Woodstock @ 50: Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young + Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock
August 18, 1969
It's been 50 years since Jimi Hendrix caught up with Neil Young at Woodstock in the summer of `69.

On that helicopter day, a half-million stories were made. And here's one of our favorites -- Jimi & Neil trying to make it to the Woodstock concert along with the hordes of flower children at the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

We had long believed it to be an urban legend that Jimi and Neil stole a truck in order to make it to Woodstock. It turns out that is not too far off the mark.


Woodstock: 3 Days of Music, Peace & Love
From a radio interview program "On The Record" by Mary Turner in 1979, Neil was asked about what he remembered of Woodstock:

Young: "One of things I remember about Woodstock was trying to get there to play.

As it turns out, the charter plane I was on with Jimi Hendrix flew into the wrong airport. We were supposed to be picked by a helicopter. The roads were jammed and there was nobody at the airport, so we had no way to get to the concert.

So we're standing at the airport with Melvin Belli [an attorney] trying to figure out what to do. And Melvin Belli steals this pickup truck parked at the airport.

So it's the three of us in this stolen pickup truck trying to get to the Woodstock concert to play -- Jimi, Melvin & me.

That's what I really remember about Woodstock.

Another variation of the story appears in David Zimmer's CROSBY, STILLS & NASH: The Biography with Neil hot-wiring the truck and Elliot Roberts, Young's manager, is driving the pickup truck with Jimi Hendrix on the hood.

Elliot says: 'Jimi Hendrix was a hood ornament! It was insane.'"

As they say, if you remember Woodstock, you weren't there...

So how about the aftermath of Woodstock?

Woodstock: A "Hippie Dream"?

One of them solves the lingering mystery of the absence of Neil Young in Woodstock, the 1970 Michael Wadleigh-directed documentary. And it would seem that's Neil Young's feelings towards that "helicopter day" only seemed to harden over the years. A quote from biographer Jimmy McDonough's Shakey has been bouncing around the blogs driven by a look at the flip-side of Woodstock in The Globe and Mail:

“Woodstock was a bullshit gig. A piece of shit. We played fuckin’ awful.

No one was into the music. I think Stephen [Stills] was way overboard into the huge crowd. Everybody was on this Hollywood trip with the fuckin’ cameras. They weren’t playin’ to the audience as much as to the cameras…I could see everybody changing their performances for the fucking camera and I thought that was bullshit. All these assholes filming, everybody’s carried away with how cool they are…I wasn’t moved.”

In an interrview on Howard Stern Radio in 2014, Neil Young said about Woodstock:

“I didn’t like the fucking cameras, they didn’t have to be on stage. They’re cameras, ‘Hello! Use your zoom, dickhead!”

“Who cares? It doesn’t matter, I was there, I saw it. Who gives a shit? I couldn’t care less.”

From The Dick Cavett TV program that was filmed the day after Woodstock with Joni Mitchell and The Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner and Grace Slick.


And out walks David Crosby and Stephen Stills -- basically straight from Woodstock. Stills shows everyone the mud that is still caked to his jeans which everyone seems to find pretty groovy. Stephen then plays "4+20".

There are other clips from the summer and fall of 1969 including scenes from their home studio in Laurel Canyon, California. Song clips include Crosby's "Song With No Words", Stills' "Black Queen", "Find The Cost of Freedom", and Crosby's "Laughing".

Certainly there's a lot of folklore that's been built up about going down to Yasgur's Farm and joining in a rock and roll band. Like that story about Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young riding a stolen truck to Woodstock.

So it turns out that Neil Young was actually at Woodstock afterall even though he does not appear in the film.

There are a lot of stories about why Neil isn't in the film. Most commonly, it's because he didn't want to be filmed and the lights were cut during CSNY's performance.

Neil's had a lot of contradictory reflections to Woodstock over the years. He used the Woodstock stage announcements extensively during the 1978 Rust Never Sleeps tour. (Hey, if we think really hard, be the rain.)

Conversely, look closely at the desert scene in the film Journey Through the Past where there is a shot revealing The Graduate wearing a Woodstock shirt just before shooting up.

So it would seem that some of the ethos of the period didn't sit too well with Neil judging by the lyrics of 1986's "Hippie Dream" from Landing On Water

'Cause the tie-dye sails
Are the screamin' sheets
And the dusty trail
Leads to blood in the streets
And the wooden ships
Are a hippie dream
Capsized in excess

And it would seem that's Neil's feelings towards that day only seemed to harden over the years. A quote from biographer Jimmy McDonough's Shakey has been bouncing around the blogs driven by a look at the flip-side of Woodstock in The Globe and Mail:

“Woodstock was a bullshit gig. A piece of shit. We played fuckin’ awful. No one was into the music. I think Stephen [Stills] was way overboard into the huge crowd. Everybody was on this Hollywood trip with the fuckin’ cameras. They weren’t playin’ to the audience as much as to the cameras…I could see everybody changing their performances for the fucking camera and I thought that was bullshit. All these assholes filming, everybody’s carried away with how cool they are…I wasn’t moved.”

Nevertheless, a duet with Stills on "Mr. Soul" from Woodstock was used on The Archives. So maybe the hippie dream wasn't so bad afterall?

But -- for many -- Neil seemed to really drive a stake into the '60's hippie vibe of "peace, love and music" culture with his "music can't change the world" comments last year. And based on the overwhelming reaction, not everyone agreed that the spirit of the 1960's was dead.

But we still think Neil loves hippies.


On the Greendale tour in 2003, we heard Neil say just before "Carmichael" that:

"It used to be that hippies were good and the cops are bad. Nowadays, it's the cops who are good and the hippies that are bad."

Recall how last fall Neil sported that hippie button?

Nostalgia dies hard.

peace. love. music.

We still think that's what it's all about. While just singing a song won't change the world, it's a start.

More on Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Woodstock.

Also, see Woodstock: The Day After and whether it was all just a hippie dream?

August 16th, 1969: Neil Young appears with Crosby, Stills & Nash for the first time the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. They mention from the stage “they were going to someplace called Woodstock the next day, but that they had no idea where that was.” pic.twitter.com/ZlV3mDnjrD

— 107.5 The Breeze (@1075TheBreeze) August 16, 2019

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