Woodstock (1970)
Grade: 63
In 1969, Woodstock, New York, was the site of rock and roll's most famous music festival. The massive, three day concert was declared a national disaster area when 400,000 people descended on the site. There was a lack of food, water, and shelter. Heavy rains made the concert a mudbath. Transportation was impossible: with the roads snarled for miles, the bands were flown in by helicopter.
But Woodstock is remembered for its positive aspects. Many of the top acts of the day performed there, and despite the difficulties faced by the massive crowds, there was no hint of violence. This lengthy documentary (nearly four hours) captures the fleeting moment in American history when hippies were the dominant subculture.
Much of the documentary is concert footage. The acts vary in both style and quality. Legendary British group The Who are the loudest. Pete Townshend closes their set by throwing his guitar into the audience. John Sebastian, former lead singer of the Lovin' Spoonful, is the wimpiest. There's Crosby Stills & Nash in their second gig, and blues screecher Janis Joplin and guitar god Jimi Hendrix a year before their drug overdose deaths. (The lead singer of Canned Heat, another Woodstock performer, would also soon die of a drug overdose).
One has to suffer Joan Baez's martyrizing her imprisoned husband, and also her relentless vocal trilling. Jefferson Airplane (a hippie band if ever there was one) is a bit disappointing, but white blues singer Joe Cocker is awesome (those are guys doing the backing vocals?). Sly and the Family Stone, perhaps the best band at Woodstock, mix rock and soul into a formidable rhythm section. Santana makes an early career appearance, with Carlos Santana competing with Alvin Lee of Ten Years After for the speed guitarist award. Hendrix is less interested in speed than in feedback, which he uses to create a wild wah-wah version of the national anthem. But Hendrix performs to only a handful: he arrived late to Woodstock, and the crowds have vanished, leaving a mountain of litter behind.
All I can ask is, where is Creedence Clearwater Revival? One of the top bands of 1969, they appear in the credits but are nowhere in the soundtrack. Did the cameramen snooze through their set? Perhaps they were roaming the grounds; the concert scenes are mixed with scenes of hippies bathing naked, nursing their infant babies, and standing in line to call their parents on pay phones. Some of these parents are interviewed: some are sympathetic with the polite, peaceful hippies, while others consider them to be trespassers and animals. There is an announcement from the stage that the brown acid is bad. The film also conducts the first interview of somebody exiting a portable outhouse: 'How were the facilities?' 'Sure beats the woods, man!'
The editing is sometimes sloppy, and the cinematography is overly fond of split screens and extreme close ups (Stephen Stills has bad teeth). But the documentary deserves its registry in the Library of Congress; not just for the great rock performances, but because it best captures the brief era of flower power.
kollers@mpsi.net http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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