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Fact #101880

When:

Short story:

The third day of the Woodstock Festival features Iron Butterfly, Moody Blues, Johnny Winter, The Band, The Jeff Beck Group, Blood, Sweat And Tears, Joe Cocker, Crosby Stills Nash And Young, The Who and Jimi Hendrix.

Full article:

Pete Townshend (The Who) : I was nervous because we didn't go there by helicopter. We went by road. We got as far as the car could go in the mud and it got stuck. It became the hundred and ninety-fifth limo to get stuck. We got out and landed in mud and that was it. There was nowhere to go. There were no dressing rooms because they had all been turned into hospitals. There was nowhere to eat. Somebody came out of the canteen, which was where we had been naturally gravitating toward in order to sit down and eat because we were told that we wouldn't be on for fifteen hours.

David Crosby : At the airport, we kept hearing all of these news reports that it had gotten completely out of hand, that there were a million people, that it was very tense, that they didn't know whether to call the National Guard or drop flowers.

David Geffen (manager, CSN) : I had booked their (Crosby Stills And Nash's) second concert together to be Woodstock. I was with them. I flew into La Guardia airport. The headline of the New York Times said 400,000 PEOPLE SITTING IN MUD. So I said to Elliot (Roberts, manager) "You go. I'm staying here." Joni Mitchell and I stayed at my apartment in New York, where she wrote the song Woodstock having never been to Woodstock.

Joni Mitchell : It was decided between Geffen and Elliott that I wouldn't be able to get out (of Woodstock) in time to make my appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, which was ridiculous, because the boys (Crosby, Stills and Young) did make it out and ended up being guests with me on the show. But I was the girl of the family and, with great disappointment, I was the one that had to stay behind.

Elliott Roberts : I thought we were gonna die. When I looked down (from the helicopter) I'd never seen so many people in one place in my whole life.

David Crosby (Crosby, Stills And Nash) : We thought we were all individual, scattered hippies. When we got there, we said, 'Wait a minute, this is a lot bigger than we thought.' We flew in there by helicopter and saw the New York State Thruway at a dead stop for twenty miles and a gigantic crowd of at least half a million people. You couldn't really wrap your mind around how many people were there. It had never happened before, and it was sort of like having aliens land.

Elliott Roberts : I went with Neil (Young) and Jimi Hendrix in this stolen pickup. Neil hot-wired it, then drove the truck with Hendrix on the hood. Jimi Hendrix was the hood ornament! And we were all tripping on mescaline or something. It was just insane.

Neil Young : Stealing a pick-up truck with Jimi at Woodstock is one of the high points of my life. He was at one with his instrument, no-one else had brought the electric guitar to that level; no-one has since. It was like handstands above everyone else, so liquid. Absolutely the best guitar player that ever lived.

Leslie Aday (aide to Bob Dylan's manager) : Hendrix was in a farm shack, but he was the only artist who didn't have to crowd into the tents backstage... I could see that Hendrix was ill, dosed, I'm afraid, by drinking the water backstage. He seemed really sick, or really high, and was sweating bullets. I was feeding him vitamin C, fruit, and having him suck on lemon slices. As we sat there, he seemed nervous and didn't think he could pull it off.
(Source : http://www.rockprophecy.com/woodstock4.html)

Nurse Sanderson : We didn't know who he was. (when Hendrix was admitted to the medical tent) Just a black man laying on the stretcher. Then everybody started saying, 'Hey, isn't that Jimi Hendrix?' There was a big stir about it. He lay on the stretcher for about thirty minutes before roadies hauled him out.
(Source : http://www.rockprophecy.com/woodstock4.html)

David Crosby : I saw hippies pushing a police car out of the mud because the policeman had just picked up a hippie girl who'd cut her foot on some glass. He carefully put her in the back seat and was trying to take her to the medical tent.

Rick Danko (The Band) : To me it was terrible. It was not our PA system, we were using other people's facilities, which means that we didn't have any control over it, and if you can't control it then I don't consider the people are getting their money's worth. (Melody Maker, May 29, 1971)

David Crosby : We were scared, as Stephen said in the film. What wasn't said in the movie is why we were so nervous. Everyone we respected in the whole goddam music business was standing in a circle behind us when we went on. Everybody was curious about us. We were the new kid on the block, it was our second public gig, nobody had ever seen us, everybody had heard the record, everybody wondered 'What the hell are they about?' So when it was rumoured that we were about to go on, everybody came.

Every band that played there, including all the ones that aren't in the movie, were all standing in an arc behind us and that was intimidating, to say the least. I'm looking back at Hendrix and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm and The Who and Janis and Sly and Grace and Paul, everybody that I knew and everybody I didn't know.

We were so happy that it went down well that we could barely handle it. I was also toasted because we had some of that Pullover pot, that incredible Colombian gold that a friend of mine named Rocky had brought to the festival.

Neil Young : see page 51 of Neil Young - The Definitive Story.

David Crosby : It was a hectic scene, and we were all kind of winging it. Behind us were Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone - all these bands - and we really wanted to be good in front of them. For me, the high point was us going out and singing Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and getting all the way through it and not screwing up. It was stoned and funny and fine.

Grace Slick : CSNY - it was their show. Well, maybe not their show, but their time. They represented the Woodstock sound, whatever that was.

David Crosby : The Hog Farmers were exemplary. They gave unstintingly, without question, to everybody, it didn't matter who you were. If you needed some help, they wanted to help you.

The people in medical services did tremendous work.

Wavy Gravy (Hog Farm Organiser/Woodstock MC) : The whole world was watching us, and we had a chance to show the world how it could be if we ran things.

Joe Cocker : I flew there in a different helicopter from the rest of the band and I didn't realise until after we played that I was the only one who wasn't on LSD. I think that was why I was so energised. I was having to catch up with them in the spirit of things.
(Source : http://www.inthestudio.net/online-only-interviews/leon-russell-joe-cocker-mad-dogs-englishmen/)

Carlos Santana : The main peak for me was Sly Stone. Bar none. He took over that night.

Pete Townshend (The Who) : To get us there in the first place, the production assistant in the limo had told us we were on in fifteen minutes. Then when we got there, they said, "Oh, sorry. We meant fifteen hours." As we were going toward the canteen, somebody came out saying that the tea and coffee had got acid in them and all the water was polluted with acid. I spent a bit of time on the stage but everybody was very freaked. I would find a nice place to sit and listen to somebody like Jefferson Airplane and then some lunatic would come up to me like Abbie Hoffman or some stagehand and go, "Ahhhhhhh! Aaaaaaah! Buuuuuuuupw!"

It was very very frightening. Somebody else would come up to me and go, "Isn't this just fantastic! Isn't it wonderful!" They would go over the hump of their cheap acid and into dreamland. People kept talking about America. It was most unfortunate. They kept talking about the American Dream and the New Albion. All kind of hippie-esque stuff was coming out and I kept thinking to myself, "This can't be true. This can't be what's happening to America. We're just arriving here. We're just about to break big and the whole thing's turning into Raspberry Jell-O. I don't believe it.

Roger Daltrey : Everybody was spiked, and we were there for like 10 hours before we went onstage and you had to drink something in 10 hours.

John Entwistle : I had my own bottle of bourbon, my own bottle of Grandad, and I walked around the audience and I met this friend of mine who was at this big tent that was pitched up and I went in there and had the bourbon and he had some Coca-Cola. Poured one out and I drank it and went, "This is great, where'd you get the ice?" And he said, "Oh we stole it from backstage." And I went, "Aw, fuck.!" And that's what the acid was in. I felt an acid trip coming on so I went back to the dressing room, drank the rest of the bourbon, and passed out. When I came around I was almost okay.

Joel Rosenman (co-producer, Woodstock) : The Grateful Dead and The Who spring to mind as acts who were just not going to play unless they were paid in cash.

Bill Belmont (artist co-ordinator, Woodstock) : A few of them had curious requests. The Who always got paid in cash in one-hundred-dollar bills before the first foot hit the stage.

Roger Daltrey: The only reason it was a miserable experience as far as I was concerned was, to be honest, being an artist you always want to give your best. By the time we got on the stage we were in no condition whatsoever to play a show.

Henry Diltz (photographer) : On Saturday, the Who was absolutely fantastic. Just Roger Daltrey up there with his cape flying around, the fringe of his cape flapping in the wind, and he'd twirl that microphone around. He really had that down, where he'd twirl it around and just miss the floor and it would come arcing through the air and he'd grab it just in time to get into 'Talking 'bout my generation.'

Michael Lang (co-producer, Woodstock) : The Who was the high point of the day for me. And I was sitting with (political activist) Abbie Hoffman onstage, watching The Who.

Joe Cocker : I’d played to festival crowds of 50,000 that summer, but all I could see were these white dots stretching to the horizon. I said to the (helicopter) pilot: ‘What the fuck’s that down there?’. He replied, ‘That’s people. And that’s where you’re playing, son'.”

Santana did the best set. My abiding memory is how good the stage was. Usually they were wonky and dangerous, but this was a good professional job.

I was wearing a tie-dyed shirt, and when I took it off after, the colours had stained my chest in the exact same pattern.
(Source : interview with Max Bell, Classic Rock, Jan 2013)