Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition", held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²; 240 ha, 0.94 mi²) dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.
Thirty-two music acts appeared during the sometimes rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest moments in popular music history and was listed on Rolling Stone's 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.[2]
The event was captured in a successful 1970 documentary movie, Woodstock; an accompanying soundtrack album; and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
The festival was held during a time of military conflict abroad and racial discord at home, and participants quickly became aware that the event had taken on a meaning beyond its original intent. The site of Woodstock became, for four days, a countercultural mini-nation. Minds were "open", drugs were used, and "love" was "free". Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman crystallized this view of the event in his book, Woodstock Nation, written shortly afterward.
Although the festival was remarkably peaceful given the number of people and the conditions involved, there were two recorded fatalities: one from what was believed to be a heroin overdose and another caused by an occupied sleeping bag accidentally being run over by a tractor in a nearby hayfield. There also were two births recorded at the event (one in a car caught in traffic and another in a helicopter) and four miscarriages.[10] Oral testimony in the film supports the overdose and run-over deaths and at least one birth, along with many colossal logistical headaches.
Yet, in tune with the idealistic hopes of the 1960s, Woodstock satisfied most attendees. Especially memorable were the sense of social harmony, the quality of music, and the overwhelming mass of people, many sporting bohemian dress, behavior, and attitudes.[11]
After the concert Max Yasgur, who owned the site of the event, saw it as a victory of peace and love. He spoke of how nearly half a million people filled with possibilities of disaster, riot, looting, and catastrophe spent the three days with music and peace on their minds. He states that "if we join them, we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future..." [3]
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_Festival
Joni Mitchell wrote the song from what she had heard from then-boyfriend, Graham Nash, about the festival. She had not been there herself, since she was told it would be more advantageous to appear on The Dick Cavett Show by a manager. She wrote this song in a hotel room in New York City, watching the reports of the Festival on television. "The deprivation of not being able to go provided me with an intense angle on Woodstock," she told an interviewer shortly after the event.[1] It was later released on her third album, Ladies of the Canyon in 1970, on her Shadows and Light album, and again in 1996 on her Hits album.
Mitchell's original version featured a stark and haunting arrangement - solo vocal, multi-tracked backing vocals and tremoloed Wurlitzer electric piano all performed by Mitchell herself. All subsequent recordings featured a fuller backing band sound.
Prior to release on any album, Mitchell performed "Woodstock" at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival, one month after Woodstock. The solo performance can be seen in the festival concert film Celebration at Big Sur (released in 1971). The performance was an exception to Mitchell's mounting distaste for large festival gigs [2].
The song later went on to be hits for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Matthews Southern Comfort, the latter reaching #1 on the UK singles chart for three weeks in October 1970, and the former reaching #11 on the Billboard Hot 100. David Crosby in an interview in the documentary Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind said that Mitchell had captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had been there.[3]
Led Zeppelin incorporated Woodstock's lyrics and structure into live renditions of their song "Dazed and Confused" between 1973 and 1975. It can be heard on the currently unreleased "Dazed and Confused" section of the video from one of the 1975 Earl's Court concerts.
In her 2005 book Break, Blow, Burn, critic Camille Paglia wrote a chapter about the song, honoring it as "possibly the most popular and influential poem composed in English since Sylvia Plath's 'Daddy'."
A line from the chorus, "We are billion year old carbon," was used by Corey Mesler as the title of a novel about the 1960s.[4]
The song was also used in an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 where the characters act out the story of a girl from the 1960s whose diary is found by Brenda.
The song was used in a Six Feet Under episode entitled "Back to the Garden" (named after a lyric in the song) in 2002, but the song isn't featured on the official soundtrack.
I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
Im going on down to Yasgurs farm
Im going to join in a rock n roll band
Im going to camp out on the land
Im going to try an get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I dont know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Click These Links and Sing Along:
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Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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