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Woodstock: The Festival for Stardust, Golden Hippies · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chucks with
0:13
Speaker 1: me and Jerry's here too, and that makes this stuff
0:16
Speaker 1: you should know the last time we'll ever talk about boomers. Yeah.
0:24
Speaker 1: I know this isn't your jam, but a lot of
0:27
Speaker 1: this stuff is my jam. Even though I'm not a boomer,
0:31
Speaker 1: I'm very much into a lot of this music. You're
0:33
Speaker 1: a boomer in spirit. No, I'm not. God, I want
0:36
Speaker 1: to cuss it you so bad right now. But I
0:41
Speaker 1: have been singing the Woodstock song in my head all day,
0:44
Speaker 1: which is a great song and one of those sort
0:47
Speaker 1: of rare not that rare, but one of those things
0:50
Speaker 1: where the cover versions are just as great. Yeah, it
0:55
Speaker 1: really is. It gets like all the versions. I mean,
0:58
Speaker 1: that's I don't think there's any any song that's captured
1:01
Speaker 1: the essence of that generation and that era better than
1:06
Speaker 1: that song, aside from We Built this City on rock
1:09
Speaker 1: and roll. Yeah, And you know, I don't know if
1:14
Speaker 1: many people understand that it is a song written by
1:17
Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell, not Crosby, Stills, Nashing Young. She wasn't there either.
1:21
Speaker 1: David Geffen was her manager, and said, Nope, you can't go.
1:23
Speaker 1: You have to be on Dick Cavin on Tuesday, and
1:25
Speaker 1: I'm worried you won't make it back in time now,
1:27
Speaker 1: which is crazy. She wouldn't would have been amazing at
1:30
Speaker 1: the concert. But they released that recorded version within a
1:33
Speaker 1: month of each other, which I never knew, just about
1:37
Speaker 1: six or eight or seven months after or eight months
1:40
Speaker 1: after the concert, but I didn't know. There was another
1:42
Speaker 1: version released also that same year from a British band
1:46
Speaker 1: called Matthew's Southern Comfort. Boy. They really had some bad
1:50
Speaker 1: names back then, and I just listened to it, and boy,
1:54
Speaker 1: they really take all of the passion out of it
1:57
Speaker 1: in that version, and they skipped they just complete wholesale
2:00
Speaker 1: skip the coolest line I think in the song, which
2:04
Speaker 1: is they just say we are stardust, we are golden,
2:08
Speaker 1: and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
2:10
Speaker 1: They don't have that lyric in the middle we are
2:12
Speaker 1: billion year old carbon, which is so hippie dippy and amazing. Oh,
2:16
Speaker 1: I never noticed that it's true though they're right. Joni
2:19
Speaker 1: Mitchell was right. They just skip it and it's just
2:22
Speaker 1: very mellow and lame. To my ears. It's like shoegaze drone. Yeah,
2:27
Speaker 1: I don't know. Apparently that was the biggest hit out
2:29
Speaker 1: of all of them though, which I no way. Yeah
2:31
Speaker 1: maybe in England, I don't know. Okay, thumbs down for me. Yeah,
2:35
Speaker 1: same here. I haven't even heard it, but it sounds sucky. Yeah,
2:40
Speaker 1: So we are talking about Woodstock and I think it's
2:42
Speaker 1: one of those things. I'm probably in the majority for
2:45
Speaker 1: our age group. I've heard of it, I've I've got
2:48
Speaker 1: images of the film in my head. Sure, I have
2:51
Speaker 1: a general I could rattle off probably four or five
2:53
Speaker 1: people or bands that were there that played. They rained,
2:57
Speaker 1: and it was muddy, and there was brown acid that stuff.
3:01
Speaker 1: The thing is is, when I was researching this, I
3:03
Speaker 1: was like, this really was like a really interesting event,
3:08
Speaker 1: and it's not necessarily because it was just so culturally significant,
3:12
Speaker 1: although it turned out to be, or that it was
3:14
Speaker 1: just such a special, magical, cosmic moment, which I'm sure
3:17
Speaker 1: if you were there, there are a lot of people
3:19
Speaker 1: who believe that, but more that it was just an
3:22
Speaker 1: exercise in putting half a million people together outdoors over
3:27
Speaker 1: three days, throwing as much drugs as you possibly can
3:31
Speaker 1: into the mix, and then just seeing what happened, and
3:36
Speaker 1: what happened was really impressive, was very peaceful, basically worked
3:41
Speaker 1: like really communal. It was a really it was a
3:44
Speaker 1: cool thing. So out of all the stuff from the
3:47
Speaker 1: sixties that like all those old stars are saying like, hey,
3:50
Speaker 1: you know the sixties, you had to be there, King,
3:52
Speaker 1: this does seem to have some chops in that respect,
3:56
Speaker 1: Like it does seem to have been significant. Yeah, it
3:59
Speaker 1: was one of those months in time for sure. And
4:02
Speaker 1: if you believe max Yasger, who we'll talk about quite
4:06
Speaker 1: a bit here and there he was. It was his
4:08
Speaker 1: farm very famously in Bethel, New York, that hosted this concert.
4:12
Speaker 1: But when he takes the stage and makes and speaks
4:16
Speaker 1: to the crowd, which is a very fun thing to
4:19
Speaker 1: watch on YouTube or if you watch the whole movie,
4:22
Speaker 1: he claims, and it might have been true at the time,
4:24
Speaker 1: that it was the largest grouping of human beings ever
4:28
Speaker 1: in history in one place. I think I've seen that
4:31
Speaker 1: in places too that that's entirely possible, to tell you
4:34
Speaker 1: the truth, Yeah, I mean between four and five hundred
4:36
Speaker 1: thousand people. That's you didn't get crowds like that back then, no,
4:40
Speaker 1: And I mean I can't think of one since then. Now, yeah,
4:43
Speaker 1: the thing that went to that sprung to mind was
4:46
Speaker 1: I think Mecca gets pretty crowded on certain holy times. Okay,
4:52
Speaker 1: it's possible that like that's rivaled that before in the
4:55
Speaker 1: past or even contemporarily. I don't know, but um, yeah,
4:59
Speaker 1: we'll put wood stock in Mecca together, how about that? Yeah.
5:02
Speaker 1: But even you're right though, when you think about the
5:04
Speaker 1: biggest like outdoor you know, even you know, there are
5:09
Speaker 1: no you know, outdoor arenas that hold anything close to this.
5:13
Speaker 1: But even when they say like all right, we're gonna
5:15
Speaker 1: take over this part of Central Park or whatever or
5:18
Speaker 1: just this area, it doesn't really like a couple one
5:22
Speaker 1: hundred to three hundred thousand people is like a huge,
5:25
Speaker 1: huge deal. So this is four to five hundred thousand.
5:29
Speaker 1: I mean, the biggest hugest college football stadiums in the
5:34
Speaker 1: United States maybe crack one hundred thousand, and those things
5:39
Speaker 1: are just massive. Imagine four or five of those filled
5:44
Speaker 1: the capacity all dumped into just one of them. That's
5:47
Speaker 1: just amazing on acid. Yeah, pretty neat. So yeah, let's
5:53
Speaker 1: start talking about this because there's a pretty cool story.
5:55
Speaker 1: I say we started at the beginning. How about that okay,
5:58
Speaker 1: and then pepper in some some stuff because Ed helped
6:01
Speaker 1: us with this one, and he really laid a bunch
6:04
Speaker 1: out in his intro, and I think we should kind
6:06
Speaker 1: of salt and pepper it in instead. All right, yeah,
6:09
Speaker 1: I think I know what you mean. Okay, cool, let's
6:11
Speaker 1: give it a shot. We do this on the fly everyone.
6:15
Speaker 1: After all these years, we still do it the same way,
6:17
Speaker 1: just so you know, we'd like to go surprise. So Woodstock,
6:21
Speaker 1: and this is something Ed posed was why you know,
6:24
Speaker 1: we're talking about the four to five hundred thousand people,
6:26
Speaker 1: Why what made it special? Why were that many people?
6:29
Speaker 1: And one of the first kind of boring reasons is
6:32
Speaker 1: just the mere fact of where it was. It was
6:35
Speaker 1: in Bethel, New York, and that was within six to
6:40
Speaker 1: seven to eight hour drive of New York City, Philly, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, DC, Buffalo, Boston,
6:50
Speaker 1: like within three or four hours of a lot of those.
6:53
Speaker 1: So it was just it was located in a place
6:56
Speaker 1: where and it was held over the course, you know,
6:58
Speaker 1: as you'll see, supposed to be three tight but it
7:01
Speaker 1: veered into the morning of the fourth. But you know,
7:04
Speaker 1: once word gets out that there's this free show, happening.
7:08
Speaker 1: You could miss Friday and show up halfway there on
7:10
Speaker 1: a Saturday and still see a lot of the performers,
7:14
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and I don't think you would have
7:16
Speaker 1: missed a whole lot missing Friday. Frankly, hey, Ritchie Havens Okay,
7:20
Speaker 1: that's it. I'll give you amazing performance, for sure. I agree.
7:23
Speaker 1: I said miss much. It didn't miss nothing, all right,
7:26
Speaker 1: all right? So um yeah, that was a big, a
7:29
Speaker 1: big part of it. And it was in Bethel. It
7:31
Speaker 1: wasn't in Woodstock. Woodstock is like sixty miles away from Bethel.
7:34
Speaker 1: But the reason that they named it Woodstock and hung
7:36
Speaker 1: onto that name for everything they had was because Bob
7:40
Speaker 1: Dylan had put this the town of Woodstock on the
7:43
Speaker 1: map when he moved there. It was like his little
7:45
Speaker 1: hideaway mountain I guess retreat in the sixties, and it
7:50
Speaker 1: just kind of became like a cool countercultural town. So
7:54
Speaker 1: the name itself Woodstock like meant a lot to the
7:56
Speaker 1: people who actually went to the Woodstock Festival in nineties
8:00
Speaker 1: sixty nine. Yeah, and before people start screaming at you
8:03
Speaker 1: and me especially, it was famously where the band lived.
8:08
Speaker 1: One of my favorite, if not my favorite group from
8:10
Speaker 1: that era, and this is where Dylan and the band
8:13
Speaker 1: recorded the basement tapes outside or in the basement of
8:16
Speaker 1: Big Pink, the house that they rented. And I finally
8:19
Speaker 1: made my trip to Woodstock last year for a show
8:25
Speaker 1: at Levan's Barn, which I might have mentioned at some
8:28
Speaker 1: point in one of our episodes. But that town is
8:31
Speaker 1: still holding on to that, and not in a bad way.
8:34
Speaker 1: It's still like embodies, i should say, that feeling and
8:38
Speaker 1: that artsy community, and it's just it's this magical place.
8:42
Speaker 1: I went in the dead of winter and there was
8:44
Speaker 1: hardly anyone there and me and my buddy Justin who
8:47
Speaker 1: you know, just like walked around Woodstock. A lot of
8:50
Speaker 1: the stuff was closed in the winter, but it just
8:53
Speaker 1: had this feeling there that is undeniable around Woodstock and
8:59
Speaker 1: Bethel and Soagrates, where our buddy Joe Garden lives. By
9:02
Speaker 1: the way, I didn't know that. Shout out Joe Garden. Yeah,
9:06
Speaker 1: we went over to Joe's house. He's it's all right
9:08
Speaker 1: there together. It's a beautiful, beautiful country. So okay. So
9:11
Speaker 1: there's where the name comes from. Even though the whole
9:13
Speaker 1: thing was held in Woodstock and it was already kind
9:17
Speaker 1: of following in a tradition that was fairly new at
9:20
Speaker 1: the time. Like we think of music festivals, you're like, like,
9:24
Speaker 1: any day of the week, you can find a music
9:26
Speaker 1: festival somewhere in the United States, Right, Yeah, for sure.
9:29
Speaker 1: It was actually still pretty new when Woodstock was held.
9:33
Speaker 1: The jazz festivals of the fifties and really starting the
9:36
Speaker 1: early sixties were the ones that established festivals, right because
9:41
Speaker 1: everybody knows, given the greatest jazz performers can't draw a
9:44
Speaker 1: huge crowd, so you have to put a bunch of
9:46
Speaker 1: them together. Hence jazz festivals, right Yeah, Yeah, they were
9:50
Speaker 1: sort of the foundation. And I think the big the
9:54
Speaker 1: big one that kind of put these kind of festivals
9:55
Speaker 1: on the map. The first one was the Monterey Pop
9:58
Speaker 1: Festival right sixty seven, And I would argue that it
10:03
Speaker 1: sort of went away after the Altamont debacle with the
10:09
Speaker 1: murder at the Rolling Stones concert, and I think kind
10:12
Speaker 1: of I'd have to look it up. I'm sure there
10:15
Speaker 1: were some festivals here and there, but I think Perry
10:17
Speaker 1: Farrell and Lallapalooza brought it back. I think it was
10:20
Speaker 1: down for a couple of decades. You're absolutely right, but
10:24
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything in between that was significant.
10:27
Speaker 1: There might have been something, but definitely like Lallapalooza is
10:30
Speaker 1: what really kickstarted the modern era of the festival. And
10:33
Speaker 1: like you said, now there they are just all over
10:35
Speaker 1: the place all the time. Yeah, And I should say
10:38
Speaker 1: there were plenty of like jazz festivals. There was New
10:40
Speaker 1: Orleans Jazz Fest kept going on. Didn't really sea Perry
10:44
Speaker 1: Farrell and his aspirations. But yes, for the pop culture,
10:47
Speaker 1: it was definitely Lallapaluza. I couldn't agree more. Yeah, yeah, boy,
10:51
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that about jazz fest. I would
10:52
Speaker 1: have gotten smoked in the emails. Yeah. Sure. So the
10:56
Speaker 1: festival craze was like at peak, the first wave of it,
11:00
Speaker 1: I should say, when Woodstock came, which was another thing
11:03
Speaker 1: that kind of helped make it such a legendary thing.
11:05
Speaker 1: And the whole thing was founded by two guys, Artie
11:08
Speaker 1: Cornfield and Michael Lange, two guys put on Woodstock, and
11:12
Speaker 1: they did it with the backing of two kids, one
11:16
Speaker 1: of which came from a very very wealthy family of
11:19
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical dynasty, John Roberts and his friend Joel Rosenman. They
11:24
Speaker 1: bankrolled this thing and they actually were looking for interesting
11:28
Speaker 1: countercultural investments, so much so that they actually advertised in
11:32
Speaker 1: the New York Times that they had a bunch of
11:34
Speaker 1: money and they were looking for interesting investments. And well, yeah,
11:38
Speaker 1: it turned out Larretie Cornfield, Michael Lange already knew Roberts
11:41
Speaker 1: and Rosenman and they had built like a recording studio together,
11:45
Speaker 1: and that kind of gave blossom to this whole Woodstock idea. Initially,
11:50
Speaker 1: it was going to be a one night benefit concert
11:53
Speaker 1: in Woodstock with Dylan as the headliner. That's Bob Dylan
11:57
Speaker 1: for those of you who aren't in the know like me,
11:59
Speaker 1: right um, And it was gonna pay for a music
12:03
Speaker 1: studio that they were gonna build in Woodstock. That was
12:05
Speaker 1: the first idea of Woodstock. And then all of a
12:07
Speaker 1: sudden they're like, well, who else can we have and
12:08
Speaker 1: who else could we have? And all of a sudden,
12:10
Speaker 1: the music festival became way more important than the music
12:14
Speaker 1: studio that it was originally intended to help build. Yeah. Absolutely, uh.
12:18
Speaker 1: And then you know, once they had this idea, they
12:20
Speaker 1: started searching around for a place and they tried Woodstock
12:24
Speaker 1: I think probably first, because, like you said, the cultural significance.
12:28
Speaker 1: Then they moved on to Joe Garden's house in Saugrate's
12:33
Speaker 1: and then get off my lawn. And then it was like,
12:36
Speaker 1: all right, was it quite big enough? Although Joe's house
12:40
Speaker 1: is great. It's like a little museum, so we can imagine.
12:43
Speaker 1: And then wall Kill which is nearby as well, and
12:47
Speaker 1: they all, you know, smartly, we're like, no, like, we
12:50
Speaker 1: can't host something this big. Have you ever been out here?
12:54
Speaker 1: It is you're out in the middle of farmland, in
12:56
Speaker 1: forest and we can't hold a concert here. And this
13:01
Speaker 1: is when a gentleman named max Yasger, who was portrayed
13:07
Speaker 1: by Eugene Levy in the movie What was the movie?
13:11
Speaker 1: Was it? Oh you're you're serious? Oh? Yeah, yeah it was.
13:14
Speaker 1: I thought you can say he portrayed him in the
13:16
Speaker 1: documentary now not finding wood stock, but something would stock
13:20
Speaker 1: or would stock? Ohoy, I think that was the name
13:23
Speaker 1: of it. But when you look at max Yasger, he
13:25
Speaker 1: looks a lot like Eugene Levies. It was great casting.
13:28
Speaker 1: But he, you know, was a guy that was a
13:30
Speaker 1: farmer and I think like a dairy farmer. Had about
13:34
Speaker 1: six seven hundred head of cattle and was the largest
13:37
Speaker 1: dairy farmer in the county, and he was not some
13:40
Speaker 1: hippie sympathizer. He by all accounts, was kind of the
13:44
Speaker 1: opposite of that was what you might think he would
13:47
Speaker 1: be as a as a farmer in upstate New York,
13:49
Speaker 1: which is very straight laced, very Republican. But apparently he
13:54
Speaker 1: also kind of liked to thumb his nose at the
13:56
Speaker 1: man a little bit. And when the locals started himing
14:00
Speaker 1: and hawing about having a concert in Bethel, he was like,
14:04
Speaker 1: screw you, guys, you can have it at my farm. Right.
14:08
Speaker 1: He was back in the two thousand aughts what you
14:10
Speaker 1: would have called the libertarian, probably so, so he also
14:14
Speaker 1: was one of those people. I get the impression he
14:16
Speaker 1: knew spunk when he saw it and he liked it. Yeah,
14:19
Speaker 1: I think you're probably right. So he really took a
14:21
Speaker 1: shine to Cornfeld and Lang. I think I've been calling
14:24
Speaker 1: him Cornfield. I don't know if you noticed or not,
14:28
Speaker 1: but I meant Cornfeld and Lang. And so he helped
14:31
Speaker 1: them get this pushed through because they were, like you said,
14:34
Speaker 1: turned down at town after town after town in the area,
14:37
Speaker 1: and so Yasgar finally kind of got Bethel to to
14:41
Speaker 1: well at least with his support, Bethel was a little
14:43
Speaker 1: more accommodating, a little more allowable. But the way that
14:46
Speaker 1: these guys got this incredibly huge music festival pushed through
14:51
Speaker 1: city councils, got permits, and all that stuff was by lying, lying, lying, Yeah.
14:57
Speaker 1: They agreed to anything that the city count souls asked for,
15:01
Speaker 1: including they agreed to hire one hundred and fifty off
15:05
Speaker 1: duty police officers. I don't think they ended up hiring one.
15:09
Speaker 1: They said that they expected fifty thousand, They expected actually
15:13
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand. The four hundred to five hundred thousand
15:16
Speaker 1: caught even them by surprise. But they were still expecting
15:19
Speaker 1: about four times more than they told the Bethel City
15:22
Speaker 1: council they were. And they just basically said whatever they
15:27
Speaker 1: wanted to, whatever they thought they wanted to hear, and finally,
15:30
Speaker 1: like like you said, with the Yasgar's help, they got it,
15:32
Speaker 1: they got it pushed through, and they had a home.
15:34
Speaker 1: The problem is they had a home now for this festival,
15:37
Speaker 1: just five weeks before the advertised date. That's right, and
15:41
Speaker 1: I think it's a great cliffhanger. So we'll come back
15:45
Speaker 1: in a moment and see if the Woodstock concert even happened.
16:12
Speaker 1: Well did it did it go down? I don't know.
16:16
Speaker 1: You tell me, did they fake that concert film like
16:19
Speaker 1: the moon Landing? Let's ask Eugene Levy. Uh No, the
16:23
Speaker 1: concert went down, And like you said, they only had
16:26
Speaker 1: five weeks and that presents a lot of problems logistically obviously,
16:31
Speaker 1: even though they weren't setting up like chairs and things
16:35
Speaker 1: like that. It was like there's a lot of you know,
16:37
Speaker 1: people might say, just build a stage out in the
16:39
Speaker 1: middle of the field and it's taken care of, but
16:41
Speaker 1: there's so much more that goes into something like this,
16:43
Speaker 1: like food and water and bathrooms and you know, medical
16:48
Speaker 1: infrastructure and stuff like that. Plus I mean, if you
16:50
Speaker 1: see the footage from the documentary, there were legit like
16:53
Speaker 1: lighting rigs and sound rigs. Yeah, Like it wasn't just
16:56
Speaker 1: some like a bunch of plywood and Tubi fourds that
16:59
Speaker 1: they put up. Like it was a legit like concert
17:01
Speaker 1: venue that they made out of nothing. Yeah, I mean
17:04
Speaker 1: it was. It was a money making venture. I mean,
17:05
Speaker 1: these guys were were sort of hippie dippie music fans,
17:09
Speaker 1: but they were out to make a buck. I think
17:11
Speaker 1: the original price was six bucks for a ticket. Eighteen
17:14
Speaker 1: for the weekend, which they didn't even give him a
17:17
Speaker 1: break on a weekend pass. It should have been fifteen
17:18
Speaker 1: for all three, yeah, real personally, and there were a
17:22
Speaker 1: lot of like they booked a lot of big acts,
17:24
Speaker 1: but a lot of big acts at the time. Like
17:27
Speaker 1: Woodstock is kind of famous sometimes for who didn't play.
17:30
Speaker 1: The Beatles very famously did not play Woodstock. Led Zeppelin
17:35
Speaker 1: is mentioned in this article, but I would argue they,
17:38
Speaker 1: I mean, their first album was only four or five
17:40
Speaker 1: months old at this point. Zeppelin, Yeah, so I don't know.
17:44
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure it was a big record, but
17:46
Speaker 1: they were trying to book like these whales. You know,
17:49
Speaker 1: the Doors didn't play, Dylan didn't play, but they were
17:53
Speaker 1: able to book as the headliners generally speaking, even though
17:58
Speaker 1: the times were pushed because everything was eight. So like
18:00
Speaker 1: the headliners ended up playing sometimes at like five in
18:03
Speaker 1: the morning or like with Jimmy Hendrix, you know, after
18:07
Speaker 1: the sun came up on the Monday. But the Who
18:10
Speaker 1: and Jefferson, Airplane and Hendricks are generally sort of thought
18:13
Speaker 1: of is the biggest names there, yeah, at the time.
18:16
Speaker 1: And the thing is is like when you look back
18:18
Speaker 1: at Woodstock's line up, you're like, man, it was just
18:20
Speaker 1: huge act after a huge act. The reason why it
18:23
Speaker 1: seems that way now is because of Woodstock. Like a
18:26
Speaker 1: lot of these YEA performers were not huge at the time,
18:30
Speaker 1: but they became huge even the who they credit the
18:34
Speaker 1: Woodstock performance for giving them a like a huge boost,
18:37
Speaker 1: basically taking them from rock stars to rock superstar like
18:40
Speaker 1: arena rock stars basically, yeah, in just a few months.
18:44
Speaker 1: So it's it's easy to kind of take for granted
18:46
Speaker 1: that all these were big acts, but they definitely weren't,
18:49
Speaker 1: and a lot of them got paid relatively peanuts, you know,
18:52
Speaker 1: Like there were a lot of bands that took five
18:54
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or less to play at Woodstock, and at
18:57
Speaker 1: the time they didn't. When they agreed, they had no
19:00
Speaker 1: idea that it was going to be this thing. It
19:01
Speaker 1: just turned out to be a really good move for
19:04
Speaker 1: all of them. Yeah, it was Santana's first I don't
19:08
Speaker 1: know if it was their first ever performance, but it
19:10
Speaker 1: was their first big show, like before their album was
19:13
Speaker 1: even out. And I think they were included because legendary
19:17
Speaker 1: rock promoter Bill Graham said, Hey, if you want the
19:20
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead, if you want credence, who. I watched a
19:24
Speaker 1: documentary on Credence not too long ago. They were the
19:26
Speaker 1: biggest band in the world the day after the Beatles
19:30
Speaker 1: broke up. Oh really, like they were number two and
19:33
Speaker 1: then the Beatles broke up, and I was like, really Credence,
19:36
Speaker 1: Like I like Credence, But but then you go when
19:38
Speaker 1: you see the story, like they were huge and they
19:41
Speaker 1: had like twenty hits. You know, they were a big,
19:44
Speaker 1: big band. So anyway, well hold on, hold on before
19:46
Speaker 1: you move on. I had a similar experience. I saw,
19:49
Speaker 1: like I think Lifetime or somebody produced like a three
19:51
Speaker 1: or four part Janet Jackson documentary that's really good. Oh yeah,
19:55
Speaker 1: and like it gets across she's if she wasn't one
19:59
Speaker 1: of the Ja Jaxon's right, she would be bigger than
20:02
Speaker 1: like Madonna and Celine diond rolled together like for that era,
20:06
Speaker 1: she was enormous. And yet that's how big a shadow
20:11
Speaker 1: her brother cast Rum that she no matter how huge
20:14
Speaker 1: she was, she was, you know, Michael Jackson's little sister. Yeah,
20:18
Speaker 1: but it's nuts, like the number of hits she had
20:21
Speaker 1: and she's just like way bigger than I realized. And
20:24
Speaker 1: I mean everybody knows Janet Jackson, but I just had
20:26
Speaker 1: no idea like the success that she actually did have. Yeah,
20:29
Speaker 1: I want to check that out. I like Jane. It's
20:31
Speaker 1: it's good. It's definitely worth watching it. It It moves pretty
20:33
Speaker 1: fast too, it doesn't drag. No, not a lot of filler. Um.
20:39
Speaker 1: So yeah, what was I saying? CCR? And and Bill
20:42
Speaker 1: Graham said, if you want CCR, you want the Dead,
20:44
Speaker 1: then you gotta take this new band that I'm representing
20:48
Speaker 1: called Santana and a very young Carlos Santana m not
20:52
Speaker 1: Neil Sean from Journey yet he was. He joined Santana
20:56
Speaker 1: as a fifteen year old right after the Woodstock performance.
21:01
Speaker 1: But because I was curious, I was like, did Neil
21:03
Speaker 1: Shan actually play at Woodstock? Because I knew he was
21:05
Speaker 1: a teenager, I get he's a founding member of Journey.
21:08
Speaker 1: You're saying, well, yeah, Neil Shan from Journey was first
21:12
Speaker 1: in Santana as a fifteen year old. I did not
21:14
Speaker 1: know that. Well. Actually, to tell you the truth, I
21:16
Speaker 1: didn't know who Neil Shawn wasn't a minute. Excuse me,
21:23
Speaker 1: I'm a little uh for clem. I've just got a
21:27
Speaker 1: little chess congestion. So yeah, same here is it? The
21:29
Speaker 1: allergy is kidding you? It is I've been I haven't
21:32
Speaker 1: felt bad at all. But anyway, oh good h So yeah.
21:35
Speaker 1: Neil Shan, founding member of Journey, was in Santana as
21:38
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old alongside Greg Rowley. Also he was
21:43
Speaker 1: a Journey's first piano player and singer before Steve Barry.
21:47
Speaker 1: I had no idea that there was such a deep
21:49
Speaker 1: Santana Journey connection. I know, how about that? Pretty cool?
21:53
Speaker 1: All right, So back to the timeline they are, or
21:57
Speaker 1: I should have said, back to the garden um. They
22:00
Speaker 1: had about five weeks to pull this thing together, and
22:03
Speaker 1: they had to make some tough choices, like when the
22:06
Speaker 1: construction supervisor comes up and says, you got a choice.
22:09
Speaker 1: We can finish the stage or we can build fencing
22:14
Speaker 1: and make sure these tickets get sold and people don't
22:16
Speaker 1: get in. And I think the riding was on the
22:18
Speaker 1: wall a. They definitely said, all right, well, we've got
22:21
Speaker 1: to have a stage, of course, like a completed stage.
22:24
Speaker 1: And also like there's already kids camping out here while
22:28
Speaker 1: you're building the stage, like this thing is. They knew
22:31
Speaker 1: what was coming. I think they definitely do a certain degree,
22:34
Speaker 1: but ed makes a pretty good point that must have
22:37
Speaker 1: dawned on them. There's no point in putting up really
22:39
Speaker 1: good fencing for a venue that doesn't have a stage, right,
22:42
Speaker 1: So they really had no choice whatsoever. They still tried
22:46
Speaker 1: to put up some fencing because, like you said, it's
22:47
Speaker 1: a money making venture, but it was just so totally
22:50
Speaker 1: inadequate that when they looked over. So this is like
22:54
Speaker 1: midweek when the construction supervisor comes over and says, do
22:57
Speaker 1: you want fences or a stage? And there's already, from
23:01
Speaker 1: what I saw in some places, fifty thousand people camped
23:04
Speaker 1: out in the area where they're building the stage already.
23:07
Speaker 1: This is what they told Bessel was the total. And
23:11
Speaker 1: this is Wednesday and there's already fifty thousand people camped
23:14
Speaker 1: out for the show that starts on Friday. Yeah, they
23:17
Speaker 1: er to be. So those guys, very very very wisely,
23:20
Speaker 1: Cornfeld and Lang, they very wisely said there's nothing we
23:25
Speaker 1: can do. We're just going to announce that this is
23:28
Speaker 1: a free concert from now on. And that did a
23:30
Speaker 1: few things that it just turned this into like a
23:33
Speaker 1: if it wasn't a hippie fest before, it's just totally now. Yeah, sure,
23:37
Speaker 1: because it's a free concert featuring some of the some
23:39
Speaker 1: really huge acts. And then secondly, I think by not
23:45
Speaker 1: putting up really good fences, they prevented gate crashing, like
23:50
Speaker 1: actual real gate crashing, which I think would have cast
23:53
Speaker 1: a really different vibe over the whole festival. Because if
23:57
Speaker 1: you enter a festival, if the first thing you do
24:00
Speaker 1: when you come into a festival is break the law
24:03
Speaker 1: or steal, essentially you're stealing in the ticket price, Yeah,
24:06
Speaker 1: that just kind of puts a spin on your experience.
24:09
Speaker 1: From that moment on. No one really had that experience
24:12
Speaker 1: at Woodstock because the guys said, fine, it's it's free,
24:16
Speaker 1: and it prevented that, And I think that that helps
24:18
Speaker 1: really lay the groundwork for the vibe that that was,
24:22
Speaker 1: you know, that grew at at that festival. Yeah, you
24:25
Speaker 1: can't complain about inadequate water and food supplies when you
24:29
Speaker 1: have crashed a free concert. Very good point. Although people
24:32
Speaker 1: would do that today, but they didn't Beck then for sure.
24:35
Speaker 1: So after they announced it, though, Chuck, they were like,
24:40
Speaker 1: it went from like a pretty big concert. Remember they
24:42
Speaker 1: were expecting a couple of hundred thousand, which is huge,
24:45
Speaker 1: to at least double that because words spread really quickly
24:50
Speaker 1: and people just started coming from all of those cities
24:53
Speaker 1: within a seven hour drive, and people were driving there.
24:56
Speaker 1: That's really the only way to get there aside from
24:58
Speaker 1: a helicopter, and very few hippies at the time had helicopters,
25:01
Speaker 1: just that they could fly themselves. So everybody was driving
25:04
Speaker 1: their car, probably ten hippies to a car, and those
25:07
Speaker 1: cars started to pile up, not like on top of
25:10
Speaker 1: one another, but right around one another, and people just
25:13
Speaker 1: started realizing, like, we're not going to go any further.
25:17
Speaker 1: This is the this is the where the line to
25:19
Speaker 1: get in begins. Is where our car is now. So
25:22
Speaker 1: everybody just left their cars and started walking miles in
25:26
Speaker 1: some cases to the farm to where the stage was
25:31
Speaker 1: that and that. They were like, oh, we'll come get
25:33
Speaker 1: our car in a couple of days. Yeah, absolutely, that's
25:35
Speaker 1: the right thing to do. They could hear Richie Havens
25:38
Speaker 1: in the distance. They're like, screw this, I'm walking. Yeah.
25:42
Speaker 1: They ran out of by the time Saturday rolls around,
25:44
Speaker 1: they had run out of food, they had run out
25:47
Speaker 1: of medical supplies, the whole you know, all the towns
25:52
Speaker 1: around really chipped in, the National Guard, the US Army,
25:55
Speaker 1: people donated food, they donated eggs and water, and max
26:00
Speaker 1: Yasger donated milk and yogurt, and the local townspeople made
26:04
Speaker 1: sandwiches to send along in ten thousand of them. Yeah,
26:07
Speaker 1: like everyone really chipped in to make sure that something
26:13
Speaker 1: bad didn't happen, and to their credit, like nothing really
26:17
Speaker 1: bad did happen. No. I mean, can you imagine half
26:21
Speaker 1: a million people all getting angry at the same time.
26:25
Speaker 1: That would be bad. And there was another group that
26:28
Speaker 1: chipped into, the Hog Farm. Here comes your buddy. I'm
26:31
Speaker 1: so excited. So the Hog Farm was a hippie commune.
26:34
Speaker 1: I don't remember what state it was, and I think
26:37
Speaker 1: maybe Arizona, but they had established themselves as really great
26:44
Speaker 1: at providing security and services at music festivals, hippie music festivals.
26:49
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why they were so good
26:51
Speaker 1: at it was because they were led by none other
26:53
Speaker 1: than possibly the greatest hippie of all time, Wavy Gravy.
26:57
Speaker 1: That was his group was the Hog Farm. And I
27:00
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, I did not see him coming, and
27:01
Speaker 1: when I saw him, I was awesome and I have
27:04
Speaker 1: even more love for him now. I just liked him
27:06
Speaker 1: before because of his name, but it turns out he
27:08
Speaker 1: was a pretty awesome dude. It's great. Yeah. So the
27:11
Speaker 1: Hog Farm, when they were providing security services at festivals,
27:15
Speaker 1: they called themselves the police force, and I think it
27:18
Speaker 1: has a kind of a double meaning, like they're pleasing
27:21
Speaker 1: the people that they're having to deal with, but at
27:23
Speaker 1: the same time, they were exceedingly polite their method. When
27:26
Speaker 1: there was a problem or there's a static or something
27:28
Speaker 1: like that, they would intervene, but they wouldn't physically intervene.
27:32
Speaker 1: They would just kind of come up and be like, hey,
27:33
Speaker 1: let's move on over this way. And they were very
27:36
Speaker 1: polite in breaking up problems, preventing like contagions from spreading
27:42
Speaker 1: throughout the crowd by just completely de escalating whatever whatever
27:48
Speaker 1: was going on, whether it was maybe a fight that
27:51
Speaker 1: was about to break out, to somebody who was on
27:53
Speaker 1: a bad trip because they took too much brown acid. Yeah,
27:56
Speaker 1: and there there was a sort of um, you scratch
28:01
Speaker 1: my back, I'll scratch your back ethos to the whole thing.
28:04
Speaker 1: So if you had it we're having a bad trip,
28:06
Speaker 1: and someone helped you out from the Hog Farm and
28:09
Speaker 1: talked you through this experience, then they were like, all right,
28:12
Speaker 1: now you go help someone out. Or if we helped
28:16
Speaker 1: feed you, why don't you help feed and like kind
28:18
Speaker 1: of take a shift. And so the crowd, you know,
28:22
Speaker 1: responded and kind and that's what kept it. I think
28:25
Speaker 1: Ed says like, not a single fight broke out. I'm
28:27
Speaker 1: sure that probably wasn't true, but there's some people who
28:29
Speaker 1: swear that. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm cynical, but
28:36
Speaker 1: I don't know. People you can have your eyeballs on
28:39
Speaker 1: everything all at once. No, for sure, I'm with you,
28:41
Speaker 1: but it's one of those that's a part of the
28:43
Speaker 1: myth that I'm happy to just keep going. Okay, not
28:45
Speaker 1: not a single fight broke out, not one. It's documented fact.
28:51
Speaker 1: And you mentioned the brown acid. That was a very
28:54
Speaker 1: sort of legendary announcement made by a guy, believe it
28:58
Speaker 1: or not, whose name was his real name Chipmunk. Well
29:01
Speaker 1: that was his nickname, was Chip. Well, I know, but
29:04
Speaker 1: that was his name, like, well that's what people call him. Sure,
29:09
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is it wasn't like his name was Chipmunk.
29:12
Speaker 1: I'm not saying his parents named him that. But do
29:14
Speaker 1: you know his real name? I think it was Edward,
29:17
Speaker 1: but his last name was m O n c K.
29:19
Speaker 1: And people just called him Chip. I'm pretty sure he
29:21
Speaker 1: had four names, and I'm pretty sure the first one
29:23
Speaker 1: was Edward Edward Monk, whist way way less cool than Chipmunk. Uh.
29:30
Speaker 1: Like I said, his name was Chipmunk, which is very fun.
29:33
Speaker 1: Despite you trying to kill that fun, I'm sorry. And
29:37
Speaker 1: he was the de facto MC. He was the lighting designer.
29:40
Speaker 1: He ended up winning like Tony Awards and stuff and
29:44
Speaker 1: came up with the lighting system and one of the
29:48
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which of the com producers said it,
29:51
Speaker 1: but one of them said, Hey, we don't have anyone
29:54
Speaker 1: to do this job, so you're gonna m see this
29:56
Speaker 1: thing if you will. So. Throughout the Woodstock documentary, which
30:01
Speaker 1: was released in March of nineteen seventy from director Michael Wadley,
30:05
Speaker 1: Great great documentary, When the Academy Award, there are many
30:09
Speaker 1: announcements from Chipmunk that are very He just had this
30:14
Speaker 1: sort of droll like. He wasn't a professional MC, he
30:19
Speaker 1: wasn't like ladies. He wasn't Michael Buffer out there. But
30:23
Speaker 1: his very famous don't take the brown acid announcement is
30:26
Speaker 1: really funny. You know, he said, take it, take it
30:30
Speaker 1: with however many grains of salt you wish, but we
30:34
Speaker 1: suggest that you stay away from that the brown acid.
30:36
Speaker 1: Of course, it's your own trip, so be my guest,
30:38
Speaker 1: but please be advised there is a warning on that one. Yeah,
30:42
Speaker 1: and like that definitely helps set the tone too. Like
30:44
Speaker 1: everything was calm, including when he was like, there's a
30:46
Speaker 1: lightning storm coming and we're all in the middle of
30:48
Speaker 1: a field. So if you're on one of those lightning
30:51
Speaker 1: rigs watching the show, please come down kind of thing,
30:54
Speaker 1: or we're out of food. There's a lot of stuff
30:56
Speaker 1: that really could have gone differently if he hadn't been
31:00
Speaker 1: the cool dude that he was very calm and collected,
31:03
Speaker 1: which is that it's just another little fortuitous thing, you
31:07
Speaker 1: know that that just happened. Everything kind of came together.
31:11
Speaker 1: There's one other thing I wanted to mention. You said,
31:12
Speaker 1: everybody's kind of coming together and you scratch my backall
31:15
Speaker 1: scratchers kind of thing. There was a ton of volunteerism
31:18
Speaker 1: there where a lot of the people who were attending
31:22
Speaker 1: it also ended up volunteering for all sorts of different stuff.
31:25
Speaker 1: And one of the things that was really important was
31:28
Speaker 1: they had planned the medical staff to cover two hundred
31:31
Speaker 1: thousand people, and they now had double that, and like
31:34
Speaker 1: the guy who was like the chief physician for the
31:38
Speaker 1: whole thing was really worried. And so as word kind
31:43
Speaker 1: of spread that, like they didn't have that many people
31:46
Speaker 1: to take care of everyone, and the roads were impassable,
31:50
Speaker 1: so the best you could hope for it was an
31:52
Speaker 1: airlift via helicopter. People who were mds and r ns
31:56
Speaker 1: who were there to see the show ended up coming
31:58
Speaker 1: and volunteering with the medical staff and just to pitch in.
32:02
Speaker 1: It was just that kind of that kind of spirit.
32:05
Speaker 1: I just love those little stories and there's a million
32:07
Speaker 1: of them in this uh, in this um, around this festival.
32:11
Speaker 1: How about that at this concert? Sure? Uh you mentioned
32:15
Speaker 1: the rain storm. The rain came through Sunday and it
32:18
Speaker 1: did thin the crowd a little bit. A lot of
32:20
Speaker 1: people by that point we're like, all right, this is
32:22
Speaker 1: sort of the last straw. We've had our fun. We
32:25
Speaker 1: saw Richie Havens, we saw Sean on Ah. I wouldn't
32:30
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a minute, but maybe we
32:33
Speaker 1: should go home. So the crowd into a little bit,
32:35
Speaker 1: but a lot of people stayed. And that's when you know.
32:38
Speaker 1: If you've seen the famous footage of of naked hippies
32:41
Speaker 1: taking mud bats. That was from Sunday on and a
32:46
Speaker 1: lot of them stayed and that that acid was still
32:49
Speaker 1: going strong, and who needs clothes at that point, right,
32:53
Speaker 1: I can imagine sure square yeah right, so um so yeah,
32:58
Speaker 1: that was a big deal too. But he just kind
33:00
Speaker 1: of ran with that with the rain and everything. But
33:03
Speaker 1: as all this going on, there's food that they've run
33:06
Speaker 1: out of and that's now being trucked in. Seven hundred
33:09
Speaker 1: and ninety seven bad trips that were bad enough to
33:11
Speaker 1: go seek attention at the medical that's all, yeah, astoundingly
33:16
Speaker 1: and only I think thirty I read a Journal of
33:18
Speaker 1: Emergency Medical Services article that I found linked to from
33:24
Speaker 1: a Grunge article on woodstock, and it was basically a
33:28
Speaker 1: rundown of that. They said, seven ninety seven and only
33:31
Speaker 1: I think twenty or thirty of them couldn't be talked
33:34
Speaker 1: down and had to be injected with valium. That was there.
33:37
Speaker 1: That was the final, the final countdown, because they would
33:41
Speaker 1: if you just wouldn't stop raving about how nuts you were,
33:44
Speaker 1: right then they would shoot you up with valium. Interesting, yeah,
33:48
Speaker 1: so right, while all this is going on, everybody's like
33:52
Speaker 1: having just a great time. There's plenty of bands playing.
33:55
Speaker 1: We haven't really talked too much about the bands. There
33:59
Speaker 1: were a ton of people that played, everybody from Janis
34:01
Speaker 1: Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to Melanie. Never heard of her before,
34:06
Speaker 1: but she was one of the folk singers that played
34:07
Speaker 1: on Friday. There's just a ton of different people. He
34:11
Speaker 1: did that song in Boogie Knights, Paly Boogie Knights, No
34:17
Speaker 1: the one. Uh I got a brand new bearer, Rolskap.
34:21
Speaker 1: Oh sure, sure, yeah, I think that was Melanie. Yeah, okay, cool, Yeah,
34:25
Speaker 1: love Melanie. I love that song at least. But there's
34:28
Speaker 1: just a bunch of different people and all, you know,
34:30
Speaker 1: I don't want to say all of them did really well,
34:33
Speaker 1: that's just not true. Some of them did terribly and
34:36
Speaker 1: some of them turned in some, you know, good enough performances,
34:40
Speaker 1: but some had like some real breakout performances too. Yeah.
34:44
Speaker 1: I mean, Richie Havens was one of them. He opened
34:46
Speaker 1: the show. If you've never seen Richie Havens before or
34:50
Speaker 1: heard him, just go watch the Woodstock performance. It is
34:54
Speaker 1: a it is a lesson in like soulful performance. He
35:00
Speaker 1: he I don't think it was supposed to open the show,
35:02
Speaker 1: but he was the only one there. And they didn't
35:04
Speaker 1: have other people to follow him, so they just said
35:07
Speaker 1: keep playing. In his memory, he played for like over
35:10
Speaker 1: two hours, but I think it was really about an
35:13
Speaker 1: hour or so. But he kind of set a tone
35:17
Speaker 1: and again, like he said, this just serendipitous experience, one
35:21
Speaker 1: after the other. I think Richie Haven's opening that show. Really,
35:25
Speaker 1: I don't know who was supposed to open. I don't
35:27
Speaker 1: I never saw either. I just saw that he was
35:29
Speaker 1: not expecting to and they're like, you're literally the only
35:32
Speaker 1: performer here, can you please open the show? So yeah,
35:35
Speaker 1: he did what he could and he just kept playing
35:37
Speaker 1: until somebody else showed up. I'm not sure who came
35:39
Speaker 1: on after him, but he really Yeah, he put that
35:44
Speaker 1: first tent Pagan and it was a yeah, it was
35:46
Speaker 1: a doozy. Joan Bayaz was another. They made a conscious
35:50
Speaker 1: choices organizers of the event to not and it was
35:54
Speaker 1: of course it was going to be political with the
35:56
Speaker 1: hippie contingent and Vietnam and everything, but they didn't politicians
36:00
Speaker 1: to speak or have a political tents set up, which
36:04
Speaker 1: is something that you would have it like a lot
36:05
Speaker 1: of these festivals. Yes, but Joan Baiez of course is
36:09
Speaker 1: going to bring bring the the awareness no matter where
36:13
Speaker 1: she just she uses awareness everywhere she goes. Right, so
36:16
Speaker 1: did Richie Havens too. For sure. I think probably almost
36:19
Speaker 1: everybody on Friday was had some sort of anti war,
36:23
Speaker 1: anti draft message going, you know. Yeah, a lot of
36:25
Speaker 1: folky stuff on Friday. Um, like you said, Santana, Um,
36:29
Speaker 1: this wasn't his first show obviously, but this was this
36:33
Speaker 1: This show came out before his first album ever was released, right, yeah,
36:38
Speaker 1: and he he says that he took some mescaline that
36:42
Speaker 1: Jerry Garcia from The Grateful Dead had given him because acid.
36:46
Speaker 1: Yeah was it acid? Yeah, I've seen both for sure.
36:49
Speaker 1: I'll watched an interview with him today. Oh he said
36:51
Speaker 1: acid Okay cool? Yeah, so and that makes a little
36:54
Speaker 1: more sense too. But anyway, Jerry Garcia dosed Carlos Santana
36:57
Speaker 1: with Carlos Santana's a willingness before the show because Santana
37:02
Speaker 1: thought he had like plenty of hours before he needed
37:06
Speaker 1: to go on, so he's like, sure, I'll just trip
37:07
Speaker 1: first and then go on afterward. And just like everyone
37:11
Speaker 1: else at Woodstock, he was shoved out on stage long
37:14
Speaker 1: before he had planned to go out there or else
37:17
Speaker 1: everyone else went on way after the time that they
37:20
Speaker 1: had planned out. Their schedule just went out the window exactly.
37:23
Speaker 1: So he ended up going and playing his show while
37:26
Speaker 1: he was peeking, and he turned into really great performance.
37:30
Speaker 1: It was great. I mean he you know, you can
37:32
Speaker 1: see interviews with him, like of old Carlos Santana talking
37:36
Speaker 1: about his experience and talking about how the neck was
37:40
Speaker 1: like moving in his in his hands like a snake,
37:42
Speaker 1: and he just he said, I kept saying to myself
37:45
Speaker 1: like slow down, man, slow down, And but then he's like,
37:47
Speaker 1: or am I playing you know, the perfect speed? And
37:50
Speaker 1: you could see the rest of it. And I think
37:51
Speaker 1: the rest of the group was on acid too, and
37:53
Speaker 1: they were just they were crushing it. It was amazing. Yeah,
37:56
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Who's the picture? Doc? Who's oh, doc Ellis?
38:01
Speaker 1: Doc ellis? Yeah? Yeah, who did not crush it? Um?
38:05
Speaker 1: According to their fans, and this is who knows. I'm
38:08
Speaker 1: sure there's some Dead fans that love this performance, but
38:11
Speaker 1: I think it's widely known within the Dead community that
38:13
Speaker 1: the Woodstock performance by the Grateful Dead was not their best.
38:18
Speaker 1: Don't know what that means, Oh, oh it was. It
38:22
Speaker 1: was like for the Grateful Dead, it was terribly loose.
38:28
Speaker 1: They played a fifty minute version of love Light. Lovelight
38:32
Speaker 1: is such a terrible song anyway, And one of the
38:35
Speaker 1: big problems with The Grateful Dead is that they always
38:37
Speaker 1: extended that stupid song way too long. A fifty minute
38:42
Speaker 1: version of love Light. Right, I don't know about any
38:45
Speaker 1: of this. So there's, um, there's ten I beseech you
38:48
Speaker 1: to go just listen to a regular love Light and
38:50
Speaker 1: then imagine fifty minutes of um and then uh, and
38:55
Speaker 1: apparently there's ten minutes of them just basically standing around
38:58
Speaker 1: talking in the middle of that fifty minute Lovelight. It
39:01
Speaker 1: was just really it was bad. It was not a good,
39:04
Speaker 1: good performance. And in their defense, um, they're a rainstorm
39:08
Speaker 1: had just blown through and the stage was hot electrically speaking. Yeah, yeah,
39:14
Speaker 1: that was part of it. I don't think that was
39:16
Speaker 1: all of it. So I think what I'm reading for
39:20
Speaker 1: you is what could have been a ninety second fix
39:23
Speaker 1: ended up being ten minutes basically. Yeah, And I think
39:27
Speaker 1: that I have the impression that they like that they
39:29
Speaker 1: were playing love Light still while they were standing around
39:32
Speaker 1: talking to one another too. It wasn't stop. Yeah, And
39:36
Speaker 1: I saw the set list and it looked like it
39:38
Speaker 1: had had them. It was possible, it could have been
39:42
Speaker 1: something really great. But I get the impression that they
39:44
Speaker 1: just weren't weren't in the right mindset right then. I
39:47
Speaker 1: always forget that. You you had a little Dead spell.
39:51
Speaker 1: Yeah you, I mean you never like followed him around
39:56
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Did you know they were gone?
39:59
Speaker 1: I remember remember I had a chance to see their
40:01
Speaker 1: last show at the Omni. One of my friends had
40:03
Speaker 1: just gotten into him. It was like, dude, you gotta go,
40:05
Speaker 1: come on, let's go. And I was like, I'll just
40:08
Speaker 1: catch him next time. That was the famous thing of mine.
40:10
Speaker 1: And they did that with Stevie ray Vaughan to Lloyd
40:14
Speaker 1: Um a lot of people. Yeah. I was just like,
40:16
Speaker 1: I'll just catch him next time. So I've learned now
40:19
Speaker 1: to just be like, Okay, yeah, let's go. That's why
40:21
Speaker 1: you you will travel to go see air supply man?
40:24
Speaker 1: That so not gonna take that chance. No way they
40:28
Speaker 1: might run out of air. No, they have a full supply. Okay. Um.
40:34
Speaker 1: So the Dead's performance is supposedly not so great. Uh
40:37
Speaker 1: CCR did play and apparently he's a really good set.
40:40
Speaker 1: But John Fogerty, he's a pretty cranky guy, or at
40:43
Speaker 1: least was back then, and I think he kept shouting
40:46
Speaker 1: out that they were the second biggest band in the world.
40:48
Speaker 1: No one believed him. Everyone said CCR really all right,
40:53
Speaker 1: and he would not release or he wouldn't sign the
40:58
Speaker 1: release to um make it into the Woodstock film. And
41:02
Speaker 1: the Dead was not in the Woodstock film. I don't
41:04
Speaker 1: think either, right. No, the lighting was not good for
41:08
Speaker 1: some reason. I guess because of the lightning and rain
41:12
Speaker 1: that had just blown through. I'm not sure why, but yeah,
41:14
Speaker 1: I saw that it was so bad that they couldn't
41:15
Speaker 1: use the footage. Yeah, so a lot of people who
41:18
Speaker 1: are familiar with Woodstock through the film may be surprised
41:22
Speaker 1: that CCR and the Grateful Dead performed or cranky Neil
41:26
Speaker 1: Young who Crosby Seals, Nash and Young very famously played
41:30
Speaker 1: their second ever show together. They played one show the
41:33
Speaker 1: night before in Chicago, and this was show number two,
41:35
Speaker 1: and Neil Young didn't want to sign the release for
41:38
Speaker 1: the film, so I guess they just cut around him. Yeah,
41:41
Speaker 1: be my guests. I have a little brief Dead anecdote
41:46
Speaker 1: from recently. Actually, if you want to hear it, should
41:49
Speaker 1: we take a break and hear it right after No,
41:51
Speaker 1: I think it's a pre break and okay, all right,
41:54
Speaker 1: let's hear it. So I actually downloaded a Dick's Picks
41:58
Speaker 1: like where it's a live show. I think one of
42:00
Speaker 1: their soundboard guys like picked over the years, and it
42:03
Speaker 1: was like, this one's so good, we're gonna release it
42:05
Speaker 1: as an album. Okay. So anyway, I downloaded it from
42:07
Speaker 1: iTunes and um, I was I went to go listen
42:11
Speaker 1: to it, and I was about to press play, and
42:13
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't really want to listen to
42:16
Speaker 1: the Grateful debt again, but I do want my money back.
42:19
Speaker 1: So I went to the whole trouble of contacting Apple
42:22
Speaker 1: to ask for a refund on it, and it said
42:24
Speaker 1: why And I really wanted to make sure that they
42:27
Speaker 1: gave me my money back, so I said, my friend
42:30
Speaker 1: told me this is a drug band and I don't
42:31
Speaker 1: want to hear that. Oh my god, And they gave
42:34
Speaker 1: me my money back. What year was this? Like this year?
42:40
Speaker 1: He's serious, Yeah, it was just a few months ago.
42:43
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah. Thanks, I'm sorry. I'll let you know
42:46
Speaker 1: that they're a drug band. I'm sorry I ruined that
42:48
Speaker 1: for you. No, I can take a break. All right, boy,
42:52
Speaker 1: that was great. I'm gonna ruminate out on that. We'll
42:54
Speaker 1: be right back. We should mention the Who. Probably they
43:20
Speaker 1: were one of the bigger bands, but like you said,
43:23
Speaker 1: this vaulted them from theaters to arenas after that movie
43:28
Speaker 1: came out. But Who were kind of cranky there because
43:32
Speaker 1: there was no green room. They were used to better treatment.
43:35
Speaker 1: The monitors were crap, apparently, even though supposedly the sound
43:40
Speaker 1: system is designed by a man named Bill Hanley, was
43:42
Speaker 1: was great, but the onstage monitors weren't good. So what
43:46
Speaker 1: Roger Daltrey couldn't hear himself and he feels like he
43:49
Speaker 1: was off key, and so they were just like not
43:51
Speaker 1: having it. I think Keith Moon and John ent was
43:54
Speaker 1: Sold purposefully took LSD in a station wagon with some girls,
43:58
Speaker 1: but Daltry and Townsend accidentally took LSD. Townsend from coffee
44:05
Speaker 1: and Roger Daltrey from some tea that was spiked right,
44:09
Speaker 1: So by the time they got up there, they were
44:10
Speaker 1: not happy. They were pushed to like a five am
44:13
Speaker 1: slot and when Abbie Hoffman jumps up on stage to
44:18
Speaker 1: you know, God bless Abbie Hoffman. But admittedly it was
44:21
Speaker 1: quite a buzz kill when you hear the audio from
44:24
Speaker 1: this to interrupt a WHO show to talk about freeing
44:27
Speaker 1: his friend and activist John Sinclair for cannabis possession, Pete
44:32
Speaker 1: Townsend wasn't having it, and he moved him forcibly out
44:35
Speaker 1: of the way with his guitar very famously. Yeah, supposedly
44:40
Speaker 1: injured Abbie Hoffman. But Roger Daltrey's like NOAA didn't happen,
44:45
Speaker 1: and so did Pete Townsend. But I've loved it. They
44:47
Speaker 1: were surly, yeah, kind of which which was not how
44:50
Speaker 1: most of the other bands were. But I can't really
44:52
Speaker 1: blame him. You said that there was no green room
44:54
Speaker 1: and they had to wait backstage. I read that they
44:56
Speaker 1: had to wait backstage for fourteen hours. Yeah, it was
44:59
Speaker 1: a drag. Anybody would be surly at that point, you know.
45:02
Speaker 1: But they had a really cool thing that happened, just
45:04
Speaker 1: kind of serendipitously. Their set got pushed so far back
45:08
Speaker 1: that they were playing the end of it as the
45:10
Speaker 1: sun was rising, and it's really neat in the documentary
45:13
Speaker 1: to see that, you know, that's true. Yeah, so they
45:16
Speaker 1: lucked out. I mentioned Shanna Nah. Yeah, it's if you've
45:21
Speaker 1: ever seen that Woodstock movie. One of the great performances
45:23
Speaker 1: is from the fifties throwback du wop group that became
45:28
Speaker 1: famous for their TV show in the seventies. But you
45:32
Speaker 1: would think it would be antithetical to these hippie dippy
45:35
Speaker 1: late sixties kids out there, But it was that perfect,
45:40
Speaker 1: like nostalgia bomb for them, like this is the music
45:43
Speaker 1: they either heard when they were kids or their parents music,
45:46
Speaker 1: and they it was a lot of fun. Yeah, and
45:51
Speaker 1: Shana and I was like they were a club act
45:54
Speaker 1: and they ended up becoming like Shanna Nah because of
45:57
Speaker 1: that Woodstock appearance. But you said that it was nostalgia. Um,
46:00
Speaker 1: I guess the Cornfeld and Lang tried to get Roy
46:04
Speaker 1: Rogers to sign on to Yeah, he was gonna do
46:08
Speaker 1: he was gonna be the last act and just play
46:10
Speaker 1: Happy Trails and the whole thing. And Roy Rogers was like,
46:13
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that, Get off my lawn. So he
46:17
Speaker 1: got Van Halen to sing happy Trails. Oh yeah, I forgot.
46:20
Speaker 1: They sang that David Lee Roth is cool. That's the
46:25
Speaker 1: poll quote. Can we make that our little Instagram things? Sure?
46:29
Speaker 1: And then of course Jimmy Hendrix. We would be remiss
46:31
Speaker 1: not to mention the Monday morning. Most people are gone.
46:36
Speaker 1: Performance by the Band of Gypsies, like not just Monday morning,
46:39
Speaker 1: took Monday morning commute time. Yeah, like the last time
46:45
Speaker 1: for an acid fueled rock concert. Yeah. And that then
46:49
Speaker 1: that's where you get the very famous Star Spangled Banner performance.
46:52
Speaker 1: And the reason why he played that is because it
46:54
Speaker 1: was in his contract that he performed last, and that
46:56
Speaker 1: all those delays just bumped him to Monday morning. And
46:59
Speaker 1: what's cool, so many people had cleared out that if
47:02
Speaker 1: you see pictures of him playing I'm not sure if
47:04
Speaker 1: it's in the documentary or not, people are just hanging
47:06
Speaker 1: around like the stage, like fans are just right like
47:09
Speaker 1: hanging on the speakers and sitting around watching him like
47:12
Speaker 1: that closely. It just became that loose. Yeah. It was
47:15
Speaker 1: sort of the effect of like, I don't know if
47:17
Speaker 1: you've ever worked in restaurants, but when you put on
47:21
Speaker 1: your music after the restaurant is clothes and everyone's kind
47:24
Speaker 1: of milling about, drinking and like cleaning up. That was
47:27
Speaker 1: Jimmy Andricks in the Band of Gypsies. It's crazy. It
47:30
Speaker 1: is crazy. So the Lang Cornfeld, Roberts and Rosenman apparently
47:37
Speaker 1: Lange Cornfield were like, guys, we need more money, more money,
47:40
Speaker 1: more money, like a bunch of times, and Roberts and
47:42
Speaker 1: Roseman actually went back to their families and we're like,
47:45
Speaker 1: this is a sure thing, just give us some more money.
47:47
Speaker 1: And they ended up sinking one point eight million into
47:50
Speaker 1: the whole thing, which I saw was about seventeen million
47:53
Speaker 1: dollars in today's money, which is still not bad considering
47:56
Speaker 1: a concert with half a million people. Yeah, but but
48:00
Speaker 1: they they were almost almost entirely in the red for that, Like,
48:07
Speaker 1: they made basically no money whatsoever. They just lost at
48:10
Speaker 1: one point eight million dollars and they owed it to
48:13
Speaker 1: Roberts and Rosenman and their families. And apparently Langon Cornfeld
48:17
Speaker 1: finally paid off the debt in the early eighties, and
48:20
Speaker 1: it was largely because of the documentary movie and the
48:24
Speaker 1: album that was released. Yeah, the documentary made a lot
48:28
Speaker 1: of money, like thirty million plus, and I think that
48:31
Speaker 1: doesn't even count you know, home video and streaming releases
48:35
Speaker 1: and stuff like that since But like I said, Michael
48:38
Speaker 1: Wilde won the Academy Award for that, and a very
48:42
Speaker 1: young Marty Scorsese was I think one of seven editors,
48:47
Speaker 1: and I think he was there shooting as well, if
48:49
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, and his legendary film manager the almost
48:54
Speaker 1: Schunemacher or is it I don't know if it's Schoonmacher
48:57
Speaker 1: Schunemacher both, Okay, one of the all time great film editors.
49:02
Speaker 1: She was one of them as well. And that movie
49:06
Speaker 1: boosted a lot of careers for people that ended up
49:10
Speaker 1: and I think ended up in the film. And I
49:12
Speaker 1: think a lot of people who didn't sign over their
49:16
Speaker 1: rights or refused to have their footage us probably ended
49:20
Speaker 1: up regretting that. Yep. And there's nothing sweeter than thinking
49:24
Speaker 1: of Neil Young regretting one of his surly decisions. You know, No,
49:28
Speaker 1: I love Neil Young in his surliness. So one thing
49:31
Speaker 1: that came out of Woodstock was that it became a
49:35
Speaker 1: bit of a brand, as seen in like some revivals
49:38
Speaker 1: that were made for attempts. I think there was Woodstock
49:42
Speaker 1: ninety four, there's definitely Woodstock ninety nine, and then there's
49:47
Speaker 1: going to be a Woodstock fifty in twenty nineteen, but
49:50
Speaker 1: it got scuttled right because of the disaster of the
49:53
Speaker 1: last Woodstock I think, yes. But there's one thing I
49:56
Speaker 1: want to say. We talked a lot about people pitching in,
49:58
Speaker 1: volunteering all that stuff. On Monday morning, after Jimmy Hendrix
50:03
Speaker 1: finished playing, almost everybody laughed, but about eight thousand participants, fans,
50:09
Speaker 1: people who came to Woodstock. They stayed behind to help
50:13
Speaker 1: clean up, and this place was trashed yea when they started,
50:18
Speaker 1: And apparently they did such a good job that archaeologists
50:23
Speaker 1: who excavate the site are routinely frustrated at finding basically nothing.
50:28
Speaker 1: Because the eight thousand volunteers who stayed behind to clean
50:30
Speaker 1: up did such a good job at it. That's pretty great,
50:35
Speaker 1: you know, no disasters. I think there were two deaths,
50:38
Speaker 1: and it seems like neither one were because of the thing.
50:44
Speaker 1: I think the one reported overdose was later found or
50:48
Speaker 1: believed not to be an overdose and was a heart thing. Yeah.
50:51
Speaker 1: The other one was very sad too. Well. Yeah, that
50:54
Speaker 1: was a straight up tragedy. The kid was sleep asleep
50:57
Speaker 1: in the field and don't run over by a tractor. Yeah,
51:00
Speaker 1: Raymond me Zach. There was no alcohol or drugs found
51:02
Speaker 1: in his system either. He was there with his older
51:04
Speaker 1: sister who probably still feels guilty about it. The other
51:08
Speaker 1: guy who died was Richard Biler and it's like, man,
51:10
Speaker 1: that's that's a real bummer. Still not bad for half
51:13
Speaker 1: a million people. And I saw it compared to um Buffalo,
51:17
Speaker 1: New York, which at the time had a population of
51:19
Speaker 1: about the same as the number of people who came
51:22
Speaker 1: to the Woodstock festival. And over that same weekend, that
51:24
Speaker 1: same period of time, Buffalo New York registered forty deaths.
51:29
Speaker 1: There are only two at Woodstock. And I can tell
51:31
Speaker 1: you Buffalo New York wasn't entirely on acid over that
51:35
Speaker 1: weekend either. Well, but there were a lot of olds.
51:37
Speaker 1: If you fact you're an age, sure that's true. Wait no, yeah,
51:41
Speaker 1: that excuse it the other way. Still, I know it's
51:44
Speaker 1: a wash. There was always the rumors of the Woodstock
51:49
Speaker 1: baby too, and in fact, at one point in my
51:53
Speaker 1: life I thought that would have been a fun movie
51:56
Speaker 1: to write, and I think I worked on it for
51:57
Speaker 1: a little while. Someone that finds out that there were
51:59
Speaker 1: the wood Stock baby, But there was not a baby born,
52:04
Speaker 1: you know, in the crowd at wood Stock, like the
52:07
Speaker 1: legend has it. I think someone was airlifted and had
52:11
Speaker 1: a baby and then one was in a car maybe yes,
52:15
Speaker 1: on the way there. Yeah, So no, no, true, would
52:18
Speaker 1: Stock baby but that still would be a good movie.
52:20
Speaker 1: I think. So what, um, what did the protagonists in
52:24
Speaker 1: your script feel like? Was there like they had problems
52:27
Speaker 1: with being the woodstock baby or well, yeah, I mean
52:30
Speaker 1: I think the obvious thing to do was make them
52:33
Speaker 1: like a like Alex P. Keaton type and Alex P.
52:36
Speaker 1: Keaton type, and then what he turns into like a
52:40
Speaker 1: mole at the end they find free love in the end.
52:43
Speaker 1: Of course, you could write that thing. It writes itself,
52:45
Speaker 1: Martin Mole's the quintessential hippie. That's right, as was Maxie
52:50
Speaker 1: asger Um, which is not true. He did not get
52:53
Speaker 1: flipped to movie style into being a hippie, but he
52:56
Speaker 1: did get sued by his neighbor, at least one neighbor.
53:00
Speaker 1: I think the organizers and the guys who funded the
53:02
Speaker 1: thing ended up suing one another. There were various lawsuits
53:05
Speaker 1: over the years, but max Yasker ended up selling his farm,
53:10
Speaker 1: moving to Florida and died there like a year after
53:14
Speaker 1: he moved. But he addressed the crowd at one point,
53:19
Speaker 1: and it's really a really great clip. This kind of
53:23
Speaker 1: conservative farm guy got up in front of four hundred
53:27
Speaker 1: thousand people plus and said, wait, wait, can you do
53:30
Speaker 1: it as Eugene Levy? No, but he said, you know,
53:34
Speaker 1: he said, I'm not used to addressing twenty people, much
53:37
Speaker 1: less this MANI And it's about a minute and a half.
53:41
Speaker 1: But the one takeaway is he said, I think you
53:44
Speaker 1: people have proven something to the world. The important thing
53:47
Speaker 1: that you prove into the world is at a half
53:48
Speaker 1: a million kids can get together and have three days
53:51
Speaker 1: of fun in music and have nothing but fun in music,
53:55
Speaker 1: and I God, bless you for it. Very nice, pretty
53:59
Speaker 1: good stuff, and happy trails to you, he said. I
54:02
Speaker 1: hear not one fight broke out. His name is is
54:06
Speaker 1: just a nickname. Look, I'm just glad we get if
54:09
Speaker 1: we didn't get into another argument like we did in
54:11
Speaker 1: the what was the episode we did and we're like, oh,
54:14
Speaker 1: I don't know. Recently, yeah, yeah, remember I was like
54:18
Speaker 1: saying something. You're like, yes, I'm saying the same thing,
54:20
Speaker 1: and oh oh yeah, what was that that was really
54:22
Speaker 1: recently that made not even be released yet? No, I
54:25
Speaker 1: don't think it has Okay, that was a fun one.
54:29
Speaker 1: All right, Well you got anything else about Woodstock Man,
54:32
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Good one that I mean. It's
54:34
Speaker 1: the briefest of overviews for such a big topic, but
54:37
Speaker 1: I think I think it was pretty good. I agreed.
54:39
Speaker 1: Since Chuck thinks this episode was pretty good everybody, That means,
54:42
Speaker 1: of course it's time for a listener mail. This was
54:47
Speaker 1: just something I thought was great. Hey, Josh and Chuck.
54:50
Speaker 1: I recently introduced Stuff you should Know to my seven
54:52
Speaker 1: year old son John. He loves you, guys, as even
54:55
Speaker 1: adopted some of your phrases, regularly telling me not to
54:58
Speaker 1: yuck as he hum. A few weeks ago, during some
55:01
Speaker 1: of your somewhat off topic banter, he asked me if
55:04
Speaker 1: you guys were married, and I said no, you know,
55:08
Speaker 1: they talk about their wives all the time, and he
55:10
Speaker 1: paused and looked confused. Then he said no, I meant
55:14
Speaker 1: to each other and he said I laughed and said no.
55:17
Speaker 1: And the next morning, while listening to the show, he said, Daddy,
55:21
Speaker 1: are you sure those guys aren't married? And he is
55:23
Speaker 1: convinced it because you guys get along so well, you
55:26
Speaker 1: must be married to each other. That means Tom and
55:30
Speaker 1: his wife must have a good marriage. Sure. Now, he
55:33
Speaker 1: asked me that every time we listen, which is funny,
55:36
Speaker 1: So keep up the good work. We love with the
55:39
Speaker 1: content of the show and you're on air chemistry even
55:42
Speaker 1: if you weren't married to each other. And that is
55:44
Speaker 1: Tom from Baltimore and his seven year old son John. So,
55:49
Speaker 1: hey John, we're not married John. If I were gay,
55:54
Speaker 1: you could do a lot worse, thanks man, And I would.
55:58
Speaker 1: I often think about having your beard rub against my
56:01
Speaker 1: chin once in a wile you like, I prefer my
56:03
Speaker 1: guys a little more fit, but no, I like something
56:07
Speaker 1: to really kind of grab onto and I'm hugging and kids.
56:10
Speaker 1: All right, well we could have a good time. Then, Hey, John,
56:13
Speaker 1: thank you for creating this weird conversation, but thank you
56:18
Speaker 1: for writing in. That was one of the most adorable
56:20
Speaker 1: listener mails I've heard in recent memory, and thank you
56:23
Speaker 1: very much for listening. If you want to be like
56:25
Speaker 1: John and Tom you said too right, yep, and write
56:28
Speaker 1: in to us. You can do it via email. It's
56:31
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56:38
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56:45
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