The original Woodstock concert was arguably the greatest single cultural mass event in Western Civilization history. It changed everything - projecting the new youth lifestyle into the world en masse. Every town & city in North America now has its own music festival, and everything from Presidential inaugurations to any peaking summit are described as the "Woodstock" of whatever the endeavor. And every 5 and 10 year anniversary since the original '69 masterpiece sees some attempt to recapture the magic. But only once in the 50 years since, has it successfully happily happened with a major concert with major acts over three days of a weekend - and that was Woodstock '94.
When you read this you're going to wish someone wrote the same book about '69. This is a take-you-there and bring-it-to-life account of not only going to the festival, but sneaking a van in, and parking right behind the main stage for the entire weekend It's about going for it. Collecting Adventure Cards. Chasing down the Meaning of Life. About experiencing perfect moments, and how to seek them out, and how to preserve them when they happen. It's about finding your courage. Taking chances. Finding bliss. And bringing it home with you.
Specifically this covers the performances by (in order) Sheryl Crow, Joe Cocker, The Band & friends, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Aerosmith, the Allman Brothers, Traffic, the Neville Brothers, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Cliff and Peter Gabriel. Those acts and their mindset and ethos and spirit are who imbue the narrator and the book. Also present and prevalent here are the Spirits of John Lennon and Jim Hendrix who both made multiple appearances over the weekend. The book is optimistic, positive, and positively funny at times. It's playful, but factual.
The author was a reporter for a Canadian newspaper and carried with him a portable cassette recorder, capturing a couple dozen tapes filled with press conferences as they happened, and the voices of the people as the festival progressed from orderly to chaotic, from buttoned-down to fences down, as well as conversations with attentive concert goers and colorful town locals. The book also captures a now-quaint period of time when landline phones were how people reached the outside world, and maps were printed on paper, and word-of-mouth was the social network. It's about when festivals were still lawless, unsecured and unpredictable, when gates could be abandoned, and you could talk your way into or out of anything.
The book will also take the reader on a bone fide acid trip as the whole mad weekend climaxes in a sort of hippie Hunter Thompson meets a positive Lester Bangs on a Jack Kerouac road trip with a Neal Cassady catalytic Adventureman. It has the playful spirit of the Merry Pranksters with Abbie Hoffman's respect for authority.
It's romantically optimistic, with a practical Gets-Things-Done operating system. It places the reader on the field as the gates first open to the public, until Peter Gabriel sent everyone into orbit during Sunday's climax. It has transcribed speeches from the stage and backstage. It paints impressionistic pictures of a wildly colorful scene while making a Michael Wadleigh-worthy documentary in book form.
It's a How To Have Fun manual. It's about the only time the spirit of Yasgur's farm in '69 ever reappeared on a mass scale under the Woodstock banner. It's a parable of Adventure. It's a harmony of an eternal chorus. It transcends age. Teenagers lived it then, and still do today and can through this book - but people old enough to have been at the first one will recognize themselves in this and be empowered that the torch was passed on and it still blazing. And everyone in between who seeks out epiphanies can enjoy a likeminded tribe.