As usual, we had no set planned, nothing coordinated. The Bear simply announced that "We're going to go up the country a little bit now," because "Goin' Up The Country" was number one then in a lot of cities, including New York. It was the perfect song for the moment, just what all these people had done. And in an intuitively brilliant moment, Alan took the mike and, without his harmonica, began playing the opening notes on a guitar, then improvised lyrics to fill in for the flute lines.
I rolled in behind on the drums, Larry slammed into the beat, and we came out tight, Alan sighing out that long, cool, opening line:
I'm going up the country, baby don't you want to go?
Our view from the stage; the rain didn't dampen the spirit of Woodstock '69
Good touch, Alan. A long, slow cheer rolled over the hills, as half a million people came to their feet in joyful celebration.
I'm going to some place where I've never been before.
I'm goin' where the water tastes like wine.
I'm going where the water tastes like wine.
You can jump in the water stay drunk all the time.
- Photo: Elliot Landy
The crowd was ours. We could feel it and we punched it, hard. You guys wanna rock? You wanna hear the real boogie, the genuine blues? Here it comes.
Alan knew how to improvise and how to make it happen in spite of us messing up because Harvey didn't know our songs yet. It wasn't Harvey's fault but he had to sort of play outside the music and jump in with a lead guitar solo whenever he thought one would fit.
We were wailing and cooking through a boogie when I noticed a guy's head and shoulders slowly rising over the tall plywood fence that separated us from the crowd.
Suddenly he stood up, and now he was above us, and jumped, swooping down on the stage like Batman. He hurtled into The Bear.
What the hell? Are we under attack?
A roadie tried to grab the guy, a short, wiry kid about 19.
The Bear, flying on acid, is still singing. He is like a little kid reunited with a lost puppy. He pushes the roadie away from the kid, who fishes a cigarette out of the pocket of Bear's yellow T-shirt. He then sat down cross-legged at Bear's feet and watched the rest of the show, head bobbing away.
This was Woodstock '69; this kind of incident could never be repeated under today's stringent corporate control of concerts. Just try to get up on any festival stage nowadays…you are likely to end up in jail, beat up, or dead.
I am banging away on my drums, still trying to figure out what the hell is going on, but the audience has picked up on it. All of a sudden, one of the audience is up here with the musicians, and he's being treated like a royal guest, a long lost pal. They're on their feet, cheering.
The enthusiasm of the crowd washed over us on the stage, waves of grungy, bare-chested, tie-dyed, granny-glassed, weed-ripped, crotch-bursting, rain-soaked, incredulous enthusiasm.
Bear looked over at me. "Man, we could start a revolution right now, this minute, if we wanted to," he said.
This audience, these at least were my people, my adopted tribe, the emerging America of the Woodstock Generation. Canned Heat people. A change from the weird concerts some pinheaded promoters who knew nothing about our music--much less us--had stuck us into as our records started going gold.
Here at Woodstock nobody cared if The Bear said "fuck." We took that stage and we kicked ass. Our heavy music, Bob's energy, that was just what that crowd wanted to hear. We could feel them and they could feel us.
The "Fried Hockey Boogie"--our big wall-blaster which we never play the same way twice--we renamed that version "The Woodstock Boogie."
I'll get some argument on this, I expect, but we got a bigger ovation than any band there, at least any band I heard there. "Goin' Up the Country'' became the theme song, the Woodstock anthem.
Me and the boys boogieing at Woodstock, 1969
It was an historic performance which was never even used in the film as it was first released, because of goddamn record company politics. It was in the original director's cut of the film--and it was put back in a special long version released 25 years later. But before the first release, when it was decided that the film was too long, they cut Canned Heat and Jefferson Airplane. We were a United Artists act and the Warner Bros. film people preferred to mangle a Woodstock high point rather than eliminate some performers with Warner record deals. They only played our song "Goin' Up the Country" behind the opening credits.
Okay, we were a little raw, a little unpolished. But that was the spirit of the hour, wasn't it? And the crowd loved us. Our performance, especially "Goin' Up The Country," raw as it was, became the defining moment of the festival--the moment that TV advertisers would pick, decades later, when they wanted to evoke the whole weekend--hell, the whole era--in only a few classic seconds. "Goin' Up The Country" and a mass of American kids in tie-dye and hip huggers says "the 60s" the way Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart and "As Time Goes By" says "World War Two."
The best part of Woodstock was that Diane was still there, waiting for me back stage when we finished playing.
The worst part was that the Blind Owl had seen too clearly what a challenge she would be.
We had a little time after the show, and we walked around, into the crowd.
It was amazing, the sexual energy, girls walking around with their boobs hanging out, pretending it was just the normal thing for them to do, guys swimming in this muddy
little swimming hole with their dicks dangling down, next to them girls washing their hair and soaping their breasts. Couples making love in sleeping bags. One couple was on top of the bag.
An incredible sense of freedom combined with an incredible sense of order. Total liberty with no sense of chaos or danger. A magic combination, gone too soon, a memory that a whole generation chased for decades to come.
Diane and I walked through the crowd and we were infected with all this energy. Diane acted at first as if she didn't really notice the naked guys or the screwing couples, but that didn't last long. We were inflamed. We started kissing, with her back up against the fence near the stage.
I talked her into coming with me backstage again, where the rest of the band was getting something to eat in a food tent the organizers had set up. As we walked in, there was an outburst of voices in Spanish:
"Caray, cabròn, còmo estas?"
"Orale, mano, que onda?"
It was Santana's band, who had gotten there earlier. Santana, a fellow Mexican, his timbale player Chepito Arias, who's from South America someplace, a whole bunch of Latino cuates, we had a reunion in Spanish in the middle of this mammoth American festival. It was one of the early signs that rock n' roll was becoming a global language.
While we were eating, Skip (who started out as such a button-down, shorthaired business guy with the William Morris Agency) was taking another step on his colorful road to ruin.
His problem: getting the band out of Woodstock was going to be harder than getting it in. The helicopters were taking out only medical cases and the stage was surrounded by people and cars, shoulder to shoulder, fender to fender, for miles in all directions. It would have been nice to stay and party and all, but we had a gig the next day in Atlantic City.
So how the hell do we get out of here?
Skip