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Arlo Guthrie Calls Woodstock the Best and Worst of Times
- Posted on Aug 13th 2009 2:00PM by Mike Ayers
With Woodstock's 40th Anniversary fast approaching, many of the legendary performers are sure to recall the finest aspects of that historic event and their special performances, the moments where they connected with everyone and everything around them. Legendary folk singer Arlo Guthrie, on the other hand, had quite a different yet still profound experience. "I was never anticipating performing that day," Guthrie tells Spinner. "So, I was excessing in all kind of indulgences. And after that day, I never did again. Because when I heard the record and saw the movie, I said, 'Oh my god. You can't make a living doing this.' It was the best time in my life but it was the worst moment in my life, both at the same time!"
Although his choices scared him straight, there were a few things that were going on that were outside of Guthrie's control. First, he says the crowd wasn't that focused on what he was doing. "We knew that there was never going to be an opportunity to play in front of that many people that were that distracted," he recalls. "I look back on it fondly, but it was a course correction that I made as a result from performing there."
Also, there was the issue of his mic not being turned on at the start of his set. The version you hear on 'Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More' has a different beginning spliced within. "It had to be the same key, in the same tempo, from the same era," he says. "And that's what you hear on the record. They substituted the first verse with music from an entirely different event. And the rest of the song goes on, as we're doing it. I just discovered that."
For a better Guthrie highlight from '69, check out his recently unearthed lost recording that will be released on his own Rising Son Records next week. You can also see him this fall, when e's scheduled to hit the road with his children as part of the 'Guthrie Family Rides Again' tour. Expect the mics to be turned on this time.
- Filed under: Concerts and Tours, News, Exclusive
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Tom Degan
The Woodstock Festival did not take place in Woodstock, New York but in the town of Bethel which is sixty-seven miles due west. The second day of that mythic, three-day concert coincided with my eleventh birthday (I am going to be fifty-one on Sunday. Yikes! Where did the time go?). I remember quite clearly my friend Tom Finkle and I riding our bikes up to the bridge on South Street that overlooks Route 17 - a four lane highway which snakes its way into Sullivan County where the great event took place. It looked like a long and narrow parking lot. The New York State Thruway had been shut down. To the best of my knowledge, that had never happened before and has not happened since.
To say that it was an exciting time to be alive almost sounds redundant. Less than four weeks earlier, two human beings had walked on the surface of the moon, a technological feat that will probably out shine every other event of the twentieth century in the history books that will be written a thousand years from now. As future decades unwind, it is a certainty that the photographic image of half a million kids, partying and dancing in the mud, will not continue to sustain the cultural significance that it does for us today. The years will pass by, the people who were lucky enough to be there will one day be no more, and the Woodstock Festival will be erased from living memory; a mere footnote to a very crowded century. But what a freaking party, baby!
This weekend I'll be listening to my copy of the Woodstock Soundtrack LP - on vinyl, of course. The very thought of listening to it on a compact disc seems somehow sacrilegious. Although I could have done without Sha-Na-Na's version of At The Hop, all in all it's a pretty good collection of tunes. I have always envied my cousin, the noted falconer Tom Cullen, who was a witness to Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. Can you imagine? Canned Heat's performance of Going Up The Country is one of the great moments in rock history; and for the last forty years, whenever I heard Joan Baez singing Joe Hill, I have had to pause whatever I was doing at the moment and concentrate on it - It is one of the most moving pieces ever recorded on tape.
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
Emma Goldman 1869-1940
Dance with me, Emma!
The last time I looked at my videocassette of Woodstock (which was well over a decade ago) I wondered about the fates of the half-a-million gathered on the fields of Max Yasgur's farm in Sullivan County on that distant weekend. The passage of four decades decrees that a third or more of them have passed on. The average age of the attendees was about twenty-two. Today would find them approaching their mid-sixties; the age many of their grandparents were in 1969!
There are many good people of that generation who have kept the spirit of the sixties alive - or have tried to anyway. America is not the same country it was forty years ago. 2009 finds us even more polarized than we were during the age of Richard Nixon.
It is no longer merely a "generation gap" that is tearing America apart. The gaps today are almost too numerous to catalog: the political gap; the health insurance gap; the employment gap; the racial gap; the education gap; the class and income gaps. The world is a lot more troubled and sadder than it was in that long ago, magical summer of 1969. Sometimes I feel like a hostage to time. The truth is, for all the technological wonders of the twenty-first century, I just don't like being here.
NOTE TO MY FRIENDS:
No, I'm not going to kill myself. Chill.
Where I come from, Woodstock has a special meaning to people because it happened here - or close enough to count. From where I now sit, Bethel is a mere forty-two miles northwest. According to this morning's local paper, seventy-five media outlets from all over the world will be covering the events commemorating the anniversary this weekend. That's enough of a reason for me to stay the hell away. I'm not as crowd-friendly as I once was. Besides, I would have preferred to attend the real thing forty years ago. That would have been too cool for words!
Nostalgia is a permanent human condition. Each generation is nostalgic for the last. It absolutely boggles the mind to think that the year 2049 will find those of us who survive looking back on these hideous times with tender longing. Given our silly human quirks, that will probably be the case. Still, it's hard not to reflect on the hope that was prevalent in the summer of Woodstock. We want to believe that there is a magical future where, as John Lennon once imagined, there are no countries; nothing to kill or die for. Maybe we will one day arrive at that wondrous place.
Maybe....
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