http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1701755
By DARRYL STERDAN, SUN MEDIA
[August 15. 2009]
For David Clayton-Thomas, Woodstock was more about hate and war than
peace and love.
"We all have this Peter Max poster image of Woodstock -- the Summer
of Love and flowers and beads and all that," says the former lead
singer of Blood, Sweat and Tears. "In truth, that's not what
motivated Woodstock. Three-quarters up a million people didn't march
up there because of love.
"What motivated people was anger. People were pissed. Hundreds of
kids were coming home from Vietnam in body bags every week. About
40,000 young Americans were dead. And when people had tried to
protest at the Democratic Convention a year earlier, they had the
riot police turned loose on them. But now, it's all become peace and
love and beads. That's not how it was. That's revisionist history."
The 67-year-old vocalist knows where he's coming from -- he and BS&T
played a midnight set on the festival's final day. Like many of the
acts on the bill, they didn't know what they were in for until it was
too late.
"It was a summer of concerts like that," he recalls from his Toronto
home. "There were a bunch of huge shows. And we had a hectic schedule
-- we had three records in the Top 10 at the time. So all we knew up
until the day before was that we were going to be playing somewhere
up around Bethel -- which was sort of a hometown gig for us, because
we were a New York City band."
But they almost didn't make the gig, he recalls.
"I remember we sat at LaGuardia Airport for several hours. Everything
had been brought to a standstill. We didn't know quite what was going
on up there -- we thought it was a riot, because the National Guard
had been called in. We thought we would have to blow it off, but
eventually they loaded us on a bus and took us to a town about 20
miles south of there. We were in a little motel that was basically a
staging ground for the artists. When we got there and they told us
they were sending National Guard helicopters to fly us in, we began
to realize how momentous an event it was."
Not that Clayton-Thomas got to take in much of it.
"We got on the chopper and they literally dropped us backstage about
45 minutes before we had to play. We did the show -- it was an
enormous amount of people, but over 100,000 it all looks the same --
and they hustled us right off the stage and into the helicopters and
took us out again. So 99% of my experience at Woodstock was onstage."
Sadly, BS&T's set wasn't captured by the film crew -- their manager
had the cameras turned off over because the band hadn't been paid.
"I still haven't been paid," he claims. "I don't think anybody got
paid for Woodstock. All the headliners were supposed to get $15,000
and a percentage of the recordings and the film. That was a big price
in '69. But there was no money to pay anybody by that point -- the
fences had come down, nobody was buying tickets, and the promoters
were basically hiding in a trailer. I think they filmed two songs
before they were shut down."
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