Forty far-out facts you never knew about Woodstock

By
Spencer Bright

Woodstock, the most famous music festival in rock ‘n’ roll history,
took place 40 years ago on August 15-18, 1969. To celebrate, here are
40 things you didn’t know about it…

1.
Beatniks, hippies, flower children and rock legends gathered together
not in Woodstock, but in the little town of Bethel, rural New York
State.

2. The idea for the festival came from band
manager Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, a songwriter turned record
company executive. They wanted to raise money to build a recording
studio in Woodstock, upstate New York, a haven for artists including
Bob Dylan, The Band and Van Morrison.

3.
There was no suitable site in Woodstock, so organisers opted for
Wallkill, 40 miles away. But residents blocked their plans, so dairy
farmer Max Yasgur stepped in to offer his alfalfa field, in the
neighbouring hamlet of Bethel. A deal was struck for $75,000. 

Peace and love: Jimi Hendrix closed the festival with a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner

4. Melanie Safka (remember ‘I’ve got a brand new pair of
rollerskates’?) failed to get a performer’s pass and had to sing her
song, Beautiful People, to the security guards to get backstage.

5.
Joni Mitchell wrote the festival’s eponymous song, with the lyrics ‘We
are stardust we are golden’, from what she heard of the event from
then-boyfriend Graham Nash, ex-Hollies and one quarter of Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young. But she never made it to Woodstock. Taking
the advice of her manager, she chose to guest on the Dick Cavett Show
and then watched the festival unfold on TV, tears streaming down her
face.

6. Any decent flower child worth their name was there to protest against the Vietnam war abroad and racial tension at home.

7.
With storm clouds approaching, the crowd was urged: ‘Let’s think hard
to get rid of the rain.’ A chant went up: ‘No rain, no rain, no rain.’
But it didn’t stop the deluge and in three hours, five inches of rain
fell and the festival became a mudfest. Joan Baez famously sang ‘We
shall overcome’ during a full-on thunderstorm.

8.
During the downpour there were fears some artists would get
electrocuted. Alvin Lee, of Ten Years After, was warned of the risk as
it was still raining when his turn came to go on. ‘Oh come on, if I get
electrocuted at Woodstock we’ll sell lots of records,’ he said. 

Joe Cocker entertains the masses

9. The performance of The
Star-Spangled Banner by Jimi Hendrix that closed Woodstock was
described by the rock critic from the New York Post as ‘the single
greatest moment of the Sixties’. Yet it was witnessed by just a
fraction of the crowd. Most had gone home by the time Hendrix came on stage, at 9am on a Monday morning.

10.
British artists were represented by Ten Years After, The Who, The
Incredible String Band, the Keef Hartley Band, Graham Nash and Mitch
Mitchell, drummer in Jimi Hendrix’s band.

11.
The British artist who really made his mark was Joe Cocker, whose
soulful rendition of The Beatles song With A Little Help From My
Friends was one of the greatest performances.

12.
Thirty-two bands were listed to play, but Iron Butterfly got stuck at
the airport and didn’t make it because the helicopter booked to ferry
them to the site didn’t arrive. Organisers were, in fact, worried their
hippy heavy-metal music would incite violence.

13.
The Jeff Beck Group, featuring Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, were booked
to play, but they split acrimoniously on the eve of their Woodstock
appearance.

14. John Lennon told organisers he had
wanted to be a part of Woodstock, but he was in Canada and the U.S.
government had refused him an entry visa.

15. There were ten million yards of blue jeans and striped T-shirt material at Woodstock.

16.
The dove perched on a guitar neck in the famous poster announcing
‘Three Days of Peace and Music’ is really a catbird, an American
perching bird known for its catlike calls.

17.
Though Bob Dylan was one of the original inspirations for the festival,
and his backing group, The Band, played to the massive audience, the
great man never made it, as one of his children was hospitalised over
that weekend.

18. Scottish folk quartet The
Incredible String Band told writer Mark Ellen about appearing on the
Woodstock stage. ‘It was incredibly high and three out of the four of
us had vertigo. Little flimsy dresses on the girls, acoustic guitars
out of tune, the drums damp from the tent, it was like playing off the
Forth Bridge to this sea of people cooking beans in the mud.’

19.
Eight women suffered miscarriages, while there are varying reports of
babies born. John Sebastian, lead singer with Lovin’ Spoonful,
announced from
the
stage: ‘Some cat’s old lady just had a baby, a kid destined to be far
out!’ Reports suggest a birth at a local hospital to a mother flown
from the event by helicopter and another involving a woman in a car in
the nine-mile traffic jam.

20. ‘Hippy’ is derived
from ‘hipster’ and was used to describe beatniks who moved to San
Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district for the Summer of Love in 1967.
Yippies (the left-wing Youth International Party led by Abbie Hoffman)
were sufficiently motivated by money to demand $10,000 from Woodstock’s
organisers to avoid any unpleasant disruption of proceedings. 

A biker grabs a snooze in between acts

21. The organisers played down the
numbers they anticipated, telling the authorities they expected 50,000,
while selling 186,000 tickets in advance (costing six dollars for each
day) and planning for 200,000. In the end 500,000 attended. Another
million had to turn back because of traffic. It was originally
advertised as ‘A Weekend in the Country.’

22. As an
unknown and unproven business concern, the organisers, Woodstock
Ventures, had to pay inflated sums to get the top rockers to sign up.
Jefferson Airplane were the first, paid $12,000, double their usual
fee. Even hippy band The Grateful Dead demanded cash in hand before
they would play, as did Janis Joplin and The Who.

23.
Off-duty police officers were banned from providing security, so a New
Mexico commune known as the Hog Farm were hired to form a ‘Please
Force.’ The Hog Farmers were led by Wavy Gravy, a toothless former
beatnik comic, who put on a Smokey-the-Bear suit and warned
troublemakers they would be doused in fizzy water or hit with custard
pies.

24. About two dozen ticket booths should have
been in place to charge $24 admission, but they were never installed
because of the crush of festival-goers. Attempts to get people to pay
were abandoned on day one, the fences were torn down and Woodstock was
declared a free event.

25.
As well as forming the Please Force, The Hog Farm were in charge of
catering, ordering in bushels of brown rice, buying 160,000 paper
plates, forks, knives and spoons and 30,000 paper cups. They fed
between 160,000-190,000 people at the Hog Farm Free Kitchen, 5,000 at a
time.

26. The Food For Love concession was running
low on burgers so it raised prices from 25 cents to $1. Festival-goers
saw it as capitalist exploitation, against the spirit of the festival,
so burnt the stand down.

27.
Hearing there was a shortage of food, a Jewish community centre made
sandwiches with 200 loaves of bread, 40 pounds of meat cuts and two
gallons of pickles, which were distributed by nuns. 

The audience stand in the rain as the show goes on

28. Sweetwater, a psychedelic rock band scheduled to open the
festival, were stuck in traffic. Instead, the crowd was entertained by
one of the Hog Farmers, who led them through a series of yoga
exercises. Sweetwater were on fifth.

29.
With the festival start-time running over an hour late, there was panic
to find a performer ready. Tim Hardin, (who later died of a heroin
overdose), was too stoned, so Richie Havens went on. When Havens
finished his set he kept trying to leave but was told to do more
encores as the next band was not ready. His song Freedom was improvised
and became a worldwide hit.

30. Though the festival
mood was anti-war, ironically the festival would most likely have
turned to tragedy without the U.S. Army, who airlifted in food, medical
teams and performers. The hippy crowd was told: ‘They are with us man,
they are not against us. Forty five doctors or more are here without
pay because they dig what this is into.’

31.
John Sebastian’s performance was unexpected. Spotted visiting
backstage, he was urged to appear. He admitted he had smoked a joint
and taken LSD, which could explain his shambolic performance, shouting:
‘Far out! Far up! Far down! Far around! You’re really amazing, you’re a
whole city.’

32. The revolving stage was designed to
minimise wait-times, turning when one act finished with the equipment
in place for the next one. But it could not support the weight of so
many people on the side of the stage watching the performances, and the
wheels fell off. ‘Grace Slick and Janis Joplin and everybody were
standing on it and you can’t just sweep them off with a broom,’
explained one of the crew.

33. For those lost and confused
there were two wooden signposts nailed to a tree. Chalked on one was
‘Groovy Way’ with arrows in opposite directions. On the other was
‘Gentle Path’ and underneath ‘High Way’ pointing to the left.

34. Nine out of ten festival-goers smoked marijuana on site and 33 were arrested on drugs charges.

35.
Two people died at Woodstock  -  one man from a heroin overdose and a
teenager in a sleeping bag who was killed when a tractor ran over him.
The driver was never traced.

36. For the weekend of
the festival it had become the third largest city in New York State.
But due to lack of basic amenities, Governor Nelson Rockefeller
declared it a disaster area. The health department documented 5,162
medical cases, including 797 instances of drug abuse. But Time magazine
called it ‘The greatest peaceful event in history.’

37.
While most acts revelled in having appeared there, sitar player Ravi
Shankar found it a ‘terrifying experience’ and said the crowd in the
mud reminded him of the water buffaloes at home in India.

38.
Actor and country singer Roy Rogers  -  billed as King of the Cowboys
for his western movies  -  was asked to close the show, singing his
trademark song, Happy Trails To You. But Rogers’ manager vetoed it, and
years later Rogers admitted: ‘I would have been booed off stage by all
those goddam hippies.’

39.
There have been four attempts to recreate the festival on different
sites: in 1979, 1989, 1994, and the disastrous 1999 festival, which was
shut down amid riots and violence. Commemorative events are taking
place across America and Europe.

40. Organisers at
Woodstock Ventures were at least $1.3m in debt afterwards. It took more
than a decade for backers to recoup money, through audio and recording
rights. 

• THE 40th anniversary edition four-DVD set of the filmWoodstock: 3 Days Of Peace And Music is out now.

Sixties spirit: Melanie Safka

I was never a hippy, festival icon Melanie insists

If
the spirit of Woodstock still exists, then it is embodied in Melanie
Safka. The long, flowing robes  -  a 2009 version of her Sixties ethnic
gowns  -  and the welcoming hug comfort as if you’re in a time warp.

When
she walked on stage in front of 500,000 people at Woodstock 40 years
ago, she was an unknown 19-year-old folk singer. She sang Beautiful
People to the beautiful people, as the hippies of the time were called.
‘I was just about as unworldly as a girl could be,’ she recalls now. ‘I
had no experience  -  I just wanted to sing. But something clicked and
by the time I came off stage, I was a celebrity. It was an unbelievable
moment.’

Her dressing room was a small teepee. Hearing her
cough from a neighbouring tent, Joan Baez sent her a pot of herbal tea,
honey and lemon.

No one could have predicted that Melanie 
-  fragile, dry-mouthed and shaking with nerves  -  would become the
festival’s enduring icon. She gained worldwide fame thanks to songs
such as Lay Down (Candles In The Rain), about her Woodstock experience,
Beautiful People, Brand New Key, which reached number one in the U.S.
and number four in the UK, and a classic, emotional reworking of Mick
Jagger’s and Keith Richards’s song Ruby Tuesday.

She is 62
now and has two daughters and two grandchildren. However, she insists
she remains true to the cause of peace that Woodstock espoused. Melanie
has worked for the United Nations as a peace ambassador since the
Seventies.

‘But I’m not a hippy, never was,’ she insists.
‘I don’t like the word  -  it sounds so lightweight and ineffectual.
What am I, then? Just me.’ 

• MELANIE is appearing at Memories Of Woodstock, West Midlands Showground, Shrewsbury, on Sunday.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1204849/Forty-far-facts-knew-Woodstock.html#ixzz0Nf4N34Gc