed
the second day of Woodstock. A year after Woodstock, the Canned Heat
tour took him to the Fehrmarn Festival in Germany, which included
Woodstock acts Sly & the Family Stone and Hendrix.
At one point, Nuttycombe rode an elevator with Hendrix, who would die
12 days after that festival.
Peace and music
While the hippies had been known for questioning authority, Woodstock
was praised for being a peaceful gathering.
"I never saw a fight," Sullivan said. "I never saw anybody hassle
anybody else."
Those who were there, he said, knew it was a historic event.
"The announcers really wanted to make it clear that you were in a
small city now
and everybody knows how to behave, everybody needed to behave," he
said. "They were telling us that this was all over the news, all over
the country the fact that we're all here, 500,000 strong, and we're
making history by running this festival."
At the same time, the festival had a clear anti- Vietnam message as
illustrated by the Country Joe McDonald anti-war song
"I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'- to-Die-Rag."
"The galvanizing effect of the festival was the antiwar movement
continuing to gain steam," Kingsbury said.
Back in California, that sentiment had exploded at University of
California, Berkeley, where Rick Sutton was studying architecture.
"I went to Berkeley to find out what tear gas smelled like," joked
Sutton, who had transferred from Cal Poly that year.
While Sutton was just beginning to get into recording studio work, he
found that music had shifted in the Bay Area.
"The scene was so politicized," said Sutton, a musician who owns
Sutton Sound Studio in Atascadero. "It had a very cynical and
jaundiced view to it."
Acts that weren't singing political songs, he said, tended to be dismissed.
Rampant drugs
While the crowd at Woodstock was later heralded for being a peaceful
assembly, drug use there became a microcosm of a more dangerous
trend. And its continued use would have fatal repercussions for
Woodstock performers such as Hendrix, Joplin, Tim Hardin and Canned
Heat's Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson.
"Drugs were rampant back then," Nuttycombe said. "Some of us made it
through, and some of us didn't."
His own musical career which was backed by influential producer Glyn
Johnswas hampered when his partner, Denis Lambert, became addicted
to heroin. Years later, Lambert would commit suicide.
"Heroin is pretty much a one-way street if you get hooked on it,"
Nuttycombe said.
While drug use seemed almost glamorous at Woodstock, the Altamont
festival four months later cast a much different light. As shown in
the movie "Gimme Shelter," drugged-out audience members appeared
zombielike and disconnected. Meanwhile, members of the Hell's Angels
signed on to do security roughed up performers and the crowd, and
killed a young man named Meredith Hunter.
It was a startling wakeup call to the peace movement.
"I think we have to agree with other rock critics," Kingsbury said.
"It feels like Woodstock was the zenith the apex of the peace
movement, and Altamont was the nadir the absolute hell of it."
Seeing the potential chaos of these festivals, Kingsbury said, many
communities passed laws forbidding them. And for a long time,
large-scale festivals vanished.
Apex event
As big as Woodstock was, it might be best viewed as simply an
amplification of a broad change that had already begun.
The anti-Vietnam movement had exploded with the Democratic Convention
riot months earlier. The Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in
1964. And The Beatles had changed the course of music well before Joe
Cocker appeared onstage in a tie-dye shirt.
"The direction was solidly changed five, six, seven years earlier,"
Sutton said.
In his mind, there were two defining moments in American music: When
Elvis Presley and the Beatles were first introduced to America.
"Woodstock was more of an accumulative, apex event," he said.
Still, Woodstock aptly reflected a coast-to-coast lifestyle change.
In the early part of the decade, Nunes was a clean-cut member of the
Sentinels, a surf band that scored a hit with their song "Latin'ia."
By the time Woodstock rolled around, he had adopted long hair and a
mustache and was playing Beatlesinspired rock.
"I don't know if I wish I were (at Woodstock), after seeing all the
mud and stuff," he said. "But I definitely could appreciate the
enormity of the event and the things it changed and contributed to."
While Nunes was performing in the Topanga Canyon area with his band
Sarah, the duo of Lambert &Nuttycombe was in Sausalito recording its
first folk record, "At Home," for A&M.
After Woodstock, Sullivan, who had attended prep school in
Massachusetts, came back to his native California to attend UC Santa Barbara.
Today, both Nuttycombe and Nunes continue to perform music locally.
Sullivan, a defense attorney, plays blues harmonica with local bands
"when I can sneak out and sit in." And Sutton continues to operate
his studio locally as he has done since 1970.
While they all agree that Woodstock was a defining moment, they also
agree the era was short-lived.
"It just all happened so quickly," Sutton said.
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment