WOODSTOCK: Down Memory Lane

I just watched:

Woodstock:  Three Days That Defined A Generation

This was a 1 hr 36 min American Experience PBS documentary first aired at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019. However, you can now see it on Prime...but only until August 31 for FREE.  Rotten Tomatoes liked it, bestowing 86/84 scores.

Christy Lemire indicated, It does bring a freshness to a story that we've heard a million times, and Glenn Kenny of the New York Times said:  

Uses the perspective of nearly 50 years' hindsight to demonstrate anew how the festival was both a mess and a miracle, and implicitly argues that it was a good deal more miracle than mess.

For me, it was a trip down a memory lane that I never took.  Read my link to this event:

In August of 1969 my wife and I were driving from Baton Rouge to Montreal to interact with the remnants of the recent World Expo.  We spent the night in Hershey, Pennsylvania to visit the chocolate company.  I read about a concert in Woodstock, New York, just 250 miles away.

I had a personal desire to go because in 1967 I had organized a rock concert in Naalehu, where the rodeo was later scheduled, one of the first outdoor rock event before Woodstock.  Of all my life accomplishments, this could well make the top ten.

It was 53 years ago this week when my wife and I were driving around this general area of Pennsylvania and New York.  I was a graduate student at LSU and had read that something called Woodstock was being held just about that time.

I made a fatal decision that could have changed my life: 

We heard some rumors about Woodstock being kind of crowded and maybe even a mess, with a storm approaching.  Interstate 87 went directly to Montreal, almost 400 miles away.  At Kingston, only about ten miles from Woodstock, we saw that the traffic to get off was a problem, so we continued on to Montreal.  That's one of the better decisions I've ever made.

Then again, we missed three days that defined my generation.  Maybe I should have made that turn off the freeway.  I had just escaped the draft by re-becoming a student towards a PhD in biochemical engineering.  I wasn't adventurous enough.

The summer of '69 was a turbulent one, a year removed from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.  Also in 1968, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was besieged by 10,000 protestors, mostly against the Vietnam War.  1969 was the year that saw Richard Nixon being sworn in as president, a massive oil spill on the coast of Santa Barbara, and Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon. 

Here are ten things you may not know about Woodstock, plus:

• The festival took place in Bethel, New York, 70 miles from Woodstock.
• Richie Havens was the first act, and was urged to stay on stage for 3 hours because no other act had yet showed up.  He even improvised a new song, Freedom, totally running out of material.  He was paid around $6500.

• 
  The band most associated with the hippie movement, the Grateful Dead, got $2500.
• Santana?  $750.  He was only 22, and was high on mescaline.  Today, he is 75 and worth $50 million.
• Jimi Hendrix was the headliner, and he signed a contract for what today is worth $200,000 (another report says $18,000, worth $125,000 today), with a clause that he had to be the final act.  So they pushed him back to 9AM on Day 4, Monday morning, when many had left.  They missed his legendary rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

• 
  Woodstock, the theme song, was written by Joni Mitchell, who could not be there.  She did appear with boyfriend Graham Nash, plus Crosby and Stills, on the Dick Cavett Show on what would have been Day 5.  Also on the program was Jefferson Airplane.  However, her first singing of Woodstock was not until weeks later in California.  I also loved her Yellow Taxi.

• 
  50 Facts about Woodstock, one of them indicating that the total attendance was more than 400,000.
• The crew that produced the show finally paid off their debts in 1979.

An hour of Woodstock on Day 1.  And another of Day 2.  Something else from Day 3.  There was another documentary, Woodstock:  3 Days that Changed Everything.  Click on that link for the whole 52 minutes that was also released in 2019.

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