WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
The brotherhood of Woodstock performers
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-woodstocknow9-2009aug09,0,5627145.story
For Arlo Guthrie, John Sebastian and other lesser-known acts, the
festival was a defining moment and a big break. Many still perform today.
By Steve Appleford
August 9, 2009
Big things happened for Arlo Guthrie in '69. That was the year he got
married, bought his farm in western Massachusetts and starred in
"Alice's Restaurant," a Hollywood movie based on his popular talkin'
blues anthem. And 40 years ago this week, the folk singer also landed
at Yasgur's Farm, facing a crowd of nearly half a million at the
Woodstock Music & Art Fair. He still hears about that one.
"There are a lot more young people these days who have heard of
Woodstock and never heard of me," says Guthrie, now 62. "If somebody
says, 'Well, who are ya?' And I say, 'I'm one of those guys that
played Woodstock.' 'Oh, then there's a table for you, sir!' It still
has some clout."
Guthrie has spent the decades since recording and touring, like many
surviving Woodstock vets. They see one another now and then, on the
road, at Woodstock anniversaries, a fraternity borne during three
days of peace, music and mud.
"We're forged in steel for life," says singer-songwriter John
Sebastian, 65, who now lives in Woodstock, N.Y., a 50-minute drive
from the actual concert site. "Those three days, if you had friends
and you were on that site, you'd just be brethren from then on." He
continues to perform and record with a traditional jug band and in an
acoustic duo with David Grisman.
For the acts lower down the bill, the festival was a defining moment
and a big break, delivered worldwide in a 1970 Oscar-winning
documentary. "Those people that were able to make that just a part of
who they were instead of totally personify them seemed to find more
happiness and success," says Holly George-Warren, co-author of "The
Road to Woodstock," promoter Michael Lang's chronicle of the festival.
Some have disappeared into obscurity (Quill, the Keef Hartley Band).
The last decade has also brought the deaths of such participants as
Who bassist John Entwistle, Jefferson Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden
and Jimi Hendrix's drummer Mitch Mitchell.
For Guthrie, Woodstock was an epic gig, but also just one wild
weekend in a career that regularly passes through esteemed venues. In
the fall, he begins another tour with the Guthrie Family, as his
children and grandchildren perform old and new songs, and celebrate
the legacy of his father, folk music hero Woody Guthrie. Arlo Guthrie
just released "Tales of '69," a recently unearthed recording of a
wandering, wordy performance from just before Woodstock.
But the songs he performs in 2009 are not limited to his 1969 set
list: "I remember as a younger person saying, 'I could relive this
moment for the rest of my life and be successful, or I can be less
successful and have more fun. I decided to do the latter."
Opening the festival was Richie Havens, not far removed from his time
on the Greenwich Village folk scene. He's on the road most weekends
now and every night still performs the rousing hit song he improvised
that day, "Freedom." "If I don't, boy, they'll kill me," says Havens, 68.
Havens remains an active artist. He appeared as a wise old man in the
2007 Bob Dylan film meditation "I'm Not There." He sang of a new
generation's war on last year's album "Nobody Left to Crown," and
he's recorded several tracks with the forward-looking Groove Armada,
including the soulful "Hands of Time."
"There's a real open door for collaboration, for experimentation,"
says Havens. "It's mood music, and that's part of the '60s too."
He will be celebrating the Woodstock anniversary Friday at the Bethel
Woods Center for the Arts, built at the original festival site in
Bethel. The venue then hosts the traveling "Heroes of Woodstock"
tour, with Country Joe McDonald, Canned Heat, Ten Years After and
several others.
Singer-guitarist Leslie West of Mountain plans to get married onstage
in the middle of the band's set. "I figured this would be a good way
to not forget my anniversary," West says. The reunited Mountain's
2007 album, "Masters of War," was a collection of hard-rock
reinterpretations of Dylan songs, including a duet with Ozzy Osbourne
on the title track. West has enjoyed unexpected visibility in hip-hop
circles since Mountain's "Long Red" was sampled by Jay-Z and Kanye
West. "All of a sudden, I've got three platinum albums on my wall for
a song I wrote right before the festival," says West.
At Woodstock, singer-guitarist McDonald led the antiwar sing-along of
"I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag," a lighthearted but stirring
reflection of that year's political moment. He still performs the
song but spent many years agonizing over career paths -- solo folk
singer or leader of a rock 'n' roll band?
"I'll never get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I'll
never get a Grammy," says McDonald, 67, who otherwise sounds content
with the long career he's had. "When you . . . sing a song against
the government and against the generals, war industry and the
president, you're not going to be embraced."
Many of the bigger names from Woodstock are already in the rock hall,
while others have enjoyed different kinds of success. In the 1970s,
retro rock act Sha Na Na wrote and performed songs in the film
"Grease" and hosted its own TV variety show. The group performs about
50 shows a year, opening with "At the Hop," the song that's in the
Woodstock movie.
Singer-drummer John "Jocko" Marcellino is one of just two original
members still in the band that played at the festival. "I am very
grateful for Woodstock, even though the check bounced and it was $350
for all of us, and we got a dollar to be in the movie. It's the
greatest eight cents I ever made," says Marcellino, 59.
He just attended the release party for the expanded DVD of the
"Woodstock" documentary in New York, where he reunited with other
festival alumni, including Havens. "He said, 'Jocko, we look great!'
" he says with a laugh. "I gave him a big hug."
--------
'WE'RE HERE TO MAKE THE NEWS!'
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08092009/entertainment/were_here_to_make_the_news__183658.htm
THE MUSICIANS WHO ROCKED WOODSTOCK REMEMBER GREATEST, CRAZIEST GIG EVER
By TYLER GRAY
August 9, 2009
Three days of peace, love and music might have produced some of
rock's greatest moments, but it was hell on the long-term memories of
the musicians. Shaking loose stories from 40 years ago was a
challenge, but The Post wrangled 10 of Woodstock's key players --
including members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, and
"The brown acid is not specifically too good" announcer and show
producer Chip Monck -- for a virtual roundtable on the eve of the anniversary.
VIDEO: Museum Dedicated to Woodstock
DAZED AND CONFUSED
* Chip Monck, producer and emcee: "Michael Lang came up and tapped me
on the shoulder at 7 a.m. on Friday and said, 'By the way, we've
forgotten to hire an emcee, and you're it.' It was probably better
done that way; otherwise I'd have had time to be even more terrified.
"I introduced myself and said, 'Now I'm going to ask you to take 10
major steps backward or all of you are going to have your noses
against the plywood wall. Let's see how we do -- 10, 9. . .' And by
Christ, they did it! So I said, 'OK, you can sit down.' And then two
guys came out with hammers and moved back the two stakes that had
clothesline between them. That was the barrier, and it was never breached.
"The brown acid announcement was difficult. Saying, 'You've just
taken something that's going to kill you' is not the best way to put
it. But I did it as bluntly as possible.
"John Sebastian [of the Lovin' Spoonful] and Arlo Guthrie went into
the medical tent and started a little performance for those on a bad
trip. I think they started with 'Amen.' Everybody was singing with
him. It sort of calmed everybody down.
"Schedule? [Laughs.] If you were there as a group, you were grabbed,
and you were on. Poor Richie Havens tried to come off-stage six
times. By the seventh time, he had actually gone through a
combination of 'Freedom,' which he made up on the spot, and
'Motherless Child.' We let him off because we had found Act Two."
* Richie Havens, Friday's opening act: "I was supposed to go on
fifth, originally. My thing was, I don't even know what the first and
last song is when I hit the stage. I got through my 40 minutes and
thought, well, that's almost all the songs I know. And [Lang] goes,
'Richie, would you play four more songs?' That's how 'Motherless
Child/Freedom' was born. I hadn't sung 'Motherless Child' since I was
about 16. It just popped out."
* Leslie West, singer-guitarist of Mountain: "When we got there in
the afternoon, my manager said, 'Spread out and walk around.' If they
saw you together, they wanted you to go on."
PEOPLE POWER
* Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe & the Fish: "I said from the
stage, 'There are 300,000 of you f - - - ers out there -- now sing.'
I was off by about 300,000 or so.
"I was onstage watching the show, and there were two guys in the
crowd who started a fight, so people cleared a little circle for
them. They were sparring for a few minutes and everybody was waiting
for them to throw a blow. Finally, people handed them a joint and a
bottle of wine. They took a couple hits and a swig and sat back down.
"I was sitting in the dirt up front when Hendrix played on Sunday
morning. Almost everybody had left by then. I kind of liked him OK
before that. But when he played 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' I knew it
was some of the most far-out music I'd ever heard in my life."
* Larry Taylor, bassist of Canned Heat: "The image that sticks with
me is the waves of people, like waves in an ocean or a tsunami, that
stood up to give us an ovation at the end of 'Woodstock Boogie.' "
INS AND OUTS
* Fito de la Parra, drummer of Canned Heat: "We practically hijacked
the helicopter for the trip in. Three-hundred-pound Bob 'The Bear'
Hite actually grabbed a journalist and threw him out with his camera
and everything. The journalist was saying, 'We're here to report the
news!' And Bob said, 'We're here to make the news.' "
* Leo Lyons, bassist of Ten Years After: "We took a helicopter down
to the gig. It was a military helicopter with the open doorway. That
was like the scene from 'Apocalypse Now' with the helicopters. I
remember thinking, 'I wonder if there will be something to eat.' And
the answer was, 'No, there will not.' I got there and I saw some
[food], but Pete Townshend [of The Who] came up and said, 'Don't eat
anything, mate. It's all spiked with acid.' "
* West: "We took a helicopter from 60th Street in Manhattan. There
was a first-aid kit in the chopper [with] amyl nitrate. I said 'Oh,
what the hell,' and I popped it. I looked at the crowd and I nearly
fell out of the helicopter. There were these cars and all these
people. It was like, whoa."
* Ric Lee, drummer of Ten Years After: "We flew in with a medic, and
he said, 'Don't eat anything unless it's in a sealed can.' I was
starving. We found a guy after the gig with a car, and he said, 'I'll
drive you out if you can find a way out.' A state trooper on a horse
showed us the way -- this road that wasn't blocked by abandoned cars.
We made it to a diner in town and just ordered everything on the menu."
* De la Parra: "When we were finished, there was no way to get out,
so our manager hijacked a limousine that had the keys in it. We all
jumped in with Felix Pappalardi from Mountain. We left it at the
Holiday Inn, where we checked into Big Brother & the Holding Co.'s
room. About 25 or 30 years later, a guy comes to see me and says,
'I'm the driver of that limo. It took me a long time to find it.'
"I had a beautiful girl with me from Boston called Diane. She was
virgin and we spent all night wrestling. She didn't give it up!
Everybody was having sex -- on the grass with no blanket, out in the
open. It was an environment of love and affection. Of all the people
at Woodstock, I'm the one who didn't get laid."
A LONG, STAGE TRIP
* Tom Constanten, keyboardist of the Grateful Dead: "You could feel
and see the stage moving around. When you feel the earth move, and
you're not in California, it gets your attention."
* Paul Kantner, singer-guitarist of Jefferson Airplane: "We were all
on acid. I was sitting on the stage watching all the bands. Chip
Monck came up and said, 'Paul, we're gonna have to get you off the
stage. It might fall over.' I couldn't get up. I was rooted about 600
miles down into the earth, through the stage, through the meadow. I
wasn't rude -- I explained it very matter-of-factly. I think Chip
thought I was being a contentious rock star, but he finally just gave up."
* Monck: "He said he felt as though he were a tree that had been
rooted. But, as far as the stage sinking, it didn't."
* Lyons: "At the end of our set, a guy rolled a watermelon onstage. I
thought it was probably a watermelon filled with acid. The
interesting story: Hunt down the man or woman who put the watermelon
onstage in 1969."
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