I went to a Woodstock 40th Anniversary Reunion show last night. It was here in Tampa at a place called Skippers and was put on by the local community radio station WMNF.
The idea was a bunch of local bands would “cover” all the Woodstock bands in the order that they performed at the actual Woodstock Festival. So each band would play roughly a 20 minute set and play songs by each Woodstock artist. So the first act would play Richie Havens songs and the last act would do Jimi Hendrix. They would play in the same order as the actual Woodstock bands played.

It all started at 2:00 PM on Saturday and went until the bands were done. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? How would they fit it all in between 2:00 and midnight. Anyway, it looks like they did it. I wasn’t there for the whole time but when I left at 11:00 PM there was only a couple of bands before Jimi was to go on.

Anyway, the show was packed and I was lucky to even get tickets. And it was also a gas. The bands did an amazing job. The highlights that I saw were the bands that did Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, The band that did the Band, and the band that did Melanie… whoops that was Melanie.

Melanie Shows Up

Yes Melanie showed up and played herself. Turns out she lives in the area. She was suppose to perform at an actual show at the original site in Bethel New York, but I guess the show fell through.

Marty Balin also showed up and played with the band that did Jefferson Airplane.

Both Melanie and Marty Balin were surprise “show ups” and the crowd loved them both.

Now I admit I didn’t see everything, so I’m going to depend on my local friends to add to this post and fill in the rest of the details. Come back for more to hear the whole story.

Jimi Playing Monday Morning

As you might remember Jimi Hendrix played last at Woodstock in 1969. He ended up playing on Monday morning to only a fraction of the 400,000 people who were actually there.

Why?

Well it was his choice. Michael Lang the promoter wanted him to play Sunday night at about midnight when plenty of people would still be there. But he and his management refused.

Why would they be so crazy?

It was all about money and egos. Jimi’s manager, Michael Jeffrey, insisted that Jimi would be the headliner and get paid the most. And because he was the headliner he would go on last.

Michael Lang had a philosophy for Woodstock that it wouldn’t be about “stars” or “money” but about the music and the communal spirit. His vision was that no band would be treated “special” and the maximum he would pay would be $15,000. It was even put into all the contracts… something he called the “favored nation status” claus. No particular bands would be given that status.

Hendrix had been getting close to $100,000 at the time because he was the hottest act in the music scene.

So the negotiations began…

Lang also wanted all the bands to appear on the poster and in advertisements as being equal with no band getting top billing or larger font sizes. Jimi Hendrix’s management insisted he appear on top and get paid more than anyone else. His agent, white patten-leather-shoe-wearing Ron Terry, was sent to do the final haggling. He insisted on $50,000.

So Lang offered Terry a solution… $30,000 to play 2 sets… one set would open the show acoustically and then he would close on Sunday night. After a phone call to manager Jeffrey, some discussion, and an extra $2000 for expenses, Jeffrey agreed.

But Hendrix never did play that acoustic set. He never showed up that Friday. He didn’t arrive until Sunday around noon.

And by the way…

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass, had disbanded in June. So Hendrix’s band at Woodstock was called, Gypsy, Sun and Rainbows. He later would change the name to Band of Gypsies.

When Hendrix and his band finally showed up on Sunday, Michael Lang offered to let him go on Sunday night at midnight. But his manager, Michael Jeffrey insisted he go on last, no matter what time it was.

It turned out he didn’t go on until 8:30 Monday morning… to no more than 40,000 people. It still was one of Jimi Hendrix’s most memorable shows. The highlight of course being Jimi’s version of the Star Spangled Banner.

Who was in the band that morning?

• Billy Cox on bass
• Mitch Mitchell on drums
• Juma Sultan and Gerry Velez on percussion
• and Larry Lee on rhythm guitar

Why a new band?

Jimi said… “We got tired of the Experience and every once in a while we were blowing our minds too much, so we decided to change the whole thing around and call it Gypsy, Sun, and Rainbows.”

I wonder if that really is the truth. All we know for sure is that Jimi Hendrix played last on Monday to only 40,000 people. He died a little over a year later.

Some of the information for this post came from Road To Woodstock by Michael Lang. Here’s the link to learn more about it.

Technorati Tags: Jimi Hendrix, Woodstock 1969, Woodstock Music Festival

Young Michael Lang

But I was wrong…

I read his book, The Road to Woodstock and have been reading and studying accounts of how the Woodstock Festival went down and it’s clear he was the soul and the inspiration for not only making it happen but for also keeping it “rightous” in the full 60’s meaning of the word.

In fact, most accounts say that Woodstock 69 would not have happened without him.

There were so many problems and curveballs thrown at the promoters that the fact that it happened at all was amazing. Put that’s another post.

Michael Lang was a boy from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn who grew up in a modest middle class family. His father ran an engineering business installing heating systems. He was also an inventor and understood what it was like to take chances. As Michael recounted in his book The Road To Woodstock…

“My father always taught me to be self-reliant. That was his thing — just take care of it, no matter what. Early on he gave me a strategy for getting out of tough situations.: Take charge and keep moving; step back just enough to think clearly; and trust your instincts.”

This advice would server him well as he struggled to make Woodstock happen.

He played drums in rock bands. And was hip enough to check out pot and LSD in his early teens but also hip enough to catch some great music in Greenwich Village, like Phi Ochs, Fred Neil, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan. But he also was hip to jazz and saw some of the greats around town too. It was clear he loved the music of his generation and understood it too.

The Miami Pop Festival

After off-and-on stints at New York University, Lang ended up in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. He opened a head shop, which was not easy task in the mid 1960’s, and managed to even make some money at it.

Inspired by Monterey Pop he decided he wanted to put on the first music festival in Florida.

Somehow he managed to pull it off in a matter of weeks, and the show happened in May of 1968. Acts included John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Blue Cheer, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and the new sensation, The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The show went off well despite weather problems (sounds familiar) and problems with the acts and the “money” people. Generally though, it is remembered as one of the better concerts from that year. It drew 80,000 people over two days.

Michael Lang’s Strength – Staying Calm

Michael Lang

In his book it’s clear from the quotes by people like Abbie Hoffman, Eddie Kramer, and the other promoters that he could handle the heat. When the situation went south he could stay cool, keep everyone else calm and get things done.

Through the debacle that was the original site in Walkill New York, to finding a new location, to putting together the organization and crews for the show, you can see in his book, that Michael was the visionary who made it happen and the one who made sure it happend on a “high” level. The proof is we are still talking about this weekend 40 years after, with not only affection, but with a gleam in our eyes. It truly was a magical weekend — thanks to Michael Lang. To learn more about the book click on this link.

And of course the summer of 1968 was as bad as 1969 was “good.” The Chicago Democratic Convention was certainly a watershed event. And of course the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy defined that year. After assassinations, riots, wars and general social unrest, the country needed a respite.

Enter 1969, perhaps the greatest summer in American history. Thank God, because 1968 had left us dazed and confused. After the bloodletting of the previous year, it was time for some unifying events and feel-good moments. Well at least a few anyways…

Man Lands On The Moon

Neil A. Armstrong, 39, invented the moonwalk when he stepped down from the Apollo 11 lunar module, saying “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” I still remember watching it on TV with my Mom. We were all proud and filled with excitement and hope. And there were many more moon landings to come but the first was the best.

The Woodstock Music Festival

Rolling Stone Magazine calls it one of the defining moments in Rock and Roll but it was also much more than that. For a generation it defined our new lifestyle and values as being acceptable. We knew we were not alone.

The Mets Amazing Season

The New Your Mets, led by Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, won the World Series.

The summer of 1969 season was the 8th regular season for the Mets who played their home games at Shea Stadium. They had never finished higher than 9th place.

Managed by Gil Hodges, the team went 100-62 and finished 1st in the Eastern Division of the National League, becoming the first-ever divisional champions. From there, they defeated the Atlanta Braves, three games to zero in the inaugural National League Championship Series for the first-ever National League pennant, followed by their first-ever World Series Championship as they defeated the American League Champion Baltimore Orioles in five games.

There were also a few not so “feel-good” moments in the summer of 1969…

Charles Manson

Charles Manson’s “family” murders 7 people in Los Angeles. Given this fact it’s amazing that Woodstock was allowed to happen. But you can be sure the world was watching to see if all “hippies” were like Manson and his followers.

Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquidick Accident

Ted Kennedy’s car drives off a bridge in Martha’s Vineyard and his “friend” Mary Jo Kopechne drowns in the accident. His hopes of becoming president drown as well.

The Winding Up of the Vietnam War

Richard Nixon was President and more and more he was escalating the war… even though he said he was winding it down. Despite more and more violent images of the war on TV, he was still able to convince the country it was winnable and worth the effort.

There were also a few silly events worth noting…

The Invention of the ATM

Where would Las Vegas be without those magical machines that dispense cash on demand? Maybe we would all have more money in the bank if Don Wetzel had never developed the first automated teller machine, which was installed at a branch of Chemical Bank on Long Island in New York.

Elvis Presley Begins His Vegas Era

When Kirk Kerkorian finished building his International Hotel (now the Hilton), he asked Presley to be the exclusive headliner, and Presley debuted July 26. The King signed up for twice-yearly monthlong stands for $125,000 per week — and stayed till 1977. For the first time, a Vegas hotel acknowledged it had profited from entertainment, and what had been just another gimmick to entice gamblers became a tourist draw in itself.

The Gay Rights Movement Is Born

Homosexuals and drag queens fought back after police raided New York’s Stonewall Inn; gay people worldwide suddenly discovered they were a community, one which from then on would forcibly resist discrimination.

“The Brady Bunch” Debuts On ABC

America’s favorite family moved into our living rooms on Sept. 26, and refused to leave — four decades later, Brady children still pop up, only now they’re on reality shows. Other zeitgeist-changing 1969 debuts include “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and, perhaps most revolutionary, “Sesame Street,” which used TV techniques to actually teach, rather than merely distract, U.S. children.

Here’s A Chronology of Major Historical Events During The Summer of 1969

June

June 1 – In Montreal, Canada, Give Peace a Chance is recorded during the famous bed-in for peace by John Lennon. The song, the first single recorded solo by a Beatle, and released under the name Plastic Ono Band, is still a strong anthem for peace.

June 28 – The Stonewall riots in New York City mark the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.

July

July 8 – Vietnam War: The very first U.S. troop withdrawals are made. The war would still go on for almost 6 more years.

July 16 – Apollo program: Apollo 11 (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins) lifts off toward the first landing on the Moon.

July 18 – Edward M. Kennedy drives off a bridge on his way home from a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Mary Jo Kopechne, a former campaign aide to his brother who was in the car with him, dies in the incident.

July 20 – Apollo program: The lunar module Eagle lands on the lunar surface. The world watches in awe as Neil Armstrong takes his historic first steps on the Moon.

July 24 – The Apollo 11 astronauts return from the first successful Moon landing, and are placed in biological isolation for several days, on the chance they may have brought back lunar germs. The airless lunar environment is later determined to preclude microscopic life.

July 25 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This starts the “Vietnamization” of the war.

August

August 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometers).

August 9 – Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murder Sharon Tate, (who was 8 months pregnant), and her friends: Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring at Roman Polanskis home in Los Angeles, California.

More than 100 stab wounds are found on the victims, except for Parent, who had been shot almost as soon as the Manson Family entered the property.

August 10 – The Manson Family kills Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, wealthy Los Angeles businesspeople.

August 15–18 – The Woodstock Festival is held in upstate New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.

August 17 – Category 5 Hurricane Camille, the most powerful tropical cyclonic system at landfall in recorded history, hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).

September

September 2 – The first automatic teller machine in the United States is installed in Rockville Centre, New York.

September 5 – My Lai Massacre: Lieutenant William Calley is charged with 6 counts of premeditated murder, for the deaths of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.

September 24 – The Chicago Eight trial begins in Chicago, Illinois.

September 26 – The Beatles release their Abbey Road album, receiving critical praise and enormous commercial success. It’s there last studio album and the end of an era for many.

These events during the summer of 1969 are still resonating in our world today, 40 years later.

Technorati Tags: apollo 11, summer of 1969, woodstock memories

• The Ultimate Collector’s Edition (3 discs total)
• The Director’s Cut version of just the movie (2 discs) – 225 minutes compared to 184 for original
• The VHS tape called The Lost Performances

In the Ultimate Collectors Edition you’ve got the Director’s Cut for the regular movie (2 discs). This comes on regular 2-disc version too. And then you’ve also got the Extras disc with a bunch more performances by the bands and lots of interviews with promoters and movie crew (and even a Hugh Hefner Playboy After Dark section). And you’ve also got the VHS tape called The Lost Performances with songs that you can’t get on any of the other DVDs.

The Woodstock Crowd

Anyway, I’ve been watching all these and it hit me. Even though some of these performances are great, it’s all the shots of the crowds that really get my attention.That’s where the real “fun” was being had and where the real story of Woodstock was happening.

And most of those shots aren’t necessarily of people watching the music although that’s what most people are there for. There’s also plenty of shots of people just hanging around, or doing yoga, or interviews with people (the one of the guy cleaning out the port-a-san is a classic), or of course the nude swimmers at the pond. These are the real stars of the movie to me.

You can tell these hippies are having fun and sharing something very special. But it’s the interviews with the townpeople and the movie crew and the organizers that are sticking in my mind.

Here’s some examples…

• The guy that jumped on stage with Canned Heat and Bob Hite totally accepted and put his arm around while he sang
• Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang (the promoters) talking about how the vision was working while they were getting rained on. In the middle of the interview a helicopter starts to drop flowers and dry clothes on the crowd. In split screen a couple undresses to make love.
• The Port-A-San man sharing how he is happy to help these kids and has his own kid at the show and one in Vietnam. I great man from the older generation. It had to open all our eyes that the older generation isn’t all bad.
• Max Yasgur addressing the crowd and saying “you’ve proven something to the world… 3 days of fund and music… and nothing but fun and music… and I God bless you for it.”

And on the Extras disc there are so many juicy tidbits like…

• Chip Monck got to be MC because Michael Lang forgot to book anyone. He was notified at 7:00 AM on Friday. Chip was actually in charge of the lights so he had no prior MC experience really. All this time I thought he was a professional announcer.
• The story of how the “brown acid” announcement happened. And how he did his best to soften the tone so it wouldn’t promote bad trips.
• How as the traffic congestion got worse and worse the promoters had to find more and more helicopters to get performers and supplies to the site.
• How big of a negative effect the rain on Saturday had on the logistics and equipment for the festival… but somehow the crowd and the bands and the organizers rose above it.
• Martin Scorsce’s comments about how the experience of the Woodstock music effected all of his subsequent movies. He was a lowly “assistant director” to Michael Wadleigh the film’s “creator.”

Yes, the crowd and the people were the real stars of Woodstock.

That couple that was on the cover to the album and became an icon to a generation got married and are still together 40 years later. Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both now 60 — embracing underneath a dirty blanket, surrounded by exhausted concertgoers will forever be intertwined with Woodstock and a generation.

Nick and Bobbi Ercoline

They only met three months earlier. And weren’t even aware the picture was being taken. But once the movie came out they were famous. To the Ercolines’ surprise, the image became the cover of the ‘Woodstock’ album in 1970 and was featured on posters for the subsequent documentary film.

But it’s clear. Forty years after the legendary festival in Bethel, N.Y., a photo of two lovebirds taken at Woodstock has become an iconic symbol of love.

They married two summers after the fabled weekend, and they still live less than an hour’s drive from the original concert site of Bethel, N.Y., and within spitting distance of where they both grew up. Nick Ercoline works for the Orange County, N.Y., Department of Housing. Bobbi is a resident nurse at the elementary school in their hometown of Pine Bush.

The 40th anniversary of the ultimate hippie-fest, this Aug. 15-17, has thrown the Ercolines into the spotlight again – something they never expected or sought.

They say they remember nothing of the original shot, taken by Burk Uzzle. “We weren’t striking a pose,” Nick says. “We were as surprised as everybody to see that photo on the album cover.”

What resonates most about the photo is that it speaks to what many Woodstock veterans consider to be the true meaning of the festival — not just music but a movement of peace, love and unity. In a recent interview with Spinner, Woodstock performer Richie Havens cited a Martin Luther King Jr. speech, saying “It’s not him or him or him, it’s all of us or nothing. That was our thing, that’s what we went against the war with.”

And what held that generation together was the belief that love could change anything. And that love could last. It sure did for Nick and Bobbi.

The couple themselves acknowledge the social significance of the now legendary picture. “It’s an honest representation of a generation. When we look at that photo … I see our generation,” Nick told the NY Daily News.

Certainly Woodstock has been romanticized over the years, but for many, the image of Nick and Bobbi wrapped in a blanket represents exactly what Woodstock is all about.

What’s more, the couple has been together ever since.

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…

“For me, Woodstock was a test of whether people of our generation really believed in one another and the world we were struggling to create. How would we do when we were in charge? Could we live as the peaceful community we envisioned? I’d hoped we could.”

Now that may sound a bit overblown but I think each of us who attended Woodstock were searching for something. Yes, many of us called ourselves “hippies” or “freaks” but deep down all we wanted was to be different than our parents. We looked at them and the world they had created and, rightly or wrongly, we didn’t like what we saw. We REALLY wanted to do better.

We saw in our parent’s world an overwhelming materialism that put the focus on things that weren’t important to us… and didn’t really work for them.

They had put the whole world at risk with their violent views of the “enemy” who at that time was the Russians. But to us as the “boomer” generation we hoped and believed there had to be a better way. Maybe we were just being naive but we had to try and find a new approach.

That’s why the hippie message of love and peace and kindness appealed to us. Sure many of the so called freaks were just acting out a role that they didn’t really feel. But others truly believed in the message and tried to make those values of peace, love, and kindness real.

And yes drugs did play a part. Pot and particularly LSD had shown us another view of reality, another state of mind.  Our minds had truly been opened up. And part of the appeal of that new state of mind was it was soooo different than the reality we saw around us. It showed us that life was much more than rushing to work, buying stuff, drinking alcohol and going to church on Sunday. In fact, drugs main impact was it showed us that you could be blissfully happy without any of what our parents thought was important.

Woodstock was important to so many of us because it helped us see that we weren’t alone in our feelings. When we saw the crowd and felt the sharing and kindness that was all around us, we knew we were on to something. It was real. There really was hope. The importance of Woodstock was it convinced us that maybe we could do it. We could live a life that was nothing like our parent’s.

The question was, could we really change the world? For that one brief weekend Woodstock convinced us that anything was possible and we knew we could.

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 0 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.