Can it really be forty years ago? If you're part of the so-called "Woodstock Generation," it must make you shudder.
Could there have been a more historical summer than 1969? Heck, Bryan Adams even wrote a hit song about that famous summer without even mentioning the famous events of that magic time where the boundaries of humanity grew to proportions never known before. On July 16th, a mighty Saturn V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The 360 plus foot tall beast propelled three astronauts to rendezvous with the moon, and on July 20th, Neil Armstrong then Buzz Aldrin would be the first humans to walk on the lunar surface. Mankind will forever remember the mighty trio of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, but weeks later another spaced out trio, Crosby, Stills, and Nash and other titans of pop music along with hundreds of thousands of other worldly people would enjoy an out of this world experience on Max Yasgur’s 600 acre farm in Bethel, New York. The Woodstock festival stood as perhaps the largest cultural event of the century intended to be performed for an audience of 150 to 200 thousand fans, but in reality, at least a half a million fans showed up. As of more than double the expected crowd wasn’t enough, the weather did not cooperate either as heavy thunderstorms pelted the area forcing part of the concert to be delayed for fear of lightening strikes. Before long, most of the crowd area became a sloppy, gloppy sea of mud. Logistics failed miserably in keeping up with the needs of the massive crowd, but only two deaths occurred during the event: one heroin overdose and another involved a spectator being crushed in his sleeping bag run over by a tractor.
Looking at the list of performers, it reads like a who’s who of the greats of the period excluding the Rolling Stones in the throes of breaking in new guitarist, Mick Taylor; the Beatles who had all but broken up by then having Abbey Road on the verge of release. The Doors, Bob Dylan, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, and Blind Faith (Eric Clapton’s temporary band with Steve Winwood). Some of the most famous acts of the time were there, but never made it to the official recordings of the festival, quite an awesome list including The Band, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Winters, and Blood, Sweat & Tears.
Talk to baby boomers who were in their mid-teens up to the age of senility, thirty and see how many folks of that age claim to have been there even if they had summer jobs in San Diego that weekend. Likewise, there sure are a lot of kids born somewhere around May, 1970 who’d swear they were conceived there. Rest assured enough people were whacked out on drugs to the extent that they probably honestly believed they were there, but has anyone asked how many people were whacked out on drugs at the festival and as such have no idea that they actually were there.
This writer would have just turned sixteen at the time of the festival and in hindsight feels pretty darned lucky he did not attend Woodstock. Somehow, thoughts of zero personal space prompting mad claustrophobia and agoraphobia would ruin any joy the music might provide, but along with the rain, the mud, probably dwindling reserves or beer and food would have surely diminished the experience to sheer misery regardless of how good the marijuana, hopefully in ample supply might have been; however, the ultimate horror would have to be the prospects of making the old bladder gladder. Yet to hear the mythology of Woodstock, one would think it was paradise on earth, the flower children, the beautiful people as in half naked folks in their 20’s covered in mud?
It’s against that background that Rhino records reissued freshly mastered and packaged copies of the original Woodstock and Woodstock II albums on CD. When Rhino takes on a reissue project, they usually do a good job, so how did they do with the two Woodstock albums?
Generally, they did a nice job. There is no comparison between the sound quality between the new improved Rhino remaster and the original CD or LP both of which were poor sounding releases. While the sound is tremendously improved, the listener must keep in mind the source of these recordings, a sprawling outdoor venue pumped through huge speaker towers. There’s no concealing lots of distortion, amplifier noise, and overall environmental noise. While providing the ability to hear all kinds of music totally buried in previous releases, some erroneous elements are much more apparent too; however, if the listener wants to hop in the time machined and travel back to the summer of ’69, the new recordings are an absolute delight. Furthermore, both volumes contain booklets with photos from the event and detailed liner notes which help fill in more of the story the songs and recordings of the crowd activities alone can’t provide.
Now that all those problems are resolved, how good are these albums? That depends entirely on what the listener’s expectations are. Clearly, Woodstock reflects a different period of time and attitudes and tastes have changed dramatically. Some artists’ material still sounds fresh and vital; others output sounds dated and quaint, psychedelic relics of a historic period forty years ago.
The first set, disc one, opens with John Sebastian, the former front man of the Lovin’ Spoonful who contributes two songs of friendly folksy singer-songwriter fare, hardly anything resembling a protest singer, sweet but not as drippy sweet as some of Donovan’s material. His second song on disc two starts of with a really stoned sounding address to the audience helping confirm that everyone must have been on drugs. Canned Heat performs one of their familiar hits, “Going Up the Country,” but this version is a disaster. The vocals and lead guitar are dreadful leaving only the rhythm section sounding like professional musicians. Lead singer, Bob Hite, sounds like a horribly mutilated Kermit the Frog. The end of the cut consists of crowd noise and stage announcements including warning the crowd to avoid some bad brown acid.
Richie Haven’s “Freedom” is much more serious material with lots of crowd interaction but it would be a long stretch to call it listenable.
Finally, after three tracks, the album gets into a good rockin’ groove starting with some good old hippie rock n roll, “Rock & Soul Music” followed by a spirited performance by Arlo Guthrie singing his dope smuggling tale, “Coming into Los Angeles” which finishes with a very stoned sounding Guthrie addressing the crowd, stoned out of his whacker, commenting about the scene, “lotta freaks, man.’ Sha Na Na’s whose popularity at Woodstock quite possibly was the driving force leading to the 50’s revival the carried on through most of the 60’s with the musical, “Grease,” and other retro acts.
Nothing from Woodstock is more memorable than the notorious “FISH” cheer from Country Joe and the Fish. “Give me an “F”. Give me a “U.” Give me a “C.” Get the picture? It’s the intro to a humorous anti-Vietnam war ditty, “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” Folks old enough to be of draft age in that era can sure identify with this one.
Disc one concludes with two songs from Joan Baez who lectures the crowd about her political views reeking of sanctimonious piety. To think her political ranting was mainstream back then! She contributes two songs, “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man,” a Byrds song scolding the hippie stereotype of blue collar rednecks, and “Joe Hill,” a song that attempts to celebrate the death of a union organizer as a martyr. Is it the remastered recording or is it just years later, Baez sounds like a shrill, snotty bitch?
The tempo picks with three songs from Crosby, Stills and Nash, the latter two adding Young as well. Woodstock helped give the first “super group” tremendous exposure and credibility among hipsters with their rich harmonies. The first track is an acoustic performance of “Suite Judy Blue Eyes,” a song Stephen Stills wrote as an ode to folky, Judy Collins. “Sea of Madness” introduces Neil Young but was apparently not recorded at Woodstock but imported from a Fillmore performance. Their set concludes with the anti-war narrative, “Wooden Ships.” What their songs lack in polish and precision, they make up for with enthusiasm. The two electric numbers are tremendous improvements over previous releases, every nuance of the band’s performance can clearly be heard now including some fine guitar work from Stills and Young.
Heading down the home stretch on disc one are two of the most powerful numbers on the album, one from the Who, the other from Joe Cocker, which helped to launch a million satirical impressions over the years most notably from John Belushi.
The Who present an excerpt from “We’re Not Going to Take It” loaded with the raw power that was the signature of the Who’s live sound in the late 60’s. While this performance has always been appealing, it has been a miserable second rate recording from how poorly the recording was produced. While this version still has a long ways to go to living up to more recent releases of Live at Leeds, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon perform with such raw, reckless energy it’s hard not to get pulled right into this recording. This is only a small part of one of the longest sets from the Woodstock festival where the Who performed virtually all of their “rock opera,” Tommy.
Joe Cocker steps up for the finale on Disc One performing his soulful, dramatic version of the Beatles’ tune, “A Little Help from My Friends.” The Grease Band performs in top form with some fine back up singers. Joe Cocker’s performance is one for the ages both powerful and full of little quirks that give impressionists a treasure trove of material to play with. We defy anyone to listen to the lyrics and write a transcript of what Cocker actually sang in portions of the song. The success of his Woodstock performance helped launch his epic rock n roll big band tour with Leon Russell, Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Once again, hat’s off to the Rhino engineers who cleaned up a recording that was barely above bootleg quality in the original.
The second disc of the original volume of Woodstock changes focus a little concentrating primarily on tunes built around extended jams. Listeners would have benefitted if the engineers banded the album so listeners could skip over some of the crowd sequences, a real problem for the opening of Disc Two as the listener must endure some crowd chanting for just over three minutes. At least the crowd chanting and makeshift percussion is much clearer and live sounding. Finally, the original Santana band cuts loose into a seven minute jam built around “Soul Sacrifice” and these guys cook. Lots of percussion elements lost in the original recording and some finer nuances of Carlos Santana’s guitar playing are much more accessible for the listener again thanks to the fine attention to detail given the new release. The cut finishes with more crowd announcements, something the listeners could easily do without.
The next jam features Albert Lee and Ten Years After, standard blues boogie fare of the time period. While some aspects of this recording doesn’t clean up as well as some tracks in this set, portions of Lee’s guitar jamming brings his Les Paul out of the audio slush for all to enjoy.
The third track on the second disc presents one of the fieriest performances from the entire Woodstock project with Jefferson Airplane plus Nicky Hopkins (yet another credit for his awesome resume) playing a little “morning maniac music” their revolution anthem, “Volunteers.” While the lyrics might seem silly by today’s standards, the instrumental power provided by the Hot Tuna faction of Jack Cassidy on bass and Jorma Kaukonen on lead guitar with hired gun, Hopkins, on piano, this number rocks!
While Woodstock was decidedly devoted to hard rock and hippie folk music of the day, some rock solid rhythm and blues steps front and center with some powerhouse extended jamming by Sly and the Family Stone performing an extended medley of “Dance to the Music/Music Lover/I Want to Take You Higher.” What these numbers lack in polish they make up for in energy. While the recording is cleaned up tremendously, capturing all the elements of a bigger band has more to do with microphone placement and original mixing elements that simply cannot be compensated for in the remastering process. Some instruments still get buried. The stereo mix can be absolutely frightening at times as voices spread out so far over the stereo field, one might get startled by sounds that seem to be originating from beyond the stereo speakers’ range.
A very wasted, hippie troubadour, John Sebastian, steps up to the microphone again, clearly wasted giving his first person account of the spectacle before performing another one of his sugar sweet, love, peace, flowers, and incense style numbers, “Rainbows All Over Your Blues.”
Track five returns to the jams starting off with a very wasted Butterfield introducing his material. One can almost hear him struggling to remain standing before the band starts its “Love March.” Some of the instrumental performances are pretty good, but all in all, this number is ten minutes of sonic hell.
For many, the best was saved for last, Jimi Hendrix. While his Woodstock performance might not be its best, Hendrix can always (some times literally) light the stage on fire. His thirteen minute jam includes his famous rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” complete with rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air as only Jimi Hendrix could launch from his magic guitar.
Woodstock Two is really for hardcore Woodstock fans and would be best avoided by casual fans or those simply wanting a curio of the Woodstock experience. There’s plenty to like including staring off with a hearty serving of Jimi Hendrix then Jefferson Airplane before concluding with a blues jam by the Butterfield Blues Band which is actually much better performed and tight than their track on the first album. Nevertheless, one would have to have a special fondness for extended jams of the era to find this a valuable listen.
Disc Two opens with three acoustic numbers from Crosby, Stills and Nash featuring one song for each performer, “Guinevere” for David Crosby, “4+20” for Stephen Stills, and “Marrakesh Express” for Graham Nash.
The middle segment of Woodstock Two features a performer most of us are surely glad to forget, Melanie. Her baby flowers and pink puppies lyrics and nauseating voice are enough to make anyone prefer the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.
Power trio, Mountain, featuring the oversized lead guitarist and vocalist, Leslie West along with Cream producer, Felix Papalardi on bass, they were an early prototype of power pop, but they’re not very good. “Blood of the Sun” has nothing to distinguish itself. Their second number from Jack Bruce’s first solo album, “Theme from an Imaginary Western,” is a big improvement over the first track with a pretty decent guitar solo but probably not the kind of thing unless someone got hooked on it way back when would grab new listeners who are reaching back in history.
Canned Heat finishes the real music on the album with some crowd crap as a final track to try to create more of the atmosphere of the experience a lengthy jam with various solos backed by a hand-clapping crowd that probably sounds incrementally better based on the amount of beer and marijuana (and other drugs) one consumes. It might clock in with the longest bass guitar solo ever, how tedious.
The last track is “Let the Sunshine In,” the number from the Broadway musical, “Hair,” performed by members of the crowd in the mud. How can we say, “You had to be there?”
The Woodstock experience was a once in a millennium kind of affair that is a true sign of the times. Later attempts to recreate the festival on anniversaries of the event were horrendous failures. While the Monterey Pop festival helped spawn Woodstock and an event on the Isle of Wight provided a similar experience across the Atlantic, the horrible experience months later at Altamont in California which headlined Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Rolling Stones.
The Woodstock albums are gems from out of the time capsule but might be a tough listen for those who weren’t a part of that culture at the time. Sure there are some enjoyable moments, but many of us might hear it and wonder how we could have been so ridiculous back then. Maybe the threat of the Vietnam War drove us to that insanity?
Rhino deserves tremendous credit for working with very difficult original tapes and getting all the music out of them possible. The difference between these new releases and past efforts is stunning.
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