I’ve been working my way through all the DVDs and videos of the recorded music at Woodstock. Now I’m just talking about the one’s on video. I haven’t started to check out all the music on vinyl or CDs. That’s my next project.

Anyway I counted…

• 23 actual video performances by 17 different performers on the “Director’s Cut” version now being released. It think there’s a couple here that weren’t on the original movie.
• 18 performances by 13 acts on the “Untold Stories” disc that comes with the Ultimate Collectors Edition
• 16 performances by 15 performers on The Lost Performances VHS tape

Now each of these performances are not repeated on the other tapes or discs. So the performances on the tape are not on any other DVD that I know of. Feel free to correct me on this if I’m wrong.

Which Are The Best Woodstock Performances?

Creedence Clearwater at Woodstock

Of course everyone has their own favorites. And if you’ve only watched the original movie you haven’t come close to seeing all the performances so how could you judge. But the songs I had never heard before were at least as good as the main ones you see in the movie. And if you’ve only seen the original that means there’s about 32 out of 55 performances that you haven’t heard or seen.

I was particulary surprised by Paul Butterfield on the VHS doing Drifting Blues. As a big blues lover I was blown away by just how authentic he was. The quality of his blues was as good as the best you could see today. It was clearly in the same league of a Rod Piazza or Mark Hummel that you would see today. The band was way ahead of it’s time.

And mostly because it was a big high point for me, Creedence Clearwater’s version of Born on the Bayou that got me to jump out of my sleeping bag at 3:00 AM on Saturday night, was great to finally get to hear. That’s on the Untold Stories disc.

Anyway my point is there is much more to hear. If you loved the music on the “old” Woodstock movie, the new stuff is not only just as good, but like seeing Woodstock from another perspective. It’s worth checking out if you get the chance.

Here’s a little taste of what you’ve been missing…

A Young Michael Shrieve

In fact, I think the Santana performance opened many people’s eyes that these hippie musicians and the whole 60’s music scene was higher quality than many understood. Santana definitely had raised the bar!

In fact, my 15 year old daughter, who plays guitar, now wants to play drums since seeing Michael’s drum solo. I bet the fact that that he was the youngest musician at Woodstock (and she thinks he’s very cute) has a little something to do with that.

Michael Shrieve’s Speech At His Induction Into the Roll & Roll Hall of Fame

“When I was 16 years old, I called up about a dozen of my musician friends and asked if they wanted to drive up to the Fillmore with me and see if we could sit in. Michael Bloomfield, Steven Stills and Al Kooper were playing together, billed as “Supersession.” Every one of my friends said no, that I was crazy. It would never happen. Until I called my last friend, who was older than me and had actually moved out of his parents’ house and was living with a girl, said, “Oh man, that sounds great. Hold on a minute,” whereupon he spoke to his girlfriend about it and came back to the phone and said to me “Hey, I think I’m just gonna stay in tonight.” Needless to say that one phone call is the reason I didn’t marry until my early thirties….

At least I can try, I said to myself. It probably won’t happen but tomorrow at least I can say that I tried. So I asked my folks, who
were always supportive and trusting of my musical endeavors, for the keys to the car and drove the thirty miles up to the Fillmore. I went in and walked up to the stage, pulled on Mike Bloomfield’s pant leg, looked up at him and said, ” Hey man, I play drums, can I sit in?”

Well I was 16 but looked 12 and I fully expected him to either kick me in the face or say “Go away kid!” But instead he said, “Well the drummer’s a really nice guy, let me ask him.”

Uh-oh. Hey, wait a minute, I thought. I was just going to try. Oh no! Well he comes back and says, “Yeah, it’s cool, you can play.” Oh shit. Then it hits me. I’m going to play with Michael Bloomfield, Steven Stills, and Al Kooper, on the sand stage that I’d seen with Cream, The Yardbirds, Van Morrison, Miles Davis, and BB King?

Well, I played but I swear to this day I don’t remember one note, not one moment of the jam. That’s how scared I was. So we finished playing and now I’m backstage hanging out with the other musicians. Am I cool or what?

Well Stan Marcum and David Brown, the manager and bass player of Santana, came up to me and said, “Hey man, we heard you play and you sounded really good. We have a band called Santana and we’ve been thinking about getting a new drummer. Why don’t you give us your number?”

Well, I knew who Santana was; everybody did in the area. I had seen them, and even said to my brother once when we were watching them play, “I really want to play with these guys.”

Cut to a year later. I never did hear from them. But, one night I was visiting a recording studio that I used to frequent to try to hustle free studio time for my own group. I’m walking in the front door and the drummer from Santana is walking out. I go inside and Santana was in the studio recording their first album for Columbia and Clive Davis, and they had just had a big falling out with their drummer! A couple of the guys recognized me from a year ago and asked me if I’d like to jam.

Well, we jammed. We played all night long and at the end of the night we all gathered in a small room off to the side. Actually, I think it was just Carlos, Gregg, and myself. Carlos asked me if I would like to join the band. I said, ” You know, let me check my schedule.” Just kidding!

That night they followed me home and I went into the house and woke my folks up and said, “See you later. This is where I get off.” I ran out to the street, jumped into the car and drove up to San Francisco’s Mission District, where the band was living in a house together. I took my appropriate place on the couch, and despite the excitement and because of the late hour, fell asleep.

I was in the band. And what a band it was! I soon saw this was no peace, love, hippie thing. This band was like a street gang and its weapon was music.

Cut to another year later and the band is set to play the Woodstock Festival. Bill Graham was able to get us on the show. We got paid, I think it was $500.00. We were known in California and we were doing a lot of festivals, always working, but still relatively unknown. We played the Woodstock show, which was of course incredible. It was also a mess. I think Paul Kantner had the best quote about Woodstock. ” If you said you had a great time at Woodstock, you weren’t there.”

Needless to say, we went over well. We were the right band at the right time. Our street gang tribal rhythms were perfect for the Woodstock tribe that day.

Another year later and we’re touring more, our first record is out and the Woodstock movie is opening in theaters across the country. Santana is playing in New York and our first day off we go to see the movie. We’re standing in line waiting for the earlier showing to finish, and as the people are coming out of the theatre, we notice quite a few of the people in line. We didn’t know if we were going to end up in the film or not. After all, we were the unknown group there that day.

Halfway through the movie there we are playing Soul Sacrifice. Halfway through into my drum solo the screen splits and there are 6 images of me across it. I didn’t know whether to shout out, “That’s me!” or sink down in my seat. I sank down in my seat and watched and listened. At the end of the song the whole theatre burst into applause, as the 6 of us turned in our seats and looked at each other in laughter and surprise.

Well, our little musical street gang had just made a sound heard round the world. As the film was released around the world, the band became known everywhere. On our first trip Europe to play the Montreux Jazz Festival, I walked to the train station to pick up some magazines, and there I was on the cover of one, in a small shot from Woodstock.

Everywhere we went people knew us. Our album shot up the charts. This was all pretty heavy stuff for a 19-year old kid, but I loved it. As a drummer, there was no better band to be in. This was about really playing your instrument and these guys would really keep you on your toes. If you didn’t play well you would hear about it! We played everywhere. We were one of the first groups to play Mexico and Central and South America. We played Africa, the Far East, the Philippines and Europe many times.

Cut to 15-20 years later and I’m walking down 5th Avenue in New York City. By this time, I’d been out of Santana over 10 years, made about 7 solo albums; played on many people’s records, done a lot of stuff. A guy walks up to me and says, “Hey Mike Shrieve! Oh man, I saw you in Woodstock. You were so great! I loved it so much….but what happened man? You’ve gotten….older.”

Well thousands of people have mentioned Woodstock to me. I kept trying to beat it with something else I did, but realized over time that this would never happen, and I learned to live with the fact, and accept that it meant so much to so many people, that you just couldn’t fight it. It seemed I was 18 forever to them, and so be it. I’m 48 now and I’ve had a fruitful and long creative career but nothing has compared to my experience of playing in Santana.

I am honored to stand here tonight to be inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. But I am even more honored to have had the experience that has meant so much to me my entire life – to have made such wonderful music with these gentlemen standing behind me.”

Check out his amazing drum solo in the video above.

]]> http://www.woodstock-memories.com/woodstock-music-festival/the-youngest-musician-at-woodstock-michael-shrieve/feed 1 http://www.woodstock-memories.com/woodstock-music-festival/my-woodstock-highlight http://www.woodstock-memories.com/woodstock-music-festival/my-woodstock-highlight#comments Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:49:53 +0000 admin http://www.woodstock-memories.com/?p=167 Of course trying to pick one highlight from something that changed your whole life is a little silly. But there is one moment from Woodstock 1969 that I will always remember…

It was late Saturday night. It was the night Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead played.

Now I’ve never been a big Dead fan but even under these special conditions of being with all these other “freaks” I couldn’t really get into it. After a long day… and now it was about 2:00 AM in the morning… well their endless, noodling jams were just not hitting the spot. To be truthful they were putting me to sleep.

When they finally ended I was pretty much asleep physically and emotionally.

Creedance at Woodstock

Then…

I heard… well… da-da-da-da —- well it’s hard to describe… you’ve got to check out the video (below)… it was those first guitar licks from Born on the Bayou… Creedence Clearwater Revival was bringing us back to life. Everyone in that big, cold, sleepy field jumped out of their sleeping bags and started to dance. It was the perfect antidote to the Grateful Dead. Energy and groove had taken over from spacey noodling… I still remember that moment well.

And that performance never made it to the movie. In fact there was no Creedence Clearwater in the movie… until now.

The new Woodstock 40th Anniversary, Ultimate Collectors Edition has an extra DVD with many unheard performance… and guess what’s on it… yup Born On The Bayou in all it’s glory. Plus two more CCR songs too… I Put A Spell On You and Keep On Chooglin’.

But that one song was worth the price for me!

And there’s lot more songs that you probably haven’t heard. I counted 55 songs available on the 3 videos you can buy. There were only 23 actual performances on the original movie disc/tape. You’re missing out.

Here’s a sample of what you are missing. Of course the actual DVD is much better quality and sound.

It’s the first time I’ve watched it all the way through in probably 35 years so it was a lot like watching it for the first time. But when you’ve watched it as many times as I have, I guess that could never be true.

Anyway…

I’ll talk more about it in other posts but one thing struck me as I was watching Jimi Hendrix’s performance on Monday morning. They did a lot of great close-ups of Jimi’s fingers on the fretboard. As a musician and guitar player myself I thought this was great. It made me realize just how far ahead of his time he really was in 1969.

Now if you don’t play guitar it may not mean anything too you but as I look back on Jimi I realize what a great blues guitarist he was. So much soul and so much emotion. Too bad he didn’t live longer and into what I know would have been his prime. I bet he would have turned into an awesome blues or jazz guitarist. 

I guess we’ll never know.

Anyway here’s a video of his performance to show you what I mean. BTW the DVD quality is Soooo much better than what you see in this video…