Said Roger Daltrey, quoted in "WOODSTOCK AT 50/The Who’s Roger Daltrey Is Not Nostalgic for Woodstock/The singer remembers the endless waiting and how 'the worst sides of our nature had come out'/(But also how great Creedence Clearwater Revival was" (NYT).
There's no film footage of Abbie Hoffman barging onto the stage with The Who (who were famously terrible at Woodstock, playing at 5 in the morning), and the NYT tells us Hoffman said "that the focus shouldn’t be on music, but on the MC5 manager John Sinclair, who was in prison on a minor marijuana charge." But there is a sound recording, and it's possible to give a verbatim quote. I'll transcribe for you: "I think it's a pile of shit, while John Sinclair rots in prison." That's as far as Hoffman gets, before Pete Townshend does whatever he does, and the big crowd cheers.
Here's what Hoffman wrote about it in his autobiography:
If you ever heard about me in connection with the festival it was not for playing Florence Nightingale to the flower children. What you heard was the following: “Oh, him, yeah, didn’t he grab the microphone, try to make a speech when Peter Townshend cracked him over the head with his guitar?” I’ve seen countless references to the incident, even a mammoth mural of the scene. What I’ve failed to find was a single photo of the incident. Why? Because it didn’t really happen. I grabbed the microphone all right and made a little speech about John Sinclair, who had just been sentenced to ten years in the Michigan State Penitentiary for giving two joints of grass to two undercover cops, and how we should take the strength we had at Woodstock home to free our brothers and sisters in jail. Something like that. Townshend, who had been tuning up, turned around and bumped into me. A nonincident really. Hundreds of photos and miles of film exist depicting the events on that stage, but none of this much-talked about scene.
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IIRC, the lyrics "teenage wasteland" from "Baba O'Riley" were inspired by what Townshend saw in the crowd while they performed at Woodstock.
I sense a need for a word origin study on "get up all our noses". That would be a good attack phrase for the CNN to employ against the Great Orange Nationalist.
I just read an interview with David Crosby in the Toronto Star in which he says (paraphrasing): what Woodstock should be remembered for is that for three days, a large number of strangers were kind to each other. Those who were there have never forgotten it, and they carry strong albeit unrealistic expectations that this experience can be repeated. I can't help wondering: is it possible that some women were raped at Woodstock, and they said nothing about it because they didn't want to contribute to any criticism of what in their minds was basically wonderful?
"The Who (who were famously terrible at Woodstock, playing at 5 in the morning)" What? The Who were the BEST act at Woodstock with the Best performance hands down.
Roger Daltry was the bands pugilist.
"is it possible that some women were raped at Woodstock, and they said nothing about it because they didn't want to contribute to any criticism" Mary Jo Kopechne would have approved, some say. Of course they didn't get to check with her.
Hoffman said "that the focus shouldn’t be on music, but on [something else]
What an pompous asshole.
And yeah, the old Creedence was great.
I saw some geezer shouting into Pete’s microphone, saying we were a load of crap, which got up all our noses.
Half the crowd at Woodstock could've fit in Pete's schnoz
Other festivals didn't have a good song by Joni Mitchell, a good cover by CSNY, and a good movie by Michael Wadleigh. Average festival - great hype, how boomer can you get?
"Woodstock wasn’t peace and love. There was an awful lot of shouting and screaming going on. By the time it all ended, the worst sides of our nature had come out."
Lord of the Flies, adult version.
Just watched 'Woodstock' on PBS's The American Experience the other night. It was mesmerizing. Mostly because it dealt with much of the behind the scenes story, not so much the actual music. It showed a ton of footage I'd never seen previously from Woodstock. Very amazing to see it at that scale.
And it showed a brief bit about The Who, but only their playing and how much energy they brought at that time of the morning, finishing up as dawn was lighting up the mess that laid in front of the stage.
Me, personally- I never liked Abbie Hoffman. He and his movement always bothered me as too angry, too much looking for trouble and change, for the sake of change. Much like we have with our professional Left today. His leanings have lived long and prospered, to the chagrin of our society at large.
Frankly- I wish Pete Townsend had slammed him over the head. The Who were famously...rough in their day. Hotel rooms were afraid of Keith Moon.
is it possible that some women were raped at Woodstock, and they said nothing about it because they
A) were So Stoned, that they never realized it was happening
B) thought, That's WHAT'S SUPPOSED to happen at these things
C) didn't know WHO they would have said anything to
D) All of the Above
???
Other festivals didn't have a good song by Joni Mitchell
She only sang about it, she wasn't there. She did sing the song at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival.
Famously terrible?? I don't know about their whole set but the Listening To You and then See Me Feel Me refrain just as the sun rises is one of my favorite parts of what I've seen from Woodstock (and one of the better tracks on the album).
Big Who fan. I love Pete. The Who did bring a lot of energy to the stage as evidenced by Townsend leaping about in a white jumpsuit. And he’s a really nice guy. I played with him in LA at a KLOS event in the early ‘90s at which he signed my red Gibson SG. It’s still my favorite axe! The last time I saw him was a Who concert where Zack Starky (Ringo’s son) played drums and Pino Pomerino subbed for the recently deceased bassist John Entwhistle. They were still damn good!
Hey you getting drunk
So sorry, I got you sussed
Hey you smoking mother nature
This is a bust
Hey hung up old Mr. Normal
Don't try to gain my trust
Cause you ain't gonna follow me
Any of those ways
Although you think you must
"'The Who (who were famously terrible at Woodstock, playing at 5 in the morning)' What? The Who were the BEST act at Woodstock with the Best performance hands down."
The members of the Who have always said they were terrible at Woodstock. However, they are judging themselves by their own high standards, colored by the miserable conditions (they had waited for hours to go on, and they--or at least Pete Townshend--claims to have taken a drink of water that had been spiked with acid). Listening to the recording of their performance, I would say it was a very good to excellent performance, with moments of greatness. They were pissed off, and their road manager Bob Pridden always said they played their best when pissed off.
As for the Hoffman incident, Hoffman's rant stops so abruptly it is evident he was forced off the stage by some sudden means. It was not just a matter of Townshend simply turning around and "bumping into" him.
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Classic!
"and their road manager Bob Pridden always said they played their best when pissed off."
As evidenced by their performance of "Baba O'Reilly" at the end of "The Kids are All Right." They did one take, and the director criticized their performance, and they were so pissed that they put their energy into the second take (I don't think they were supposed to destroy the set, either, but I can't remember; it's a long time since I read the Rolling Stone article about it).
People had a good reason to be afraid of Keith Moon. During his US Tour, Graham Chapman told the story about Moon: He was in his hotel room playing a Who album when a guest complained about the noise. Moon took some explosives*, wired the guest's door, and set it off.
After the noise and debris settled, he told the guest, "That's noise."
* What, you don't take explosive with you while traveling?
Another Who fan
geezer as just "man," not old man. I like that.
CCR is probably my favorite. I've been listening to so much CCR on this trip that I probably sing Green River in my sleep.
For those who, like me, see CCR as the greatest American rock band:
Creedence Clearwater Revival to Finally Release ‘Live at Woodstock’
“Creedence Clearwater Revival's entire performance at Woodstock will finally be released, 50 years after the band played at the legendary music festival. Live at Woodstock is due on Aug. 2 and includes all 11 songs from CCR's set on Aug. 16, 1969.”
Good news, EP. I read that they didn't like their performance at Woodstock and didn't want to release it but glad it will finally be available. So many great performances there!
walter,
That's always been my theory as to why he garbled the saying the way he did. He was just the right age to have that song burned into his subconscious.
Monterrey Pop in 1967 was Peace and Love.
Woodstock in 1968 was transitional to the really bad sh*t at Altamont in 1969.
I didn’t think that The Who at Woodstock was terrible, but compared to their recordings from that year (and the immediately-following years, it wasn’t great. With just a trio plus singer, they relied on studio artistry.
I do think that compared to their (indifferent) studio recordings, the performance of Sly and the Family Stone at Woodstock was miraculous. Quite possibly their greatest moment ever, and I always thought that the high water mark for general race relations in all of American history was Sly’s interracial band at Woodstock. Not black music, not white music, not whites appropriating black music.
And the final argument in Woodstock as the high water mark of race relations being Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of the national anthem.
The medley of Dance to the Music/Wanna Take You Higher/Hey Music Lover featuring Sly at Woodstock:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1m5ws
Oops. {#35}
I heard that Sly and the Family Stone performance at Woodstock is Trump's favorite Woodstock moment too.
Not sure what the fact-checking is on this one. I've heard this story several times. Abby Hoffman was an asshole.
The Who, on the other hand, were the best live act of their age. An amazing band of startling power:
Pete Townshend was a good rhythm guitarist and a true songwriting genius.
John Entwistle is arguably the greatest bass player of all time, and played the bass in a totally different way than anyone else then or since. He once claimed "The Who haven't a proper bass player."
Keith Moon is arguably the greatest drummer of all time, and killed himself through rank substance abuse.
Roger Daltrey was a late bloomer. By the time of Who's Next, he'd fully matured as a singer.
All in one 4-man band.
Putting them on at 5:00 AM seems almost a sacrilege today.
How Woodstock was the defining moment of a generation is beyond me. It seems like a grotesque, filthy, drug-infested public health tragedy to me.
The Who not "famously terrible" at Woodstock... their performance included in the film, and in their own film too The Kids Are Alright from 1978.
I was not wealthy enough to be at Woodstock, only the poor.
I read that they didn't like their performance at Woodstock and didn't want to release it but glad it will finally be available.
Artists are often poor judges of their own work. Linda Ronstadt never thought her live performances measured up; her recently released Live In Hollywood recorded in 1980 proves her wrong.
Crazy Pete. That Buttigieg was a wild man back in the old days.
"Artists are often poor judges of their own work."
They can be the best judges of their own work. They know what they can do, they know what they have done, they know what they aspired to do, and they know when the work they do falls beneath any of these metrics of achievement. I read an interview with Buddy Rick recently in which he makes this exact point, that he ignored any appraisals of his (or his band's) performance from any outside parties, as only he knew when his performance was good or bad by his standards.
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