Terry Bezer of Classic Rock Magazine wrote a great article on Memories of Woodstock, here’s a sneak peak-
Celebrating the upcoming Memories Of Woodstock festival, Classic Rock’s Paul Henderson talks about the finer points of what is still arguably the greatest festival of all time.
When I heard that Classic Rock was sponsoring an event called Memories Of Woodstock, I suddenly stopped whatever I was working on and drifted off into rose-tinted memory mode. Funny how mere mention of the word ‘Woodstock’, or even seeing it in print does that to me. Must be the bit of hippie blood in me – probably got it into my system from dancing barefoot to Led Zep at the Bath festival in 1970 (arguably Britain’s Woodstock), and cutting a toe on a broken bong or something, rather than inheriting it from my parents’ DNA.
No, I didn’t go the original Woodstock (listed in Rolling Stone magazine’s 50 Moments That Changed The History of Rock And Roll), the mother of all rock festivals. But over the years I’ve read about it countless times in countless magazines and books, looked wide-eyed at photographs taken at the event, seen the movie several times, and idled away many an hour imagining what it must have been like to actually be there! So much so that sometimes I wonder if maybe I //was// there. “If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there.” So, conversely… Yeah?I mean, yeah, I was at the Bath festival in 1970 when Zeppelin must have tapped into a nearby ley line or something, the way they made the air crackle and the trees start to dance (and Johnny Winter, Santana, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Frank Zappa and a load of others blew us all away too); I sat in the blazing sun at the Crystal Palace Garden Party and nodded approvingly to an hypnotic Bob Marley & The Wailers; I’ve got down at a dozen Readings and up at a few Glastonburys, and had my ears hurt at I don’t know how many Doningtons; I’ve experienced time standing still when the Sandy Denny-fronted Fairport Convention played Meet On The Ledge on a flat-bed trailer in a park in Hull. I’ve been to festivals that I can’t remember a single band that played, and seen bands at festivals (Hollywood? Weely? Plumpton? Great Western?) that I kind of remember being at but haven’t the foggiest memory of what they were called. And I’ve had a blast at all of them. Probably.
Read the whole article at Classic Rock » Blog Archive » Celebrating Woodstock.
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