Woodstock 1969: The Music

The Most Memorable Performances from the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival

Woodstock was planned as three days of peace and music. Day one of the festival was meant to be dedicated to folk music, while days two and three showcased more rock and roll.

Kicking off the show on Friday afternoon was folk singer Richie Havens. His performance at Woodstock would be one of the shows for which he became most known. His original slot on the bill was fifth, but since some bands were still stuck in the Woodstock traffic he took the stage first. He was so well received by the crowd, he continued playing until he ran out of songs. It was then he improvised a rendition of the traditional slave hymn “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”

A solo performance by Country Joe, without his band the Fish, became a powerful anti-war symbol. Country Joe and the Fish’s best-known song was a combo of, “The ‘Fish’ Cheer” and the “I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” – a song that is well-known to the Vietnam generation. The Fish Cheer is a cheerleading-style call-and-response chant where Country Joe yells out “Give me an F!” and the crowd obliges. His interpretation of the song was famously altered at the Woodstock festival, spelling out a different four-letter word.

The Who’s set almost didn’t happen, as the band demanded to be paid before taking the stage. Yet somehow in the early morning hours of Sunday, one of the promoters was able to give them their certified check for eleven thousand, two hundred dollars. Their Woodstock performance helped immensely with their popularity in the US. They performed much of their rock opera, Tommy. As they began their performance at roughly 5 am on Sunday, concert-goers were able to watch the sun rise while listening to their set. Later, The Who’s bassist John Entwistle said that “God was their lighting man.”

Englishman Joe Cocker had spent a long time in the music industry, but until Woodstock was relatively unknown to audiences. His Woodstock performance was famous because of its timing right before a torrential downpour and thunderstorm that stopped the festival for several hours. Woodstock’s weather was one of many problems the event faced. Maybe most notable of Cocker’s set was his rendition of the Beatles’ hit “With A Little Help from My Friends,” which has since been labeled one of the best cover songs of all time.

Woodstock was only the second-ever performance together by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Newly-added group member Neil Young famously refused to be recorded on camera during Woodstock, going so far as to threaten the camera people. He also did not play during the band’s acoustic set. Despite the turmoil, the group’s rendition of Joni Mitchell’s song, Woodstock, has become the definitive recording about the event, and immortalized its spirit in song.

Peppered with legendary performances by Janis Joplin, who died a little over a year later, a pregnant Joan Baez, a young Carlos Santana and what Grace Slick called a “morning manic music” slot by her band, Jefferson Airplane, it was obvious even at the time that Woodstock would be the defining moment for a generation.

No performance at Woodstock is as well known as that of Jimi Hendrix, though many say he failed to deliver as the supposed headliner of the show. Scheduled to be the final performance of the festival – as stipulated in his contract – he eventually took the stage at about 9 am Monday morning. Ironically, much of the audience had already left by the time Hendrix got on stage, with – at most – one hundred and eighty thousand spectators still around. The performance was full of Hendrix’s mind-blowing improvisations, along with some well-known and lesser-known songs. However it’s his solo rendition of the Star Spangled Banner that has been inextricably linked with Woodstock, the grandeur of the festival, and – in fact – the era of the 1960s itself.

But, more important than even the music, Woodstock was about the shared experience of a generation.