Hyde Park had been the largest outdoor concert ever held but within months it was eclipsed by Woodstock. There the up-and-coming, down-and-out, long-haired, freaky, and high, all showed up and for four days camped outside and listened to the music. Except for the Big Three (Dylan, The Stones, The Beatles), everyone who was anyone in music went to Woodstock. And if Dylan was not there, he was amply represented by The Band, whose lyrics and delivery displayed the same worldly hipness as Dylan.
The Who were there, along with Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, John Sebastian, Sly Stone, Country Joe and the Fish. But mostly, of course, we were there, newly visible. “Wow, look at you,” went one performer after another. “You’re beautiful. We’re beautiful.” We were the story.
Someone then coined the phrase “Woodstock Nation” for all these hairies, and a helicopter shot shows the “nation” at its first convention, spread out over the fields, impervious to the rain and mud. Periodic announcements from the stage would deliver reports of lost children, warn people of “bad acid,” the house-keeping chores of the nation. The New York Times, reacting to the mud and mire, would ask, “What kind of culture is it that can produce so colossal a mess?” We called it “getting it together.” We were proud.
And though I knew this only by reputation – I was at the time of Woodstock still in England – I still identified.
To people who would dismiss it, we said, “Hey, it happened, didn’t it? Nobody got hurt, did they?”
People still believed that music was going to change the world. FROM AN AMERICAN STORY
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