My SW Column About Woodstock (and Poco)

[Mark]

It was such a special day at Bethel that I decided to write my September Sound Waves column about it. Thanks again to Mary, Rusty and Rick for their hospitality and Jimmy and Richie for an unbelievable night that I never thought I would see.

“Good Morning America, How Are You?”

By Mark T. Gould


It was a scene that probably plays out in parks all over America; two middle-aged men sitting on a ledge, strumming acoustic guitars, singing and playing popular songs, albeit for a very small audience.

They finished their version of the classic “Stand By Me,” and my wife and I applauded. They smiled, a bit self-consciously. The duo then tried to work out an arrangement of Steve Goodman’s “City of Orleans,” but “the way Arlo (Guthrie) did it,” as one of them put it.

They weren’t satisfied, but again we clapped, bathed in the pleasure of two listeners enjoying the playing of two enjoyable musicians.

Yet, our ovation, such as it was, was undoubtedly one of the quietest ever at the site, because we weren’t at just any park; we were at the base of “the hill,” near the monument erected in a special place, where, some four decades ago, an estimated 400,000 wet, tired, hungry, and, yes, stoned, music listeners much like ourselves grooved to something just a wee bit bigger, although arguably no more passionate than our two acoustic players, amid our generation’s finest public spectacle of the “peace and love” that we all espoused.

Yes, we were at the former Yasgur’s Farm, situated in bucolic Bethel, New York, an upstate hamlet tucked into the Catskill Mountains where, as the old farmer/landowner himself told the crowd back in the day, “half a million kids (got) together for three days of fun and music, and nothing but fun and music.”

Yes, we’d finally made it to Woodstock. And, we weren’t alone.

The offer to see the site came from my good friends, the country-rock pioneers Poco, who were scheduled to open a concert for Loggins & Messina in the new Bethel Woods Center For The Arts, an outdoor concert amphitheatre adjacent to its Woodstock/Sixties museum complex tucked into the top of the hill, that still virtually undisturbed “sacred ground” that the Bethel Woods developers mercifully, and smartly, left in its pristine, natural condition, post-clean up that is, from the days after the concert.

Ironically, it was also Poco’s first trip to Woodstock, too, having turned down the chance to play the festival back in August 1969, because, according to founder Rusty Young, “our managers had us a better gig, for $500 more, playing a high school in Long Beach (California).

“You might have seen the movie,” he cracked, in one of the better lines of our time.

The Bethel area, which is surrounded by the equally tiny hamlet of White Lake, where everyone swam and cooled off in the eponymous lake during the big weekend, actually does mean “place of God,” or “sacred place,” and, living up to its name, remains as peaceful and quiet today, as it probably was back in the time of the legendary three-day concert.

Cloth flags bearing the famous Woodstock logo of the guitar neck with the dove perched on it adorn virtually every lamp post in town, providing a pastoral GPS directive of sorts to travelers as they journey up the hills toward Hurd Road, the site of the festival. Turning onto the road, we pilgrims are first faced with comparative oodles of paved parking areas (now, that would have been a concept in ’69, right?) for the amphitheatre and the museum, blacktop that appears somewhat out of place amid the breathtakingly beautiful rustic acres of trees, farm land, cows and barns that surround the complex.

Appropriately, within that natural beauty and sacredness, there is little in the way of directional signage to the permanent monument, at the base of the hill, about 500 yards from the original concert stage, where the names of all of the performers, and reference to the 400,000 who both witnessed and made the spectacle, lies. But we found it, just off Hurd Road, next to a small gravel parking lot, where we ran into our new acoustic friends.

Being, of course, that it’s Woodstock, it had to rain on our way to the festival site. No, make that pour, and I mean pour, as in apocalypse, bring out the Ark, and the giraffes and elephants pour, but, as we reached the gravel parking lot near the monument at the base of the hill, the sun peaked out from behind the black clouds, another sure sign of the magic of this special place.

We gazed up at the hill and the stage, read the names of all the performers on the monument (like we couldn’t recite them from memory, right?), listened to the guitar players, and took a slew of pictures. When it was quiet enough, I could swear we could hear Woodstock stage announcer Chip Monck calmly plead to “come down off those towers,” caution the crowd about the “brown acid that is not specifically too good,” and send “Bugsy to the pink and white tent.”
We could hear the roar for Country Joe McDonald (“gimme an F!”), Sly & The Family Stone (who actually got a city-full of exhausted people up and dancing), The Who (playing “Tommy” at dawn at the sun came up), and the booming rhythms of then 17-year-old Santana drummer Michael Shrieve, as he thundered through “Soul Sacrifice,” which, looking back, just might be the theme song for the festival.

We felt the glory, the magnificent music, and yes, amid all the hassles of being wet, tired, cold and hungry, the peace and the love of those three days, which remain a benchmark for our generation.

As we turned to walk away, my wife remarked, “it doesn’t seem like there were 400,000 people on that hill.”

No, I thought, it was a lot more.

[Jeff Fin]

Great article Mark,really enjoyed it...one correction...Poco performed at Woodstock two years ago at The Bearsville theater..

[Mark]

Noted. Woodstock, not Bethel, the festival site.

[mikec]

Hi Mark, Thanks for posting your article. Sorry I missed you at the show. What a great time My wife and I had. We were sitting in the parking lot trying to have a picnic lunch my wife made when the storms came. It was something to see. The lightning strikes were incredible. All ground strikes. Then like you said it cleared up after a little while. I thought the interview was great. Finally got the chance to meet Richie and he surpassed my expectations by a mile. The show was great too. I never thought I would get the chance to see Richie and Jimmy with the band. L&M were also very good. This was a day I will never forget. Take care Mark. Maybe I will see you New Year's Eve if they play Infinity.

[Patm]

Nicely written column Mark, I enjoyed reading it.

[Dar]

nice