Woodstock

Giftable 50th anniversary commemorative with never-before-seen images and original interviews. Hear from performers and attendees in their own voices! Featuring Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Grateful Dead, as well as unsung audience members and folks behind the scenes. This compendium remembers all the people who made the three days of peace and music an impossible success. The world today feels far removed from the one in which Woodstock was possible, where half a million strangers congregated peacefully for three days. Longtime music writer Daniel Bukszpan offers insights on how the festival is still making an impact on pop culture, while candid interviews, set lists, and beautiful photographs relive the beautiful chaos and once-in-a-lifetime performances at Yasgur's farm. With images by renowned photographers, including Amalie R. Rothschild and Elliott Landy, including the cover photo of Janis Joplin.

• Watch author Daniel Buiszpan on CBS New York at https://youtu.be/mN8r3fXINO0

• Listen to an interview with author Daniel Bukszpan on Dead Air Radio. http://bit.ly/31sUbzZ

• For the many of us who weren't fortunate enough to have been there (because we weren't born), and even for those that were, the original Woodstock Festival has become one of the most storied events in rock and popular music history. Thanks to the movie and countless campfire legends, there's so much that we know about the festival, so many nuggets that have become rock & roll folklore.

The free love at the the free festival in the free-flowing mud. The brown acid. Hendrix's dramatic closing set. Janis, The Who, The Dead, Joe Cocker and more, all putting in career-defining performances. There are legitimate reasons we still talk about Woodstock.

All of those things are covered in Daniel Bukszpan's new book and, incidentally, the mere fact that books are still being written about Woodstock speaks volumes. But the real fun lies not in the frequently retold legends, but rather the nuggets that are less frequently discussed. The bands that played sets not considered legendary.

That means the people who played early on day one, such as Richie Havens, Indian yogi Swami Satchidananda, Sweetwater, Bert Sommer and Jim Hardin. We read about the nightmare that was the bathroom situation (barefoot and carefree sounds great until you have to wallow through two feet of piss-mud), and the logistical issues of getting everyone fed. We can ponder the simple fact that the Paul Butterfield Blues Band had to follow Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. And we can laugh at the fact that organizer John Morris sent a coded “Fuck you” message to Iron Butterfly when they demanded a helicopter from LaGuardia.

We knew so much about Woodstock but, after reading Bukszpan's book, we know so much more.
—LA Weekly, Book of the Month

• Read about the Woodstock phenomenon that has captured our collective psyche in the Washington Post at https://wapo.st/2SFUQtU

Auteur

Daniel Bukszpan is freelance writer and the author of The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal and The Encyclopedia of New Wave. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Échantillon de lecture
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
BEGINNINGS
Michael Lang
Artie Kornfeld
Joel Rosenman
John Roberts
John Morris
Chris Langhart
Chip Monck
Bill Hanley
The Hog Farm
Bill Graham
Abbie Hoffman
Arnold Skolnick
Joshua White
Max Yasgur 
Word of Mouth
Artists Who Didn’t Perform
The Locals
Getting There
The Traffic
Elliott Landy 
It’s a Free Festival
THE PERFORMERS: DAY ONE
Richie Havens
Swami Satchidananda
Sweetwater
Bert Sommer
Tim Hardin
Ravi Shankar
Melanie
Arlo Guthrie
Joan Baez
First Aid 
The Brown Acid
Food
Where’s the Bathroom?
THE PERFORMERS: DAY TWO
 
Quill 
Country Joe McDonald
Santana
John Sebastian
The Keef Hartley Band
The Incredible String Band 
Canned Heat 
Mountain
Grateful Dead
Creedence Clearwater Revival 
Janis Joplin
Sly and the Family Stone
The Who
Jefferson Airplane
Drugs 
News Coverage
Technical Difficulties
 
THE PERFORMERS:
DAY THREE
Joe Cocker
Country Joe & The Fish
Ten Years After
The Band
Johnny Winter 
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band 
Sha Na Na
Jimi Hendrix
 
ENDINGS
 
Garbage
Coming Home 
Births and Deaths
Dick Cavett 
Soundtrack Album
The Documentary
Index
Photo Credits
Resources 
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
 
Creedence Clearwater Revival
AUGUST 16, 1969
Set list:
Born on the Bayou / Green River / Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do) /
Commotion / Bootleg / Bad Moon Rising / Proud Mary / I Put a Spell on You /
The Night Time Is the Right Time / Keep on Chooglin’ / Suzie Q
 
Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the most popular bands of the 1960s. They hailed from the San Francisco Bay Area but stayed away from the region’s trademark psychedelic jams. Instead, they focused on the three-minute single, and they were masters of the form.
            “We grew up listening to Top 40 radio, and so the three-minute single, two-and-a-half-minute single, was the format,” said bassist Stu Cook.
            He said that when they reached the festival grounds in Bethel, they saw a lot of familiar faces. The experience that they had backstage bore no resemblance to the one that the audience was having.
            “We hung out with Santana’s people, the people from Bill Graham’s organization took care of us,” he said. “We hung out with him and drank wine and smoked weed, ate great steaks. Backstage was a different world and a half from the audience, for sure.”
            One thing that Bill Graham’s organization could not provide was a reprieve from the hours of delays that plagued the entire festival. Cook said that the band endured a wait of several hours before they could finally set foot on stage.
            “There was a lot of technical difficulties throughout the evening,” he said. “We were supposed to play at ten on Saturday night, and I don’t think we got on the stage until after one.”
            According to those who saw it, their set was a great one. Many audience members said it was one of the best performances of the weekend.
            “Creedence was perfect,” said Mark Yessin, who was twenty when he watched their set. “I thought the performance was great.”
            The band does not appear in the documentary or on the soundtrack. Cook said that singer and guitarist John Fogerty refused to allow it on the grounds that the band had played too poorly. Cook was adamant that he was wrong about that.
            “We had some technical problems at the start of the set,” he said. “They were worked out, but I know John was irritated to no end about the problems that h…