By Louie Ferrera

The definitive song about a seminal event in the counterculture of the 1960s was written by someone who wasn’t even there.

Joni Mitchell was supposed to be at Woodstock. She was also booked on the Dick Cavett Show the day after the festival was to end. Joni and her manager watched on tv as nearly half a million hippies converged on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in upstate New York.  Roads were clogged, traffic was backed up for miles, it was chaos. It soon became apparent that if Joni were to go to Woodstock she would most likely not make it back in time for her appearance on the Cavett show. A decision was made and Joni stayed home. As it turned out Joni was joined on the show by David Crosby, Stephen Stills and members of the Jefferson Airplane, all of whom performed at the festival. She would have made it back after all, but then again perhaps Joni never would have written Woodstock had she actually been there. Her song is essentially a second hand report written from information she gleaned from those who had been there.

While history was being made up at Yasgur’s farm, I was twelve years old. Needless to say I didn’t make it to Woodstock. Over the years I’ve become somewhat of an aficionado of that festival; I’ve read the books, seen the film and listened to the songs countless times. From everything that I could gather, Joni Mitchell managed to grasp the essence of what the Woodstock experience was all about and distill it into a musical masterpiece. Her version of the song appears on her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon. The 60s weren’t all sunshine and rainbows. There was a dark undercurrent during the Age Of Aquarius. Accompanying herself on electric piano, Joni brilliantly conveys this dichotomy. Her performance of Woodstock is haunting and deeply emotive. This is a song that stays with you.

The recording of Woodstock that most people are familiar with appears on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album Deja Vu. Where Joni’s version is dark and moody, CSNY’s is raucous and celebratory, by any standard a truly great rock and roll song. Neil Young introduces the tune with a run of his trademark guitar licks, a ragged-but-right sound as recognizable as any in rock. Neil sets the table for what I think is the most inspired vocal performance of Stephen Stills’ life. Stephen’s voice can be sweet as honey or rough as an old bluesman. He brilliantly combines both elements here. In 1970, Stills was at the top of his game, a singer/songwriter/guitarist triple threat. His phrasing is spot on as the song chugs along through the first verse. Woodstock hits the first of many peaks when those incomparable CSNY harmonies kick in on the chorus. Soaring, seamless, inspired… I run out of superlatives when trying to describe this once in a lifetime vocal blend:

We are stardust, we are golden

We are caught in the Devil’s bargain

And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden

Stephen sings verse two with everything he’s got, the harmonies soar even higher on the second chorus, then here comes Neil again. His guitar solo here is twenty-seconds long. Everything that makes Neil Young a totally unique stylist, everything that moves me about his music and has made me a lifelong fan of his is packed into these incendiary twenty-second:  the tone, the distortion, the passion. Neil plays this solo like his hands are on fire! Out of the solo comes yet another chorus, because you just can’t get enough of those harmonies. The last verse is the cherry on top, the icing on the cake, the super in superlative ‘cause CSNY sing it together in four-part harmony:

By the time we got to Woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere was a song and a celebration

Celebration indeed! I get goosebumps every time this verse comes around and sing it at the top of my lungs no matter where I happen to be.

By the end of the decade, the 1960s came crashing down. The hippie dream of peace, love and brotherhood never really came to pass. But for a brief moment that dream was alive for three days at a dairy farm in upstate New York. Joni Mitchell wasn’t there but her song Woodstock was the dream catcher.

(Listen to both versions of Woodstock below.)