AT THE WOODSTOCK Music & Art Fair in 1969 we all back to the garden (and the mud puddle). Just the name conjures images in millions of people’s minds—regardless-of age—of youth innocence joy music color summer even of endless horizons and possibilities. And one-on-one person-with-person intimacy being here now intimacy grokking the moment.
Joni Mitchel wrote a lovely song about the event that was turned into a hit single for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in 1970:
I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road.
And I asked him, “Where are you going?” and this he told me:
“I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm.
I’m going to join in a rock and roll band.
I’m going to camp out on the land.
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free.”
We are stardust, we are golden,
and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
“Then can I walk beside you? I have come here to lose the smog,
and I feel to be a cog in something turning!
Well, maybe it is just the time of year, or maybe it’s the time of man.
I don’t know who l am, but you know life is for learning.”
We are stardust, we are golden,
and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,
and everywhere there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shotgun in the sky,
and they were turning into butterflies above our nation.
We are stardust, billion-year-old carbon.
We are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain,
and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
If an event of that supposed nature was held today, there would be hundreds of thousands of people sitting on their asses, babbling on their cellphones with someone who wasn’t there, texting them about how great it was to be there! Maybe an alt-rock group could record a new version of the old song with a few updated changes in the lyrics:
We are stardust, billion-year-old carbon.
We are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain,
and we’ve got to text ourselves back to the garden . . .
true words of wisdom....the only problem is that today’s generation will not understand the message....almost like the guy who goes on vacation and takes hundred of snapshots....without realizing he missed the the real beauty of being there to witness the view with his eyes.....and can’t wait until he goes
home to look at the scenes on paper....
JOE You know some staggeringly gorgeous waitress from Pizza Casa (remember the beauties that Bettelli used to find in the woodwork of the Valley and hire?) asked me to go to Woodstock with her and I accepted (duh!) and got the time offa work (Leo Matus’ newsstand, my first job outta high school and before college) and was scheduled to go in a VW van to Bethel, NY, but something came up and Leo offered me double-time to work the weekend so I said yes to the money and no to the drop-dead beautiful waitress and didn’t go to the musical/cultural event of the decade and the knockout waitress (whose name I have long since forgotten) never spoke to me again and I probably spent the money on something stupid (smoked it up) so, once again, I did the wrong thing at the right time and ain’t hindsight grand? NEAL