I don’t remember Woodstock at all. Total blur… But then, I don’t remember because I didn’t go. I repeat, I DID NOT GO TO WOODSTOCK. However I did go to the Mason-Greenville Hilltop Pop Festival, but nobody remembers that gig any more than they remember Woodstock, except me and Van Morrison and the Velvet Underground and a few other notable bands. It was a miserable flop that got cancelled half-way through the first night, partly because hardly anyone showed up and partly because of dangerous thunderstorms that blew out the lights and sound system. We reconvened at a local farmhouse where Van’s band and two dozen other musicians jammed til dawn. Now that turned out to be a helluva night. Van was royally pissed and I would say rightfully so. On the other hand, I got to play a four hour jam version of Moonlight with Van’s band. That one song lasted until the sun came up.
I also went to the Newport Folk Festival in mid July ’69, almost exactly a month before Woodstock. And in spite of the bad acid there, which I won’t bother to rehash here, I remember that show perfectly well. Mostly I remember Joni…
If anybody in the world ever asks me if I have ever met Joni Mitchell, I would reluctantly say yes, because I have. By then I was already a huge fan of hers, having first fallen for her songwriting skills on Tom Rush’s album, Circle Game, which had 3 of her songs, Urge For Goin, Tin Angel and the title song, Circle Game. When her first album came out, Song To A Seagull, I was shocked and delighted to discover that Joni was a woman. I had thought Joni was just a funny spelling of Johnny, and that she was a he. I know, completely sexist, but I was just a clueless young punk then. I walked into Recordland one day and Ruthie said, “I have something I think you are going to love.” and she handed me “Seagull”. Boy was she ever right about that.
I first saw Joni live and in person at a musicianship and songwriting class on a cool July afternoon early in the Newport Festival. It kept spitting rain and I was standing ten feet from her when she was introduced to James Taylor for the very first time. I heard the introduction and watched them shake hands and nod, clearly they had never met before then. I think they really liked each other right away, a lot. I could feel the warmth between them as if I were standing in the sun. I can’t say if that’s true or not but it sure seemed that way to me.
I sat in the front row as she and James, and Jaime Brockett and a dozen or so other master musician-singer-songwriters played their songs and talked about song structure, verse, chorus, harmony, melody, lyrics, melodic hooks and so on. It was over two or three hours in the afternoon and there were only a couple hundred of us in the entire class, all sitting in the grass in front of them. It was an amazing event and a real privilege to be there.
I thought I had the best seat in the house, in the very front row four feet from the edge of the small temporary stage. Turned out my seat sucked big time in one way, and that was because I was sitting right smack in front of a small upright piano, so whenever Joni sat down to play keyboard, all I could see of her was the soles of her shoes as she moved her feet on the pedals. I was totally bummed by that. When she stood up and played guitar I could see her fine. She sat on a folding chair right next to James Taylor, who wore a goofy hat that I thought was cool. I eventually bought one just like it but never wore it because I was too vain about my hair and all that soft cloth hat just smooshed it.
Later that evening I saw Joni again as she did her actual performance on the main stage and as usual she was just stunning, both as a beautiful woman and as an extraordinary artist. She was like a glittering jewel in green velvet. I was then, and still am in absolute awe of her talent. There were many other people who performed over the two or three days of that gig, Ritchie Havens (who had some serious dental problems and was performing with no teeth), Buffy St. Marie (who I had met in a canoe once up on Sebago Lake) Pentangle, who had two (count em TWO) of my alltime forever favorite guitar players — Bert Jansch and John Renbourne, and of course James Taylor, to name a few. Hell even Johhny Cash was there.
I was also a performer at Newport 69. It was an afternoon gig and the MC was Pete Seeger. Back stage I met Arlo Guthrie and several other people who were trying to put together the musical crew for a newly crafted, single-masted sloop named the Clearwater, which was going to sail up and down the Hudson River doing concerts to raise money to clean up the heavy pollution in the river. It was a big deal in Maine when she was first launched up in Bristol earlier that summer and when Arlo and Pete invited me to go to an audition in New York to be one of the Clearwater musicians I was flattered beyond telling.
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The next day I left the festival hitch hiking, me and my guitar and backpack, and had hardly walked a mile from the grounds when a big shiny car pulled over and gave me a ride. I jumped in the back seat and there was Joni Mitchell. I was stunned speechless. She kind of laughed and told me to relax, I would get used to her. She then asked about my guitar and we shuffled around so I could open the case. It was my old Brazilian Rosewood ’67 D-35 Martin (only a couple years old then, still young and curing) and it was still tuned in open G, which she played in all the time.
We then spent the next hour and a half talking about tunings and finger picking patterns and some of her songs. She showed me the tuning and chords for Dawntreader, which it turned out was written for David Crosby. I knew who he was from the Byrds, and CS&N had just released their first album, which I loved, but I had never seen them live and I don’t think anyone had any clue how huge they would eventually get. At any rate, I still use the Dawntreader tuning for other songs of mine and to this day I still can’t play Dawntreader itself. Joni is an amazing guitarist, way better than I will ever be and I’m pret-ty frik-kin good.
Traffic was very heavy headed up 95 to Boston so a ride that should have taken 45 minutes to an hour was more like an hour and a half. I showed her what chords I had figured out for Marcie and a couple other of her tunes and she made some corrections. I had some chords that worked, that sounded ok, but that were fingered oddly, less efficient than her chords, and in some cases, what I played was harmonic to the real chord but was just wrong.
We did in fact talk briefly about Woodstock but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to another festival just then, especially if I couldn’t get a gig to perform there as I did at Newport. It was nearly a month away and I had no idea what I might be doing when it rolled around. Besides, all the rumors were that Woodstock was going to be only for headliners, no small time acts like me. You had to be famous and have records out.
She (and her driver) dropped me off on 95 just south of Boston, right outside the city. They were headed over to the coast and I was heading straight up 95 and home to Maine. She had some other gig that night out on the Cape and I had to decide whether to go down to New York the following week for the audition. I never did (and I regret it to this day). Instead I hooked up with my friend Saul back in Portland and we hit the road within a few days, thumbing west and looking for the all American hippie troubadour dream.
A month later, in August when Woodstock happened I was either in Montana or in New Orleans. It might have been New Orleans because Saul later moved there and that was the only time he and I traveled west together. I could be wrong though because I seem to remember being in Yellowstone with him too. I can’t remember which trip was which — out of the twelve or fourteen times I hitched coast to coast sometimes I went south and sometimes I went north and sometimes I went straight across the middle.
By mid September I was in California, where I saw Joni again in Big Sur at Esalen with CS&N. I didn’t get to talk to her that time though. That was a great show, one of the best I’ve ever been to, even to this day. Then a couple days later I got a short job at one of the canneries down on St. James Street in San Jose, and well, that started the rest of that story, which led to the Renaissance Faire up in Marin a week or two later, one of those small choices we make in life that shift our entire path for the rest of our days.
I have often wondered if I was the inspiration for Joni’s song, “Woodstock”. I have never said I was. I never knew one way or another. I don’t even really care. I probably was not. It’s just a private joke, a small conceit I allow myself now and then, and to this day that ride with Joni is a very sweet memory, one of a small handful of the greatest treasures of my life.
The next big festival I went to in California was in early December, and it was the last one I ever went to. It was at a raceway in Altamont and very early on I could clearly see it was the end of the hippies. We were over. Altamont was the brutal death knell for love, peace and understanding. It was a frikkin nightmare, and I wasn’t even stoned. I’ve been to lots of concerts since, but I have never been - and likely never again will go - to another big multi-day festival. I like sleeping in my own bed and I’m just not that fond of mud, madness, or murder.
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