Michael Wadleigh

Woodstock & Cinema: Scrapbook Thoughts (Vol. 2) – ‘Woodstock Generation’

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To understand what’s happened at Woodstock, it’s important to look at what came after, what came before.

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Gimme Shelter (1970, Dirs. Albert & David Maylses and Charlotte Zwerin) is a look at the festival which dealt a death blow to the spirit of the Sixties, only months after Woodstock ’69. The Rolling Stones are shown in their total fuck up of the infamous Altamont Speedway free gig, where violence and rioting led in part to the death of Meredith Hunter, a black man involved in an altercation with the Hell’s Angels (who were providing security to the event). Jerry Garcia’s (Grateful Dead band leader) face drops when he learns that Jefferson Airplane’s lead guitarist got knocked out, which is a sight to behold.

It is heavily laced with the implications of the recklessness and drug-corrupted spirit of Rock & Roll superstars at the time. Mick Jagger’s face is reflected back through the lens as he watches the footage on camera of the fan being stabbed. His bare void of expression, as he struggles to accept the reality of what happened. It’s a hard film to stand in front of, the live footage of a crowd in chaos nauseating as the Stones and other groups try to keep the crowd under control. Everyone is fired out, exhausting their cylinders between intensive tour schedules and drug addictions; it’s a sad vision balanced with earlier interesting footage of them touring the US. Still as much of a firecracker, to this day.

Monterey Pop (1968, Dir D.A Pennebaker) is a welcome step back in time, almost ironic that I saw these festivals in this order. Woodstock (1970, Dir. Michael Wadleigh) is a film defining a generation of teenage idealism, but Monterey Pop lays down the foundations of musicians who performed there. Janis Joplin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and more got a lot of exposure from the festival, organised by John Dorris of The Mamas and The Papas, alongside festival producer Lou Adler and more. The focus here is ultimately what drives the movement of people to Bethel, N.Y; the performers who play their instruments to others. This footage is about the San Fransisco community who grew a lot of this movement. People who spoke with their instruments & voices, with more verve and feeling than some people do in their entire lives. All their tools and words. It had a performance which made me spontaneously cry in joy,

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There’s been a lot to think about since starting this Woodstock project. My expanse, the horizons of what I’ve been looking at, are much wider now. Moving beyond Woodstock, has allowed me to notice the reverberations the festival sent out across the American musical landscape.

For all the ink spilled on Woodstock its’ cultural impact was not infinite, and certainly not indefinite. The unique confluence of events which had led the festival; the performers, the documentary and more into a state of celebrated existence, was still just a drop in the cultural ocean. With rock music’s major debt to rhythm & blues, soul music and more, it’s important to note the impact (or lack thereof) on the African-American community at the time of the festival, and also the attempt to create their own Woodstock-type event 7 years later in Watts LA, That’s first, in WattStax (1973, Dir. Mel Stuart), but not chronologically first. Summer of Soul documents the Harlem Cultural Festival happening months before Woodstock (June 29th – August 24th 1969). Hundreds of thousands of black people turn up to see some of the most ecclectic artists of all time. Sly & The Family Stone had to have the Black Panthers do security for his gig because the NYPD refused to provide security because the expectation for the show was expected to be too crazy.

Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson dives into the Harlem Cultural Festival, reflecting how music as a whole is developing at the time, Sly & The Family Stone is maybe the only act who crossed both festivals. Here was my first experience last year with concert filmmaking, and the film does a tremendous amount of grace in restoring a piece of neglected history. The film does work to make its’ history appear more ‘lost’ than in reality, but filmmakers do what they need to make a convincing cinematic experience. Woodstock manipulates its’ chronology, and it can be important to recognise the power of singing as a performance first and foremost. Music can cross so many boundaries, and the organisation of these radically free festivals pre walkie talkie set ups, just organising by hand and voice and power. It can be hard to quantify that.

WattStax is a direct from the old testament style of American 70s new wave recording, of the Stax records free concert. Two years after Altamont obliterates the white hippie movement, Mel Stuart puts onscreen Reverend Jesse Jackson who performs one of the most powerful speeches in cinema history. The music here is distinctly 70s, tickets at one dollar each for an incredible array of talent. When people storm the field to dance to Rufus Thomas’s ‘Funky Chicken’, its’ excitement and freedom is stacked alongside The Emotions gospel performance of ‘Peace Be Still’ which is genuinely soul-wrenching; people having metaphysical convulsions in the church. It’s a beautiful if uneven portrait of soul in America at the time, still alive with passion as Isaac Hayes mounts the stage in a gold chain vest (with the drip) performing soul classics that roar across the sky in fire.

Richard Pryor narrates a long walk through the black experience that ducks and weaves between topics with searing fierceness, his intricate comedy maybe softer now, but at the time must have really exposed people to the black lens, the black vision. Power, unity. WattStax is an expression of that, “I Am, Somebody”.

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–[On A Film About Jimi Hendrix] “The reason Warner Bros. made the film,” Boyd said, “was because of the record company, because Mo Ostin [chairman of the board of WB Records] was in favor of the project. But Warner Bros. films didn’t interfere or censor the film in any way, and when the film opened at the UA Westwood they were stunned by the business.” (It set a house record, $46,000 in two weeks.)

-Hendrix plays Delta blues for sure – only the Delta may have been on Mars.

Tony Glover, Rolling Stone

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Documents. I’m thinking a lot about documents, documentaries. I’ve seen a lot of films now in search of Woodstock ideals; exploring multiple musicians and alternative festivals. I’m tired of watching endless processions of sonic experimentation, mass gatherings, artistic synthesising. I’ve been on a solid tear watching film after film, and I’ll try sum up what I’ve seen so far.

The Last Waltz (1978, Dir. Martin Scorcese), Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue (2015, Dir. Amy Berg) & A Film About Jimi Hendrix (1973, Dirs. Joe Boyd, John Head and Gary Weis) were the first three documentaries. Here I started at the end, with The Band‘s final farewell performance in 1973, directed by Martin Scorcese (Woodstock editing alumni now risen) expressing how everyone at the time is saying farewell to the ideals of the Woodstock generation. Althought the concert is self-congratulatory, a lot of it is earned in how real the music is, symphonies of rock n’ roll and and a whole artistic tribe onstage.

Janis Joplin: Little Girl Blue is a American modernist documentary, archival footage mixed with talking heads on her artistry The interviews are the main thing I remember from it, a particularly shocking sequence where Janis was voted ‘Ugliest Man’ in her university town/fraternity society,near ruining her self confidence of painful note. Footage of her before her untimely end is particularly harrowing, but each time she’s on screen she’s a vision of a beautiful talent. Still it’s a tapestry of powerful material about her.

A Film About Jimi Hendrix is a different beast, gentle interviews with the people who knew Jimi closely shortly after he died. Although Noel Redding (1/3 of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, his defining band), refused to be interviewed for the film for moral reasons (quoted in the article above), it is a nonetheless frighteningly frank conversation with the people around him who supported his rise to fame and witnessed him fall off the side of a cliff. Performances, wild.

The original Rolling Stone article declared that Woodstock was never actually officially declared a ‘disaster area’ by N.Y Governor Rockefeller, and it made me think about the disaster areas left in the wake of these positive, successful artistic expressions.

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These direct accounts from Woodstock are filled with positive recollections of the mud, the swamp of the environment. These films do wonders in expressing the collective mud of the counterculture at the time, detailing various Woodstock-era projects and festivals. Jimi Hendrix: Electric Church (2015, Dir. John McDermott) hits the Atlanta Pop Festival, where Jimi played in front of 500,000 Americans in a performance which is maybe the best I’ve ever seen of his, even if it doesn’t have the raw power of his Woodstock set. Watching this and Janis (1974, Dir. Howard Alk) was like watching two virtuosos endlessly explore their own inner rhythms and patterns; Jimi a master of guitar and Janis a master of voice.

But first, Festival Express (2003, Dirs. Bob Smeaton & Frank Cvitanovich), a record of the Canadian train tour across Toronto, Calagary, Winnipeg and other cities, weeks onboard of musicians jamming together in a ultimately unprofitable venture. Alongside the Avandáro festival in Mexico in 1971 and other Latin American festivals, Electric Church and Festival Express chronicle musical and tribal explorations into the wider cultural landscape, physically as the music traveled to different parts of the continent. Canadian students protested and rioted that the concerts should be free, causing panic and low attendance at the stadiums where musicians were scheduled to perform. Jerry Garcia sets up a free stage to get 6,000 protestors off the of the venue in a move which ultimately reflects bravely but sadly on a world now filled with extortionate ticket prices.

There’s performances on the train from Rick Danko (of The Band), Garcia and co., Joplin, Buddy Guy, even Woodstock bizarros Sha Na Na come back for a brief appearance, their appearance like an odd relic on the horizon of rock n roll’s decline from the top of the sun. Janis then, is such a deep return to that sun setting, as Hendrix’s ‘Electric Church‘ was quietened upon his death. Janis Joplin would die only weeks after her appearance on the Festival Express tour, all the films beginning to reflect off each other in delicate ways like that. Electric Church compares Atlanta to being maybe even bigger than Woodstock, while at the end of Festival Express someone declares it better than Woodstock due to being able to jam with the musicians for so long.

Still even Janis, filled with absolutely touching moments of footage only captured when she was alive (giving the film a mysterious presence of vitality) returns to Woodstock. Performance footage I’ve never seen before of ‘Can’t Turn You Loose’ is again crazy, actually enhanced by the context provided by Amy Berg’s later documentary referenced above. Janis here is on full display in her ability to carry the weight of her own pain, alongside the demonstrated talent and recklessness that accompanied being a rockstar. The footage collected is searing enough to understand why it’s a base for all other future Joplin-related material.

It’s honestly quite amusing that Ayn Rand gave a lecture about how the Woodstock generation represented the end of the ‘Dionysian’ spectrum of infantile passivity and madness. In positing the Space Race gathering of over a million, self sufficient families and spectators in witnessing an extreme achievement of supposed ‘rational thinking’, I feel she misses several key details. Already amusingly touched upon in Summer of Soul, the Moon Landing represented very little to poorer underfunded communities on the ground. Also, that this rational pursuit of lunar exploration and search for exterior space, reflects back across the counterculture’s collective need for interior space, psychedelic space.

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This has taken a long time, to get here. My final part of this Volume is dedicated to artists who impacted and were impacted by Woodstock, the final pieces in a puzzle in understanding the culture of the Sixties. Bob Dylan, captured here in glittering impact in Don’t Look Back (1967, Dir. D.A Pennebaker) is then explored by now artistic savant Martin Scorcese in No Direction Home (2005, Dir. Scorcese).

Meanwhile, The Grateful Dead Movie (1977, Dir. Jerry Garcia & Leon Gast) is Garcia’s own mixed attempt at capturing The Dead‘s cult-like vision in producing a touring, travelling musical circus and spiritual sanctuary, for decades. Long Strange Trip (2017, Dir. Amir Bar-Lev ((with Exec. Producers Scorcese & Justin Kreutzmann, son of Mickey Hart & The Grateful Dead filmmaker)) chronicles that psychedelic vision across the seas of time, as the band contended with fame, rampant drug use, cult-esque worship, and a continuing back and forth with musics’ pre-established rules and distribution methods. Bob Dylan has catalogs of bootleg material to his name, even creating the first ‘gold standard’ in bootleg material. The Grateful Dead on the other hand, revolutionised broadcasting material when countless fans recorded live performances, cheaply copied and distributed them in local areas to an ever increasing number of fans, trading recordings like Pokemon cards.

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Dylan makes me restless. The whole processing of writing about him seems like a fool’s errand, because of how connected he is to his art being whatever it can be in the moment. Dont Look Back (deliberately spelt without apostrophe) is a erudite, cinema-vérité styled embarking on a career beginning to get distorted by mass fame and recognition. The film is his tour, his endless becoming as an artist performing to crowds who are just desperate to listen. It is a work which connects Pennebaker indefinitely to the music scene, for good reason.

No Direction Home is more alive for me, if only because of how great the scope is. Scorcese clears through the direction of a man who’s presence was continually expected of at Woodstock, his ghost lurking over the whole show as people thought this mythic presence would come to play. His son was in hospital at the time of Woodstock, but Scorcese’s scorching documentary about this 1961-1966 folk/rock and roll hybrid run, and the presence behind lyrics which are blessed with grace and unfolding is fantastic. Here the whole career of a man who not only mastered instruments, but positively expanding new genres with almost lacksidaisical focus is a true mystery. His lyrics just sculpt around a moment, and the film crashes through audience’s booing, people desperately trying to understand him, pull him towards a political path he seems relatively uninterested in pursuing.

I don’t know what that means for artists, other than his path is his own. And the melodies, textures and refusal to conform to any shape other than what’s required of the moment is really critical for being a great artist, to write a song such as ‘Like A Rolling Stone’.

Live Performance, Manchester, 1965, during the famed ‘Electrical Sets’.


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The Grateful Dead Movie is where things get heavier, because The Dead, ghoulish and playful as they are, weren’t the haunting presence at Woodstock that Bob Dylan was. They actually played the original festival, in a set which both electrocuted them and put the audience to sleep with a 50 minute version of one of their songs late into Saturday/Sunday early morning. Bob Weir said that they spent 20 years making up for their poor performance at Woodstock, and their lost performance (existing in partial video footage) is a sad reminder of what can happen when you miss an opportunity to be embraced by those paying attention. Mutliple fans and commenters however refer to the band’s own journey which took them taking a sort of ‘portable Woodstock‘ to towns and cities for decades after, which is a presence and burden that Dylan deliberately tried to shrug off. Here, is Garcia’s vision for their last performances in 1974, or so they thought.

Opening with an animation sequence which supposedly cost half the entire rest of the movie, the film is a surrealist surfboard through the interior of Garcia’s music tribe, a minimal amount of interview material is made up for with images of the Statue of Liberty in the zany acid-soaked apocalypse, before moving onto endless scenes of deeply tranced-out audience members. The film has some really disorienting and hallucinatory nitrous scenes, fans in their own universe in the interior of the venue, not even near the stage. Some great performances, some annoying endless performances (a lot of patience is needed or being completely tripped out helps appreciate the finer points of their psychedelia way of playing). I like them though, and the film is a heart-warming tribute to an artistic project which at the time had built from a phenomenal small district success in Haight-Ashbury 1967 up to then 74-77, during the 3 years of challengable production which split the band in various ways during hiatus (they ended up performing again by the time the film came out).

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Oh, the guy selling hot-dogs who loves Sha Na Na and thinks The Grateful Dead are too loud, love him what a guy.

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Long Strange Trip then, is a final cavernous account of the success, but sometimes demoralising weight of the entire Grateful Dead project. Over nearly 4 hours, the film lays out in often thorough detail the ins and outs of an artistic project which survived long after Woodstock Nation generation had return back to humble mortal reality. The Dead were on a reckless fun spree with abandon for years in a peace project of art, music, and mind expansion. After doing The Acid Tests across America with Ken Kesey and just performing for trippers at random, their band philosophy became like that of fingers all connected to a hand, each performing individually but connected at the core. This led to a revolutionary approach to touring musichood and stardom, not as a famous edited performer group repeating the same identical melodies; but as a continually evolving, continually growing, continually changing live touring peformative entity.

This then carries the project into the scope of music’s technological revolution, as 10-15 years after both Janis Joplin & Jimi Hendrix have passed away, The Dead are riding the wave of bootleggers trading their tapes at the height of their popularity during 1984-90, as Reagan clamps down on the free festival spirit which birthed and sustained many of these movements. It is sad to see their success clamour for more, endlessly more, and how the band had to keep giving into that momentum. They refused to play Altamont after the reports of the violence, but by the 80s & 90s reports of violence, deaths and unruly followers had begun to marr the entire spirit of the red and blue skull. The Wall of Sound’s history is chronicled in detail, postively exploring at times how the band could be at the forefront of sonic experimentation as artists. They hired The Rolling Stones previous manager, a British fellow by the name of Sam who cuts through the bullshit of the hippie cult with reckless aplomb. Jaggedly successful, but held back by certain leaderless qualities of the entire group.

Because The Dead, for all their ego-dissolving spiritual roots in the pure pursuit of music, becomes soured by heaven falling from the sky, fans becoming obsessive and inducing reclusive behaviour for the band. Unwanted gigantic crowds, arguments about Hell’s Angels being present and serious drug use begins to soak through the edges of the timeline; the frame. The whole frame of the band begins to sag under the weight of its’ glorious celebration of a communal other-society, draining Warner Bros. (and later their own) financial situation by supporting entire teams of staff and families through the project. They party without talking to each other honestly. Which keeps them tied to the project, for founders Garcia and Pigpen until their painfully sad deaths.

The artistic performances end up near endless, and two things drive the health of members to decline. Ron ‘Pig Pen’ McKernan passes away due to alcohol abuse related conditions in 1973, which is covered in touching detail. Garcia’s passing is ultimately more haunting, his entire presence radiating throughout the entire band’s life like a huge sun of love, he described the band ‘as a little patch of flowers growing in a clearing in the forest’ for God’s sake. The whole project is a much more intense vision of what happened to the Woodstock ideals as the few who did carry a torch genuinely kept it lit. You don’t need to take into account the individual success or failure of any one resonant strain of the band, it was a phenomenon which even for those bizarre hundreds and thousands lifted them out of a kind of mass sleeping even temporarily. The Deadheads are the ultimate fans, proto-religious converts of a wave that wanted to believe in the pure release of expression above all else, in a mandala of people (a deaf section where people listened to the vibrations through balloons and had a sign language interpreter for Jerry’s lyrics, for example).

A really touching moment is when Jerry late in life said to his then wife “I could just live off of the ice cream money you know” (referring to Ben & Jerry’s flavour ‘Cherry Garcia’, released in Feb, 15th 1987). But ‘Death Don’t Have No Mercy’ and he comes for everyone in this land. The last footage of Garcia playing on stage is haunting, a shadowed husk hunched over his guitar performing the echo of a once great noble dream. I’m glad the band managed to be such bizarre countercultural successes, outliving and lasting many of their more famous and more respected peers. Perhaps then this is all there is to say for now, on the Woodstock generation. I feel like I have a much greater understanding of how such a gathering could have manifested, a thorough and ongoing obsession with ruminating on the soul of America, entertainment, and music.

-Alex

Stay tuned for the final Vol. 3, where I’ll bring my understanding up to what happened after the initial festival; the re-occurences, the organised festivals of ’94 & ’99 and the various fiascos that followed, and its’ eventual place in the world now. Alongside some other offcuts.

Woodstock & Cinema: Scrapbook Thoughts (Vol. 2) – ‘Woodstock Generation’

Woodstock & Cinema: Scrapbook Thoughts (Vol. 1)

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In April 2022, I decided to embark on a journey to watch the cinematic material currently related to Woodstock Festival (founded by Woodstock Ventures), specifically the first event in August 15th, 16,th, 17th and 18th August 1969, Bethel NY. This is a scrapbook of cinema thoughts and understanding related to all materials Woodstock; documentaries, feature films, tv specials, as well as random thoughts about interviews and other pieces on the festival. Nearly half a million people attended over 3 Days of Love, Peace & Music in what was at both a nationally declared disaster area and at the same time one of the wildest gathering of musicians and creative talent in the 20th century, in protest of the Vietnam War and in search of peace. My thoughts on the cinematic visions of the films are below.

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So this is the only bit written after watching the first documentary. It is a revelation, a world of performers falling off the sheer edge of heaven. In sound they find release, reprise, and the foundations of communication. The performers are metal, built from a bunch of hippies and absolute free folk. Things which prevent peace are released in a sphere of mud, music, meltdowns. The power felt watching Hendrix, Santana, Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, Ten Years After, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, all these crazy crazy musicians just shredding in the arena. The camera is boiling with images of musicians in trances, the body on display in a way to accomodate all the shit of physically being in a officially declared ‘disaster area’. Founder Michael Lang said “I didn’t drink from any bottle I hadn’t opened myself” because of how food and drink at the fesitval had become laced with chemicals. The edge of infinity, in a culture of peace, for just three days is one of the boldest cinema experiences I’ve ever watched.

I saw the film over several days actually, the first film in a very long time I’ve split up into multiple viewings. Like a festival, this project is in those moments not at gigs, resting, sleeping, getting food. Talking to people, seeing who they are, why they would even go there. Hippies are enshrined in memory now, their potential in amber now, not flowering in youth. Being a hippie is old, I think I’m old. The people debating the worth and cost of such a colossal undertaking of distressed teenagers is worth recognising, the cop who supports the kids, the community members arguing on camera furious at the local distress.

Like an absolute diamond encased in a director’s cut version, the world of this film (with seven editors, Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorcese among them) it represents a shining vision of human frames glittering across the screen in their thousands. It’s been a long time since I’ve been touched by a film’s hope for the future, however sentimental that may sound in the 2020s of sharp hyper capitalism. But I enjoyed myself, I had fun. Rip it up, have a ball.

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To know that Woodstock, the film, is responsible for reviving the massive financial losses the festival incurred, is something of an even greater achievement. The fact that it is one of the most radically documented films regarding music impact culture, and revolutionary spirit is an even greater one.

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It’s hard finding time to write for this. I don’t usually try a fragmented style, I want my focus on these subjects to have as much clarity as possible. Woodstock ’69 is already growing and evolving in my memory as I watch two further films on the subject. Michael Wadleigh’s seminal doc is from inside the very beating heart of the festival itself, it’s eyes roaming the festival in search of the next great revelation of meaning through experience. It is a delicate canvas dragged through the mud of those days, the spirit churning at its’ centre. And now I find myself with films from further out of the sphere, ‘Woodstock: Three Days That Defined A Generation’ (2019, Dir. Barak Goodman) and ‘Woodstock Revisited’ (2009, Dir. David McDonald).

These are films that are falling from the same tree, rippling like waves against cavern walls. The festival experience is applied through different lenses. That of historical broadcasting (Goodman’s film is a PBS funded documentary), and intricately styled memoir and recollections (McDonald’s documentary is highly experimental by televisual standards). But streams flow back into rivers, and both films are doing their best to understand and venerate an event which changed the face of the Earth.

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It was raining toads when we played. The rain was part of our nightmare. The other part was our sound man, who decided that the ground situation on the stage was all wrong. It took him about two hours to change it, which held up the show. He finally got it set the way he wanted it, but every time I touched my instrument, I got a shock. The stage was wet, and the electricity was coming through me. I was conducting! Touching my guitar and the microphone was nearly fatal. There was a great big blue spark about the size of a baseball, and I got lifted off my feet and sent back eight or 10 feet to my amplifier.

-Bob Weir, Grateful Dead Guitarist, Rolling Stone

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I am reading about Jefferson Airplane, Saturday’s star act, who didn’t take the stage until 8:00AM Sunday morning. Country Joe Farm said when he heard Jimi Hendrix play the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ that the guitar “would never be the same ever again.” Joan Baez performed six months pregnant with her husband in prison, she recalls with breeziness. A hurricane of spirit, 500,000 people listening to music. It’s hard to capture the fragments of this mosaic. In David McDonald’s film, he explores in depth the artistic community of utopian communes which preceded Woodstock’s happening; the actual town itself.

Roots of 19th & 20th century American utopian projects by intellectuals propelled the reality of this gathering from long before its’ manifestation in 1969. Artists had been gathering in the space for decades before, winding histories of bohemian festivals and turn of the century gatherings. The film is uncharacteristic in its’ cerebral take of a history of a local community, it’s public-access TV aesthetic really wild to visually interact with. It’s one of the only documentaries I’ve ever seen with serious frame fragmentation and multiple panelling combined with vivid psychedelic colour tinting. It’s interviews are friendly but opaque, tagged with a locals’ knowledge behind the camera of who’s who and who’s relevant. Woodstock as a cultural event the festival, resonates through a chasm of American history. But the spirit of the gathering is part of an Americana, a folklore.

It makes sense that the PBS documentary then, so heavily draws from Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 Woodstock discussed above then. Goodman’s doc is a shrine, a veneration of moments of a beating heart expanded with the context of those young enough to need some insight. A tribal memory of American spirit expanding in the sun, rays scattering out. Here the memory is viewed through the glass of an exhibition, moments of alive spirit now encased in the glass of informational viewing. There are elements of the Woodstock festival expanded on further here, Richie Havens tells a beautiful story about how “nervous he was to go on stage“, as audiences waited and festival managers waited for acts who hadn’t turned up yet. In these moments the film comes the most alive, opening the mind of the musician into the memory of their performances.

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Neil Young refused to be filmed during the festival, claiming the cameras were too distracting. There is a cascade of moments in the experience of that time which can only be reflected in those who were there. The environmental conditions prevent Ten Years After from keeping their instruments in tune. This place is just submerged in conditions, stories, experiences and moments of life which really see everything. 80 lawsuits were filed against them upon finishing, 5000 people requiring medical attention, several unfortunate deaths even (RIP the man who got crushed by a tractor). The town of Bethel, NY passed laws preventing any mass gatherings like this from occuring again.

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Creating Woodstock (2019, Dir. Mick Richards) is a vertiable feast of information on the festival, interviews abounding with anecdotes and stories of a whirlwind production force. In a deal struck with the city inspector, driving behind at 4AM to remove just painted ‘Stop Work’ orders from the city council risking arrest is just one of the many stories that really shook me. Richie Havens improvised his hit ‘Freedom’ after running out of material after being called back 5 times because no other artist’s had arrived. $1.4 million dollars in debt, bands told to ‘F.U.C.K Y.O.U’ in telegraphs while others like The Who refused to play at 6AM until they got paid in cash full. 50 serving stations double sided around 10 areas serving hundreds if not thousands of people a day, the logistics on display here . The inspector’s 15 year old daughter who ran off into the festival, and his futile search which distracted him from inspecting the sanitation of the area (causing a possible shutdown), was matched only by the wildness of having to convince artist after artist flying in on helicopters to consent to being filmed for the documentary without being paid.

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The battle for the site is laid out in much fuller detail here, the Mills farmer (who was responsible for the 2nd, unused site) was on the receiving end of death threats to prevent the hippies from tearing up the surrounding area. The investors/co-producers John P. Roberts and Joel Roseman get special veneration in their absolutely stunning personal and music business force to produce the festival, not only the crew pulling all nighters but everyone becoming exceptionally free together. Michael Lang and Artie Kornfield also get more time for their unique relationship, which allowed them to move from music recording studio dreams to event changing paradigm.

Jimi Hendrix: The Road to Woodstock (2014, Dir. Bob Smeaton) is only a supplementary addition. In the above documentary, one of the participants recounts how Jimi had flew in to the airport, hailed a ride with two random kids and was at the site in two hours somehow mysteriously. Smeaton’s documentary helps elaborate on how his backing band, Band of Gypsys (shout out Larry Lee), were not so lucky in their arrival in station wagons hours later. But his performance is a monumental zenith of guitar trance playing, and the documentary does include a performance of ‘Vilanova Junction’ and encore ‘Hey Joe’, as well as the extended performances featured in Wadleigh’s documentary. It doesn’t get to the heart of what he was doing there, but the artistry is self-evident.

Oh, and the parking lots were drenched in mud. Just a swamp of fertile farmland sinking under the weight of festivities, at one point after raining heavily on Sunday evening, weight from the crowd made the stage start sinking down the hill. Jimi Hendrix came out and shredded the morning sky, under some weathered conditions.

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I’m thinking about when Creedence Clearwater Revival went on stage at 3:30AM and said the crowd looked like a scene from ‘Dante’s Inferno’, playing for one lonesome soul with a lighter. I’m thinking about the fact that Jimi Hendrix’s live performance was released in complete, in both the Wadleigh version, and an alternate ‘Second Look’ performance which is in B&W (really interesting). I’m thinking about the voluminous amounts of people on screen in further representations of Woodstock memory, history and myth.

A Walk on the Moon (1999, Dir. Tony Goldwyn) is Woodstock in the Hollywood cultural memory, it’s extension only relevant to the interpersonal dynamics of Diane Lane, Liev Schreiber and Viggo Mortensen. Woodstock here represents a spiritual freeing of the self. A sequence where Lane’s hedonistic abandon takes her into some acid-tripped revealing of her self in front of daughter Anna Paquin, putting in innings as the wild stubborn teenager. Richie Havens ‘Freedom’ is used to astonishing effect here, the very liberation of souls in the crowd. Here Woodstock is a mirage to enter through, its’ romance and spirituality colliding with characters opening up to each other. It’s not the best material, but I get it.

Taking Woodstock (2009, Dir. Ang Lee) is another sort, a far more authentic mantra of what was happening. Centred on Eliot Tiber, a kid who through being able to approve his own permit to run a music festival in the town of Bethel, NY, leveraging a simple permit with great historical consequences. He connected with Michael Lang and associates to loan his family run motel as the basis for their headquarters of operations for the festival. As thousands of hippies descended on the surrounding area to get to Max Yasgur’s farm, the entire societal architecture around them was transformed to accomodate this mass gathering of people.

A lot of good performances here, history as fiction manafactures a lot of portrayals which really try and emulate the spirit of those involved in the festival’s creation. Using Wadleigh’s technique of multiple divided screens, conversations and scenes lap over each other with finesse. Lee stages beautiful one-take long shots of those in pilgrimage, all pulled with a steady grace towards the site. It sometimes misses, sure. Moments of Eliot gathering his will are empathetic, with some real spectacular performances by his parents, Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman. Their transformations echo his, and Liev Schreiber also has a rather stunning turn as a security based sweetheart transvestite. Based on a real character she spent time protecting the Tibers from anti-festival protestors as well as Nazi-inspired youths attacking them for their Jewish heritage.

It’s important to note that the film deals with the danger of the events, though. Centred on the heart of players skirting gently around to see what happened to the people of Bethel as they experienced a mass cultural event. Tiber uncovers his sexuality, perception-distorting drugs, his family’s sad past; a lot is pushed through the main characters. Michael Lang even rides around on the horse, Jonathan Groff playing him in a strangely watchable way I can’t look away from. It ultimately rests its hands at the end of the experience, so as a film I can understand its’ mixed reviews and box office failure. The film links Woodstock’s significance to the 1968 Stonewall riots months earlier, and I appreciate the film trying to break from any one perspective so it can let the love in from the peripheries. That’s a great line.

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I didn’t watch Always Woodstock (2014, Dir. Rita Merson) because honestly it looks like a bridge too far, just awful. Love this review from The Dissolve though.

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Woodstock or Bust (2018, Dir. Leslie Bloom) is insane, even just skimming through it. Surface it’s just two girls wanting to play their music at Woodstock and trying to get there. But it’s surreal, connectedto the anti-war legacies in the bizarrest way, it shows just how far appropriation of the Woodstock spirit and iconography can go in entertainment. Pays homage to the festival’s folk roots by putting up the strangest low-budget spiritual connective tissue to the festival’s spirit . ‘Best ever bust.’ (groan).

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Peace, Love & Misunderstanding (2011, Dir. Bruce Beresford) deals with Woodstock in a way that’s both at once achingly banal but also appreciative of Woodstock spirit. It honours Jane Fonda, 60s spiritual child, Catherine Keener, Jeffery Dean Morgan (in a larger role than Taking Woodstock), Elizabeth Olsen, Nat Wolff, a cast of American talent in performances where they are trying at least. It’s Woodstock through a hollywood lens alongside a personal one. Woodstock is explored through the festival’s tourist trade and current situation, alongside generational conflict expressed between mom Keener & hippie Grandma Fonda. The film is painfully inoffensive, liberally indulging the ‘far out’ iconography of a generation it no longer really believes in, only to serve the needs of the story and the eventual familial re-union in drawn out dynamics. Keener and Morgan singing ‘The Weight’ is pretty cool though.

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[Highlights from the photographer being interviewed.] Still crazy that Santana was hallucinating while he was playing, seeing a snake on his guitar and eyes and teeth in the crowd. Max Yasgur got the best yield of corn after they replanted a crop at the end of the festival, probably because of all the human waste.

And for me, that’s been a real education, for sure. The whole thing with the movie and how they had to borrow money to get the film, you know? Things like that. 150 miles of film? 16-millimeter film?18 guys shooting 24-7, collapsing, having somebody take over for them when the collapsed and fell down, because of carrying that heavy camera around? Those are the real stories of Woodstock.

Baron Wolman, Rolling Stone

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RIP Carl Blackstead, who oversaw the recording and producing of the songs during the festival and for the 1970 documentary. Also RIP to Ravi Shankar’s master tapes, which to this day have never been found. The article linked here really dives into how much of the Woodstock documentary soundtrack was manipulated, warped into an artistic presentation of shape. Even in the mode of authenticity, hundreds of little changes have to be sculpted to make a film. There’s David Fricke’s sober take on the improbable accident of the festival, ‘a success and failure’ in equal measure is really important to take in. Events can escape themselves, becoming oversold and overexploited. Woodstock is on the cusp of the end, both year wise and culture. Altamont is coming. But Yasgur put up a sign saying ‘Free Water’ after he heard his neighbours were charging for it.

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I’ve been laying awake in the wake of watching Woodstock Diary (1994, Dirs. Chris Hegedus, Erez Laufer & D.A Pennebaker), a 3 hour day-by-day play of some of the other acts at the festival, unseen offcuts, and original interviews with some of the defining players. From the recording studio genesis, unseen performances from acts such as Bert Somner, Tim Hardin, Ravi Shankar, Quill, Mountain, Country Joe & The Fish, The Band, Johnny Winter, Paul Butterfield Blues Band (although I read this performance is actually a recording from an earlier gig in Whitelake), right up to Jimi Hendrix’s revelations on the guitar Monday morning. ‘Nightmare in the Catskills’, so said the New York times as the festival wound up.

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Shout out to the bank manager who flew in a helicopter at midnight to the bank to get the producers of the festival their cashier’s checks to pay the bands. To the Hog Farm Commune as well. The lady who fed everyone on granola as well, and refused to buy even sugar or salt! Hundreds of thousands of people. Mad. The people who marched on the fast food stand overpricing their food and burned it down! They still tried to help him out, but mad.

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I think I’m standing above a wide hill, in Yasgur’s farm, surrounded by people. I can hear the music. I can see the people. I can feel everything. It’s been a ride. – scene in Taking Woodstock where the people turn into the ocean.

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I’m out of this whirlwind now. Just like everyone else, I’ve left the festival, with only memories to keep me company. A friend told me that one of her family friend’s had left mid-way through a set performed by a “Mr. James Helix” (Jimi Hendrix), didn’t appreciate the guitar.

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Woodstock will exist forever. Untold recordings, footage from collector’s editions, autobiographical books, vinyl liner notes; they’re all artifacts from a memory of collective expression. Woodstock’s roots superseded its’ foundations. The town since thrives on the trade of American artworks to this day, for better and for worse. Peace, love and music for 3 days continuously, and genuinely.

And cinema has helped in innumerable ways to ensure a legacy of the festival’s essence. From searingly real direct cinema documentaries to varying levels of Hollywood artificiality; the authentically earnest to the sanctimoniously boring, they understand Woodstock ideals as they fit the confines of other drives, plot situations, and character motivations. All those feedback into the real world. The festival attendees had to do much of the same, filtering back from their natural exodus into American society.

From interviews I saw, the founders and makers seemed happy with how everything turned out. Heritage, safe in the glass case of the past can sometimes obscure the mechanics and engineering behind an event which sat at the crossroads of politics, art, music and business. The four points of a star which helped it manifest into a cultural meteor that hit the ground so hard we’re still feeling it’s reverberations. Woodstock being free was an accidental stroke of genius, and its rare that enough minds get together to will the conditions to make something that important. Later posts will deal with the legacy of anniversary concerts, Black Woodstock, and other associated materials. That is a more complex set of affairs, which deserves its own understanding. Woodstock’s limitations are duly noted sure, but for free I can’t think of a better concert to have not gone to.

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Woodstock & Cinema: Scrapbook Thoughts (Vol. 1)