Woodstock 1969

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969 drew more than 450,000 people to a pasture in Sullivan County. For four days, the site became a countercultural mini-nation in which minds were open, drugs were all but legal and love was "free". The music began Friday afternoon at 5:07pm August 15 and continued until mid-morning Monday August 18. The festival closed the New York State Thruway and created one of the nation's worst traffic jams.

 "What we had here was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence," said Bethel town historian Bert Feldman. "Dickens said it first: 'It was the best of times. It was the worst of times'. It's an amalgam that will never be reproduced again."

Day One of Woodstock was supposed to be the day for the folkies. Joan Baez was the headliner, preceded by a bill that included Tim Hardin, Arlo Guthrie, Sweetwater, the Incredible String Band, Ravi Shankar, Bert Sommer and Melanie. One rock act, Sly and the Family Stone was added for a little taste of the rock'n'roll of the weekend. The scheduled starting time was 4pm. The performers were spread around in Holiday Inns or Howard Johnsons miles from the site. Because of the traffic jam, the promoters were frantically contracting for helicopters to shuttle in the performers and supplies. But the helicopters were late. A four-seater finally arrived after 4pm; it could handle only single acts. Lang had two choices:  Hardin, who was drifting around backstage stoned, or Richie Havens, who looked ready. "It was, 'Who could get setup the quickest?'" Lang said. "And I went with Richie Havens." Three days of music started at 5:07pm Eastern Daylight Time on August 15, 1969.

Richie Havens
Minstrel From Gault
High Flyin' Bird 
I Can't Make It Anymore
With A Little Help
Strawberry Fields For Ever
Hey Jude
I Had A Woman
Handsome Johnny
Freedom 

Every time Richie Havens tried to quit playing, he had to keep on. The other acts hadn't arrived. Finally, after Havens had played for nearly three hours - improvising his last song "Freedom" - a large U.S. Army helicopter landed with musical reinforcements. An Army helicopter? "Yes," said Havens. "It was the only helicopter available. If it wasn't for the U.S. Army, Woodstock might not have happened." The U.S. Army saved the day for a crowd that was, for the most part, anti-war? "We were never anti-soldier," said Havens. "We were just against the war."

Sweetwater
Motherless Child
Look Out
For Pete's Sake
Day Song
What's Wrong
Crystal Spider
Two Worlds
Why Oh Why

Bert Sommer  (played about 8 pm)
Jennifer
America

Bert Sommer's angelic voice won him a standing ovation.

Tim Hardin
Misty
If I Were A Carpenter

The sprinkles began around midnight as sitarist Ravi Shankar was playing.

Ravi Shankar
Raga Puriya-Dhanashri / Gat In Sawarital
Tabla Solo In Jhaptal
Raga Manj Kmahaj / Alap Jor / Dhun In Kaharwa Tal / Medium & Fast Gat In Teental
 

Melanie Safka was supposed to sing, so she and her mother got in her mom's 1968 burgundy Pontiac Bonneville and headed upstate. When they turned onto Route 17, they noticed lots of traffic. When Melanie called the festival's producers, they said, yes, the traffic was headed for Bethel, which was getting crowded, so she'd better get to a hotel where they would take her by helicopter to the festival site. At that hotel, the name and location of which Melanie doesn't remember, she saw a slew of TV cameras focusing on Janis Joplin and her bottle of Southern Comfort. "And me?" says Melanie. "I was just a fleckling."

Melanie
Beautiful People
Birthday Of The Sun

Melanie Safka was such a nobody that she didn't even have a performer's pass. So when it was time for her to go on, she had to prove who she was by showing her driver's license and singing "Beautiful People." She was led backstage to her "dressing room," which was actually a tepee-sized tent. When she realized that she would be playing for a crowd about the size of Boston, she got so scared that she developed a nervous cough that "sounded like a chain saw." It was so loud that someone in the next tent sent her a cup of soothing tea. That neighbor was Joan Baez.

Arlo Guthrie
Coming Into Los Angeles   
Walking Down The Line
Amazing Grace

Joan Baez
Joan played for 40 minutes at the free stage before her manager found her and informed her that she still had to play on the BIG stage.
Joe Hill 
Sweet Sir Galahad 
Drug Store Truck Driving Man
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
We Shall Overcome 

By the time Joan Baez finished "We Shall Overcome," a warm thunderstorm was pounding Yasgur's farm. In the space of about three hours, five inches of rain fell.

Day Two
Saturday, August 16th, 1969

Promoters decided early on that it was crucial to crowd control for the music to be endless, especially after dark. The music was supposed to start at 7pm on Saturday and continue until midnight. But after the crowd swarmed the site on Friday, the promoters' strategy changed. They needed more music and deemed that acts should start later and play until dawn. Saturday's bill included loud, tough rock'n'roll: The Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, Mountain and Santana. The promoters worried that as the music got louder, the crowd could get wilder. But if they weren't entertained well, several hundred thousand bored fans could do some damage. Lang and the other organizers pleaded with Saturday's acts to play twice as long. Most were willing. It was the biggest audience in history; the attendance was estimated at 250,000 that morning.

Quill
Waitin' For You

Quill started at 12:15pm - threw maracas, then whatever else they could get their hands on to get the crowd into their set. Needless to say it failed and we hardly ever heard from them again.

Other acts still weren't ready. Stage organizers knew they had to kill time. The Woodstock Nation might get restless if the music stopped. Emcee Chip Monck grabbed Country Joe McDonald, strapped an acoustic guitar on him and thrust him on stage. McDonald's short set included the unprintable and improvised "Fish Cheer" and "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag". Country Joe actually performed "solo" on Friday night, after Richie Havens.

Country Joe McDonald
I Find Myself Missing You
Rockin' All Around The World
Flyin' High All Over The World
Seen A Rocket
Fish Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die-Rag  

After Country Joe, Monck spotted John Sebastian, the former lead singer and guitarist for the Lovin' Spoonful. Sebastian, clad in wild tie-dye, was tripping on some unidentified substance. He hadn't even been invited to perform at the festival. He recalls he was "too whacked to say no." Sebastian's stage rap was nearly a parody of hippie conversation, mostly because of his psychedelic state. But the crowd roared with approval. "Just love everybody around ya' and clean up a little garbage on your way out," Sebastian told the crowd. Sebastian actually played on Friday after Country Joe.

John B. Sebastian
How Have You Been
Rainbows All Over Your Blues
I Had A Dream
Darlin' Be Home Soon
Younger Generation

Keef Hartley

Santana  (played around 2:30 pm)
Persuasion 
Savor 
Soul Sacrifice 
Fried Neckbones 

Incredible String Band
Catty Come
This Moment Is Different
When You Find Out Who You Are

Canned Heat
A Change Is Gonna Come / Leaving This Town
Woodstock Boogie
Going Up The Country  
Let's Work Together
Too Many Drivers At The Wheel

The show wasn't going on. Janis Joplin, The Who and the Grateful Dead refused to play Saturday night. Their managers wanted cash in advance. Woodstock Ventures feared the fans would riot if the stage was empty. The promoters pleaded with Charlie Prince, the manager of the White Lake branch of Sullivan County National Bank, to put up the money. Prince knew that Ventures President John Roberts had a trust fund of more than $1 million. Late Saturday night, Prince negotiated his way through the clogged back roads from Liberty to White Lake, where he opened up the bank. He discovered the night drop slot was overflowing with bags of cash. Prince called Joe Fersch, the bank's president, who told him to use his judgement. After Roberts gave Prince a personal check that night for "50 or 100 thousand dollars," Price wrote the cashier's checks. The performers were paid. The show went on. "I felt that if I didn't give him the money for the show to go on, well, what would a half-million kids do?" Prince said.

Grateful Dead
St. Stephen 
Mama Tried
Dark Star / High Time  
Turn On Your Lovelight  

Creedence Clearwater Revival
Born On The Bayou  
Green River  
Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won't Do)   
Commotion  
Bootleg
Bad Moon Rising  
Proud Mary  
I Put A Spell On You 
Night Time Is The Right Time  
Keep On Choogin' 
Suzy Q  

Janis Joplin
Raise Your Hand
As Good As You've Been To This World
To Love Somebody
Summertime    
Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)    
Kosmic Blues  
Can't Turn You Loose
Work Me Lord
Piece Of My Heart  
Ball and Chain  

Sly & The Family Stone (played at 1:30 am)
M'Lady
Sing A Simple Song
You Can Make It If You Try
Stand!
Love City
Dance To The Music
Music Lover
I Want To Take You Higher

Of all the acts, Woodstock's producers were worried only about Sly and the Family Stone. The rocking soul band had a tendency to fire up small crowds, inviting people to rush the stage. With a couple hundred thousand people, Sly and his band could ignite a riot. So Kornfeld cleared the pit in front of the stage to give security a fighting chance. Then he and his wife, Linda, climbed down, all alone into the vast chasm between the musicians on stage and Woodstock's horde. "He was singing, 'I want to take you high-er!' and everyone lit up. All those lights in the crowd, thousands of them," Kornfeld said. "We were right between Sly and the crowd.

The Who   (Played at 3 am)
Heaven And Hell  
I Can't Explain  
It's A Boy
1921
Amazing Journey  
Sparks  
Eyesight To The Blind
Cristmas
Tommie Can You Hear Me  
Acid Queen
Pinball Wizard  
Abbie Hoffmann Incident
Fiddle About
There's A Doctor I've Found
Go To The Mirror Boy
Smash The Mirror
I'm Free
Tommy's Holiday Camp
We're Not Gonna Take It
See Me Feel Me  
Summertime Blues
Shakin' All Over
My Generation  
Naked Eye

'Dammit Abbie, stay off the stage' probably the words of Michael Lang to Abbie Hoffman just before Pete Townshend clubbed him in the back of the head with his guitar

Jefferson Airplane (Played at 8:30 am)
The Other Side Of This Life
Plastic Fantastic Lover  
Volunteers  
Saturday Afternoon / Won't You Try
Eskimo Blue Day  
Uncle Sam's Blues
Somebody To Love  
White Rabbit  


Day Three
Sunday, August 17th, 1969

By noon, the sun was beating down on Bethel. Heatstroke became the biggest worry, even some fans were showing signs of pneumonia from being drenched for two days. The promoters considered turning the fire hosts on to mist the crowd, but didn't. It started to rain again in the afternoon. Sunday's lineup again was packed with rockers: The Band, Joe Cocker, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Ten Years After, Johnny Winter and Jimi Hendrix. Iron Butterfly, which pioneered heavy metal rock'n'roll, was also scheduled to play. The group arrived in New York from a seven-week, nationwide tour and called for a helicopter to bring it to the festival. But Lang and the other organizers worried that Iron Butterfly's brand of hippie/heavy-metal music might be dangerous under the circumstances. Emcee John Morris dispatched a nasty telegram to the group at the airport. It was designed to provoke the members into deciding not to play. But Lee Dorman, Iron Butterfly's bassist, remembers it differently. Woodstock organizers, he said, were supposed to send a helicopter and didn't.

Joe Cocker (played at 2 pm)
Delta Lady [Penthouse review] 
Some Things Goin' On
Let's Go Get Stoned
I Shall Be Released
With A Little Help From My Friends  

Country Joe & The Fish
Barry's Caviar Dream
Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine  
Rock And Soul Music  
Thing Called Love
Love Machine
Fish Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die-Rag  

Leslie West/Mountain
Blood Of The Sun
Stormy Monday
Theme From An Imaginary Western 
Long Red
For Yasgur's Farm
You And Me
Waiting To Take You Away
Dreams Of Milk And Honey
Blind Man
Blue Suede Shoes
Southbound Train

Ten Years After (played at 8 pm)
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes
I May Be Wrong, But I Won't Be Wrong Always
I'm Going Home

The Band  (played at 10:30 pm)
Chest Fever
Don't Do It  
Tears Of Rage  
We Can Talk About It Now
Long Black Veil
Don't Ya Tell Henry
Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos
Wheels On Fire
Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever
The Weight  

Johnny Winter
Mean Town Blues  

Blood Sweat And Tears
More And More  
I Love You Baby More Than You Ever Know
Spinning Wheel  
I Stand Accused
Something Coming On

Crosby, Stills, Nash (& Young) (3 am)
Suite Judy Blue Eyes
Blackbird
Helplessly Hoping
Guinnevere
Marrakesh Express
4 + 20
Mr Soul
Wonderin'
You Don't Have To Cry
Pre-Road Downs
Long Time Gone
Bluebird Revisited
Sea Of Madness
Wooden Ships
Find The Cost Of Freedom
49 Bye-Byes


Day Four
Monday, August 18th, 1969

Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Everything's Gonna Be Alright
Driftin'
Born Under A Bad Sign
All My Love Comin' Through To You
Love March

Sha-Na-Na
Na Na Theme
Jakety Jak
Teen Angel
Jailhouse Rock
Wipe Out
Who Wrote The Book Of Love
Duke Of Earl
At The Hop
Na Na Theme

Jimi Hendrix  (played at 8:30 am)
Jimi closed to a mere 30 to 40 thousand people on Monday morning
Message To Love
Getting My Heart Back Together Again
Spanish Castle Magic  
Red House
Master Mind
Here Comes Your Lover Man
Foxy Lady  
Beginning
Izabella
Gypsy Woman
Fire  
Voodoo Child (Slight Return) / Stepping Stone
Star Spangled Banner
Purple Haze  
Woodstock Improvisation / Villanova Junction
Hey Joe  

It was about 9am, time for Hendrix, the headliner. He had launched into the national anthem, a moment that would go down in the annals of rock'n'roll. "I remember trying to fall asleep during the ‘Star-Spangled Banner'," said Ciganer, Jerry Garcia's buddy. "I just wished he would stop." The party was over.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was officially over at 10:30am following Jimi Hendrix on August 18th, 1969

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WOODSTOCK '69 - The Performers:
===================
Joan Baez
The Band
Blood, Sweat & Tears
The Paul Butterfield
Blues Band
Canned Heat
Joe Cocker
Country Joe McDonald & The Fish
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Crosby, Stills, & Nash
The Grateful Dead
Arlo Guthrie
Tim Hardin
The Keef Hartley Band
Richie Havens
Jimi Hendrix
Incredible String Band
*Iron Butterfly
Jefferson Airplane
Janis Joplin
Melanie
Mountain
Quill
Santana
John Sebastian
Sha-Na-Na
Ravi Shankar
Sly & The Family Stone
Bert Sommer
Sweetwater
Ten Years After
The Who
Johnny Winter
#Neil Young
 

# Neil Young performed a few songs with Crosby, Stills, & Nash and later joined their group.
* Iron Butterfly was scheduled, but didn't perform because they got stuck at the airport and couldn't make it to the site.

Gathered that weekend in 1969 were liars and lovers, prophets and profiteers. They made love, they made money and they made a little history. Arnold Skolnick, the artist who designed Woodstock's dove-and-guitar symbol, described it this way: "Something was tapped, a nerve, in this country. And everybody just came."

The Woodstock dove is really a catbird; originally, it perched on a flute. "I was staying on Shelter Island off Long Island, and I was drawing catbirds all the time," said artist Arnold Skolnick. "As soon as Ira Arnold (a copywriter on the project) called with the copy-approved 'Three Days of Peace and Music,' I just took the razor blade and cut that catbird out of the sketchpad I was using. "First, it sat on a flute. I was listening to jazz at the time, and I guess that's why. But anyway, it sat on a flute for a day, and I finally ended up putting it on a guitar."

View of Route 17b

Bert Feldman, the town historian, was suddenly Woodstock's censor. His job was to keep frontal nudity from appearing on national television. he stood between the swimming hole and the television cameras, reminding folks to cover up. Afternoon temperatures were in the mid-80s. "They had to have one or two garments on, depending on sex," Feldman said. "Lemme tell you, after five minutes, it was work. You never saw a fight in there. You could argue, of course, that it was because everyone was stoned."

Ben Leon ran the boat rental business on Filippini's Pond, popularly known as "Leon's Lake." The 90-year old kept watch on the boats from the porch of a shanty perched on the hillside above the largest of Woodstock's skinny-dipping spots. On Woodstock weekend, Leon wasn't renting boats, but he was still watching. "He sat on the veranda, the old fool, and you could hear him 50 feel away: ‘Heee-heee-heee. Haw-haww-haww,'" Feldman said. "He had a gigantic pair of binoculars. Must have been Navy submarine spotters or something. The funny thing was that 10 days after the festival, he dropped dead. I talked to the undertaker, and he said he never could wipe the smile off the guy's face. That's the way to go, I guess."

Sullivan County residents heard that the kids up there in Bethel didn't have enough food. By Friday afternoon, members of the Monticello Jewish Community Center were making sandwiches with 200 loaves of bread, 40 pounds of cold cuts and two gallons of pickles. Woodstock Ventures estimated that it needed donations of 750,000 sandwiches. Food was being airlifted in from as far away as Newburgh's Stewart Air Force Base.

Ralph Corwin pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one and started trucking down Hurd Road. The 26-year-old biker from Winterton met up Sunday afternoon with a young couple. The girl wore an Army fatigue shirt and a pair of black jeans. The guy begged a smoke; Corwin flipped him three or four. The couple walked away. Corwin looked over his shoulder. The girl's black jeans were missing on the back side. "Only the strip down the center," Corwin said. "No undies, and her cheeks were hanging out."

A short, violent thunderstorm struck around 5pm, triggering an early exodus from the grounds. Leo O'Mara noticed a guy with a red beard, wearing a vast muddy poncho and a huge smile. O'Mara sat in the mud and wondered why this guy was so thrilled in such miserable weather. "Then I noticed that there were three other sets of legs under that poncho," O'Mara said.

Woodstock
Written by Joni Mitchell, performed by
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, 'Tell where are you going?'
This he told me
Said, 'I¹m going down to Yasgur's Farm,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.'
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
'Well, then can I walk beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year,
Yes and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am,
But life is for learning.'
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon.
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon.
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We caught in the devil¹s bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Woodstock Memorial

For years, no one celebrated Woodstock's anniversary, and Augusts came and went without notice. People who wanted to stop by Yasgur's farm and reminisce weren't always sure they were at the right place.

In the late ‘70s, a ragtag bunch started celebrating every August with a three-day party. Around 1978, a welder named Wayne Saward came out for the party. "And it was, like, super-quiet," he recalled. "There'd be 30 people there, at most. And that was in the middle of the night. Then in 1984, Saward started, pretty much alone, to build the world's only monument to the event. It's a 5 1/2 ton marker made of cast iron and concrete; landowner Louis Nicky paid $650 for concrete and casting the iron. Once the marker went up, the site became a kind of counterculture shrine. Visitors started showing up randomly, staying for a few minutes, then leaving.

The counterculture's biggest bash - it ultimately cost more than $2.4 million - was sponsored by four very different, and very young, men: John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang. The oldest of the four was 26. John Roberts supplied the money. He was heir to a drugstore and toothpaste manufacturing fortune. He had a multimillion-dollar trust fund, a University of Pennsylvania degree and a lieutenant's commission in the Army. He had seen exactly one rock concert, by the Beach Boys.

Robert's slightly hipper friend, Joel Rosenman, the son of a prominent Long Island orthodontist, had just graduated from Yale Law School. In 1967, the mustachioed Rosenman, 24, was playing guitar for a lounge band in motels from Long Island to Las Vegas.

Roberts and Rosenman met on a golf course in the fall of 1966. By winter 1967, they shared an apartment and were trying to figure out what they ought to do with the rest of their lives. They had one idea: to create a screwball situation comedy for television, kind of like a male version of "I Love Lucy".

"It was an office comedy about two pals with more money than brains and a thirst for adventure." Rosenman said. "Every week they would get into a different business venture in some nutty scheme. And every week they would be rescued in the nick of time from their fate."

To get plot ideas for their sitcom, Roberts and Rosenman put a classified ad in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times in March 1968: "Young Men With Unlimited Capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions." They got thousands of replies, including one for biodegradable golf balls. Another seemed strange enough to work as a real business venture; Ski-bobs, bicycles on skis that were a fad in Europe. Roberts and Rosenman researched the idea before abandoning it. In the process, the two went from would-be television writers to wanna-be venture capitalists. "Somehow, we became the characters in our own show," Rosenman said.

Reprinted from The Times Herald-Record
Woodstock Commemorative Edition
Text copyright 1994 The Times Herald-Record

The entire article:   http://www.geocities.com/~music-festival/how-w.htm

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