Woodstock was a music festival that was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969. Bethel is 43 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock. During the sometimes rainy weekend, 32 acts performed outdoors before an audience of 400,000 young people. It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history. Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll. (More from Wikipedia)
But there is no shortage of interpretations of "American Pie" from all quarters (I took a stab at it myself ages ago): Bob Dylan is said to be the "jester"; the Beatles are evidently referenced in the line "sergeants played a marching tune"; and the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger in particular) seem to have a more central role in the tale – the fifth verse includes the lyric "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick / Jack Flash sat on a candlestick" (an obvious reference to the Rolling Stones hit "Jumpin' Jack Flash"), several mentions of Satan ("Sympathy for the Devil" is one of several times that the Stones toyed with Satanic imagery), and apparent veiled references to the horrific Altamont Speedway Free Concert that occurred on the heels of Woodstock on December 6, 1969, where the Rolling Stones were the featured act, and the Hells Angels motorcycle club provided security.
As depicted in Gimme Shelter (I saw the film when it came to theatres in 1970, but I never want to see it again), one audience member, Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by several bikers after he pulled a gun – and yes, someone caught the incident on film. Lead male singer Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane was knocked out cold by a Hells Angel, and Mick Jagger was punched in the face by an unruly fan shortly after his arrival by helicopter. It was a perfect storm where simply everything went wrong – the rain and the other privations at Woodstock were nothing compared to what occurred at Altamont.
When Joan Baez took the stage at Live Aid on July 13, 1985, she addressed the crowd: "Good morning, children of the '80s. This is your Woodstock, and it's long overdue." It seemed so obvious and yet I remember being surprised at her saying it. Joan Baez of course was there in 1969 – the full name was Woodstock Music & Art Fair – and she was there whenever peaceful protest was needed also.
And Joan Baez was there beginning in 1960 when the folk music revival was in its heyday; and she wasn't political at all in the beginning.
(February 2014)
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In 1969, Mick Farren "liberated" the earliest large-scale rock concert in the U.K., the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival by encouraging the fences to be torn down. This concert – which took place the month after Woodstock (and with many of the same acts) – featured the Who, the Band, Free, Joe Cocker, and the Moody Blues. But the real excitement was caused by the inclusion on the bill of Bob Dylan, who had been little seen since his near-fatal motorcycle accident in July 1966. When Dylan took the stage, audience members included three of the Beatles, three of the Beatle wives, three of the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Jane Fonda, Roger Vadim, Syd Barrett, and Elton John.
One of the main reasons for the location of the original Woodstock was to lure Bob Dylan out of hiding – the idea was to throw a huge party practically on his doorstep that surely he couldn't resist attending. Woodstock is the name of the town where Dylan lived (and also members of the Band); the festival itself was in Bethel. But resist he did; Bob Dylan instead signed up to appear at the Isle of Wight Festival and set sail for England on August 15, 1969, the day that Woodstock opened.
The following year, Mick Farren organized his idea of what a rock festival should be. Called Phun City, it took place from July 24 to July 26, 1970. Unlike Woodstock and most other similar festivals, there were no admission fees and no fences. After the funding for the concert was withdrawn, the organizers had to notify the bands scheduled to appear that they would have to perform for free. Most of the bands agreed to go on anyway; ironically, one of the few bands that didn't play was Free, best known for their 1970 hit "All Right Now". Rock musicians who did perform included MC5, the Pretty Things, Kevin Ayers, Shagrat, the Edgar Broughton Band, Mungo Jerry, Mighty Baby, and the Pink Fairies; the Beat poet William Burroughs was also there.
As one of the few new bands, Crosby, Stills & Nash (Neil Young also played with them part of the time; the band was then called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) was a hit at the 1969 Woodstock festival, including their performance of "Wooden Ships". There was a renowned exchange between songs, where David Crosby notes that this is just their second gig, and then Stephen Stills says: "This is the second time we've ever played in front of people, man, we're scared s--tless."
Crosby, Stills & Nash wasn't really as new as that quote seemed to indicate; the band had released their debut album Crosby, Stills & Nash in May 1969, three months before Woodstock, and the recording sessions began in June 1968. I had always thought that Neil Young was the man peeking out of the door on the back cover of Crosby, Stills & Nash, but it was actually their drummer Dallas Taylor. Young did join up for their next album, Déjà Vu; the album was released under the name Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (with drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves also credited on the cover in smaller print).
(April 2014)
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After Mountain, the solo album by Leslie West was released, the group then went on the road using the band name Mountain, bringing along Steve Knight on keyboards after Norman Landsberg and Ken Janick left to start the band Hammer. Their fourth concert as a working band was at the 1969 Woodstock festival; though they were not included on the first album or the concert film, their performances of "Blood of the Sun" (from the Leslie West solo album, Mountain) and "Theme for an Imaginary Western" (written by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown) were included on the double album Woodstock 2 that came out in 1971.
Shortly after Woodstock, Canadian Corky Laing replaced N. D. Smart on drums, and this line-up of Mountain produced one of my favorite hard rock albums of all time, Climbing!. The album also includes a reflection on Woodstock, called "For Yasgur's Farm" (Max Yasgur owned the farm where the festival took place).
The other member of Cream, Jack Bruce released his debut solo album, Songs for a Tailor in the U.K. at almost the same moment that Mountain was performing one of the songs on the album, "Theme for an Imaginary Western" at Woodstock.
(May 2014)
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(September 2014)
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Since Richie Havens was about the only musician who had arrived at the 1969 Woodstock festival before the highways became hopelessly jammed, he played for hours. As he recalls (quoting from Wikipedia): "I'd already played every song I knew and I was stalling, asking for more guitar and mic, trying to think of something else to play – and then it just came to me . . . The establishment was foolish enough to give us all this freedom and we used it in every way we could."
After a remarkably quick guitar tuning, Richie Havens then improvised a song called "Freedom" that was based on the Negro spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child". It was this performance that made it into the Woodstock movie. Bob Dylan has incorporated "Motherless Child" into his songs; Wikipedia lists dozens of others who have also recorded the song in one form or another.
(March 2015)
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Ravi Shankar is an acknowledged master of the sitar and began promoting Indian classical music in 1956, including appearances at major music gatherings like the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival (Shankar's first performance at a rock event) and the original Woodstock in 1969.
(July 2015)
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