On Sly Stone and Woodstock

I first watched the Woodstock film in Jr. High shortly after watching outtakes of the Who’s performance there on August 17-18th, 1969. I had only watched the Who’s performance in the witching hours of Sunday morning and Jimi Hendrix’s legendary but contextually depressing closing act to a giant hill of mud and some people that didn’t have to be anywhere that Monday morning. After watching the official Michael Wadleigh film I was initially disappointed by the editing of when each of the bands were featured if they were featured at all. The Who one of my favorite bands of the time were way to early, so was Crosby, Stills, and Nash. There was no Creedence, Mountain, Dead, or Band. I didn’t realize most of those named hadn’t signed off on it, but it is one of the few slights I’ll hold on co-editor Marty Scorsese. I think he made up for it.

However, what was placed perfectly in the edit was Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and Sly and The Family Stone. Sly Stone for me was a revelation of the film, to the point where his performance at Woodstock is The most impressive and should be the most celebrated. For one, they were one of the only soul/funk groups to grace the primeval plywood. And timing is everything.

I’ve told it many times that my one-shot time machine is Saturday night to Sunday Morning of the ‘69 Woodstock. The line up of Santana, Canned Heat, Mountain, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, The Who, and Jefferson Airplane In That Order, is one of the greatest bills ever put on. And it all went wrong. Long set changes, poor electrical grounding, rain, bad acid and splinters all descended on the artists attempting to captivate and galvanize half a million people trying desperately to stay awake. Some of the best anecdotes and nightmare scenarios come from this specific line up of the festival. By the time Sly & The Family Stone hit downbeat they had been lulled to sleep by a technically plagued Dead set, a hot but monotonous Creedence, and a spirited but raw Janis with her recently put together backing band. But by the time Sly and crew ended, no could go back to bed.

Sly & The Family commanded a weary crowd they could not see through the black of night and had them all on their feet demanding them back for four encores. The two songs featured in the film “I Want To Take You Higher” and “Music Lover (Higher)” were staples of their festival sets but it plays different in both the film and (though I wasn’t there) in real time at 4a.m. The delirious listener has been through and is still halfway through a music marathon and these killer grooves coming from this dimly lit stage in a shade of blue is infectious and you can’t escape it. You don’t want to either. You’ve also been blasted by blues-rock for ten hours and what the Family Stone delivers is out of left field. By the time the “Music Lover” Medley reaches its climactic “Higher” you are not only on board, you have given yourself to primordial Dionysian premonitions and you follow every call and response, sink into every fuzz bass groove, and shake to every trumpet riff Cynthia Robinson shot out into the void leaving you with dance moves you never though you had.

I used to rank my top five favorite performances of Woodstock in the High Fidelity manner. To keep my contrarian streak I often had Hendrix third or fourth and The Who first or second. But the older I get the more I’m impressed and literally moved by the Sly & The Family Stone set and forever convinced it was the best of the entire event given the time and conditions. Their set to this day jumps off the recording like no other artist in that festival.

David Crosby had downplayed the music portion of Woodstock as most of that generation does in favor of the holistic cultural utopia in the mud sort of thing. But in reality the performances had to power the event to legendary status, or else sitting in mud and bad acid with a bunch of well meaning people would be kind of an awful experience. Especially if you left your car on the side of the road three miles away. The music is what should be celebrated about Woodstock Festival. It sounds obvious but needs repeating.

And Sly & The Family Stone saved it.

This was meant to come out Tuesday and while writing this Brian Wilson also passed. Not to ignore that I’ll have something for him in a later post.