The Beatles' Swan Song

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Forty–five years ago today, the Beatles released "Let It Be," the last album they would release as the Fab Four. It was also the soundtrack for the movie of the same name.

It was released on this date in the United Kingdom. The album was released in the United States 10 days later — after the movie hit the theaters.

In the years ahead, there would be compilation albums released exploring various themes. There would be a concert album that combined tracks from concerts in the Hollywood Bowl recorded about a year apart. There would even be a couple of singles that were made by combining recordings of the long–deceased John Lennon and the then–three surviving Beatles.

But there would be no more new, original albums.

Anyway, "Across the Universe" is my favorite song on the album. I have long said it is my favorite Beatles song of all, and it probably is although there are several songs that are worthy of that designation.

As it has been with many Beatles songs, there are plenty of cover versions of "Across the Universe" out there — and, as I have admitted many times before, as a rule I'm not a fan of Beatles cover songs — but I think my favorite is the one Fiona Apple did for the movie "Pleasantville."

Her voice always seemed right for that song — well, to me it did.

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The title track is certainly a fan favorite. It was ranked the 20th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone, and I am certain that it is one of the most recognizable Beatles tunes ever recorded. Probably more recognizable than "Hey Jude" or "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" — or even "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."

I've heard — more than once — that Paul McCartney wanted to write the Beatles' equivalent of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," arguably Simon and Garfunkel's signature song, so he wrote "Let It Be." That would be plenty for most people — to have inspired a Beatles song — and I like both songs, but I think Simon and Garfunkel's song was better.

(Even though Paul Simon, who wrote most of the song, loathed the part that Art Garfunkel wrote — "Sail on, silver girl ..." — and reportedly came to believe that he, not Garfunkel, should have sung it on the record.)

I would certainly list "Let It Be" as one of the favorites from the album. It was the title track, after all.

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Another favorite is "Get Back," which was performed in the famous rooftop concert on the roof of Apple's (that's the recording company, not the computer company) headquarters in London in January 1969 — the last public appearance of the Beatles.

If you get the chance to see the movie, you can see portions of the 42–minute concert that drew a crowd of curious onlookers, including British police who broke up the show.

If you listen to the album, you'll hear several songs that aren't generally well known to non–Beatles fans — like "One After 909," "Two Of Us," "I Me Mine" and lots more.

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But nothing can compare to the feeling I get when I see the Beatles performing "I've Got a Feeling" for an audience.

Wish I could have been there.

A 'Cactus Flower' in Full Bloom

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Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman): Mr. Greenfield, please don't handle the instruments.

Harvey (Jack Weston): I was reading the other day, a dentist in New Jersey has topless nurses.

Stephanie: I didn't know you were interested in reading.

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It was simply impossible to not like Goldie Hawn's character in "Cactus Flower," which premiered on this date in 1969.

She was so sweetly earnest, almost naive. There wasn't a deceitful bone in her body — which is probably why her relationship with Walter Matthau, playing a deceitful dentist, became so distasteful for her. That wasn't clear at first. Hawn and Matthau were having an affair. Hawn was led to believe Matthau was married with children. Turned out, though, that he was a bachelor; he just told women he had a family to avoid becoming too involved with them.

But Hawn's character had a strong sense of ethics. She wanted to be married, but she would not take another woman's man and she would not stand between a man and his children. If the relationship with Matthau continued, she would eventually violate those ethics so Matthau had to go.

But it was Hawn who apparently was on the way out when the movie began. She tried to kill herself, but a neighbor intervened — and it was when Matthau learned of the aborted suicide attempt that he realized how much he really cared for Hawn.

To save the relationship, Matthau needed a temporary wife so he turned to his dental assistant, played by Ingrid Bergman, who, as it turned out, had been nursing an infatuation with her boss for quite some time. Matthau told her he needed someone to pose as his wife and assure Hawn that the relationship was over and had been for awhile. Bergman resisted at first but eventually agreed to do it.

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Bergman brought two little boys with her (I think they were her nephews in the story) to her meeting with Hawn and did everything she could to sell the idea that her "marriage" to Matthau was over, but Hawn was a tough interrogator. She had to see Bergman with the boyfriend she claimed to have — he was played by Jack Weston, one of Matthau's patients — before she was convinced.

You know, even though Bergman was in her 50s when she made "Cactus Flower," it seems ironic that someone as beautiful as Bergman was a few decades earlier — in "Casablanca" and "Gaslight" and "Joan of Arc" — and was still beautiful when she made "Cactus Flower" ended up portraying a presumably plain dental assistant. But she did it well.

Perhaps so well that she was inspired to insist, five years later, that she play possibly the plainest character in "Murder on the Orient Express" — for which she was rewarded with an Oscar.

Hawn did win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress) for her performance in "Cactus Flower" — which, as I recall, surprised some people. Perhaps not so much because of the caliber of her competition — as always, the nominees were good but none seemed to strike observers as particularly inevitable — but because the public memory knew Hawn as the ditzy blonde on TV's Laugh–In.

Stereotypes can be powerful things, and sometimes they distract from the truth — in this case, that Hawn deserved the Oscar she received. Fortunately, the Academy's voters weren't distracted from the truth.

And the truth — as it so often is — was complicated.

Hawn has never been the greatest actress who walked the earth. But she was convincing — and she was not nominated for Best Actress Who Ever Lived. She was so convincing that observers struggled to differentiate between Goldie Hawn the person and the airhead she played on Laugh–In. Like Suzanne Somers a decade later, she was much smarter than the characters she played.

"Cactus Flower" was filled with unexpected surprises — not unlike the cactus that Bergman kept on her desk.

One infrequently sees a flowering cactus, but it does happen, even in the most inhospitable of environments. The cactus that Bergman's character kept on her desk didn't bloom often, but, when it did, it was a sight to see.

Agatha Christie's Misfire

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All I know about the publication of Agatha Christie's "Hallowe'en Party" is that it was published in November 1969.

I don't know the exact date, but I suspect the book was published closer to the beginning of November (and, consequently, closer to Hallowe'en itself). Perhaps such timing would have helped. By 1969, Agatha Christie was nearly 80, and her writing engine seemed to be running out of gas. "Hallowe'en Party" was disappointing when compared to her earlier works. The plot wasn't bad, but the telling of it was weak and a bit inefficient for Christie.

The book matched Christie's most popular detective, Hercule Poirot, with Christie's caricature of herself, Ariadne Oliver. Ariadne was a rather eccentric sort, a celebrated writer who was averse to publicity, fond of apples, a teetotaler. Poirot described her as having an "original if untidy mind" — the ideal complement to Poirot's tidy gray cells.

If opposites attract, Hercule and Ariadne were a match made in heaven; in fact, I have often wondered why Christie wrote about Ariadne so seldom. Ariadne appeared in roughly half a dozen Agatha Christie books. She was an old friend of Poirot's — hence, nearly all of her appearances were in books that featured him prominently, although I think there was one book in which Oliver was featured as a sort of tangential character, but Poirot was not part of it.

Readers of "Hallowe'en Party" could be forgiven for thinking Poirot would not play a role in this one, either — at least, at first. In "Hallowe'en Party," Ariadne happened to be present when, while preparing for a Hallowe'en party, a 13–year–old girl related that she had witnessed a murder once but only recently had come to realize that it was a murder she had seen.

Not long thereafter, the girl was found dead — drowned in an apple–bobbing bucket — and Ariadne called on her old friend to solve the murder. Considering what she had heard from the girl herself, Ariadne was concerned that the murder might have been prompted by the girl's revelation.

It was a missed opportunity in many ways. At a time when many were examining the so–called "generation gap," it was a chance to remind readers that such a gap has always existed. It was an opportunity to examine the logic (or lack thereof) of teenagers, but, by the time Christie wrapped it up, "Hallowe'en Party" was still loaded with loose ends and characters who seemed promising at first but sort of fizzled out.

Well, Christie was nearing the end of her life, and she had written so many excellent books that I suppose she could be excused for making the occasional misfire.

Butch and the Sundance Kid: A Product of Its Time

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"Who are those guys?"

Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman)

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I have long thought that "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," which premiered on this day in 1969, was a product of its times.

It told the story of a different time and place — the Old West in the 19th century — but from a decidedly contemporary point of view.

The movie came out in the year of the first moonwalk, which involved many kinds of people working together and eschewing individuality to an extent, but it was also a time of nonconformity, of thumbing one's nose at the establishment.

It was hardly surprising that, in such an atmosphere, a movie that glorified the exploits of two outlaws, nonconformists of their day, should be as successful as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

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Roger Ebert had his own take on the movie: It "must have looked like a natural on paper," he wrote, "but, alas, the completed film is slow and disappointing."

I guess that kind of depends on your point of view.

Ebert's point of view was that there were two problems with the movie: "First, the investment in superstar Paul Newman apparently inspired a bloated production that destroys the pacing. Second, William Goldman's script is constantly too cute and never gets up the nerve, by God, to admit it's a Western."

I disagree with both points — to different extents, I guess. I thoroughly disagree with the first point. I disagree with the second point, too — but not entirely, not unreservedly. Yes, there were times when the script was too cute, but most of the time I thought it was clever and funny.

Like the time when Butch and Sundance and Etta (Katharine Ross) arrived in Bolivia, and their destination turned out to be little more than a farm with livestock wandering around. Butch remarked that the whole country couldn't look like that.

"How do you know?" Sundance asked. "This might be the garden spot of the whole country. People may travel hundreds of miles just to get to this spot where we're standing now. This might be the Atlantic City, New Jersey, of all Bolivia, for all you know."

And I still laugh when Sundance refuses to jump from the cliff into the water below because he can't swim.

"Are you crazy?" Butch replies. "The fall will probably kill you."

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It's hard to argue with logic like that.

Ross, not too far removed from her appearance in "The Graduate," was their sidekick, and she delivered what I thought was the best monologue in the movie when the subject of whether she would accompany Butch and Sundance to South America came up.

"I'm 26, and I'm single and a school teacher, and that's the bottom of the pit," she said. "And the only excitement I've known is here with me now. I'll go with you, and I won't whine, and I'll sew your socks, and I'll stitch you when you're wounded, and I'll do anything you ask of me except one thing. I won't watch you die. I'll miss that scene if you don't mind."

And she didn't watch them die.

That, of course, came at the end of the movie. But even the audience didn't watch them die, just saw them running into a hail of gunfire.

In spite of Ebert's assessment, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" received seven Oscar nominations and won four. Goldman, by the way, took home one of those Oscars for his screenplay.

Goldman won another Oscar a few years later for his screenplay in another Robert Redford movie, "All the President's Men."

A Fabulous Foursome

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"First, we'll have an orgy. Then we'll go see Tony Bennett."

Ted (Elliott Gould)

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When I was in college, I remember having the kind of frank conversations that were abundant in "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," which premiered on this day in 1969.

Having such conversations when you are 20 is one thing. It is quite another when you have come to occupy that middle earth known as one's 30s — when one is apt to be married, maybe have a house and a car and a kid or two — and such conversations can lead to divvying up such things.

With some people and in some situations, it is possible to be too honest. There are probably some topics that are best left unexplored.

What made "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" funny was that its writers were sensitive to the crisis the 30–somethings of that time faced. They were caught in the no–man's land of the Generation Gap.

Now, there is always a gap between the generations, but it was particularly pronounced at that time when a war half a world away wasn't the only war being waged in America. There was a race war in America in those days, and there was a war between the sexes, which came to include the emerging gay rights movement.

It is no exaggeration to say there were times when the fabric of American society seemed to be coming apart at the seams.

Quite often the conflicts seemed to come down to the Generation Gap. The young were usually on one side, the old were on the other. The couples in "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" were too old to be the radicals and too young to be the parents of the radicals.

Most of the time, I guess that isn't so bad. Being in your 30s gives you a unique — but temporary — ability to connect with both extremes. I have never been able to be as honest with both groups as I was when I was in my early 30s. The rest of the time, I've been able to be pretty honest with one side but not so honest with the other.

In the late '60s and early '70s, there was a lot of emphasis on honesty in relationships, and that really was what "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" was about.

It wasn't really about wife swapping although that was the premise for the movie.

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"My darling, you did not cheat. You told me about it. If you hadn't told me about it, that would have been cheating!"

Carol (Natalie Wood)

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Things really got started when one of the couples (Natalie Wood and Robert Culp) spent a weekend with one of those groups that were so prevalent in those days — dedicated to helping couples get in touch with their feelings and open up to each other and all that. Culp's character got caught up in the moment, and he found himself confessing to infidelity.

Wood's response was that it was wonderful that he could be so honest with her, and she proudly shared the news of his affair with the other couple (Dyan Cannon and Elliott Gould), which caused a ripple effect within their relationships.

I thought that was the funniest part of the movie. The four had been spending the evening together, going out for dinner, then getting high back at Bob and Carol's place. Throughout the evening, Bob and Carol ranted about the life–changing experience they had had.

Then Carol dropped the bombshell on Ted and Alice as they were leaving.

Alice was furious with Bob and made it clear on the drive home. My memory is that Ted said little — except that it was clear he was aroused. Alice was not.

After discussing the subject of whether to have sex, Alice, in frustration, suggested that she should just lie back and let him do what he wanted to do with no additional participation from her. "Now," she said triumphantly, for she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to have sex if the partner did not wish to actively participate, "do you wanna do it just like that with no feeling on my part?"

"Yeah," Ted replied.

Well, he was being honest — but it probably wasn't the most diplomatic way he could have done it.

Later, Ted told Bob that he had been tempted to cheat but hadn't gone through with it. Bob's advice to him was to do it if he had another chance. "You've got the guilt, anyway," he advised. "Don't waste it."

Eventually, the couples reached the conclusion that the only way they could be totally honest with each other would be to swap sexual partners.

Some of the reviews I have read criticized director Paul Mazursky's ending, in which the couples did not trade partners after all, but I disagreed. I thought it was consistent with the characters and where they were emotionally at that point in their story. If they had swapped partners, it would have totally obscured the movie's message.

"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" received four Oscar nominations but lost all four.

The Start of Woodstock

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It's been a strange week.

Forty–five years ago today, the Woodstock music festival began in New York. I had planned to focus on that — and yet, all week, my thoughts have been on Robin Williams.

I wrote about the Woodstock anniversary extensively five years ago so I don't need to spend a lot of time on it this year — never intended to, really — except to note the anniversary.

But I've been thinking about Williams, who had just turned 18 and recently finished high school when the festival was held. Did he go to it? I doubt it. He lived in Chicago and Detroit when he was very young, but the family moved to California when he was 16, and I doubt that he went all the way across the country for a music festival — although he may have. Nearly half a million people showed up; it wouldn't surprise me if a few came from the West Coast.

Considering his age, I'm sure the movie and the three–record album were influences on him, as they were for just about everyone else in his age group, even if he wasn't there.

Swami Satchidananda Saraswati opened the festival with its keynote address (I guess you could call it that). That probably sounds odd, given that everyone who was there came to hear the music.

Probably 99% of the weekend — which stretched into the following Monday — was devoted to music from all sorts of performers (at least, when it wasn't raining) and the festival ended memorably, with Jimi Hendrix giving an amazing performance to a much–depleted audience.

But the festival began, before Saraswati's remarks, with Richie Havens.

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His performance of "Freedom" still sends chills down my spine — and I have seen it countless times and heard it even more.

He played for a couple of hours late that August afternoon.

There are other memorable moments from the festival, too. I wrote about many of them five years ago.

Woodstock launched some careers, as Katie McLaughlin writes for CNN.com. It was the first public appearance for Santana and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

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It has been said by some that Woodstock was the last gasp of the '60s, and there may be some truth in that. Certainly it was the last gasp of the communal '60s when the emphasis was on peace and brotherhood.

Why was that? I have asked — and I have been told it was because virtually the only drugs being used that weekend were pot and acid, neither of which brings out the violent and aggressive sides in people like alcohol and cocaine.

Is that the reason? I don't know. At least one person was using heroin that weekend, and he overdosed. Another person died of a burst appendix, and still another was in a sleeping bag and was run over by a vehicle so the weekend did not pass without incident but there were no fights. Lots of sex, as McLaughlin writes, but no fights. Hundreds of thousands of kids, strangers to nearly everyone there, spent the weekend together in peace and harmony.

And then, of course, there was Jimi Hendrix, who closed out the show on Monday morning. About half the crowd had left by that time. The ones who left early missed what may have been the most memorable performance of all. Well, they released a double CD of his show 25 years after the fact.

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It was an innocent time, but it was losing its innocence. Only a week earlier, the Manson family had committed seven horrific murders in two consecutive nights.

A Movie With No Story

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"You've got a nice place. It's not every man that can live off the land, you know. You do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud."

Wyatt (Peter Fonda)

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"Easy Rider," which premiered on this day in 1969, is part time capsule, buried in the late 1960s, and part timeless road/buddy picture.

The basic story was that Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda had pulled off a cocaine deal and were riding their motorcycles through the southwestern United States. The backstory was missing, though.

Every time I have seen it, I have thought that parts were hopelessly dated and other parts were relevant — but they haven't been the same each time. It is (pardon the pun) a moving target.

Well, I suppose the violent ending is mostly a reflection of the deep division in American society in those days and probably always will be seen that way — but, even there, one can see relevance to modern times.

While there were undeniably rough moments to get through in "Easy Rider," the flip side was the joy the lead characters — Hopper, Fonda and Jack Nicholson — experienced on their journey.

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And that, to me, sums up the '60s.

There was a lot of pain and a lot of conflict. There were demonstrations against the war in Vietnam and demonstrations for civil rights.

But there were also moments of bliss and pure joy. Young people reveled in their freedom as perhaps no other generation before them. Some felt threatened by that. Others were liberated by it.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that people like Henry Fonda (Peter's father) — and, certainly, his more conservative friends in the movie community — were bewildered by "Easy Rider." It didn't have a story.

That sort of went against the conventional grain.

"[I]n fact, director Dennis Hopper has done an old and respectable thing," Ebert wrote. "He has told his story in cinematic shorthand, instead of spelling it out in dreary detail. Fifty years ago, Hollywood figured out that if you put the good guys in white hats you could eliminate 10 minutes of explanation from every Western. Hopper has applied this technique to the motorcycle movie."

I'm not entirely sure that is what Hopper did — at least, not deliberately.

"If you follow the story closely in 'Easy Rider,' you find out it isn't there," Ebert wrote. "The rough cut of the movie reportedly ran over three hours, and Hopper edited it to a reasonable length by throwing out the story details and keeping the rest. So the heroes are suspended in an invisible story, like falcons on an invisible current of air. You can't see it, but it holds them up."

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There was a lot of talk, around the time that "Easy Rider" was showing on the big screens of America, of gaps. That wasn't really new, I guess. Five years earlier, "Dr. Strangelove" mocked the politicians and their "missile gap" rhetoric. By 1969, the culture was awash with angst about all kinds of gaps — between the generations, the races, the genders, you name it.

(Several small children could be seen in a segment of the story that took place in a hippie commune. One of those children, Henry's granddaughter and Peter's daughter, 5–year–old Bridget Fonda, was making her movie debut, about 20 years before her breakthrough part in "The Godfather Part III.")

Those gaps were becoming increasingly violent, too. So the ending of "Easy Rider," as obscene as it was, was the only way the movie could have ended — to end it any other way would have robbed the story of its meaning.

Even if, as Ebert said, the movie had no story.

Redefining the Western Genre

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"What I like and what I need are two different things."

Deke (Robert Ryan)

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The premiere of "The Wild Bunch" 45 years ago today was an important milestone in the movie western.

Gunfights have always been part of a movie western, but, in the early days, there were also parts of westerns that dealt with other things, too. Sometimes they addressed subjects that made viewers think. Sometimes they were partly love stories. Even "High Noon" dealt with nonviolent issues while Gary Cooper went looking for backup in the approaching shootout.

"The Wild Bunch" had other issues, too, but they were intimately related to the violence of the Old West. By and large, before "The Wild Bunch," Hollywood had idealized the Old West, but "The Wild Bunch" portrayed the Old West as the violent place the history books tell us it really was.

Along with the "spaghetti Westerns" that were popular at that time, "The Wild Bunch" redefined the western genre. If anything, the westerns that have followed have been increasingly violent.

Must have made it hard for the parents of the last half century to instill certain values in their children.

When we are young, we are told that might does not make right. It is a principle that is reinforced continually in stories and movies.

In "The Wild Bunch," it was understood that laws might exist, but, at its heart, the West was a lawless place, and it belonged to the new, not the old.

The story took place in 1913. The world was changing, and the "Wild Bunch," an aging gang of outlaws, knew their time was coming to an end. The frontier was making its transition to modern civilization.

I liked what film critic Roger Ebert wrote:

"In an early scene," he wrote, "the bunch rides into town past a crowd of children who are gathered with excitement around their game. They have trapped some scorpions and are watching them being tortured by ants. The eyes of Pike (William Holden), leader of the bunch, briefly meet the eyes of one of the children. Later in the film, a member of the bunch ... is captured by Mexican rebels and dragged around the town square behind one of the first automobiles anyone there has seen. Children run after the car, laughing. Near the end of the film, Pike is shot by a little boy who gets his hands on a gun.

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"The message here is not subtle, but then Sam Peckinpah was not a subtle director, preferring bold images to small points. It is that the mantel of violence is passing from the old professionals like Pike and his bunch, who operate according to a code, into the hands of a new generation that learns to kill more impersonally, as a game or with machines."

William Holden played the leader of the gang, but he wasn't the first choice. Lee Marvin accepted the role but had to pull out to make "Paint Your Wagon." Before casting Holden in the role, Peckinpah considered such heavyweights as Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Sterling Hayden, Richard Boone and Robert Mitchum.

Not to say that Holden wasn't a heavyweight, but the others had more heft for the role, I think.

Anyway, Holden and his gang (Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez) wanted one last, big score before retiring; at first, they selected, as their target, a railroad office, but they were disappointed. They thought they would get a stash of silver for their trouble. Instead, they got a bag of steel washers. To add insult to injury, they were ambushed by Holden's ex–partner (Robert Ryan) but managed to escape to Mexico.

That was just the beginning of a long tale of double crosses and lawless maneuvers. The closest thing to a love story in "The Wild Bunch" was when Sanchez saw an ex–lover in the arms of a Mexican general and shot her on the spot.

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"The Wild Bunch" was a bloody movie, but the violence didn't seem gratuitous. Still, there is no denying it was violent. It both started and ended with perhaps the bloodiest conflicts that had been seen on the big screen to that time — and, mind you, this was at a time when movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" had been showing up in theaters.

It seemed like an honest representation of a time and a place where the sword was mightier than anything else around.

A Near Masterpiece

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"The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk. Did you know that? That's a fact. In Florida, they got a terrific amount of coconut trees there. In fact, I think they even got 'em in the gas stations over there. And ladies? You know that in Miami, you got — you listenin' to me? — you got more ladies in Miami than in any resort area in the country there. I think per capita on a given day, there's probably 300 of 'em on the beach. In fact, you can't even scratch yourself without gettin' a belly button up the old kazoo there."

Ratso (Dustin Hoffman)

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"Midnight Cowboy," which premiered on this day in 1969, was "one of a handful of films that stay in our memory after the others have evaporated," wrote Roger Ebert 25 years after its debut.

But, after apparently taking the opportunity to revisit it after a quarter of a century, Ebert asserted that it was "a good movie with a masterpiece inside, struggling to break free."

When the movie was in the theaters in 1969, Ebert wrote that it "comes heartbreakingly close to being the movie we want it to be."

Perhaps there is a subtle nuance or two that I am missing, but it sounds to me like he had pretty much the same reaction to the movie in 1994 that he had in 1969.

It was a near masterpiece, I guess you could say. The American Film Institute ranked it 43rd on its list of the top 100 movies of all time — and AFI chose Ratso's iconic line, "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" as its #27 movie quote (just ahead of "Play it, Sam" from "Casablanca").

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It may be something of an urban legend that Hoffman improvised that line. The producer disputed that account in the movie's two–DVD package.

While that point may be up for debate, there is no debating this: "Midnight Cowboy" holds the distinction of being the only X–rated movie to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Two other X–rated movies — also from the early days of movie ratings — were nominated for Oscars but did not win ("A Clockwork Orange" and "Last Tango in Paris").

Given the considerable changes in both the public's perception of and the requirements for an X rating, I feel pretty safe in asserting that an X–rated movie will never be nominated for — let alone win — an Oscar again.

"Midnight Cowboy" did not remain an X–rated movie. It was re–evaluated and given an R rating, which is more appropriate, on its reissue a few years later.

It did have a pretty strong sexual content (and most people probably would agree that sex is a must in the modern definition of X–rated filmmaking), but the sex was rather tame compared to today's movies. I have seen more explicit nudity in PG–rated movies than I saw in "Midnight Cowboy."

True, one of the characters, Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight), was a gigolo, and some of the story was about his adventures (and misadventures) in New York. But the sexual content that led to the X rating had more to do with the implication that Voight's character might have been homosexual.

That is the important distinction. In 1969, an X rating was treated like a legitimate film rating, which it was. It meant that the content definitely was not suitable for children, because of either extreme violence or extreme sexual activity, and that they could not be allowed to see such a movie, even if accompanied by an adult.

In those days, people who were at least 16 could watch an R–rated movie without an adult.

Then the adult film industry latched onto the X rating; over time, it ceased to be recognized as a legitimate movie rating. It became code for pornographic movie. Mainstream commercial theaters stopped showing X–rated movies, and reputable actors stopped appearing in them.

And the bar was raised on R–rated movies. The Motion Picture Association of America raised the minimum age for admission without an adult to 17.

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But sex wasn't the only consideration in 1969. The rating also was the result of the gritty, realistic depiction of New York street life in those days.

Ultimately, the R rating, as I say, was the most appropriate one for "Midnight Cowboy." The material wasn't anywhere near mild enough for a PG rating, but X was too extreme.

The acting really was impressive. Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for Oscars but lost to John Wayne (for "True Grit").

Fighting the Battle of Burning Oak

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Elizabeth Montgomery was always an activist.

She was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War when her TV series, Bewitched, was popular. Long after the series went off the air, she was an advocate of women's rights and gay rights (the latter influenced to a certain extent by her friendship with Bewitched co–star Dick Sargent, the second Darrin, who was gay).

Surely, it was due at least in part to Montgomery's influence that Bewitched was more than another slapstick '60s sitcom. It had the requisite bizarre circumstances the primary characters were striving to overcome with goofy supporting characters. But it was also clever, contemporary and cosmopolitan — and socially aware.

Consequently, it probably wasn't much of a stretch for her to do episodes of Bewitched like the one that first aired 45 years ago tonight, "The Battle of Burning Oak."

The premise was that Darrin (Dick York) was invited to join a country club, Burning Oak, that was very exclusive — and very bigoted. Viewers knew it wasn't the kind of thing that would appeal to Darrin; but it was the kind of invitation that was of enormous value to a social ladder–climbing, up–and–comer like Darrin's mother–in–law, Endora (Agnes Moorehead), imagined him to be. She said as much to Samantha, who thought nothing of it.

(Samantha, like many viewers, probably dismissed it as the rantings of a mother who believed her daughter had married beneath her — a theme that was well established on the show by this time and paved the way nicely for an episode about prejudice and stereotyping.)

To prove her point, Endora turned Darrin into the snob to end all snobs — a snob's snob and a sure bet to be asked by the screening committee to become a member.

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And he was — in spite of the fact that the ladies of the screening committee had been unimpressed when they learned that Samantha did all her own housework.

Samantha deduced that her mother had cast a spell on Darrin and, with the help of her Aunt Hagatha, dug up some dirt on the committee members to level the playing field.

It all led to an amusing confrontation with the members of the club in which Samantha, with a little assistance from witchcraft, exposed the snooty members of the committee, some of whom claimed to have had ancestors on board the Mayflower.

From a group that advertised itself to be "pure–bred Americans," it turned out that some had ancestors on the wrong side of the law; for example, one was descended from a horse thief. Others did not have the noble ancestry they claimed; one was descended from a servant, another from a stowaway. And so on.

They all came to America to escape prejudice, Samantha declared. Actually, she continued, no one could rightfully claim to be a pure–bred American except an Indian. "And an American Indian could never get in here," she said with a sweet smile.

My memory is that some of the proper ladies of the club's board fainted when she said that.

At that point, Samantha rose when Darrin announced that it was getting late and it was time to go home.

In hindsight, it was courageous of writers Leo and Pauline Townsend to tackle the topic of bigotry.

At the time, Americans' social consciousness and sensitivity was emerging. The debut of All in the Family, which regularly challenged prejudice, was still a couple of years away. TV sitcoms were mostly silly in those days, seldom trying to make a serious point.

I suppose Bewitched had its share of silliness, too, 45 years ago tonight.

At one point, Endora, in her indignant way, observed that she had been protesting a new movie that portrayed witches as evil. I don't recall a specific title being mentioned, but I have often wondered, whenever I have seen that episode, if perhaps Endora was referring to "Rosemary's Baby," which was quite popular at the time.

The theme of witches being a persecuted minority was a recurring one — which, I suppose, gave Bewitched legitimacy to poke fun at bigotry.

It's hardly the same thing, of course. Witches are fictional characters. Prejudice against them can't be taken seriously, but prejudice against real people, whatever the reason for it, should be taken seriously.

That seems obvious today, doesn't it? But you have to keep it in the context of the times. It was a big deal at that time for a TV series to have a black leading lady who wasn't carrying trays.

(It's been quite awhile since I have seen the episode, and I don't remember now if there were any stereotyped servants at Burning Oak — but it wouldn't surprise me if there were. It's the kind of touch that would have appealed to Montgomery.)

Bewitched was uniquely positioned to challenge the prejudice and double standards of its time. The marriage of Darrin and Samantha, after all, was a "mixed marriage" — not in the way that phrase was interpreted by most people at the time, but mixed, nonetheless — and it was likely to produce offspring who carried the genetic material of both parents, as indeed it did.

It was also about a marriage in which the wife had more power than the husband, something that is much more common today than it was in 1969. Her actual power advantage (witchcraft) was a metaphorical edge as well. That made it easier, I suppose, for viewers to accept it when stories could be seen on more than one level.

The story lines, like the one in "The Battle of Burning Oak," played with questions about stereotypes and group depictions that were only starting to be asked — and it did so in a way that was virtually invisible if you weren't looking for it. The best episodes of Bewitched worked both as metaphor and as a serious story.

It seems our culture is taking prejudice seriously today, and you can attribute that to many factors — but don't underestimate the contribution Bewitched made on this night 45 years ago. In my experience, laughing about something is the first and most positive step to take in dealing with it.

The Free Spirit of Miss Jean Brodie

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"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like."

Miss Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith)

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Was there a Miss Jean Brodie on the faculty when you were in school?

There were teachers in my schools who had some of her qualities — but I can't think of anyone who was quite like the very liberated Miss Jean Brodie.

(And when I say "liberated," that was kind of a scandalous thing all by itself in the period between the two world wars.)

She was a spitfire.

A teacher at a girls school in Scotland in the 1930s, Miss Jean Brodie had a reputation for wandering from the prescribed course of study in promoting art, music, drama and seeking, in general, to influence her girls (or "gulls," as she pronounced it). She believed she was in the prime of her life, and she intended for her students — in particular, four 12–year–olds (Pamela Franklin, Shirley Steedman, Diane Grayson, Jane Carr) — to be the beneficiaries of her knowledge.

Brodie and the four often went to plays, concerts, museums — which provoked the headmistress and others on the faculty, especially since Brodie was involved with a male music teacher and had been involved with a male art teacher.

The music teacher, who was also church choirmaster, was asked to resign by the church because of his relationship with Brodie, and she lost the allegiance of the art teacher, who had been more prone to be supportive of Brodie's unorthodox classroom approach than just about anyone else on the faculty.

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"I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life."

Miss Jean Brodie

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The art teacher, as it turned out, had begun a relationship with one of Brodie's girls (Franklin). It was the subject of some conversation. But the art teacher was still obsessed with Brodie, and Franklin's character broke things off with him.

"Miss Brodie never got married like our mothers and fathers," observed Grayson's character at one point.

"They don't have primes," Franklin's character said.

"They have sexual intercourse," replied Grayson.

The script crackled, especially when Franklin's character figured out Brodie and confronted her. There was no such confrontation in the book upon which the Tony Award–winning play and, ultimately, the movie were based.

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Smith won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance, but, otherwise, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" was largely ignored by the Oscars. Rod McKuen's song "Jean" was nominated for Best Song but lost to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head."

Franklin wasn't nominated for an Oscar, but she did win the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress.

Turner Classic Movies will be showing "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" at 5 p.m. (Central) this Thursday.

Up on the Roof With the Fab Four

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"We went on the roof in order to resolve the live concert idea because it was much simpler than going anywhere else.

"Also nobody had ever done that so it would be interesting to see what happened when we started playing up there. It was a nice little social study.

"We set up a camera in the Apple reception area behind a window so nobody could see it, and we filmed people coming in.

"The police and everybody came in saying, 'You can't do that! You've got to stop.' "

George Harrison
'Anthology'

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If there is a seminal moment from the '60s that still lives in pop lore, it is probably the fabled rooftop concert given by the Beatles on the roof of the Apple building in London on this date in 1969.

Ultimately, about half of the 42–minute show served as the concluding segment of "Let It Be" — the fourth and final Beatles movie.

As George Harrison said, it was an interesting study. The movie captured a range of reactions on the street level in London, from excitement to exasperation. In hindsight, probably the Beatles were the only musicians who had the luxury of conducting such a social experiment. Anyone else might have been arrested, and their careers would have been reduced to punchlines.

But they were the Beatles, internationally known. Everything they did made news — not always good news but news. They could get away with things that other groups could not — like playing loud music in the business district during the noon hour.

In the movie, pedestrians could be seen looking skyward, trying to ascertain where the sound was coming from. A few of the older pedestrians clearly were annoyed by the intrusion into their lives.

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They didn't realize they were witnesses to history — the Beatles' last public concert. They were hearing something for which Beatles fans would yearn for 11 years — until John Lennon was murdered in December 1980 and it was no longer possible — a Beatles concert.

(In the 1970s, the talk was not of a Beatles concert but of a Beatles reunion. It was understood that they would perform together, but the shape that performance would take was never established in the discussions I heard or in which I participated. If such a reunion had taken place, it might have been on a TV show. It might even have been in the form of a multi–city tour.

And a few might have dreamed of a repeat of the rooftop performance. Who knows?)

The concert took place nearly five years to the day after the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The Debut of Led Zeppelin

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Today, Led Zeppelin is regarded as a classic rock band, a cultural icon, but 45 years ago today, the world was really getting its first taste when Led Zeppelin released its debut album.

As I understand it, the initial reviews were negative, and I guess that is understandable, really. No other band, no matter how rebellious its music sounded, could compete with Led Zeppelin. Their sound was a unique blend of blues, heavy metal and hard rock, and it was just about guaranteed to annoy the older generation.

What more could a young person, determined to challenge authority, want from a band?

But anyone who listened to Led Zeppelin in those days quickly discovered there was more to Led Zeppelin's sound than noise. It was a radically different kind of sound, and a lot of people didn't know what to make of it.

In hindsight, it can be said that Led Zeppelin was more than a means to annoy the older generation. Led Zeppelin made really good music.

I discovered Led Zeppelin several years after that debut album, but "Dazed and Confused," one of the tracks on that original record, has long been one of my absolute favorites.

The record itself reached #10 on Billboard's chart following its initial release. Today, Rolling Stone ranks it #29 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time (higher than any other Led Zeppelin album). Ten years ago, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

That debut album has had a lasting influence on the cultural landscape. Other albums contained songs that are more recognizable to mainstream audiences, but Zeppelin's fans have a fondness for many of the tracks that easily matches songs like "Rock and Roll" and "Stairway to Heaven."

There were those in America who had heard of Led Zeppelin before the album hit the store shelves but not many. The band launched an American tour to introduce themselves to U.S. audiences in late 1968, starting the day after Christmas in Denver.

The material on that first album had been recorded a couple of months earlier, so, when the band began its tour, it was way ahead of other groups at that stage of their chronological development. The Led Zeppelin sound was well developed, and the tracks on the first album bear witness to its uniqueness.

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Led Zeppelin took what folks like Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck were doing and made it their own. Songs like "Dazed and Confused" get most of the attention with their obvious blues influences, but songs like "Communication Breakdown" were — in hindsight — much more representative of what fans could expect.

It is worth noting that the record came out at a time when an album's cover art was almost as important as the music, and Led Zeppelin did not disappoint. The album's artwork was based on the famous photo of the Hindenburg ablaze in May 1937. It was a reference to the origin of the group's name, which, supposedly went something like this: Jimmy Page was discussing forming a band with Jeff Beck, Keith Moon and John Entwistle. Moon said that would "probably go over like a lead balloon," and Entwistle said, "[A] lead zeppelin." The four didn't form a band, but a name for a band had been born.

This is really an important date in the development of hard rock (and, for that matter, heavy metal) as a musical genre. Led Zeppelin was a pioneer, a band with a harder edge than anything that had come before — and a harbinger of things to come.

In The End, The Love You Take ...

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This is a melancholy anniversary for Beatles fans. It was 40 years ago today that the Beatles released their final studio recording, "Abbey Road."

It's always been my favorite, which is saying something, I guess. Just about every Beatles album was great, in my opinion. For the true Beatles fan, it is quite a task to single out one as a "favorite."

But perhaps it could only be my favorite Beatles album because of the vinyl format. Today, it is great to be able to listen to an entire Beatles album from start to finish without ever having to change sides. But there was something special about being able to weave just about every song on the second side together, as the Beatles did on "Abbey Road," creating one long medley.

My friends and I agreed that it was technically perfect. It may not seem that way in the age of CDs. But it sure seemed that way when vinyl was still in vogue.

"Abbey Road" was not the last studio album that was released by the Beatles — technically speaking, that was "Let It Be," which was released just after the band broke up in 1970 (that is an anniversary that remains to be observed). But the songs on "Let It Be" were recorded before "Abbey Road." "Abbey Road" was the final studio effort by the Beatles.

So, as I say, it is a melancholy anniversary. But it is reassuring, in a way, because it comes in the same month that the Beatles are being introduced to a whole new generation of listeners, via a new video game and the release of remastered CDs of all their records.

What more evidence does one need to support Rolling Stone's conclusion that they were the greatest rock 'n' roll performers of all time?

Contrary to the final track on "Abbey Road," it was not the end for the Beatles. People will still be listening to them long after the rest of us are gone.

The Relevance of Woodstock

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By Monday, Aug. 18, 1969, many people had left the Woodstock Festival.

But those who remained got to see one of the legendary musicians of the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix, who performed more than a dozen songs, including his astonishing rendition of "The Star–Spangled Banner."

I don't exactly think it is what Francis Scott Key had in mind when he was writing the poem at the Battle of Fort McHenry that became the lyrics of the national anthem. Nor, do I think, was it what they had in mind when the tune was a popular British drinking song in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

But, at Woodstock, it seemed appropriate.

It wasn't Hendrix's finale. He played his most popular songs — "Purple Haze" and "Hey Joe" — before leaving the stage.

And when Hendrix concluded his set, Woodstock slipped into the history books, a symbol of a generation — and clearly a source of continuing debate four decades later.

Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald tries to take some of the luster from the memory of Woodstock by reminding people of what is not being celebrated — the infamous Altamont concert later that year and the Manson murders that occurred 40 years ago this month.

"Sometime in the future, when their grip on the levers of the media has loosened, somebody will write a real history of the 1960s and the political awakening of Baby Boomers that will acknowledge it was marked by arrogance, self–indulgence, irreponsibility and totalitarian impulses," Garvin writes.

"When it does, Woodstock and Altamont will be combined in a single chapter, for it was the delusions of one that led to the tragedy of the other."

Maybe there is some truth in that. But it seems to me an oversimplified, if not wishful, appraisal of someone who never really "got" what Woodstock was about.

Perhaps it is not the sort of thing you can put into words. It certainly isn't the sort of thing that can be boiled down to a few neat concepts.

But I have a hard time seeing a relationship between Altamont and Woodstock.

Maybe their relationship — if one exists — is like the masks of the laughing face and the weeping face popularly associated with the theater.

Two extremes. The truth lies somewhere in between.

But Woodstock and Altamont were not bookends. Altamont may well have represented the "end of the hippie movement," as some have suggested, but Woodstock was hardly the beginning.

For that matter, neither was completely representative of the young of that time. There was clearly a dark side, which could be seen in Altamont, and there was the idealistic side, a yearning for something better, which could be seen in Woodstock.

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It reminds me of a line from Oliver Stone's movie about the man who was president when Woodstock occurred, "Nixon."

In the movie, Nixon — who became known for, among other things, chatting with presidential portraits during his tenure in the White House — is seen talking to a portrait of John F. Kennedy. "When they look at you, they see what they want to be," he says. "When they look at me, they see what they are."

Maybe that is the paradox — Woodstock was about what the children of the '60s wanted to be, Altamont was about the imperfect reality. Consequently, perhaps Woodstock's memory has become inflated out of proportion.

Such a tug–o–war was not unique to the 1960s, just more visible than it has been for most generations. Good and evil have always been engaged in a conflict. Sometimes it is just easier to see in the movies — it is a theme that was played out in six films in the "Star Wars" series, and I don't think it was ever really resolved.

Go back and watch the films of "Woodstock" and "Gimme Shelter," the documentary featuring footage from the Altamont concert. The former truly is a tribute to peace and love, the latter is the opposite.

But history tells us that the Vietnam War didn't end because half a million people sang along with Country Joe McDonald's "I–Feel–Like–I'm–Fixin'–To–Die Rag."

And a fine line has always divided love and hate.

Which brings me to the most important question I have seen asked in this wave of Woodstock nostalgia, although it is the one question that wasn't really asked at all, at least not in the words that keep running through my head. It was more implied — by USA Today: Does Woodstock still matter?

Some people say it doesn't. Some say it never did.

But co–founder Michael Lang says it did and it still does. "A lot of those seeds planted in the Woodstock era are beginning to flower. From the green movement to sustainable development and organic gardening, all these things seem to be coming back to us."

And it seems to me that Woodstock's spirit can be seen in subsequent charitable music festivals, such as George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh a couple of years later and Bob Geldof's Live Aid in 1985, even if it is not recognized as the inspiration.

Yes, Woodstock still matters. In ways that are seen and unseen.

The Baptism of Woodstock Nation

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On the third day of Woodstock, Sunday, Aug. 17, 1969, the weather turned wet after Joe Cocker opened things up with a nine–song set that concluded with his rendition of the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends."

A thunderstorm interrupted things for several hours. The performances resumed around 6 p.m. with Country Joe McDonald. The closing acts had to be pushed back to Monday morning.

But Sunday, Aug. 17, 1969, had some remarkable performers — Ten Years After, the Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Johnny Winter (with his brother Edgar Winter), Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Perhaps that day, more than the other days of the Woodstock Festival, held the answer to Todd Leopold's question at CNN.com — "What is it about Woodstock?"

Correctly, Leopold observes that, even though there were many festivals in 1969, no other festival became synonymous in the public mind with an entire generation. Woodstock retains that status 40 years later, and I suspect it will always be remembered as the defining moment of the "peace and love generation."

At some point on that August weekend, those hundreds of thousands of people became more than a bunch of folks who were gathered in a field to listen to popular musicians of the day. They became "Woodstock Nation," in many ways as mythical and temporary a place as Peter Pan's Neverland.

I think the thunderstorm that Sunday afternoon brought everyone together. It was like a shared baptism. Without it, Woodstock might well have been like all the other music festivals of the time. But it seemed to me, when I saw the movie of the event years later, and even today, when I see clips from the concert, that playing and dancing in the rain and the mud, even though no music could be heard, had a cleansing effect.

Not everyone felt that way. Mark Hosenball writes in Newsweek that Woodstock was "a massive, teeming, squalid mess."

"If you like colossal traffic jams, torrential rain, reeking portable johns, barely edible food, and sprawling, disorganized crowds, then you would have found Woodstock a treat," he recalls. "For those of us who saw those things as a hassle, good music did not necessarily offset the discomfort."

I'm inclined to think that was a minority opinion. I'm sure there were some at Woodstock who were appalled by the conditions. Hosenball acknowledges that he "concluded that the crowd had grown too big for the venue" and "decided to check out." He reports that he "grabbed a one–way bus that the promoters had organized for would–be refugees, and on a rural highway several miles away from the stage, I hitched a ride from a carful of disappointed concertgoers."

But that was thinking that was more in keeping with the attitudes of the "squares" against whom many in the younger generation rebelled. Their elders were slaves to their creature comforts while Woodstock Nation was awash in a sense of innocence that, perhaps, was lost when four young people were gunned down at Kent State nine months later.

Well, even the boys of Neverland had to grow up eventually. And so did the residents of Woodstock Nation. Most of them are now in their late 50s or early 60s. Many married, had children and assumed adult responsibilities.

But for a single weekend in August, all that could remain in the unpredictable future. Most of the residents of Woodstock Nation were united in their desire for peace and their love for the music of their times.

And on that wet Sunday, at least, that was enough.

Memories of Woodstock

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If you were at the original Woodstock festival 40 years ago today, you were treated to some of the era's biggest psychedelic and guitar rock performers — Country Joe McDonald, Santana, Canned Heat, Mountain, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, the Who, Jefferson Airplane.

That's a pretty memorable lineup.

After 40 years, though, writes Katie Hawkins–Gaar for CNN.com, memories can be hazy. I'll give you that one.

Hawkins–Gaar reports that some of the participants at Woodstock don't remember certain points from the festival.

They might not remember some of the finer points about their journey to Woodstock. But if some of those details aren't clear anymore, they must remember how awe–inspiring it was to see all that talent assembled in a single place on a single day. And they must have known that the world was watching, even if the New York Thruway was closed. (Well, actually, I've heard that Arlo Guthrie got that one wrong.)

And, surely, they saw the sea of people on that hillside — and they knew this was no ordinary music festival, even though there were many of them that summer.

Woodstock was special. It was unique. It was, seemingly, the proof the pacifists wanted to support their claims that people of all races could come together in peace and harmony.

And it did work — for a few days. I rather doubt it would have succeeded on a long–term basis.

In its way, Woodstock was the "yes, we can" moment for the Baby Boomers. It wasn't about politics or economics. It was about courtesy.

But I sometimes wonder if the patience displayed by the attendees at Woodstock held up — strained though it must have been by the conditions — because they all knew it was a short–term solution.

Well, be that as it may, I have to confess that I enjoyed reading Gail Collins' reflections on her experience at Woodstock in yesterday's New York Times. She began by saying that the reminiscences of that weekend 40 years ago are "beginning to make me feel like Frank Buckles, the 108–year–old last surviving veteran of World War I."

She told an amusing story about having to look for food for herself, her brother and six companions because she "left the picnic basket behind on the front porch."

Then she made this observation: "The lesson I took away from it is that whenever anybody asks you to do something off the wall, you should really try to do it — unless it involves being unethical or a two–plane connection. You might not enjoy it while it's going on, but somewhere down the line the anecdotes will always come in handy."

She acknowledges, though, that "[w]hen I was actually at Woodstock, it never occurred to me anybody was going to want to discuss it 40 years down the road."

But they do, and Collins shares an insight with today's young folks. "The Woodstock–mania must drive young people crazy since it is yet another reminder that the baby–boom generation is never going to stop talking about the stuff it did, and that when they are old themselves there will probably still be some 108–year–old telling them how everybody slept in the mud but that it was worth it because Janis Joplin sounded so awesome and the people were all mellow," she writes.

"Current younger generation, I know you would be equally good–natured if you found yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the world with 400,000 other people and a bunch of bands. But it will never happen because although you will have many, many fine adventures of your own, you will never be cut off."

I guess that's the flip side of modern technology. Cell phones and GPS are great if you're stranded somewhere, but they make it darn near impossible to duplicate the Woodstock experience.

Which leads me to an inescapable conclusion. No matter how many commemorative concerts they have held or will hold in rural New York, there will never be another Woodstock. It belongs to the Baby Boomers.

But that's OK. It's like the wistful way my grandparents used to speak of gathering the family around the radio to listen to Jack Benny or Amos 'n' Andy — or President Roosevelt's Fireside Chats — in the 1930s. TV didn't exist yet, and when it came along, it changed the nature of home entertainment.

It was like that with Woodstock. It was a defining moment for a generation that is justifiably proud of what happened 40 years ago this weekend. Today's generation — and future generations, for that matter — will have massive shared experiences, too, but they will be different. That is what will make those experiences unique and memorable.

And something worth talking about 40 years later.

Remembering Three (Actually Four) Days of Peace and Music

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Next Saturday will be the 40th anniversary of an important cultural event in America.

On Aug. 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in White Lake, N.Y. — known to history as the "Woodstock Festival" — began "3 Days of Peace and Music." Because of bad weather, it wound up extending into a fourth day.

Literally and figuratively, the 1960s were coming to an end — and not entirely in keeping with the peace and love mantra popularly associated with the young people of the time. By mid–August of 1969, the decade had about 4½ months remaining. The Manson family had just killed seven people a week earlier. Before the year was over, a concert–goer would be stabbed to death by a Hell's Angel during a Rolling Stones concert. In the last three years of the 1960s, nearly 40,000 Americans died in Vietnam.

Against that backdrop, the Woodstock Music & Art Fair convened for three days of peace and music — and, against the odds, met its goals.

Maybe that is why, as Jon Pareles wrote recently in the New York Times, "Baby boomers won't let go of the Woodstock Festival. ... It's one of the few defining events of the late 1960s that had a clear happy ending."

Roughly half a million people attended the festival. Originally, there was an admission price, but when so many people showed up, organizers quickly decided to make it a free show.

And those who stayed were treated to nearly three dozen of the era's best musical acts, although there were some noteworthy performers who chose not to attend, even though they were invited — Bob Dylan, the Doors, the Byrds, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, the Moody Blues, Joni Mitchell.

Richie Havens opened the show at 5:07 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 15, 1969. Not very well known at the time, Havens developed a following after his appearance at Woodstock. In 1971, John Lennon, for example, told Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone that Havens "plays a pretty funky guitar."

You can see for yourself in the attached video clip.

Bigger names were yet to come, but Havens' performance was followed that Friday by Melanie, Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez — as well as Ravi Shankar, a nearly 50–year–old Indian musician whose work was introduced to Western audiences by George Harrison of the Beatles.

Sanitation was bad, food was in short supply, and the weather was poor at times. But in spite of the obstacles, it was a remarkably peaceful event, considering that preparation was inadequate for the huge turnout. There were two deaths — one a heroin overdose, the other a person in a sleeping bag who was run over by a tractor in a nearby field. There were also two births and a few miscarriages.

For a few days in August 1969, a spot in rural New York was truly a city, with births, deaths, even a marriage (I think) — but without the crime, the violence and the cultural clashes that plagued real cities then and still plague real cities today.

Forty years later, it stands as a monument to what people of good will can achieve.

Abbey Road

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It turned out to be an iconic moment in rock 'n' roll history, but, at the time, it was something of a rush job.

Forty years ago today, photographer Iain Macmillan was given about 10 minutes to shoot the photos that would include the shot that became the cover of the Beatles' "Abbey Road" album. So he ascended a 10–foot step ladder shortly before noon and photographed the Beatles walking, single file, across the street crossing.

It was a Friday. Even for 1969, the street seems fairly empty — for the middle of a workday.

See the fellow standing on the curb on the right? His name was Paul Cole, a tourist from America who was in his late 50s at the time. Apparently, he was unaware that he was being photographed and didn't realize that he had, in fact, been included in the album cover until he saw it several months later. He may not have known that the four men who were crossing the street that day were the Beatles.

And maybe I'm somewhat dense, but I only recently noticed that there is an actual Beetle parked on the left. Kind of ironic, don't you think? As I understand it, the car belonged to someone who lived in an apartment across the street from the studio. I've heard the vehicle was sold at an auction in the 1980s and currently is on display at a Volkswagen museum in Germany.

Well, "Abbey Road" remains my favorite Beatles album. Nearly six years ago, when Rolling Stone published its "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, "Abbey Road" was 14th. Four of the albums ahead of it were also Beatles albums. I could quibble about the rankings, but I won't. Still, "Abbey Road" is my favorite.

And, apparently, it is a common occurrence for visitors to Abbey Road to re–enact the Beatles' street crossing while someone shoots their picture. Sort of a souvenir. Even four decades later.

Half of the Beatles are gone now. But the surviving half of the famous songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney — Sir Paul McCartney, now 67 years old — is currently on tour. He will be in Atlanta a week from today, Tulsa a week from Monday and Dallas a week from Wednesday. I don't know what concert tickets sell for these days, but if I could spare it, I wouldn't mind seeing Sir Paul in concert. I've heard he puts on quite a show.

In the meantime, would you like to see what's happening on Abbey Road right now? Click here.