About 10–15,000 people camped out for three miles up and down Highway One for the two-day festival. The event audience was so well-mannered that those without the $4.00 admission price listened from the highway, even though there was no gate. [5] The artists performed on a low stage behind a pool, backed by the Pacific Ocean. Musical performances dominate the film, with footage of surrounding occurrences interspersed into the music sequences.
Joni Mitchell
Mitchell, who did not appear at the Woodstock Festival, performs the song "Woodstock" prior to any album release, first attempting to teach the audience to sing the melodically complicated refrain. Ironically, Mitchell would later develop a well-known distaste for festival gigs, but in this performance her enthusiasm is evident. Mitchell talks about having spotted whales off the coast, and is generally seen with then-boyfriend Graham Nash of CSNY. She also sings "Get Together" with members of Crosby, Stills & Nash in a seemingly impromptu jam.
Although Mitchell had made earlier televised appearances, this may be her earliest filmed performance. [9]
Others
In addition to CSNY, Baez and Mitchell, other performers featured in Celebration included John Sebastian, Dorothy Combs Morrison and The Combs Sisters, Mimi Fariña, Carol Ann Cisneros, Julie Payne, Chris Ethridge and The Struggle Mountain Resistance Band. [4]
While Ruthann Friedman, The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Incredible String Band performed at this event, [3] [10] they do not appear in the film.
In the opening scene the filmmakers attempt to interview local patrol police, but fail to get permission.
Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) was a folk-rock supergroup comprising the American singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills and the English- American singer-songwriter Graham Nash. When joined by the Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, they were known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY). They are noted for their intricate vocal harmonies and lasting influence on American music and culture, their political activism and their tumultuous relationships.
John Benson Sebastian (born March 17, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter and musician who founded the rock band the Lovin' Spoonful in 1964 with Zal Yanovsky. During his time in the Lovin Spoonful, John would write and sing some of the band's biggest hits such as "Do You Believe in Magic", "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind", and "Daydream". Sebastian would leave the Spoonful in 1968 after the album Everything Playing. After leaving the Spoonful, Sebastian would focus on a solo career, releasing his first solo album in 1970 titled John B. Sebastian. Sebastian would continue on recording solo albums.
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American musician, singer, and songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Manassas. As both a solo act and member of three successful bands, Stills has combined record sales of over 35 million albums. He was ranked number 28 in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and number 47 in the 2011 list. Stills became the first person to be inducted twice on the same night into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. According to Neil Young, "Stephen is a genius".
David Van Cortlandt Crosby was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He first found fame as a member of the Byrds, with whom he helped pioneer the genres of folk rock and psychedelia in the mid-1960s, and later as part of the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash, who helped popularize the California sound of the 1970s. In addition to his music, Crosby was known for his outspoken personality, politics, and personal troubles; he was sometimes depicted as emblematic of the counterculture of the 1960s.
The Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. The festival was founded by music promoter and Jazz Festival founder George Wein, music manager Albert Grossman, and folk singers Pete Seeger, Theodore Bikel, and Oscar Brand. It was one of the first modern music festivals in America and remains a focal point in the expanding genre of folk music. The festival was held in Newport annually from 1959 to 1969, except in 1961 and 1962, first at Freebody Park and then at Festival Field. In 1985, Wein revived the festival in Newport, where it has been held at Fort Adams State Park ever since.
"Woodstock" is a song written by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. At least four versions of the song were released in 1970. Mitchell's own version was first performed live in 1969 and appeared in April 1970 on her album Ladies of the Canyon and as the B-side to her single "Big Yellow Taxi". A version by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young appeared on their album Déjà Vu in March 1970 and became a staple of classic rock radio and the best-known version of the song in the United States. A third version, by the British band Matthews Southern Comfort, became the best-known version in the United Kingdom and was the highest charting version of the song in the UK, reaching the top of the Singles Chart in 1970. A fourth version by studio project the Assembled Multitude also became a chart hit.
"Helpless" is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) on their 1970 album Déjà Vu. Young played the song with The Band in the group's final concert with its original lineup, The Last Waltz, on American Thanksgiving Day 1976 at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom, with Joni Mitchell providing backing vocals offstage.
Woodstock Two is the second live album released of the 1969 Woodstock Festival concert. The two-LP set contains more material from many acts featured on the first Woodstock album with additional performances from Mountain and Melanie. The tracks by Mountain were in fact not from their Woodstock performance but rather a show recorded at New York's Fillmore East. Unlike the first Woodstock soundtrack LP, this LP does not contain any ancillary stage announcements. Like the previous album this was also packaged in a triple gatefold sleeve.
CSN is a box set by Crosby, Stills & Nash, issued on Atlantic Records in 1991. It features material spanning from 1968 through 1990 from their catalogue of recordings as a group in addition to selections from Crosby & Nash, Manassas, and their individual solo albums. It peaked at No. 109 on the Billboard 200, and has been certified platinum by the RIAA. The set is "dedicated to the loving memory of Cass Elliot, without whom most of this music may not have been made." A two-disc distillation of the box was released for other markets later in the year.
Dallas Woodrow Taylor Jr. was an American session drummer who played drums on several rock albums in the 1960s and 1970s.
"Sweet Sir Galahad" is a song written by Joan Baez that she famously performed at the Woodstock Festival in August 1969, after having debuted it during an appearance in a Season Three episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which aired on March 30, 1969. A recording of the song, first released as a single in late 1969, would lead off Baez's 1970 album One Day at a Time.
"Our House" is a song written by British singer-songwriter Graham Nash and recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on their album Déjà Vu (1970). The single reached No. 30 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 20 on the Cash Box Top 100. The song, "an ode to countercultural domestic bliss", was written while Nash was living with Joni Mitchell, recording both Crosby, Stills & Nash and Déjà Vu.
Woodstock 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm is a six-CD live box-set album of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York. Its release marked the 40th Anniversary of the festival.
Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music is a 4-CD live box-set album of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York. Its release marked the 25th anniversary of the festival. The box set contains tracks from Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, Woodstock 2, and numerous additional, previously unreleased performances from the festival as well as the stage announcements and crowd noises. Just prior to the box set's release, Atlantic Records released a much shorter 1-CD version entitled The Best of Woodstock. In 2019, Rhino Records issued a 38-CD box set called Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive which includes every musical performance as well as stage announcements and other ancillary material.
Henry Lewy, born Heinz Lewy, was a German-born American sound engineer and record producer, who was best known for his work on many critically acclaimed and successful rock and folk albums of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly those by Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joan Baez, Stephen Bishop, and Judee Sill.
The Young Men was a Hong Kong folk/rock band in the late 1960s and early 1970s featured in the local media as the answer to the super American band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The group consisted of Stephen Lam, Ralph Wong, and Carl Wu. They performed in the 1971 Hong Kong Festival and were regularly as featured artist in the Hong Kong TVB variety TV show, Enjoy Yourself Tonight, in the early 1970s.
The Big Sur Folk Festival, held from 1964 to 1971 in California, was an informal gathering of prominent and emerging folk artists from across the United States. Nancy Jane Carlen (1941–2013) was working at the Esalen Institute when Joan Baez was asked to lead workshops on music. Carlen was a good friend of Baez, and they decided to invite other artists, which turned into the first festival.
CSNY 1974 is a live album by Crosby, Stills, & Nash, and their seventh in the CSNY quartet configuration. Issued on Rhino Records in 2014, it consists of concert material recorded in 1974 on the band's tour during the summer of that year. It was issued in several formats: a standard compact disc box set consisting of three audio discs and a standard DVD; as one pure audio Blu-ray disc and a Blu-ray DVD; and a more expensively packaged limited deluxe edition consisting of the material on six vinyl records along with the Blu-ray discs and a coffee table book. Three single disc samplers were also issued: one of the acoustic material exclusively available at Starbucks in the United States and Canada; a second at normal retail outlets; and a third included as a covermount disc to the 250th anniversary issue of the UK music magazine Mojo issued as "an exclusive audio-visual sampler of the new CSNY 1974 box set." Each of the non-sampler sets also contained a 188-page booklet, and all formats were released the same day, with the Mojo sampler arriving with the September 2014 publication of that edition. The three-disc and DVD package peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard 200, while the Starbucks sampler peaked at No. 37 and the selections sampler at No. 81.
The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 1969 and 1970 concert tours were two separate tours that covered North America, and Europe, before the band broke up for the first time.
Johanna Demetrakas is an American independent filmmaker and television director known for documentaries like Womanhouse and Right Out of History. She has worked as a professor at Cal Arts and USC.
