The Start of Woodstock

---

---

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.

---

---

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.

---

---

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.

---

---

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.

The Relevance of Woodstock

---

---

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.

---

---

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

---

---

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

---

---

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

---

---

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.