Five ways to get your Woodstock fix on the fest’s 50th anniversary
This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the music and arts festival that took place August 15-18 at a dairy farm in the sleepy Upstate New York town of Bethel in 1969.
Featuring landmark performances by artists like The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix among 27 others, it became the blueprint for the modernday destination music event, with Coachella to Bonnaroo to Delaware’s Firefly Music Festival all inspired by it.
There’s a multitude of ways to commemorate Woodstock in the coming days. To fully immerse oneself in what it was like five decades ago on Max Yasgur’s farm, you can opt out of showering for a week, liberally apply patchouli, hose down the backyard until it’s a muddy mess and crank Country Joe and the Fish, or you could read, watch and listen to one of the five options below.
WOODSTOCK: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT FILM
One camera crew was there, in the middle of everything, recording the live performances of some of the greatest singers and musicians of the era, along with the — sometimes chemically assisted — joy, peace and rock at Woodstock. The Oscar winning documentary is headed back to theaters for one night only, August 15.
Locally it will be screening at the Regal Plymouth Meeting 10, Regal Edgemont 10 and downtown at the Regal Riverview 17 — all at 7 p.m. Thursday. If you can’t make it out to the theater, the nearly four-hour long opus is available on a variety of streaming services including iTunes and Google Play.
“WOODSTOCK — AS IT HAPPENED — 50 YEARS ON” BROADCAST
A replay of the festival, at the exact time it took place 50 years ago, will air exclusively on WXPN 88.5 in a four-day exclusive radio event. Beginning at 5:07 p.m. ET on Thursday, “Woodstock — As It Happened — 50 Years On” will immediately transport listeners to the 1969 event originally billed as the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair.
The innovative “as if you were there” program will include all of the culture-changing festival’s stage announcements and even the breaks between artist sets, when bad weather stopped the original concert, to stay in sync with the timing and length of the original event. It will incorporate content found in Rhino Entertainment’s massive new 32-disc collection, ‘Woodstock — Back to The Garden — The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive.’
WOODSTOCK: 3 DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC BOOK
This large coffee table book is the official 50th anniversary celebration of Woodstock from the festival’s creator and founder Michael Lang. It includes hundreds of photographs and documents accompanied by his often-fascinating memories and insights.
The ephemera from Lang’s largely unseen archive also includes the original designs and plans for the event, correspondence, setlists, information on artists’ fees and much more. That wealth of material is accompanied by the best photographs of the event by famous and unknown photographers and notably features the archive of Henry Diltz, the only official photographer at Woodstock who was there for two weeks, from an empty field of cows to the first stage construction, crowds arriving and the aftermath. He also captured onstage performances and behindthe-scenes moments with the many artists involved.
LIVE AT THE SITE
Feel like driving up about three hours north to the original site of Woodstock in Bethel, NY? The field is now maintained by the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts venue, which has a series of shows and events spread out over the weekend, but are restricting entry to those with tickets to the respective shows each night.
Friday will see Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band perform, and though the thenBeatles drummer didn’t play at the first Woodstock, openers Edgar Winter and Blood, Sweat & Tears did. Saturday’s headliner Santana and Sunday’s main attraction John Fogerty are 1969 alum, the latter who played while fronting Creedence Clearwater Revival.
FOREVER STAMP
A more subtle celebration of Woodstock comes courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service, who earlier this month issued Woodstock Forever stamps in observance of the 50th anniversary of the festival. Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamp artwork which features an image of a dove along with the words “3 Days of Peace and Music,” evocative of the original 1969 promotional poster for the event. In the stamp art, the words are stacked in the background in vibrant colors along with the year 1969, USA and Forever while a white dove stands in the foreground.
VINYL OF THE WEEK
Keep an eye on this spot as each week we’ll be looking at new or soon-to-be-released vinyl from a variety of artists. It might be a re-pressing of a landmark recording, special edition or new collection from a legendary band. This week, it’s an album full of demos that in many cases became smash hits for other artists.
PRINCE: ‘ORIGINALS’
Prince will forever be remembered as a commanding live performer, chart-topping recording artist and music revolutionary. Yet for all the time he spent in the spotlight over his lengthy career, he also worked behind the scenes to nurture talent and pen songs for the rising artists. Never has this been more evident than on ‘Originals,’ featuring 14 previously unreleased recordings that illuminate the vital, behind-the-scenes role Prince played in the success of other acts.
In addition to releasing nine of his most commercially successful full-length albums and generally dominating the charts in the 80s, Prince also wrote and recorded endless reels of material for protégés like The Time, Vanity 6, Sheila E., Apollonia 6 and Jill Jones. Occasionally, his original demo recordings would be used as master takes on their albums, with only minor alterations to the instrumentation and a replacement of the vocal tracks. Other times, artists would rely on his demos to guide them through their own recording process, with Prince’s initial take informing their final version of the song.
Several of the iconic songs found on ‘Originals’ were considerable hits for the artists who recorded them. Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life” reached the top spot on the dance charts in 1984, while the enormous success of “Manic Monday” propelled the single and its accompanying album, The Bangles’ ‘Different Light’, to the No. 2 spot on the pop charts. The Time’s ‘Ice Cream Castle,’ featuring the Top 20 “Jungle Love,” spent a whopping 57 weeks on the Billboard 200. And in 1991, Martika enjoyed international success with “Love… Thy Will Be Done”, a top 10 hit in France, Australia, the UK and in the States.
‘Originals’ pulls back the curtain to reveal the origins of these familiar songs, in addition to deeper album cuts such as Vanity 6’s “Make-Up,” Jill Jones’s “Baby, You’re a Trip” and Kenny Rogers’ “You’re My Love.” The album also features Prince’s majestic original 1984 version of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which first appeared on the eponymous 1985 album by The Family, a forgotten, shortlived group the Purple One put together the year prior. Of course, the song would become best known when it got a second life covered by Irish songstress Sinéad O’Connor in
1990, spending a month at No.
1 while the video clip played endlessly on MTV.
Sourced directly from Prince’s vast archive of Vault recordings, the ‘Originals’ is available via all download and streaming services and physically on CD and 180-gram 2LP and limited-edition deluxe CD and 2LP formats. Find the collection online and in stores from all respectable retailers who carry vinyl.