The Synthesizer: Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog
Electronic music had its roots in the musique concrète developed in France in the 1950s and carried into the 1960s by Cage, Berio, Riley, Stockhausen, and Reich. Milton Babbitt and his contemporaries were able to create new sounds using electronic and computer-generated tones, filters, and manipulation. In 1964, an engineer named Robert Moog created voltage-controlled amplifiers and filters that were basically the first step toward building synthesizers. Moog’s keyboard-controlled synthesizer became commercially available in 1966. One of the first musicians to use the new technology was Wendy Carlos, who had worked with Babbitt at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and who worked alongside Moog to make the instrument composer-friendly and performer- friendly. In addition to music in the more avant-garde tradition of electronic composers, Carlos recorded an album of synthesized versions of famous compositions by J.S. Bach (as the Swingle Singers had done with their voices), and had a hit with Switched-On Bach. By 1969, the album hit the top ten on Billboard’s album chart. Before long, the synthesizer was as much a part of the sound of popular music as the guitar.
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The Birth of Jazz Fusion
Jazz musicians had been struggling for a way to compete with the intense audience appeal of rock music. Attempts to make the music more attractive to audiences without extensive jazz backgrounds, while still remaining interesting to jazz performers and aficionados, had not met with great success. In 1969, Miles Davis, who had been at the forefront of so many other important developments in the history of jazz, decided that swimming against the stream was not going to be fruitful. He decided to incorporate characteristics of rock music into jazz, creating a hybrid that came to be known as jazz fusion, or simply fusion.
Davis took small steps at first—asking his bassist to use electric bass instead of acoustic and asking his keyboard player to use the electric piano (as Joe Zawinul had used with Cannonball Adderley) instead of a concert grand. He simplified the harmonies and insisted on a more easily discernible beat. In his 1968 album, Les Filles de Kilimanjaro, he even had one song based on a Jimi Hendrix tune. Although jazz had often used melodies and harmonic structures of popular music as a basis for improvisation, performing a rock song in a jazz style was unusual, as were the timbre of the bass and the keyboard. Despite these innovations, the music still sounded primarily like mainstream jazz.
In 1969 Davis recorded the album that is considered the first jazz-fusion record, In a Silent Way. This album took several more steps that brought the music closer to rock. First, Davis brought an electric guitarist into the group. John McLaughlin had serious rock credentials, having worked with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of Cream. As you will hear on your USAD Music CD, McLaughlin was an important player on this recording. Later, starting in 1970, he became an important leader in jazz-rock fusion, tempered with influences from Indian classical music, leading his own band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Davis decided to use three electronic keyboardists for this recording—Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul (all three of whom become important jazz fusion musicians in the 1970s and beyond). Not only did this resemble the multi-keyboard rock heard as far back as Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” but Davis also asked them to use some unusual techniques, playing with the volume and tone controls on the keyboard just like rock guitarists had been doing on their instruments. While Corea and Hancock played the electric piano that had been used increasingly in rock over the past few years, Zawinul concentrated on the organ, which had become extremely popular in rock.
Davis also worked with producer Teo Macero to edit studio material into a finished work that might be substantially different in form from what was originally recorded in the studio. In addition to rearranging the order of sections of the music, some of the repetition was created using tape loops like those developed by Steve Reich and then popularized by The Beatles. The entire album consisted of one song on each side, although Side B is more like a suite: The title song, “In a Silent Way,” moves directly into “It’s About That Time” without a break, and then “In a Silent Way” returns.
LISTENING EXAMPLE 13: “IN A SILENT WAY” (1969)--
MILES DAVIS
The rock and roll instrumentation and editing techniques were not the only aspects of In a Silent Way that proved to be influential. Coltrane had already developed the ethereal ambient sound of improvisation over a sustained pedal harmony, but In a Silent Way now extended the concept to greater length. The open form of the sections was also significant, since the musicians had no idea how long each section would end up being—those decisions were made later by Davis and Macero. The album exhibited some of the dreamy trance-like feeling of minimalism. The lengthy improvisations over a repeated harmonic background worked like the extended guitar solos of bands like the Grateful Dead or Cream. Guitar was not new to jazz, but the way it was used—and the sound used—was like a rock instrument, not the more traditional sound of the jazz guitar. “In a Silent Way” was the first clear foray for jazz musicians into the world of jazz fusion.
Most of the musicians for the In a Silent Way session were familiar members of Miles Davis bands. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Dave Holland, and drummer Tony Williams had played many sessions with Davis. Chick Corea had played with Davis a few times. Joe Zawinul had only worked with Davis on a few as yet unreleased sessions when they worked together on In a Silent Way. John McLaughlin was added to the session at the last minute. Davis and McLaughlin had only met a couple days earlier, and McLaughlin was visiting Davis’s house for the first time when Davis told McLaughlin to bring his guitar to the studio the next day. This spur-of-the-moment decision by Miles Davis changed the character of the album, and, as a result, the sound of jazz fusion.
The recording on your USAD CD consists of a little more than the first four minutes of the B side of In a Silent Way, which consists of the section (attributed to Zawinul) that gave the album its title.
A lot like an extended instrumental improvised portion of a rock and roll song, lasting approximately eleven minutes before the first section returns—literally. Macero spliced the first section on at the end to create an ABA form to the twenty-minute recording.
Many of the musicians on this recording would have significant careers in both fusion and more traditional forms of jazz. John McLaughlin broke into the rock and roll market with his Mahavishnu Orchestra. Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul were core members of Weather Report, one of the leading fusion groups over the next dozen years. Before they took off on their own, however, all of the musicians from In a Silent Way (except Herbie Hancock) returned to the studio, along with additional musicians, to record Miles Davis’ best-selling 1970 album Bitches Brew. Bitches Brew took the techniques explored on In a Silent Way to the next level and sold half a million copies during its first year. Jazz fusion was to predominate jazz for decades to come.
Rock and Roll Beginnings and Endings
The late 1960s was a time of beginnings and endings. Many aspects of music that had flourished during the 1960s were not able to survive into the 1970s. Other groups and individuals that were important in the 1970s got their start in the late 1960s.
Superstar was not the first rock opera, nor was it the first to have success as a recording before it was ever staged. The roots of The Who’s Tommy can be traced back to 1968, when Pete Townshend told Billboard magazine that they were working on a rock opera about a “deaf, dumb, and blind pinball player.” By April 1969, the song cycle was complete. The recording would be the first Who album to sell a million copies in the U.S. and became the standard by which all rock concept albums were judged.
Superstar was not the first rock opera, nor was it the first to have success as a recording before it was ever staged. The roots of The Who’s Tommy can be traced back to 1968, when Pete Townshend told Billboard magazine that they were working on a rock opera about a “deaf, dumb, and blind pinball player.” By April 1969, the song cycle was complete. The recording would be the first Who album to sell a million copies in the U.S. and became the standard by which all rock concept albums were judged.
Motown experienced some disharmony in the late 1960s, largely due to lack of financial transparency. The Holland-Dozier-Holland composing team left Motown and sued Berry Gordy for $22 million. The successful Motown formula was further disrupted when Diana Ross left the Supremes in 1969 and when Gordy moved the headquarters to Los Angeles in 1971. It wasn’t the end of Motown, by any stretch, but Detroit certainly lost its significant position in American popular music, and Motown lost one of the aspects that made it different from other record companies.
The news was not all bad for Motown. Marvin Gaye had achieved some success during the 1960s as a Motown drummer, songwriter, solo artist, and duet partner, but his first big hit was a remake of Gladys Knight’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” It ended up spending seven weeks at number one in the U.S. in late 1968 and early 1969. After the success of “Grapevine,” Gaye placed five more songs in the top five, including two more number one hits, over the next ten years.
The news was not all bad for Motown. Marvin Gaye had achieved some success during the 1960s as a Motown drummer, songwriter, solo artist, and duet partner, but his first big hit was a remake of Gladys Knight’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” It ended up spending seven weeks at number one in the U.S. in late 1968 and early 1969. After the success of “Grapevine,” Gaye placed five more songs in the top five, including two more number one hits, over the next ten years.
In 1969, Motown added an important new group to their roster—the Jackson 5. To ensure success, Gordy had Diana Ross introduce them to a crowd of invited guests in Beverly Hills in August. Continuing the Diana Ross endorsement, Gordy titled their first album Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5. The ploy must have worked, because the album, released in December, sold more than half a million copies. It also helped that the Jacksons were invited to perform on the Ed Sullivan show in December, where they sang, among other songs, the tune that would become their first number one hit, “I Want You Back.” By the end of January 1970, the song hit number two in England and number one in the U.S. Michael Jackson was barely eleven years old. The end of the 1960s was the beginning of his amazing career.
Three British-born brothers, Robin, Barry, and Maurice Gibb, formed a band while they were living in Australia. The group, which they called the Bee Gees, had their U.S. debut in 1968. The Bee Gees became the leaders of the disco movement in the 1970s, especially after their contributions to the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. The double-album soundtrack to Fever, which included six songs featuring the falsetto harmonies of the brothers, outsold all previous soundtrack albums, with more than 25 million copies. The brothers had three number one hits from the album, three more from albums later in the 1970s, and produced two more top-ranked albums before the bright lights of disco started to fade in the early 1980s.
Three British-born brothers, Robin, Barry, and Maurice Gibb, formed a band while they were living in Australia. The group, which they called the Bee Gees, had their U.S. debut in 1968. The Bee Gees became the leaders of the disco movement in the 1970s, especially after their contributions to the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. The double-album soundtrack to Fever, which included six songs featuring the falsetto harmonies of the brothers, outsold all previous soundtrack albums, with more than 25 million copies. The brothers had three number one hits from the album, three more from albums later in the 1970s, and produced two more top-ranked albums before the bright lights of disco started to fade in the early 1980s.
Jazz-rock bands also had their start in the late 1960s. Al Kooper, the organist for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” joined with other rhythm section players and several highly trained New York-based jazz horn players (trumpet, sax, trombone) to form Blood Sweat & Tears. Their 1968 debut album was not a big hit, but with revised personnel and a new Canadian lead singer, David Clayton-Thomas, the band had a number one eponymous album late in 1968, and three number two singles. The band was nominated for ten Grammy awards and won three, including Album of the Year. Unfortunately, after additional acclaimed albums in 1970 and 1971, the departure of Clayton-Thomas interfered with the band’s success, and they never again achieved the popularity that they had attained in 1969 and the early 1970s.
A group that followed a similar path got its start and its name in Chicago. After working as a local band in the Midwest, their college friend, James Guercio, who had produced Blood Sweat & Tears, encouraged the group to move to Los Angeles where he helped them get a job as the house band at the famous Whisky a Go-Go and a recording contract with Columbia. Their first album, Chicago Transit Authority (which was the name of the group at the time—later shortened to Chicago), was a double album. Despite the more expensive price for a double album, Chicago Transit Authority earned Gold album status, selling over half a million copies. Chicago lasted much longer than Blood Sweat & Tears, with a Grammy award in 1976 and chart hits all the way into the 1990s, including number one hits in 1982 and 1988.
A group that followed a similar path got its start and its name in Chicago. After working as a local band in the Midwest, their college friend, James Guercio, who had produced Blood Sweat & Tears, encouraged the group to move to Los Angeles where he helped them get a job as the house band at the famous Whisky a Go-Go and a recording contract with Columbia. Their first album, Chicago Transit Authority (which was the name of the group at the time—later shortened to Chicago), was a double album. Despite the more expensive price for a double album, Chicago Transit Authority earned Gold album status, selling over half a million copies. Chicago lasted much longer than Blood Sweat & Tears, with a Grammy award in 1976 and chart hits all the way into the 1990s, including number one hits in 1982 and 1988.
Some of the top groups of the 1960s did not outlast the decade. The power trio of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce, known as Cream, was famed for its long instrumental improvisations, similar to those of the San Francisco bands like the Grateful Dead. Some authors consider them an influence on the nascent rock style of heavy metal and certainly on hard rock. Despite two singles in the top ten in late 1968 and the double platinum success of their double album Wheels of Fire, Cream disbanded at the end of the year, and the three musicians went their separate ways.
Before he joined Cream, Eric Clapton had performed with another blues-based British rock band, the Yardbirds. After Clapton left, the Yardbirds continued to have outstanding guitar players including Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds folded in 1968, and Page formed a new group called Led Zeppelin. Zeppelin is considered an even stronger influence on the development of heavy metal, in particular the song “Whole Lotta Love” from their 1969 number one album, Led Zeppelin II.
Before he joined Cream, Eric Clapton had performed with another blues-based British rock band, the Yardbirds. After Clapton left, the Yardbirds continued to have outstanding guitar players including Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds folded in 1968, and Page formed a new group called Led Zeppelin. Zeppelin is considered an even stronger influence on the development of heavy metal, in particular the song “Whole Lotta Love” from their 1969 number one album, Led Zeppelin II.
Steppenwolf first came to prominence in Los Angeles, but they had an international pedigree, having been formed by a German-born musician who joined his first rock band while living in Canada. Their music was used on film soundtracks—Candy from 1968 and Easy Rider from 1969. “Magic Carpet Ride,” used in Candy, reached number three, but not until after “Born to be Wild,” featured in Easy Rider, hit number two. “Born to Be Wild” was ideal for Easy Rider, with its lyrics referring to “heavy-metal thunder,” and the main characters riding their thundering motorcycles heading “out on the highway.” Some authors link the use of the phrase “heavy metal” with the eventual association with the style of rock made popular by groups like Steppenwolf and Led Zeppelin.
Jethro Tull, the group easily recognized by Ian Anderson’s jazzy flute playing and their consistent use of mixed meter, had started to build a following in England before they released their first album in early 1969. Most of their success came in the 1970s, with several top ranked albums. They were extremely popular live and ended up being the highest-grossing band of the 1970s.
Jethro Tull, the group easily recognized by Ian Anderson’s jazzy flute playing and their consistent use of mixed meter, had started to build a following in England before they released their first album in early 1969. Most of their success came in the 1970s, with several top ranked albums. They were extremely popular live and ended up being the highest-grossing band of the 1970s.
In 1968, three of the best singers from the folk-rock tradition came together and formed one of rock’s first super groups: David Crosby from the Byrds, Stephen Stills from Buffalo Springfield, and Graham Nash from the Hollies. Neil Young, who had sung with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield, joined in 1969, forming one of the most famous groups of the late 1960s and 1970s—Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Known for their four-part harmonies, the group played at many festivals and recorded number one albums, becoming what one author called “the most sophisticated vocal group of the early 1970s.”
In 1968, seeking greater control over their product, The Beatles had formed Apple Records. The famous “White Album” was their first album released on the new label. The first single released by Apple Records, “Hey Jude” backed by “Revolution,” hit number one in both England and the United States. In the U.S., it held the top spot for a record-setting nine consecutive weeks. By 1969, it was becoming more and more clear that The Beatles were not going back on the road—they had not appeared live since 1966. Aware that they were drifting apart, McCartney encouraged them to make another film. It was in the process of working on the music for the film (which became both the movie and the album Let It Be) that The Beatles presented their final live performance—an impromptu concert on the roof of Abbey Road studios. With the story of The Beatles coming to an end, the story of the music of the 1960s was also coming to an end.
In 1968, seeking greater control over their product, The Beatles had formed Apple Records. The famous “White Album” was their first album released on the new label. The first single released by Apple Records, “Hey Jude” backed by “Revolution,” hit number one in both England and the United States. In the U.S., it held the top spot for a record-setting nine consecutive weeks. By 1969, it was becoming more and more clear that The Beatles were not going back on the road—they had not appeared live since 1966. Aware that they were drifting apart, McCartney encouraged them to make another film. It was in the process of working on the music for the film (which became both the movie and the album Let It Be) that The Beatles presented their final live performance—an impromptu concert on the roof of Abbey Road studios. With the story of The Beatles coming to an end, the story of the music of the 1960s was also coming to an end.
The Festivals
Woodstock
One of the most famous musical events of the 1960s is the rock festival held near Woodstock, NY, in August 1969. Books have been written, documentaries have been filmed, and songs have been sung (e.g., Joni Mitchell’s “By the Time We Got to Woodstock,” sung by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young). You might remember from Section II that Woodstock, NY, was the location of the first performance of John Cage’s seminal 4’33”. After multiple venue changes, the “Woodstock Music & Arts Fair” actually took place about seventy miles southwest of Woodstock, closer to the village of Bethel, on the dairy farm of Max Yasgur.
The organizers had not really thought everything through and originally intended to charge admission, having sold upward of 100,000 tickets. Days before the festival began, though, crowds had started to gather, and since the organizers had not put substantial security in place, thousands of young people simply walked in without paying. By the afternoon of the day before the festival, before any ticket takers were in place, there were already approximately 60,000 people who had set up camp in front of the stage. Woodstock had become, by default, a free festival. By the time it was over, most accounts suggest that nearly half a million music lovers had attended the festival we call “Woodstock.”
Whatever logistical aspects the organizers might have overlooked in organizing the festival, their carefully selected musical lineup made up for it. The “Aquarian explosion” of “three days of peace and music,” as the organizers billed it, took place on August 15–17, 1969. The first day was folk and world music oriented, with folk musicians like Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie, and Ravi Shankar representing the music of India. The second day featured the San Francisco-based Latin rock band Santana, well known in their home base, but largely unknown to the rock crowd at Woodstock, since they had not yet released their first album. This was the beginning of national exposure for Santana, who played a set that “electrified the crowd.”
Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, and Creedence Clearwater Revival were some of the best-known groups to perform on the second day. One of the biggest surprises of the second day was Sly and the Family Stone. Another San Francisco-based band, known for its mixture of funk, soul, and psychedelia, Sly re-electrified the crowd with songs like “I Want to Take You Higher” and “Dance to the Music.” The band’s “fiery performance” at Woodstock is credited with boosting their national profile.
The band that was supposed to perform last on Saturday night was not even able to get on stage until more than eight hours after their scheduled time. Jefferson Airplane was supposed to have been the “big finish” to the Saturday lineup. They ended up as almost an afterthought, playing to a totally exhausted crowd sometime after 7:00 am. Jefferson Airplane’s set for Woodstock included “acid rock” from their 1967 breakthrough album Surrealistic Pillow as well as songs from their newest album Volunteers (which had not been released yet). The title song from the latter album was a call to revolution, espousing and encouraging the antiwar sentiment that was prevalent among the Woodstock attendees. After all, the festival was intended to be “three days of peace and music.” The other common denominator at the festival, however, was drugs, and Jefferson Airplane was well suited to this theme, as the group was straight out of the psychedelic scene of San Francisco.
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LISTENING EXAMPLE 14:
“WHITE RABBIT” (1967)-- JEFFERSON AIRPLANE
Grace Slick had actually composed the song “White Rabbit” even before she joined the band Jefferson Airplane. Grace and her husband Jerry had started a band called the Great Society, and she wrote a few songs for the band. According to an interview she gave some fifty years later, “White Rabbit” came from two important sources of inspiration. One was the idea that the older generation disapproved of drug use, but read their impressionable children books like Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz, with drug references in them. She began to write lyrics using characters and drug references from Alice in Wonderland. When it came time to compose the music, she was inspired by a musical experience when she listened to Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain over and over. The result was that she used a rising half-step chord motion for the introduction and the A section of the song, lending it that Spanish Phrygian flavor. The snare drum and bass played a bolero-like pattern that also added to the Spanish flavor. As in Ravel’s “Bolero,” one of the most important characteristics of “White Rabbit” was the increasing intensity throughout, full of variations on the same musical idea, leading up to a finish that is noticeably different from anything that happened earlier in the song. The recording we will hear on the USAD CD is the studio version from the 1967 album, Surrealistic Pillow. Compare this recording with the video of the live performance at Woodstock, and you will be impressed with the band’s ability to perform so consistently, even under the adverse conditions at the outdoor venue.
Grace Slick’s vocal ornamentation of the melody helps keep this otherwise simple tune interesting. |
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Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock
At about 9:00 am on Monday morning, the featured closing act of Sunday night, Jimi Hendrix, finally came on stage to close out the festival. Some estimates put the crowd size as low as 30,000 by that time, though others have suggested that nearly 200,000 might have heard the Hendrix performance. Hendrix and the recently- assembled band he called “Gypsy Sun and Rainbows” played for almost two hours. The most famous part of Hendrix’s performance, and possibly the most famous aspect of the entire Woodstock festival, was his riff on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Hendrix was known for his guitar pyrotechnics (including literally lighting his guitar on fire at Monterey)—specifically for using feedback and effects to make unique sounds with his instrument. Walter Everett, in his book about the musical aspects of rock, lists some of the techniques, including “Fuzzface, Univibe, feedback, wrist vibrato, trills, string bends, wah, and whammy bar.”
The dawn’s early light had already dissipated before Jimi Hendrix, about two-thirds of the way through his set, segued into a guitar improvisation of the anthem that, when sung, begins with the words “O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light . . .” This was not the first time that Hendrix had performed a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in public, nor was it the last, but it certainly was the most famous. Hendrix’s choice to deconstruct “The Star-Spangled Banner” was appropriate for the antiwar crowd present that day. What might be surprising to learn is that Hendrix was a former U.S. Army paratrooper and had occasionally expressed views in support of the war in Vietnam. In a 1967 interview with the Dutch magazine Kink, Hendrix was quoted as having said, “The Americans are fighting in Vietnam for a completely free world. . . Of course, war is horrible, but at present it’s still the only guarantee of peace.” That said, his intent and the reception of the performance might have been different. The audience (and critics for decades thereafter) certainly heard his treatment of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as being antiwar and anti-government.
The performance, utilizing many of the advanced guitar techniques he had developed over the past few years, was a combination of music and noise, not unlike something John Cage or one of the electronic music composers would have created. Starr and Waterman, in American Popular Music, call Hendrix “a sound sculptor, who seemed at times to be consciously exploring the borderline between traditional conceptions of music and noise, a pursuit that links him in certain ways to composers exploring electronic sounds and media in the world of art music at around the same time.”
Hendrix moved smoothly from a medley of his standards “Voodoo Chile” and “Stepping Stone” into the beginning of the “Banner.” At first he presented a fairly calm and straightforward rendition of the “Banner,” with drums adding only texture and depth, without locking in the tempo. But then, just over a minute in, he let loose. After the part where the words would have been “rockets’ red glare,” he bent a note up and then down, as if suggesting the trajectory and whistle of a piece of munitions. The “bomb” hit the ground, and we heard Hendrix depicting an explosion and chaos, playing lower on the strings, with lots of distortion. The drummer contributed, with noisy bass drum and cymbals. Hendrix bent the pitch higher on the strings to depict the anguished cries of the victims. Suddenly, as if nothing ever happened, the melody returned. Despite all the interruption in between, Hendrix had kept careful track of where he left off. Hendrix’s addition of musical comments in between the expected sections of music remind us of troping, just like when Benjamin Britten added vernacular poetry in between the expected Latin sections of the mass.
Many authors and critics consider this performance emblematic of the antiwar movement of the 1960s. Hendrix historian Charles Shaar Murray calls it “the most complex and powerful work of American art to deal with the Vietnam War.” Referring to other artistic statements about the war, Murray suggests that “one man with one guitar said more in three and a half minutes about that peculiarly disgusting war and its reverberations than all the novels, memoirs and movies put together.” Whether Hendrix intended it that way or not, his performance of “The Star- Spangled Banner” at Woodstock was an important part of the repudiation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The Woodstock festival did not go off without a hitch, but overall, it was a success. The farmer who rented the land, Max Yasgur, was impressed that “half a million kids can get together for fun and music and have nothing but fun and music.” The New York Times called Woodstock “a phenomenon of innocence.” Another author suggested that the entire festival had gone off “without so much as a fistfight.” To this day, those who were there (and many who weren’t) claim to be part of the “Woodstock Nation.” As one author put it, “There were problems—bad trips, cut feet, dehydration, drug busts outside the festival grounds, even three deaths (two overdoses, a ruptured appendix),” but there were also three births. Today, we can hardly imagine what it must have meant for a culture to have nearly half a million people have a shared musical experience.
One of the reasons that the Hendrix performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock became so important was that the festival was filmed and made into a rockumentary that featured Hendrix’s solo. The film Woodstock, released in 1970, was the sixth highest grossing film of the year and substantially multiplied the number of people who had seen or heard the festival. The soundtrack was the top-selling album in the U.S. for four weeks in 1970. Add to that radio airplay of recordings from the soundtrack; re-releases of the film and soundtrack; additional documentaries; copycat festivals (A Day in the Garden Festival, Woodstock II, Woodstock ‘99); and recordings released by the individual artists (there are soundtrack recordings and DVDs of Jimi Hendrix’s performance at Woodstock, for example), and the reach and influence of Woodstock is nearly universal. However, as influential as it may have been, Woodstock was not really “the beginning of a new era of peace, love, and understanding,” as some might have hoped. It was more “the climax of hippy culture” or the “last hurrah of the love and peace era.” What came next was not exactly three days of peace and music.
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POSTLUDE—EARLY 1970S
The world of 1959 could not possibly have imagined the world of 1970. The new reality of the 1970s seemed much more like an extension of Altamont than Woodstock. Antiwar protests continued, but became more violent. Several of the most iconic musicians of the era died almost as soon as the 1970s began, victims of the rock and roll lifestyle. Jimi Hendrix was first—his death was attributed to barbiturate intoxication. Jim Morrison died in Paris on July 3, 1971. Although the death certificate lists a heart attack, the twenty-seven-year-old singer was a severe abuser of alcohol and drugs. Janis Joplin’s cause of death, in October 1971, was a drug overdose. The Beatles, as individuals, all outlasted the 1970s, though John Lennon barely made it into the 1980s. In December of 1980, Lennon was shot at close range by a deranged fan. George Harrison outlasted the entire century but succumbed to cancer in 2001. Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney, as recently as 2018, were still performing, recording, and touring.
The Beatles as a collective, however, did not survive more than a few months into the 1970s. With the April 1970 release of the Let It Be film and the accompanying album, The Beatles were ready to call it quits. By this time, they each were starting to go their own way, releasing their own recordings, and not interested in doing the work to get the Let It Be album ready for release. Phil Spector was brought in to organize the studio material into an album. In his usual fashion, he felt compelled to add additional instruments, creating his “Wall of Sound.” McCartney didn’t appreciate these lavish arrangements and cited them as one of the reasons that he left the band in April 1970. The Beatles, the musical group that represented the 1960s more than any other, were now history. The 1960s were over.
The Beatles as a collective, however, did not survive more than a few months into the 1970s. With the April 1970 release of the Let It Be film and the accompanying album, The Beatles were ready to call it quits. By this time, they each were starting to go their own way, releasing their own recordings, and not interested in doing the work to get the Let It Be album ready for release. Phil Spector was brought in to organize the studio material into an album. In his usual fashion, he felt compelled to add additional instruments, creating his “Wall of Sound.” McCartney didn’t appreciate these lavish arrangements and cited them as one of the reasons that he left the band in April 1970. The Beatles, the musical group that represented the 1960s more than any other, were now history. The 1960s were over.