Woodstock for the Rest of Us

Woodstock Didn’t Happen in August 1969 – At Least Not for Most of Us.

August 15, 1969 Richies Havens took the stage.  He was performing on a platform erected in the middle of a farmer’s field in upstate New York.  Thousands of people were pouring in.  Then tens of thousands.  Then hundreds of thousands. As Mr. Havens began to sing, thus commenced the performances of what would be the truly legendary Woodstock Festival.

What happened between that first night and Sunday morning two days later would become iconic.  Nothing would compare to this for decades..  Woodstock at that point was just a event that kept growing; it would become a cultural touchstone.  From that moment forward we were Woodstock nation, those of us that were under 30.

For years I would get asked the question when I told people I grew up in New Jersey, “Did you get to Woodstock?”  I lived five or six hours away.  I was 13.  I had no money and I had very protective parents. While they could stop not stop me from slipping out and smoking a joint over behind the grade school, they could stop me from taking a long holiday with half a million people.  My folks were not just going to set me free to go listening to that damn caterwauling.

Intellectually I knew Woodstock had happened.  I got glimpses of what I missed on TV broadcasts.  Right after the festival Dick Cavett had the Jefferson Airplane and on to perform. Crosby Still and Nash showed up to hang out and talk.  As I watched that hour of late night TV I regretted not finding a way to get to the concert but for God’s sake I was 13.  I do know two people who went.  One of them was actually the blond haired kid on the cover of Life magazine the week after the concert. I knew that a giant humongous concert had happened.  I knew the heavy bands had played.  But I also knew I I was not part of it..

Nope for me Woodstock happened on May 11, 1970. On that day Woodstock Music from the Original Soundtrack and More was released on the Cotillion label.  Within days somebody in my little cadre of ne’er do well friends had snapped up a copy and it had found its way to Pedricktown, New Jersey.  The first time I heard it was sitting out at Phil Gerrill’s place on Sparks’ farm.  Someone had a portable record player and we were smoking some joints and one very steady handed person dropped the needed on the opening groove on Side 2.  Within a heartbeat Country Joe McDonald was shouting out the Fish Cheer, “Gimmie a F,  Gimmie a U ….”

Over the next few days, and definitely over the rest of that summer we wore those six sides out.  We listened again and again to I’m Going Home by Ten Years After.  We kept playing Hendrix’s take on the Star Spangled Banner.  Soul Sacrifice by Santana was burned into my ears. Even Joe Cocker’s slow reading of With a Little Help from my Friends got played and played again.  The six sides of that collection became our hymnal for the summer of 1970.  Marijuana was our sacrament.

My guess is that for just a whole swath of American youth between May 1970 and when we all returned to school the day after Labor Day, that massive collection of music was a defining common experience.  We all rued the fact we were not there.  We all swore that if they ever through another big festival like it we would be there.  We got toasted, we hid the roaches and we sang out of tune at the top of our lungs letting our freak flags fly.  We the youngest of the boomers fought with our parents and let our hair grow out.  We got our bell bottoms with patches that said things like Mr. Natural and 13. In the those months when everything was so damn confusing, the vision that was Woodstock was burned into our brains.

Times were truly confusing.  Nixon had invaded Cambodia.  Remember I mentioned the three LP set hit the market, May 11, 1970?  A mere six days earlier National Guardsmen had gunned down students at Kent State University killing four of them.  Altamont had occurred the December prior.  Both of these events battered us and left our confused.

Cutting off the plastic from around that trifold record jacket, smelling that fresh vinyl and the energy of what was condensed into this tracks gave us hopes and dreams. We really did become a Woodstock Nation, at least for a little while. Yeah the concert may have been in 1969 but the tsunami that was the music played there on that New York farm hit in the summer of 1970.  When the FM underground radios stations started playing track after track, that is when Woodstock happened for the rest of us.