August
It says something that I'm posting my homage to summer in mid October. There's a geographical explanation; after spending the first 32 years of my life on the eastern seaboard, I came to depend on the change of seasons to calibrate my internal calendar. Then came my move west 17+ years ago, when, upon arriving in the Bay Area, I became adrift in a nebulous cycle of fog, rain, fire and flood. Looking out my window onto the San Bruno Hills this October 16th, it looks like late August. By my reckoning, it's time for wistful thoughts about the waning days of summer.June and July are fine. But it's August, in particular, that's driven me to post this latest entry. Maybe it's because my birthday lands on August 23. Maybe it's because my son, by a coincidence of procreation, was born on the 20th of the same month....Nah, both of these anniversaries are worthy of mention, but it's August 15th, 16th and 17th that have captured my imagination for the last 40 years and vaulted August to a level of dreamy romanticism of which no birthday, even that of an only son, could inspire.
I was a few days shy of my own 9th birthday in August of 1969 when radio and television reports began trickling in about a convergence, on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York, of hippies and musicians, the head count of which was heading toward biblical proportions, according to the early reports. We all know what happened during those three days at Woodstock, some by virtue of actual attendance, but others, like myself, from the documentary film by Michael Wadleigh, which was released the following year. The moments that the film immortalized were the touchstones that prompted me to immediately begin dividing the world into two distinct categories; a) the people, songs and cultural snapshots that gave off a 'neo-Woodstock' vibe- and b) ...everything else.
True to my life-long love of all things Woodstock, I did take an evening a few weeks ago to see the Ang Lee film 'Taking Woodstock' and was impressed with the film's ability to tell the story of the festival from a point of view of someone who experienced it largely from the margins. But the summer movie that had an equal, if not greater, neo-Woodstock vibe, was 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'. The star of that movie was Shia LaBeouf. That's relevant because Shia, if his bio has been reported accurately, is a hippie child, born of hippie parents who raised their son in convention-free circumstances. So, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Shia LaBeouf - hippie parents. Thus, you have something with a conclusively 'neo-Woodstock' vibe. I bring up this rather remote, contemporary example to illustrate that, even forty years later, my mind still makes this kind of distinction.
But the examples from years gone by were more frequent, most of which were revealed in the immediate wake of Woodstock. The most celebrated of these is arguably Joni Mitchell's hallucinogenic hymn, 'Woodstock' , penned, as many know, by Joni in a hotel room in NYC while watching the live television coverage of it all and lamenting her own absence from the festival. Joni Mitchell: envying her boyfriend Graham Nashs' appearance on the Woodstock stage, writes a song that becomes just as emblematic of the event as any of the songs that were actually performed there. She virtually founded the school of the neo-Woodstock vibe.
In August of 1969, Paul McCartney was nowhere near Bethel, New York. But he was on a farm, in West Sussex, England, putting the final touches on his self-titled 'McCartney', an album so crudely produced, stripped down and evocative of a five-day stubble that it played like a trippy poetic addendum to the concert that was staged at Yasgur's farm. McCartney: rustic farm - barefoot - bearded - broken guitar strings. Again, neo-Woodstock vibe.
In 1972, my rather square older cousin graduated from college. It was a milestone marked with a party given in his honor by his parents. True to form, my cousin didn't have a hair out of place that evening. But the same can't be said for one of his classmates who was there for the celebration. I remember the graduates posing for a Kodak moment in front of the fireplace. Absorbing the social posturing of these older guys, I was mesmerized to discover that peeking out from under the mortar board and gown worn by my cousin's fellow graduate, there was discernible evidence of subversion: shoulder length hair, facial growth of the lamb-chop sideburn variety, ripped and frayed jeans and a pin-striped button down shirt that was not only untucked, but certifiably rumpled. These elements revealed themselves only after my double-take, similar to the way I had to look twice at the superficially preppy Steven Stills on stage at Woodstock, before realizing his indisputable counter-culture credentials. The sneaky obscurity of that anti-establishment essence lent a risky underground quality to both Steven Stills and the graduate. 1972 college grad: externally upright but with an underlying subversiveness - not to mention the unmistakable glassy quality in his eyes that could've only been brought on by the purest stash of Columbian Gold. Again - neo Woodstock vibe.
(Generational note; 'square' was a term used to describe someone who got regular haircuts, tucked in their shirt and avoided recreational drugs.)
But nothing compares to the mother of all of my neo-Woodstock moments, which happened later the same year. August, in fact. That's when my middle-aged, non-conformist, dashiki- wearing, peace sign-flashing parents took my brother and I on a day trip to a farm in rural, upstate New York (with just that minimal evocation, I bet you can hear Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner piercing the morning quietude). We were visiting the farm, not just for the French picnic we enjoyed under a tree, but to have a conversation with a quintessential 'back to the land' hippie named Paul, about the prospect of shedding our suburban existence and joining him as one of the founding families of the commune he hoped would develop on the farm. As we ate our Concord grapes and tore at our communal baguette like French proletariats plotting an uprising, we sat at Paul's knee - a knee, by-the-way which was outfitted with a devastatingly hip pair of black leather pants of the Jim Morrison variety - as he shared his vision of a self-contained utopia. In Paul's version of life on the farm, children would attend school right there on the grounds, play basketball in the re-converted barn which now housed a gymnasium, and become generally indoctrinated with a progressive syllabus of peace, love and understanding. Paul wasn't a musician per se, but as he held court under that tree with his shoulder length hair, leather pants and flower power wife by his side, you could practically hear the reverb from the steel strings of a Fender Guitar. Driving away at the end of the day with the farm diminishing on the horizon behind us, I lived briefly in the fantasy that I would in fact finally gain citizenship to Woodstock Nation. Notwithstanding the moment of fanciful speculation on the part of my parents, it wasn't to be. Despite the dashikis and flashing peace signs, our suburban life, with its boil-in-bag dinners and primary and second mortgages, beckoned.
As the leaves begin to fall from the branches and August, like that farm of my youth, diminishes in your rear-view mirror, take the opportunity to seek the potentially neo-Woodstock moments in your own life. The change of seasons itself will likely offer an opportunity. As you curse the cold, letting an f-bomb fly here and there, remember to really let it fly. 'Fuck', in and of itself, is not Woodstock worthy. But, if you harness the frustration of others with a call-and-response shout out, you're recapturing a bit of what Country Joe McDonald had in mind. Give me an 'F'.....Give me a 'U'....
Don't limit your quest for a neo-Woodstock moment to your waking hours. As you climb under your temperature-fortified bedding for the night, think of August, and the wheat colored hills of Sullivan County, N.Y. If you're disposed to having a neo-Woodstock moment, your REM cycle might evoke dreams of seeing '...a child of God who was walking along the road......'
Peace!
Posted by Pete Smith at 10/6/2009 5:35 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Woodstock Open Salon Memoir
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Woodstock Open Salon Memoir
Nice work, Pete! I don't remember that trip to Woodstock you made w/M&D, although I'm picturing perfectly. At that moment I anticipating that wedding in the courtyard of the Montfort House on September 27th. But J & I saw "Woodstock" a year later when the documentary came out. Fascinating, intriguing, exciting; but I think I knew deep inside it wasn't truly me. But I wanted it to be.
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Thanks Pam,
I think I have a blog entry in me about that magical day of September 27 too. Stay tuned. Incidentally, don't think your recent 40th escaped my radar. I went so far as to buy a card to mark the occasion but never got around to sending it. Forgiven?
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Pete this was great! I love the story about going to the farm with your parents to check out the commune. Hysterical. And I had no idea Ang Lee had a Woodstock film!
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