Over 400,000 people attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August of 1969 but it might as well have been 400,000,000 the way some people describe it today. Not only do a suspiciously large number of individuals claim to have been there (it's as if none of them died over the past fifty-seven years other than many of the artists and most of the organizers) but mythology masking as history wishes we'd all buy into this crap too. The truth is, only a tiny fraction of Baby Boomers managed to make it to Bethel, New York that summer.
It's probably for the best most people weren't there. Many, many more got to enjoy a glimpse of it when they attended the film a year later and they got to experience the great music while being able to avoid the bad weather, the mud, the smell, the hunger, so many drug overdoses and, crucially, a handful of bad or indifferent performances from those not included in the footage. (The Incredible String Band went down badly, Ravi Shankar wasn't to everyone's taste and The Band were a bunch of surely, overrated tools)
Joni Mitchell famously decided to give Woodstock a miss. She had been interested in performing at the festival but her manager persuaded her to go to New York City instead so she could be a guest on The Dick Cavett Show. Her then-boyfriend Graham Nash played at Woodstock with the newly formed Crosby, Stills and Nash and he promptly told her all about it. She then sat down and wrote "Woodstock" in honour of the festival that she wasn't even at. It would go on to become one of her signature numbers, a major hit for both CS&N and, in the UK, Matthews Southern Comfort and a song still associated with late sixties' flower power counterculture. Mitchell's composition is a celebration of the back-to-nature spirit of the age which only manages to emphasize the idealism. You may not necessarily know she wasn't there by the lyrics but it makes sense given new age mysticism and good vibes present. Meanwhile, some of those who did show up wrote Woodstock tributes of their own but they were burdened by accuracy.
Poor old Melanie. She did a well received thirty minute set at one in the morning on the opening day yet she was left out of the movie. Still, not only did her career continue to take off but she had a breakthrough hit with "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)", a far more realistic take on the Woodstock experience. Subsequent generations may have bought into the romance of the hippie era but the general public at the time clearly didn't mind having a much more measured view. There's a particular verse that I would like to highlight. Here are its four lines along with my own brand of analysis:
We were so close, there was no room. Yeah, no shit. It was uncomfortable. Nearly half-a-million people crammed into a farm will do that. Sure, that Max Yasgur guy was a successful dairy farmer or something but his property could've only been so big. Yet, everyone being packed in so tight was in keeping with the times so you all should've just sucked it up, right?
We bled inside each other's wounds. Gross. (On the other hand, I initially misheard Melanie and thought she's used a word other than 'wounds' which would've been even more disgusting) Charitably, she could have been singing about how members of her generation had these wounds that had been caused by the Kennedy assassination and the Bomb and 'Nam and all that shit and that everyone in attendance was giving each other emotional blood transfusions or something along those lines but she could've done with more elegant phrasing had that been her intention.
We all caught the same disease. Yeah, leftism, am I right? I jest but I can imagine a few sad, crew-cut sporting Nixon fans saying something along those lines. It would be interesting to find out if there were any long term health problems that affected attendees as Melanie seems to be suggesting. In any event, I think Mel has hammered the point home sufficiently by now. (There is a longer version of "Lay Down" out there but I'd rather not risk hearing about people sharing each other's backwash or stepping on discarded ban-aids or other stomach-turning activities)
And we sang the songs of peace. Seeing as how crowded and teeming with disease and rain-soaked it was, it's a wonder there weren't riots like at Woodstock '99. A credit to everyone that peace and love was a constant throughout the weekend's festivities — and hopefully it carried over in their everyday lives, even those who were on the way to becoming Yuppies.
Joining Melanie on "Lay Down" are the Edwin Hawkins Singers. While the best thing about this single, their presence seems to take you out of being at Woodstock. Like Joni, the gospel act best known for "Oh Happy Day" weren't there, though they would appear earlier that the summer at the so-called 'Black Woodstock' held in Harlem (and not to be confused with the music festival that was supposed to run concurrently with the famous Muhammad Ali-George Foreman Rumble in the Jungle fight in the former Zaire). A gospel act at the hippie love fest might've been a good idea but having them on this song doesn't right a wrong. It even manages to trivialize the overt realism of Melanie's lyrics a little.
The other thing wrong with Hawkins and his group of female singers is that they do not do Melanie any favours. I must say I'd been expecting her to sound like a prototype of those quirky female folk singers from the Lilith Fair era — a sort of Manic Pixie Dream Girl with an acoustic guitar — but her voice was far too gravelly. She did all right for herself anyway with her Woodstock set being more than respectable. Nevertheless, she's way out of her depth next to a choir full of commanding vocalists. If she had been hoping that they might build her up then I hope she wasn't too disappointed. Last time I credited Rare Earth for being "pioneers in the 'nondescript white band with a Motown fixation' game". As if not to be outdone, Melanie Safka's first of two RPM number ones place her at the forefront in the 'white girl singers who think they can play with the gospel vets' stakes.
"Lay Down" isn't a great song but it remains a fascinating period piece from a time that has been mythologized to death. This first hand account may not feed into the public's dream of peace and love and music but it ought to be an antidote to much of the accompanying bullshit. Perhaps it would be better remembered had Melanie been as talented a songwriter as Joni Mitchell. Alas, we all can't be Joni, can we?
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