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) is a folk rock supergroup made up of American singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills, and English singer-songwriter Graham Nash. When joined by Canadian-American singer-songwriter Neil Young as a fourth member, they are called Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY). They are noted for their lasting influence on American music and culture, and for their intricate vocal harmonies, often tumultuous interpersonal relationships, and political activism.
John Benson Sebastian is an American singer/songwriter, guitarist, harmonicist, and autoharpist. He is best known as a founder of The Lovin' Spoonful, as well as for his impromptu appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 and a US No. 1 hit in 1976, "Welcome Back".
Stephen Arthur Stills is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. As both a solo act and member of two 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 is an American singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
"Woodstock" is a popular song written by Joni Mitchell. Three versions of the song were released in the same year, 1970. The cover by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young appeared on their March 1970 album Déjà Vu, prior to Mitchell's own version on her April 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon. The CSN version has become a staple of classic rock radio and is the best-known version in the United States. Mitchell's version was the B-side to her single "Big Yellow Taxi". The 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, reaching the top of the UK singles chart in 1970.
Margarita Mimi Baez Fariña was an American singer-songwriter and activist, the youngest of three daughters to a Scottish mother and Mexican-American physicist Albert Baez. She was the younger sister of the singer and activist Joan Baez.
"Helpless" is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) on their 1970 album Déjà Vu.
Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More is a live album of selected performances from the 1969 Woodstock counterculture festival. Originally released on Atlantic Records' Cotillion label as a triple album on May 11, 1970, it was re-released as a two-CD set in 1994. Veteran producer Eddie Kramer was the sound engineer during the three-day event.
Message to Love is a feature documentary film of the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. Directed and produced by Murray Lerner, the film includes performances by popular rock acts, such as Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and the Doors, as well as folk and jazz artists, such as Joni Mitchell and Miles Davis. The title of the film is taken from a song by Hendrix.
CSN is the eleventh album by Crosby, Stills & Nash, issued on Atlantic Records in 1991, not to be confused with the album of the same name released in 1977. A box set on four compact discs, it features material spanning 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 on several high profile rock records of 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.
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, 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 the nineteenth album by Crosby, Stills, & Nash, their seventh in the CSNY quartet configuration, and their fifth live album, the third as a foursome. 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. Two single disc samplers were also issued, one of the acoustic material exclusively available at Starbucks in the United States and Canada, and another at normal retail outlets. Each of the non-sampler sets also contained a 188-page booklet, and all formats were released the same day. 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.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and 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.
Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive is a live album by various artists, packaged as a box set of 38 CDs. It contains nearly all of the performances from the Woodstock music festival, which took place on August 15–18, 1969, in Bethel, New York. The CDs also include many stage announcements and miscellaneous audio material. The box set also contains bonus material such as a Blu-ray copy of the director's cut of the Woodstock documentary film, a hardcover book written by concert promoter Michael Lang, and a replica of the original concert program. It was released by Rhino Records on August 2, 2019, in a limited edition of 1,969 copies.
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.
