Fact #64006
When:
Short story:
The second day of The Woodstock Festival is held in upstate New York, USA, featuring John Sebastian, Keef Hartley, Canned Heat, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Mountain and Santana.
Full article:
John Sebastian : I went to Woodstock as a member of the audience. I did not show up there with a road manager and a couple of guitars. I showed up with a change of clothes and a toothbrush. It just so happened that because most of my friends were musicians I ended up backstage.
There was a moment when the stage had filled up with water and it was impossible to put electric instruments onstage. At that time Chip Monck (Woodstock announcer, stage co-ordination) said to me, "Look, we need somebody who can go out there with an acoustic guitar and hold 'em while we go out and sweep the water off the stage and let it dry up and you're elected." So, I had to run and borrow a guitar from Timmy Hardin and go on. But it was not anything I had planned for. It was just one of those nice accidents and it resulted in my career then taking another step forward. Now, I was the Summer Concert guy. I played every Summer concert there was.
(Source : http://www.classicbands.com/JohnSebastianInterview.html)
Mickey Hart (drummer, Grateful Dead] : Whenever we were under pressure, you could guarantee that we would fold.
Bob Weir (guitarist/singer, Grateful Dead] : Nothing was working properly. Our sound manager had messed around with the equipment, and we were getting a great deal of electrical shocking just from trying to play our instruments. When I got too close to my vocal mike a big blue arc of electric current lifted me off my feet and threw me back against the amplifier.
Martin Scorsese (assistant director) : They were flying in vitamin B-12 shots on the helicopters to keep the crew going. Two of the cameramen got sprained knees. Yeah. Sprained knees. From squatting up there for like 10, 12 hours at a stretch. And finally crashing. Maybe crashing after 20 hours, and somebody else grabbing the camera. Crashing right there on the stage, surrounded by the music, waking up during the Grateful Dead. Waking up, thinking, this will finish. We will finish this. But then you'd go under again . . .??Yeah. I remember huddling under this blanket, and people falling over me in the dark. Waking up during the Dead, yeah. The sky all dark and the light so bad they were pushing the film up to 1,000 ASA, trying to get something. Thinking, this has been forever. This has been all there ever has been . . .
Tom Constanten (Grateful Dead] see page 161 of One More Saturday Night.
Rock Scully (Grateful Dead crew) : P 124 of One More Saturday Night
Bill Graham : Monterey in 1967 was the egg for Woodstock in 1969.
Wavy Gravy (Hog Farmer) : I remember when they still had only about 50,000 people on the field. One of the promoters said to me and Tom Law, '"You want to clear these people off? We want to start taking tickets." And I said "Do you want a good movie or a bad movie?" Because I knew they had sold the movie rights. So they had a conference and Mel Lawrence got on the walkie-talkie and the next thing we knew, it was a free festival. Which I thought was very perceptive of them. To see that this was the way to go. If not for the movie, though, they would have cleared that field and tried to collect tickets. They would have had to.
Pete Townshend : All these hippies wandering about, thinking the world was going to be different from that day on. As a cynical English arsehole, I wandered through it all and felt like spitting on the lot of them and shaking them, trying to make them realize that nothing had changed and nothing was going to change. Not only that, what they thought was an alternative society was basically a field full of six-foot-deep mud laced with LSD. If that was the world they wanted to live in, then fuck the lot of them.
Bill Graham (promoter) : Hundreds, if not thousands, of kids pitched their tents somewhere down the road five miles away. So what were they blessed with? The experience of breathing the same air? They had come from somewhere and paid good money to get there and then what did they get? Look at those roads. Look at that access and egress. Once you got past the main area, even with the delay towers, the sound was awful.
When Santana went on, I went into the crowd and I talked to some of the movie people about it
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There was a moment when the stage had filled up with water and it was impossible to put electric instruments onstage. At that time Chip Monck (Woodstock announcer, stage co-ordination) said to me, "Look, we need somebody who can go out there with an acoustic guitar and hold 'em while we go out and sweep the water off the stage and let it dry up and you're elected." So, I had to run and borrow a guitar from Timmy Hardin and go on. But it was not anything I had planned for. It was just one of those nice accidents and it resulted in my career then taking another step forward. Now, I was the Summer Concert guy. I played every Summer concert there was.
(Source : http://www.classicbands.com/JohnSebastianInterview.html)
Mickey Hart (drummer, Grateful Dead] : Whenever we were under pressure, you could guarantee that we would fold.
Bob Weir (guitarist/singer, Grateful Dead] : Nothing was working properly. Our sound manager had messed around with the equipment, and we were getting a great deal of electrical shocking just from trying to play our instruments. When I got too close to my vocal mike a big blue arc of electric current lifted me off my feet and threw me back against the amplifier.
Martin Scorsese (assistant director) : They were flying in vitamin B-12 shots on the helicopters to keep the crew going. Two of the cameramen got sprained knees. Yeah. Sprained knees. From squatting up there for like 10, 12 hours at a stretch. And finally crashing. Maybe crashing after 20 hours, and somebody else grabbing the camera. Crashing right there on the stage, surrounded by the music, waking up during the Grateful Dead. Waking up, thinking, this will finish. We will finish this. But then you'd go under again . . .??Yeah. I remember huddling under this blanket, and people falling over me in the dark. Waking up during the Dead, yeah. The sky all dark and the light so bad they were pushing the film up to 1,000 ASA, trying to get something. Thinking, this has been forever. This has been all there ever has been . . .
Tom Constanten (Grateful Dead] see page 161 of One More Saturday Night.
Rock Scully (Grateful Dead crew) : P 124 of One More Saturday Night
Bill Graham : Monterey in 1967 was the egg for Woodstock in 1969.
Wavy Gravy (Hog Farmer) : I remember when they still had only about 50,000 people on the field. One of the promoters said to me and Tom Law, '"You want to clear these people off? We want to start taking tickets." And I said "Do you want a good movie or a bad movie?" Because I knew they had sold the movie rights. So they had a conference and Mel Lawrence got on the walkie-talkie and the next thing we knew, it was a free festival. Which I thought was very perceptive of them. To see that this was the way to go. If not for the movie, though, they would have cleared that field and tried to collect tickets. They would have had to.
Pete Townshend : All these hippies wandering about, thinking the world was going to be different from that day on. As a cynical English arsehole, I wandered through it all and felt like spitting on the lot of them and shaking them, trying to make them realize that nothing had changed and nothing was going to change. Not only that, what they thought was an alternative society was basically a field full of six-foot-deep mud laced with LSD. If that was the world they wanted to live in, then fuck the lot of them.
Bill Graham (promoter) : Hundreds, if not thousands, of kids pitched their tents somewhere down the road five miles away. So what were they blessed with? The experience of breathing the same air? They had come from somewhere and paid good money to get there and then what did they get? Look at those roads. Look at that access and egress. Once you got past the main area, even with the delay towers, the sound was awful.
When Santana went on, I went into the crowd and I talked to some of the movie people about it