Posted on 06/30/2009 10:53:20 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
It was billed as three days of peace and music, but the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was really the culmination of months of planning, begging, borrowing and countless hours of hard work. To mark the 40th anniversary of that historic concert, the man at the heart of it all, Michael Lang — the producer who co-created Woodstock — peels back the curtain and reveals the stories and the passion behind one of rock's most powerful moments.
Lang and Holly George-Warren deliver The Road to Woodstock on June 30, but here they give RollingStone.com a first look at some of its revelations. Lang recounts his first meeting with Max Yasgur, the dairy farmer who invited a nation of music-hungry kids to his upstate New York farm. He recalls how he courted Bob Dylan, and why the legend didn't make it to the Woodstock stage that weekend. He also explains how he avoided losing the Grateful Dead and the Who at the 11th hour, and describes the moment that Sly and the Family Stone elevated the festival to another plane.
Read on for these and more personal stories from the man who took Woodstock from vision to rock history.
...The Who Cement Their Place in Rock History
It was three thirty in the morning and the Who were about to go on, so I said, "Look, Abbie, whoever you saw is gone, so let's just go watch some music and chill out for a few minutes."
He agreed and we headed back up to the stage to sit with musicians from various groups who'd gathered to watch. Abbie kept fidgeting next to me. He couldn't stop talking. "I've really gotta say something about John Sinclair! He's rotting in prison for smoking a joint!" Sinclair, the manager of the radical Detroit rock band the MC5 and the founder of the White Panther Party, was set up by the cops and sentenced to ten years in prison for the possession of two joints.
"Okay, Abbie," I tried to reason with him, "there will be a chance later on, between sets or something."
But he persisted. "No, I really gotta say something! Now!"
"Abbie, the Who is on," I reminded him — they were about halfway through performing Tommy in its entirety, so I don't know how he failed to notice. "You can't make a speech in the middle of their set — let them finish! Chill out!"
Just after "Pinball Wizard," Abbie leaped up before I could grab him and rushed to Townshend's mic, while Pete had his back turned and was adjusting his amp. Abbie started earnestly beseeching the audience to think about John Sinclair, who needed our help. He was in his element, berating everyone for having a good time. "Hey, all you people out there having fun while John Sinclair is being held a political prisoner . . ." WHAM! Townshend, turning back to the audience and seeing Abbie at his mic, whacked him in the head with his guitar.
Abbie stumbled, then jumped to the photographer's pit, dashed over the fence, and vanished into the crowd below. A pretty dramatic exit. That was the last I saw of him that weekend.
HENRY DILTZ: I was right in front of the Who, on the lip of the stage. There was Roger Daltrey, with his fringes flying. Abbie Hoffman ran onto the stage and Pete Townshend took his guitar and held it straight out, perfectly, with the neck toward the guy, just like a bayonet, and went klunk. I thought he killed him. Early in the set, Townshend had already kicked Michael Wadleigh in the chest while the director crouched in front of him with his camera. Now Townshend was over the top with fury. "The next f***ing person who walks across this stage is going to get f***ing killed!" he yelled as he retuned his Gibson SG. The audience at first thought he was joking and started laughing and clapping. "You can laugh," he said coldly, "but I mean it!"
PETE TOWNSHEND: My response was reflexive rather than considered. What Abbie was saying was politically correct in many ways. The people at Woodstock really were a bunch of hypocrites claiming a cosmic revolution simply because they took over a field, broke down some fences, imbibed bad acid, and then tried to run out without paying the bands. All while John Sinclair rotted in jail after a trumped-up drug bust. The Who continued with their exhilarating performance of Tommy, and just as the sun rose, they played raucous rock and roll classics from their days as mods: "Summertime Blues," "Shakin' All Over," and "My Generation." They were astonishing. Later, I couldn't believe the band thought they were subpar and that the audience didn't get into Tommy.
PETE TOWNSHEND: Tommy wasn't getting to anyone. By [the end of the set], I was about awake, we were just listening to the music when all of a sudden, bang! The fucking sun comes up! It was just incredible. I really felt we didn't deserve it, in a way. We put out such bad vibes — and as we finished it was daytime. We walked off, got in the car, and went back to the hotel. It was f***ing fantastic.
BILL GRAHAM: The Who were brilliant. Townshend is like a locomotive when he gets going. He's like a naked black stallion. When he starts, look out.
ROGER DALTREY: We did a two-and-a-half-hour set . . . It made our career. We were a huge cult band, but Woodstock cemented us to the historical map of rock and roll.
--- Rolling Stone article of excerpts from the forthcoming The Road to Woodstock by Michael Lang with Holly George-Warren, Ecco/HarperCollins, © 2009 (used with permission)
This is great stuff-—I just finished writing some of this in my newest book, “Eight Events That Changed America.” It’s noteworthy that Daltry said Hitler was “right for the German people at the time,” and was “really marvellous.” Of course, he went “mad” later, but at the time he was fine. LOL.
2 1/2 hours set = a lot of work especially in the middle of the night. The rest of the groups at Woodstock were largely sh*t.
“The rest of the groups at Woodstock were largely sh*t.”
Well, three days is an awful lot of time to fill. So naturally, you wind up with a lot of filler. Looking at the list of performers at Woodstock, it seems for every legendary act like the Who, there are two acts nobody remembers or cares about anymore.
Frankly I’ve found Michael Lang to heavily overstate his role in this fiasco. He parlayed his “fame” into operations on the subsequent Altamont Speedway Rolling Stones fiasco and the riotous 1999 Woodstock.
There was arson and looting at the 1969 “peace and love” fest too.
I may get around to reading this account some day but may have gotten my fill from reading:
“Young Men With Unlimited Capital: The Story of Woodstock” by Joel Rosenman, John Roberts, Robert Pilpel (the men who originated and invested in the Woodstock project)
and
Woodstock: An Inside Look at the Movie That Shook Up the World and Defined a Generation by Dale Bell (about the filmcrew that shot the footage)
Famous radicals (Abbie Hoffman and the Black Panthers) engaged in savage thugary to exort many dollars out of the promoters (they threatened to riot and cause problems if they weren’t given $10,000 and booth space, well look what happened, they were paid off and the fences were trashed anyway, the burger guy had his booth burned down by hippies, and someone who’s name elludes me tried to forcibly steal the film crews’ borrowed equipment)
All in all, the history of this event is overstated (while other music festivals have been cast to the dustbin of history). It changed the way the MUSIC INDUSTRY looked at bands and led us to the current path of $85 tickets and stadium shows. Yeah, wooooo!
Ever wonder why you don’t hear anything good on the radio anymore? It isn’t the talent pool, it’s the suits.
The Who put together such a kick ass set that night. The rest of the time, the crowd had to listen to crap like Country Joe and the Fish.
We are all for peace, luv and understanding...except if you interupt my set!!!
The Who also got dosed on acid (someone put it in their drinks without telling them).
Pete Townsend has said it was the worst show they ever had to play.
And it was the Monterey Pop Festival (1967) that put them on the map in America.
The people at Woodstock really were a bunch of hypocrites claiming a cosmic revolution simply because they took over a field, broke down some fences, imbibed bad acid, and then tried to run out without paying the bands.
...Substitute “Hope and Change” for Cosmic Revolution...
... and it sounds like a bunch of Obama Voters....
I hope in 2012, We won’t get Fooled Again!!!!
Would have been a great place for a tactical nuke.
Santana recalls his own experience (at Woodstock) taking LSD. "My guitar is like - like (an) electric snake. So that's why you see my face, you know, like making all these ugly faces, like, 'Stand still,' you know." "Intuitively I just said, 'God, please help me. I'll never do this again," he says.
CARLOS SANTANA: We got to Woodstock at eleven in the morning. We'd heard it was a disaster area. They flew us in on a helicopter. We hung around with Jerry Garcia and we found out that we didn't have to go on until eight at night. They told us just to cool out and take it easy.
One thing led to another. I wanted to take some mescaline. Just at the point that I was peaking, this guy came over and said, “Look, if you don't go on right now, you guys are not going to play.” I went out there and I saw this ocean as far as I could see. An ocean of flesh and hair and teeth and hands. I just played. I prayed that the Lord would keep me in tune and in time. I had played loaded before, but not to that big of a crowd. Because it was like plugging into a whole bunch of hearts — and all those people at the same time. But we managed. It was incredible. I'll never forget the way the music sounded, bouncing up against a field of bodies. For the band as a whole, it was great.
Frank Zappa made the same observation, he basically said before Woodstock, it was the old guys with the cigars who basically said, "let's take a chance on these guys, who knows, maybe it will sell."
But after Woodstock, the record companies decided to try to use younger people to determine who to sign, because they were "hip" and "knew" what the kids wanted, and they were much more conservative than the old guys.
But is was the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 that made them legends.
Incomplete list of performing artists/songs and sequence of events
Friday, August 15
The first day officially began at 5:07 p.m. with Richie Havens and featured folk artists.
Richie Havens
Swami Satchidananda - gave the invocation for the festival
Sweetwater
The Incredible String Band
Bert Sommer
Tim Hardin, an hour-long set
Ravi Shankar, with a 5-song set, played through the rain
Melanie
Arlo Guthrie—order of set list unknown
Joan Baez- she was six months pregnant at the time
Saturday, August 16
The day opened at 12:15 pm, and featured some of the event’s biggest psychedelic and guitar rock headliners.
Quill, forty minute set of four songs
Keef Hartley Band
Country Joe McDonald
John Sebastian
Santana
Canned Heat
Mountain, hour-long set including Jack Bruce’s “Theme For An Imaginary Western.”
Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band
Grateful Dead
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Sly & the Family Stone
The Who began at 4 AM, kicking off a 25-song set including
Tommy
Jefferson Airplane
Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18
Joe Cocker was the first act on the last officially booked day (Sunday); he opened up the day’s events at 2 PM. His set was preceded by at least two instrumentals by The Grease Band.
Joe Cocker
Country Joe and the Fish resumed the concert around 6 p.m.
The Band - Set list confirmed in Levon Helm’s book “This Wheel’s On Fire”
Blood, Sweat & Tears ushered in the midnight hour with five songs.
Johnny Winter featuring his brother, Edgar Winter, on two songs.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young began around 3 a.m. with separate acoustic and electric sets.
Neil Young skipped most of the acoustic set (the exceptions being his compositions “Mr. Soul” and “Wonderin’”) and joined Crosby, Stills & Nash, but refused to be filmed during the electric set; by his own report, Young felt the filming was distracting both performers and audience from the music. Young’s “Sea of Madness,” heard on the album, never occurred at the festival, it was recorded a month after the festival at Fillmore East.
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Sha-Na-Na
Jimi Hendrix
Message to Love
Hear My Train A Comin’
Spanish Castle Magic
Red House (Hendrix’s high E-string broke while playing, but played the rest of the song with five strings.)
Mastermind (written and sung by Larry Lee)
Lover Man
Foxy Lady
Jam Back At The House
Izabella
Gypsy Woman/Aware Of Love (These two songs written by Curtis Mayfield were sung by Larry Lee as a medley)
Fire
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)/Stepping Stone
The Star-Spangled Banner
Purple Haze
Woodstock Improvisation/Villanova Junction
Hey Joe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_Festival
Ultimately I think it was the filmed accounts of them at Monterey, Woodstock, and Isle of Wight that made them legends.
Millions saw the movies. Thousands saw the performances.
Of all, I thought Sly and the Family Stone was by far the best. Damn shame Sly had to waste it all on drugs.
And I didn’t know CCR played Woodstock.
If it wasn’t for Hendrix, the whole thing could have been considered a bunch of opening acts for Sha-Na-Na
Neil ranks. The rest of the hippies can drop dead (great photo)
Used to be, they’d find some band that had regional or small label success and sign them and reissue the back catalog. Now the labels want to own it all, lock stock and barrell (and have the band in debt to the label for production and promotion costs).
The 1990s “indies to mainstream” experiment was a fluke (although in the end, grunge saved MTV by making it relevant). Ultimately the labels got scared, shut the door to new talent, and harvested boy bands and poster pop star divas. And 15 years of that has gotten old.
Now all radio rock is called “alternative”. Alternative to what? Oldies? Synth-disco? Rap?
I read that they got the gig because someone knew them from Glee Club at some school (Columbia?).
Ultimately they served as the band that cleared the fields at the “end” of the show. Woke up the crowd and got them “on the road”.
Jimi Hendrix followed but out of an estimated 400,000 people in attendence, Jimi played to something around 20,000-40,000.
The who are the most tantalizing story I think in Rock. At one point Townsend goes stark raving mad while trying to do In search of the lost chord. Later he’s caught with child porn doing “research” on this and that. He clocks Abbie Hoffman in the head with his guitar.
On the other hand he just exudes normality on another level. I read an article about how he can ride the Tube in London in virtual anonymity. When I was in college he played our town and someone caught them at a local hotel talking like English Country Gentlemen, how they couldn’t wait to get back to England and resume their roles of Country Squires.
Townsend has always been a mix of “really out there” and “super normal” in curious and surprising ways.
Jimi Hendrix followed but out of an estimated 400,000 people in attendence, Jimi played to something around 20,000-40,000.
Please NO MORE WOODSTOCK festivals!!
Not after the grotesque imagery of gen X’ers confusing hedonistic immoral debauchery with the original ‘peace-n-love’ festival
A photo of me at the Woodstock Festival (August, 1969)
The biggest joke of the 1999 festival was that the promoter (I’m going to suspect Michael Lang here) booked James Brown to play. As the OPENER. On the SECONDARY stage.
WTF?
Daylight? No warmup act? Minor audience staging?
I can almost see the Washington Monument in the background.
It looks like that picture was flipped. Carlos is actually right-handed.
Apparently not that day.
I am going blind reading psychdelica but it looks like Led Zeppelin was the only tolerable band. Blood Seat & Tear was fair.
Yeah Monterey was the show. Wasn’t that also the really big one for Hendrix?
The Kinks had been banned from the USA because they did not put up with the sh*t from the stage hand union thugs in the USA. The Who had been a smaller group and the Kinks getting banned really was a big opening for The Who.
The Kinks ended up doing more English albums which were actually among their best work. The ban actually helped their work in my opinion.
Chuck Berry
Booker T & The MGs
Led Zepplin (not sure, but I think there is an alternate poster with Yardbirds or The New Yardbirds)
Dave Brubeck
and these were listed who also played Woodstock
CCR
Janis Joplin
Canned Heat
Johnny Winter
Joe Cocker
Paul Butterfield
Sweetwater
—
But then that is a “pop festival”, which also had acts like Johnny Rivers. A more diverse lineup (not necessarily just “pop 40 acts”).
The Glastonbury Festival is the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world. It takes place on the last weekend of June. More than 170 thousand people attended the festival with more than 300 live performances.
2009 .. all you needed were Wellies!
The Beach Boys were also supposed to play Monterey Pop but Brian Wilson was too busy working on SMiLE to give it much attention, I think that the Who were their replacement.
I’ve been rediscovering TYA (was into them in high school then they faded from my personal rotation). Damn good band, don’t get the credit they deserve.
But with 300 live performances, the notion of a “shared event” is lost.
It’s like a bar with an internet jukebox. A bar that selected 100 singles for the system (or later 100 CDs) had much more control over the sound and feel of the establishment.
SXSW in Austin has 2,000+ bands giving 10,000+ performances over 5 days (many free, but also many nighttime performaces with $150 wristband or $20 cover charge admission). It is the ultimate of “choose your own adventure” festivals, no two people have the same experience, even when they go to see the same performer or even the same performance.
With all due respect - most of the other acts besides The Who sucked.
CSNY - lefties with nice voices and some nice songs. Crosby’s pinnacle was The Byrds mainly due to Roger aka Jim McGuinn.
Jimi - A bit overrated in my mind. Ditto pot head Santana.
Creedence - some liked them but not me.
Blood Sweat & Tears - not that bad and not hippie America haters.
Edgar Winter & Joe Cocker - okay.
Sha Na Na - WTf were they doin there instead of philly.
The rest of the groups were crap or lefties.
Thanks for the list. It reinforces my earlier thoughts that Woodstock, with the execption of The Who, was a huge waste of time instead of a major cultural event.
It was more a masturbatory event for Baby Boomers to remind how special and important they are.
The Who and Pete Townsend get extra gold stars for Pete hitting Abbe Hoffman over the head with his Gibson SG. If only he had hit him even harder. ;-)
If you can remember Woodstock, you weren’t there.
Amen man. Let me tell that playing 2 1/2 hours at 4 am was probably not a lot of fun.
Pete Townsend had some recent problems with his web browsing activities but The Who’s music was top notch.
The rest of the group were lefty hippies or talentless scum. Townsend hitting Abbe Hoffman was priceless. I get the impression the whole thing was rather unpleasant for The Who including getting their drinks spiced with drugs.
Most of the American bands during the era were crap. The Byrds were good not due to Crosby but McGuinn.
Just rich snotty CA kids like Jefferson Airplane and The Dead who made crap music. They probably would have ended up in the Manson family. Probably most had trust funds.
There were hundreds of hours film shot (multiple cameras shooting many songs from different angles, plus interviews and site coverage) as well as at least one person on scene shooting video. And yet the footage of Abbie Hoffman getting thwacked apparently was missed.
I hear it can be heard on a bootleg audio of the Who performance.
In the book on the film, they discuss how there were a couple of production screenings of the full Woodstock footage on multiple cameras in sequence (ran something like 18 hours) and they laid "in the round" when they viewed the clips. They were watching it altogether to determine which shots and performances to use for the feature.
In Target they run an ad on the TV’s for the remix of Woodstock by Martin Scrosese. I like a lot of his work but I could not be bother to watch this except maybe The Who. Dirty spoiled and self important hippies.
I like John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols (SP) because he despised hippies including Richard Branson (aka Weirdy Beardy) who’s Virgin label was their final home.
Lydon is a real libertarian and liked Newt. Only band that had an anti-abortion song (Bodies) which he claimed was neither pro or anti just pro-responsibility. Imagine that - the most famous punk band ever at about 18 years old writing & singing songs about personal responsibility while hippie bands preached the opposite!
The Gibson SG is a pretty solid piece of wood. I would rather go to the dentist than watch Woodstock. I would watch The Who.
Johnny from his pre-punk days when he was a roadie for Hawkwind.
LOL! Well at least he had good taste (sort of) with Hawkwind. Robert Calvert and I think Lemmie on bass. LOL! He must have been 15.
Yep. Lemmy. Motorhead was originally the name of a Hawkwind song.
And going back to Isle of Wight festival, the Deviants played outside the gates to the anarchists who tried but couldn’t get in.
I think there is some shared lineage between the Deviants, Pink Fairies, and Hawkwind.
The sound are somewhere between the Stooges and Pink Floyd.
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