40 years later, Woodstock still fascinates
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32331026/ns/entertainment-music/
It should have been a disaster, but instead it became a generation's symbol
Aug 10, 2009
BETHEL, N.Y. - Forty years after Richie Havens sang and strummed for
a sea of people at Woodstock, he still gets asked about it all the
time. And like in the movie, he still gets requests to sing "Freedom."
He's not surprised.
"Everything in my life, and so many others', is attached to that
train," Havens said.
The young hippies who watched the sun come up with The Who in 1969
are now eligible for early bird specials. Many of the bands are
broken up or missing members who died. But Woodstock remains one of
those events like the moon landing earlier that summer that
continues to define the '60s in the popular imagination.
Consider the bumper crop of Woodstock nostalgia marking the 40th
anniversary. There's a new director's cut DVD of the concert movie, a
remastered concert CD, director Ang Lee's rock 'n' roll comedy
"Taking Woodstock" and a memoir by promoter Michael Lang. There are
also a performances scheduled by Woodstock veterans at the old site,
now home to a '60s museum and an outdoor concert pavilion.
The Woodstock legend stems from big names like Jimi Hendrix and Janis
Joplin playing at a show where everything went wrong but turned out right.
The town of Woodstock didn't want the concert and promoters were
bounced from another site at the 11th hour. Lang settled on a hay
field in Bethel owned by a kindly dairy farmer named Max Yasgur. The
concert did come off Aug. 15-18, 1969, but barely. Fences were torn
down, tickets became useless. More than 400,000 people converged on
this rural corner 80 miles northwest of New York City, freezing
traffic for miles. Then the rains doused everything.
It should have been a disaster. But Americans tuning in to the
evening news that weekend saw smiling, dancing, muddy kids. By the
time the concert movie came out months later, Woodstock was a symbol
of the happy, hippie side of the '60s spirit.
It still is.
Baby boomers are the "Woodstock Generation" not the "Monterey
Generation" or the "Altamont Generation." Bethel's onsite museum has
logged more than 70,000 visitors since last summer, a fair number of
them college students born well after Woodstock. A roadside monument
there regularly logs visitors from around the planet.
"It's almost a pilgrimage," said Wade Lawrence, director of the
Museum at Bethel Woods. "It's like going to a high school reunion, or
it's like visiting a grave site of a loved one."
A cultural touchstone
From Lollapalooza to All Points West, there have been plenty of big
festivals focused on youth culture. The continent-hopping Live Aid
shows of 1985 did that and more, enlisting top names like U2 and
Madonna to fight hunger in Africa. None have the cultural cachet of
Woodstock. Who would ever ask a Generation X-er: "Were you really at Live Aid?"
People who went to Woodstock say the crowd set it apart as much as
the music. The trippy anarchy of Woodstock has become legend: lots of
nudity, casual sex, dirty (and muddy) dancing, open drug use. The
stage announcer famously warned people to steer clear of the brown acid.
Many who were there recall Woodstock as an oasis of good vibes during
a time of unrest over the Vietnam War. Ilene Marder, then an
18-year-old who hitched from the Bronx, saw people feeding one
another and respecting one another. She knew she found her tribe.
"The music was nice, but it was being with so many people who looked
like us, who looked like me," said Marder, who later moved to
Woodstock some 50 miles away.
"I remember telling myself 'Don't forget this! Don't forget they way
you feel right now!"'
Former Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten remembers hearing
buzz that something special was up at the nearby hotel where the band
was staying. The scale of the event sunk in when the band choppered
in over the mass of people. While artists like Joe Cocker and Santana
boosted their careers at Woodstock, the Dead were notoriously flat.
Jerry Garcia, the band's late guitarist, told interviewers that his
guitar was being hit with bouncing blue balls of electricity the
kind that comes from bad wiring, not strong psychedelics. Constanten
said he wasn't as bothered as his band mates.
"Actually, I had a wonderful time. The guitarists were not. Because
of electrical problems, they were getting shocks from their strings
and all," he said. "Aversion therapy like that, no one needs."
Woodstock goes viral
Constanten contends the music and spirit of Woodstock was not a
revelation to the people there. But it was to the millions who saw
the movie and listened to the album.
As they say now, Woodstock went viral.
"This juggernaut of a music scene burst in their awareness," he said.
"It didn't feel different to us. It was their response."
Woodstock has been resurrected a couple of times since then, at least in name.
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They Went Down To Yasgur's Farm
http://www.capecodchronicle.com/chatnews/chat081309_2.htm
Local Residents Recall The Festival That Changed Rock Music
by Tim Wood
8/13/09
CHATHAM --- Forty years ago this week, 16-year-old Rick
Smith rendezvoused with a group of friends at the Howard Johnson's
restaurant at the rotary. They all piled into a VW bus for the long
trip to Bethel, N.Y., to take part in what was to become the most
famous event in the history of modern music.
Smith's parents had told him he couldn't go to the
Woodstock Music and Art Fair, billed as "three days of peace and music."
"I kind of just snuck out and went, for which I was in
trouble for the next decade," said Smith, who now owns Chatham Real
Estate. "But I felt it was important. In retrospect, it was one of
the best decisions I ever made."
A number of Chatham residents, both past and present,
attended the festival held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre farm in Upstate
New York Aug. 15 to 18, 1969. Thirty-two musical acts performed for
a crowd estimated at a half million. The rain, mud, and lack of
sanitary facilities and food are among the memories that stand out
for those interviewed, as well as the music, which featured some of
the top rock acts of the day.
"It was the music that called us there," recalled Marion
Prendergast. "We were so excited, happy, mellow and stoned."
Karen McPherson was a folk singer at the time, and many
of the musicians who played Woodstock weren't her cup of tea. But
she recalls the brilliant display after Ritchie Havens asked the
throng to light matches, and gained a new appreciation of Janis Joplin.
"I'd never really appreciated her before, but when I saw
her and saw her energy, just her stage presence was just so good and
energetic," she said.
Heather Smith Labbe, Rick's older sister, traveled to
the festival with a separate group of friends. Asked about the
music, she replied, "I saw the whole thing. I think the most
spectacular thing for me was watching The Who. That was
amazing." She saw Jimi Hendrix, who closed the festival in the wee
hours of Aug. 18, up close. "Hardly anyone was there, so I was like
three feet away from him."
Rick Smith was in a local rock band at the time, and
remembers "waiting and waiting" for Sly and the Family Stone to take
the stage. "The music was all a blur, but it was just phenomenal,"
he recalled. "The Who was by far my favorite, and Mountain ---
Leslie West was awesome" (Woodstock was only the band's fourth live
appearance).
Woodstock was also an important event culturally as well
as a touchstone in the lives of many of those who
attended. McPherson, a 23-year-old paralegal in Arlington, Va. at
the time, remembers the details --- getting stuck in the "mother of
all traffic jams," finding a camp site in the woods, and the lack of
sanitary facilities.
"We had food, but we didn't have toilet paper," she said.
But festival goers formed an instant community, and
shared food and other scare resources.
"If you needed anything, you just asked the person next
to you," recalled Smith Labbe. Her group had no food. "People were
passing out granola in the woods. We didn't know what we were eating!"
She remembers Hare Krishnas, naked hippies and "all
kinds of things going on. "It was just a rainy, horrible mess at
times, but everybody was really, really friendly." For a 19-year-old
who grew up in Chatham, "it was totally an adventure," she said.
The festival was also a break for those in the peace
movement at the time, Prendergast recalled.
"We were empowered not only by our numbers, but by the
commonality that brought us together," she said. "Our vision of
peace carried us through, to come out a stronger, more solid movement."
Bruce and Debby Beane had a somewhat different
experience. They actually worked at the festival. They arrived a day
early and stayed a day late, avoiding the traffic hassles, according
to Debby Beane. Bruce, who was working in a rock club in Boston at
the time, was assigned to parking detail, "the plans for which of
course fell apart with the unprecedented crowds and rain." Debby
answered phones, "which never stopped ringing," and also helped in
the T shirt silk screening tent. They were put up in a nearby dude
ranch; the crew filming the documentary on the festival stayed in the
next room. Bruce was paid about $250, Debby $50.
"And oh yes, there was a lot of great music," she said
in an e-mail.
McPherson kept her tickets (they cost $7 for each of the
three days); nobody was taking them at the festival. "There were a
lot of people who thought you shouldn't buy tickets, that music
belonged to the people," she said. Smith Labbe also has her tickets.
"They're covered in mud," she said.
--------
Say peace
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story.asp?file=/2009/8/16/music/4517017&sec=music
MUSIC, MYTHS and LEGENDS
August 16, 2009
By MARTIN VENGADESAN
Four decades later, Woodstock remains an unparalleled music festival
that rocked America and, to a certain extent, the world.
FESTIVALS are an essential part of the music experience. Nowadays,
the most acclaimed ones are generally in Britain, events like
Glastonbury and Reading. At various points when I was growing up, big
festivals included Montreux, the rolling Lollapalooza tour and, of
course, the huge Bob Geldof-organised Live Aid shows of 1985.
However, there is no one festival that comes close to matching the
impact of Woodstock.
For four days, 40 years ago (Aug 15-18, 1969, to be exact), some of
the biggest names from the folk and rock music scenes converged upon
a large field outside of the town of Woodstock in upstate New York.
To an estimated audience of nearly half a million, they held a
festival that became a defining moment in the chaotic atmosphere of
the 1960s. Woodstock may have been a rebellion, but it was once
fuelled largely by the ethos of peace and love.
Ironically, Woodstock was one of those things that grew and grew.
Initially planned as a sort of update on the successful 1967 Monterey
Pop Festival, the organisers ran into trouble when local townsfolk
objected to having so many people descend upon their neighbourhood,
which was near the home of the already iconic Bob Dylan.
Thanks in part to the generosity of farmer Max Yasgur who allowed his
dairy farm to be used, it became a monumental event that reflected
the times. (It's also the subject of the Ang Lee movie Taking
Woodstock this summer.)
Folkies like Richie Havens, Tim Hardin, Melanie and a visibly
pregnant Joan Baez led the initial call for a peaceful solution to
humanity's problems, although it's fair to say they were probably
trumped by the anti-war anthem I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag
which was delivered with great passion by Country Joe and the Fish.
A nod to the "mysticism" of the times (i.e the hippie fascination
with all things Indian) was achieved in part by an invocation by
Hindu spiritual teacher Swami Satchidananda, and sealed by a
performance by Ravi Shankar. The mysticism might have had its roots
in more than just music and prayers though, for a healthy supply of
hallucinogenic drugs like marijuana and LSD made the rounds!
The undisputed musical star of Woodstock was Jimi Hendrix. His
performance at Woodstock, backed by Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox,
might not have been his greatest ever but it was probably his most
influential. Obviously under the influence himself, Hendrix tore into
a set that included Fire, Purple Haze and Hey Joe as well as some
blistering and occasionally confusing improvisations. Foremost among
these was an improvised version of the US anthem, The Star-Spangled
Banner, that came to symbolise a new generation asserting itself.
Of course, with so many different people being involved, Woodstock
couldn't go entirely smoothly. Radical youth leader Abbie Hoffman
clambered on stage during a set by The Who, and was clattered by the
guitar of Pete Townshend, and at one point a panic went out over the
negative qualities of some of the LSD on sale ("don't eat the brown
acid" was, and still is, a counterculture catchphrase).
The sheer number of people who eventually descended on Yasgur's farm
was simply too much to be handled, and massive traffic jams (both on
the road and in the toilets) were the order of the day.
Not every band that played at Woodstock enjoyed itself, with the
Incredible String Band and the Grateful Dead turning in disappointing
performances. The likes of The Doors, The Byrds, Joni Mitchell and
Dylan himself also opted out of the festival.
However, it was to be at Woodstock that artistes like Johnny Winter,
Mountain, Canned Heat, and especially Santana, made themselves part
of public consciousness. Allied to memorable performances by
Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, it meant
there was more than enough great music to go around.
When it was all over, Woodstock left a muddy mess and an indelible
impression on the hearts and minds of those who were there (or who,
like myself, had to be content with watching the video and listening
to the album). Abbie Hoffman's book Woodstock Nation was just one of
the many pop-culture references to an event that became immortalised
in song by the likes of Melanie, Joni Mitchell (whose song Woodstock
was covered very successfully by both Crosby, Stills & Nash and
Matthews Southern Comfort) and Mountain. It even had a character
named after it by Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz!
Tragically, a year later, Woodstock was followed by Altamont, another
festival, which this time ended in bloodshed, and almost seemed to
hark an end to the idealism of the 1960s.
A variety of anniversary concerts has been held (although none of
them apparently on the original location) in 1979, 1989, 1994 and
1999. While the earlier three concerts had quite a few acts
returning, and the 1994 version starred Dylan, the 1999 incarnation
was notable for repeated outbreaks of violence that included rape and arson.
Utimately, Woodstock was a huge collective meeting of minds, unified
in a common benevolent goal, a moment in time that is unlikely to be
repeated. It was about so much more than just music.
--------
Woodstock remains one of the defining moments of a generation
By Kevin Chong
August 16, 2009
The old hippie joke goes: "If you can remember the '60s, you probably
weren't there." With the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival
arriving Sunday, you could reasonably argue that it's impossible to
forget the decade.
The iconic weekend-long concert, which drew a surprisingly
well-behaved audience of 400,000 to an upstate New York dairy farm
owned by Max Yasgur, is being widely commemorated in every
conceivable media form-including those that didn't exist in 1969,
like satellite radio and Twitter tweets.
Woodstock nostalgia is also being cashed in on with books like The
Road to Woodstock by festival organizer Michael Lang; a six-CD
compilation from Rhino Records entitled Woodstock 40 Years On: Back
to Yasgur's Farm; a feature-length comedy about that weekend, Taking
Woodstock, directed by Ang Lee; and a 17-city summer tour called The
Heroes of Woodstock featuring original Woodstock performers like John
Sebastian, Canned Heat, and Ten Years After that is travelling
through fairgrounds and casino concert halls in the States.
The '60s offers to many baby boomers the same kind of mnemonic
wellspring that the Great Depression did to the generation before
them, and most people born after the Age of Aquarius find it hard to
truly appreciate the era in an even-handed way.
Either you cherish the endlessly repeated stories your parents (or
grandparents) tell you about those turbulent, mind-expanding handful
of years, or you reject them as propaganda from a now-creaky
demographic that refuses to admit that it's no longer young or cool.
The 40th anniversary of Woodstock, perhaps the epoch of the hippie
era, provides an opportunity to take a balanced look at its impact
(or lack thereof).
Musically, Woodstock offered performances from '60s icons like Jimi
Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, and Sly & the Family Stone, acts like
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young and the Band that would be more closely
associated with '70s, and other acts like Melanie, Sha-Na-Na and
Mountain that are now regarded as one-hit wonders or historical footnotes.
(It's rumoured that Led Zeppelin, the Byrds and the Doors turned down
invitations to play the music festival. One imagines their presence
at the legendary concert the same way one ponders Tom Selleck as the
original choice as Indiana Jones.)
History-making performances from the festival included Hendrix's
guitar instrumental rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, Richie
Havens' earnestly strummed solo acoustic version of his ode to
personal liberation Freedom, and Joe Cocker's take on the Beatles'
With a Little Help from My Friends (later used as the theme song for
the 1980s dramedy about the 1960s, The Wonder Years.)
Even the most ardent '60s hater would find it difficult to deny the
lingering presence of this music four decades later. It's hard to
picture teenagers from that era listening to, say, Al Jolson or the
songs of Irving Berlin the way some of today's teenagers have Hendrix
or the Grateful Dead on their iPods. Even as the broadcast radio
waves and download charts are dominated by rap, R&B, and Nickelback,
so-called classic rock lives on in a niche-filled musical universe of
MP3 blogs and podcasts.
Contemporary indie rock, which has previously mined punk rock and New
Wave record collections for inspiration, now frequently turns back to
the hippie era, be it the harmony-filled folk of bands like Great
Lake Swimmers and Fleet Foxes that earns comparisons to CSNY to
Animal Collective's reinvention of psychedelia.
An even more strongly felt influence of Woodstock, which became the
subject of an Oscar-winning documentary of the same name in 1970,
might be the concept of the rock festival itself.
Although it was preceded by the Monterey Pop Festival and closely
followed by the Altamont Free Concert, which was marred by the
stabbing death of 18-year-old Meredith Hunter by a Hell's Angel, it
was Woodstock that became a template for big-statement concerts and
festivals like Live Aid, Lollapalooza, and Burning Man.
The rock festival road trip is now a rite of passage for most
university students: squeezing into an undersized car, sleeping in a
tent in a field full of drunk people, and paying eight dollars for a
bottle of water at a rock festival in North America or Europe like
Sasquatch, Coachella or Roskilde.
Today's festivals are better planned than Woodstock, which suffered
from food shortages and sanitation problems, and spontaneously became
a free concert when its fences were torn down.
But the younger incarnations almost certainly lack the original's
spontaneity and lofty idealism.
Some of this is accounted for by the more sensible times we inhabit.
If the musicians and concert-goers at Woodstock rallied for peace,
the expansion of the mind, and a complete re-vamp of our social and
sexual conventions, their contemporary counterparts strive for a
stronger ownership in their music through independent labels and DIY
distribution, more environmentally conscious, ethical forms of travel
and consumption, and lives that are less strongly influenced by mass
marketing and the interest of multinationals.
Ultimately, Woodstock is remembered fondly because it embodies the
goodwill and music of an era rather than its simplistic ideology and
sanctimony. One of the more comical moments of the festival occurred
when Abbie Hoffman, activist and author of Woodstock Nation,
interrupted a 4 a.m. set by The Who to make a speech against the
imprisonment of another activist. Who guitarist Pete Townshend used
his guitar to whack Hoffman off the stage before the band resumed its
set. While Townshend's gruff response to Hoffman might not have been
the most peace-loving moment of the festival, he nevertheless made
the point that that the music was the message.
--------
Remembering Woodstock:
A 13-year-old's Experience Still Resonates Today
Jim Schumacher and Debbie Bookchin
Posted: August 14, 2009
This commentary was written by Debbie Bookchin for Vermont Public
Radio and aired 8/14/09. Listen to it at: http://www.vpr.net/episode/46688/
One summer afternoon, forty years ago, I announced to my mom that I
was leaving our New York City apartment and heading up to Woodstock
for the three-day music and arts festival. I was 13 years old at the time.
I arrived a few days early, without a ticket, and was quickly put to
work helping build the stage. A few days later I watched in wonder as
the rolling pasture was transformed into a living, breathing sea of humanity.
Like most people who attended Woodstock, I had my share of
adventures: By the first day of the concert I'd lost my moccasins and
went around barefoot the rest of the time; the second day I noticed
an acquaintance, Alan Wilson from the band Canned Heat, walking
across a bridge to the performers area. I let him drag me up the
scaffolding -- against the security guards pulling at my ankles - so
that I could hang out in the backstage area, where one of my sweetest
memories is of Country Joe, of the original Fish fame, planting a
fatherly kiss on my forehead. Eventually I got tired of the mud and
rain. I found a ride back to New York City and ended up in a
political debate with Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies, whom we picked up
hitchhiking on the New York State Thruway.
But most of all, what I remember about Woodstock was that even though
I was essentially alone - dressed only in a tee-shirt and a pair of
jeans with a few dollars in my pocket - I never once felt afraid.
Tucked into my sleeping bag the first night, dozing off to the
lullaby of Joan Baez's soaring a cappella version of Swing Low Sweet
Chariot, I felt as safe as if I were in my mother's arms at home.
Pretty much everywhere I looked, these really were my brothers and
sisters, caring for each other, sharing what they had, without
policing, without a lot of rules, instinctively placing mutual aid
ahead of self-interest and doing what came so naturally to them:
creating a community.
Recently my 15-year-old daughter was channel surfing on the car radio
when we heard the familiar opening notes of Jesse Colin Young's
version of the 1960s hit "Get Together." After we'd listened to the
famous refrain, "...smile on your brother, everybody get together,
try to love one another right now," my daughter said wistfully, "I
wish I'd been at Woodstock." When I asked her why, she said "Life
seemed so creative and interesting back then."
Today it's easy to focus on the excesses and failures of the 1960s,
but Woodstock reminds us of our best utopian impulses: Despite the
rain, and lack of food and facilities, we enjoyed the music,
peacefully, sharing, looking out for each other. Briefly, we turned
our political desires into reality -- realizing our innate,
deeply-human longing for community, and experiencing what life might
be like in a more egalitarian, creative, visionary society.
For a few moments, we lived a sensibility we had only dreamed of --
and it felt good.
.
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