Jimi Hendrix - "All Along The Watchtower", charted #5 in UK.
Woodstock
Woodstock was a music festival held on a dairy farm in the Catskill Mountains, northwest of New York City, between August 15–18, 1969, which attracted an audience of more than 400,000.
Billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", it was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm near White Lake in Bethel, New York, 43 miles (70 km) southwest of Woodstock.
Over the sometimes rainy weekend, 32 acts performed outdoors. It is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history, as well as the definitive nexus for the larger counterculture generation. Rolling Stone listed it as one of the 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.
The event was captured in the Academy Award-winning 1970 documentary movie Woodstock, an accompanying soundtrack album, and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", which commemorated the event and became a major hit for both Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Matthews Southern Comfort. Joni Mitchell said, "Woodstock was a spark of beauty" where half-a-million kids "saw that they were part of a greater organism". In 2017, the festival site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman, and John P. Roberts. Roberts and Rosenman financed the project. Lang had some experience as a promoter, having co-organized a festival on the East Coast the prior year, the Miami Pop Festival, where an estimated 25,000 people attended the two-day event.
In April 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival became the first act to sign a contract for the event, agreeing to play for $10,000. The promoters had experienced difficulty landing big-name groups prior to Creedence committing to play. Creedence drummer Doug Clifford later commented, "Once Creedence signed, everyone else jumped in line and all the other big acts came on." Given their 3 a.m. start time and omission from the Woodstock film (at Creedence frontman John Fogerty's insistence), Creedence members have expressed bitterness over their experiences regarding the festival.
Woodstock was designed as a profit-making venture. It famously became a "free concert" only after the event drew hundreds of thousands more people than the organizers had prepared for. Tickets for the three-day event cost $18 in advance and $24 at the gate (equivalent to about $120 and $160 today). Ticket sales were limited to record stores in the greater New York City area, or by mail via a post office box at the Radio City Station Post Office located in Midtown Manhattan. Around 186,000 advance tickets were sold, and the organizers anticipated approximately 200,000 festival-goers would turn up.
Max Yasgur's dairy farm in 1968
In his 2007 book Taking Woodstock, Elliot Tiber relates that he offered to host the event on his 15 acres (6.1 ha) motel grounds, and had a permit for such an event. He claims to have introduced the promoters to dairy farmer Max Yasgur. Lang, however, disputes Tiber's account and says that Tiber introduced him to a realtor, who drove him to Yasgur's farm without Tiber. Sam Yasgur, Max's son, agrees with Lang's account. Yasgur's land formed a natural bowl sloping down to Filippini Pond on the land's north side. The stage would be set up at the bottom of the hill with Filippini Pond forming a backdrop. The pond would become a popular skinny dipping destination.
The organizers once again told Bethel authorities they expected no more than 50,000 people and despite resident opposition and signs proclaiming, "Buy No Milk. Stop Max's Hippy Music Festival", the festival went ahead.
Organizers were forced to make the event free of charge when facilities and fencing were incomplete and non ticket holders just walked thru gaps in the fencing. Though the festival left its promoters nearly bankrupt, their ownership of the film and recording rights more than compensated for the losses after the release of the hit documentary film in 1970.
The influx of attendees to the rural concert site in Bethel created a massive traffic jam and authorities were fearing chaos as thousands began descending on the community.
Jimi Hendrix was the last act to perform at the festival. Because of the rain delays that Sunday, when Hendrix finally took the stage it was 8:30 Monday morning. The audience, which had peaked at an estimated 400,000 during the festival, was now reduced to about 30,000 by that point; many of them merely waited to catch a glimpse of Hendrix before leaving during his performance.
Although the festival was remarkably peaceful given the number of people and the conditions involved, there were two recorded fatalities: one from insulin usage, and another caused in an accident when a tractor ran over an attendee sleeping in a nearby hayfield. There also were two births recorded at the event (one in a car caught in traffic and another in a hospital after an airlift by helicopter) and four miscarriages.
Yet, in tune with the idealistic hopes of the 1960s, Woodstock satisfied most attendees. There was a sense of social harmony, which, with the quality of music, and the overwhelming mass of people, many sporting bohemian dress, behavior, and attitudes, helped to make it one of the enduring events of the century.
After the concert, Max Yasgur, who owned the site of the event, saw it as a victory of peace and love. He spoke of how nearly half a million people filled with potential for disaster, riot, looting, and catastrophe spent the three days with music and peace on their minds. He stated, "If we join them, we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future ... "
The Film
The documentary film Woodstock, directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese, was released in 1970. Artie Kornfeld (one of the promoters of the festival) went to Fred Weintraub, an executive at Warner Bros., and asked for money to film the festival. Artie had been turned down everywhere else, but against the express wishes of other Warner Bros. executives, Weintraub put his job on the line and gave Kornfeld $100,000 to make the film. Woodstock helped to save Warner Bros at a time when the company was on the verge of going out of business. The book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls details the making of the film.
Wadleigh rounded up a crew of about 100 from the New York film scene. With no money to pay the crew, he agreed to a double-or-nothing scheme, in which the crew would receive double pay if the film succeeded and nothing if it bombed. Wadleigh strove to make the film as much about the hippies as the music, listening to their feelings about compelling events contemporaneous with the festival (such as the Vietnam War), as well as the views of the townspeople.
Woodstock received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The film has been deemed culturally significant by the United States Library of Congress. In 1994, Woodstock: The Director's Cut was released and expanded to include Janis Joplin as well as additional performances by Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and Canned Heat not seen in the original version of the film. In 2009, the expanded 40th Anniversary Edition was released on DVD. This release marks the film's first availability on Blu-ray disc.
"Woodstock", Joni Mitchell. 1969
"Black Magic Woman", Santana hit #4, 1970
"Somebody to Love", Jefferson Airplane hit #5, 1967
Appearances:
Friday, August 15 –
Saturday, August 16
Richie Havens 5:07 pm – 7:00 pm
Swami Satchidananda 7:10 pm – 7:20 pm Gave the opening speech/invocation
for the festival.[39]
Sweetwater 7:30 pm – 8:10 pm
Bert Sommer 8:20 pm – 9:15 pm
Tim Hardin 9:20 pm – 9:45 pm
Ravi Shankar 10:00 pm – 10:35 pm Played through the rain.
Melanie 10:50 pm – 11:20 pm
Arlo Guthrie 11:55 pm – 12:25 am
Joan Baez 12:55 am – 2:00 am Was six months pregnant at the time.
Saturday, August 16 –
Sunday, August 17
Quill 12:15 pm – 12:45 pm
Country Joe McDonald 1:00 pm – 1:30 pm Joe later performed together
with The Fish.
Santana 2:00 pm – 2:45 pm
John Sebastian 3:30 pm – 3:55 pm
Keef Hartley Band 4:45 pm – 5:30 pm
The Incredible String Band 6:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Canned Heat 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Mountain 9:00 pm – 10:00 pm This performance was only their third gig
as a band[42]
Grateful Dead 10:30 pm – 12:05 am
Creedence Clearwater Revival 12:30 am – 1:20 am
Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band 2:00 am – 3:00 am
Sly and the Family Stone 3:30 am – 4:20 am
The Who 5:00 am – 6:05 am
Jefferson Airplane 8:00 am – 9:40 am
Sunday, August 17 –
Monday, August 18
Joe Cocker and The Grease Band 2:00 pm – 3:25 pm
Country Joe and the Fish 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Ten Years After 8:15 pm – 9:15 pm
The Band 10:00 pm – 10:50 pm
Johnny Winter 12:00 am – 1:05 am
Blood, Sweat & Tears 1:30 am – 2:30 am
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 3:00 am – 4:00 am
Paul Butterfield Blues Band 6:00 am – 6:45 am
Sha Na Na 7:30 am – 8:00 am
Jimi Hendrix / Gypsy Sun & Rainbows 9:00 am – 11:10 am
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