This past weekend we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The event was a legendary happening that’s been illuminated from so many angles, it’s hard to shed any new light on the subject. That said, it is — and always will be — a milestone in the establishment of the American counterculture after World War II, the atom bomb, the Beatniks, the 1960′s anti-war movement, the dawn of the sexual revolution and the rise of psychedelic culture.
While all of the socio-political implications of the event will always reverberate on such occasions, it’s important to remember that Woodstock was ultimately about the music.
Here are some of my favorite moments from the fest…
Crosby, Stills & Nash performed their second gig at the festival. It starts out rough with their famously out of tune guitars and vocals, but eventually settles into a legendary performance of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from their hit debut album.
When I think of Woodstock, I think of Richie Havens. His nearly-three-hour performance opened the festival with the frantic energy of Havens’ rhythm guitar playing, poetic lyrics and emotive vocals, but it’s his closing tune that made him a legend and created his career. Here’s the Wiki…
Havens as a live performer earned widespread notice. His Woodstock appearance in 1969 catapulted him into stardom and was a major turning point in his career.[2] As the festival’s first performer, he held the crowd for nearly three hours. In part, Havens was told to continue playing, because many artists scheduled to perform after him were delayed in reaching the festival location with highways at a virtual standstill. He was called back for several encores. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual Motherless Child that became Freedom. The subsequent Woodstock movie release helped Havens reach a worldwide audience. He also appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival in late August 1969.
The Band didn’t make the cut in the feature film of the concert, but their inexorable legacy and this footage of their performance of “Tears of Rage” says that they deserve a spotlight in a remembrance such as this…
The Who played a medley of their rock opera songs at the fest before leaning into this incendiary, deconstruction of their iconic hit, “My Generation.” Pete Townsend apologizes before the band kicks off the obligatory performance, but he definitely didn’t need to…
We can’t talk about Woodstock without talking about Sly & The Family Stone. Here’s Ultimate Classic Rock‘s take on their iconic performance…
Sly & the Family Stone were already stars when they took the stage at 3:30 Sunday morning. But they had recently released their first classic album, ‘Stand!,’ and were at the tightest point in their career. Their early-morning show is a bit sloppy, but the blurry-eyed delivery digs into the dirty, nasty pull of the music. Their entire 50-minute set is pretty remarkable, but the stumbling-toward-ecstasy drive of ‘I Want to Take You Higher’ is the highlight.
Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” has been heard in every capturing of the event, but it remains the bullseye document of the festival’s flashpoint marriage of politics, rock, sex, drugs and what it meant to be a young American at the close of the 1960′s. May we all be patriotic enough to live up to this outrageous call for liberty, love and freedom.
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