Woodstock, man. 40 years ago this weekend. Three days of peace, love and inadequate toilet facilities. I’ll never forget hitching a ride down to Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, N.Y. way back in ’69… wait a minute, I wasn’t there. I was a kid.
Any way, Joan Baez was there, as she reminded critics at PBS’s portion of the TCA press tour two weeks ago (she’s being saluted in a PBS American Masters episode Oct. 14). As usual, Baez, who was at press tour via satellite, put the whole Woodstock trip in perspective:
I think flying over Woodstock in the last helicopter in, before the big storm made it impossible for anybody else to enter by air, with my mother and my manager and Janis Joplin peering out over the crowds, all gravitating in one direction, we knew something big was about to happen. And when we were there, I think we knew that something very big was happening, and certainly afterwards it had happened. And it’s a marking point in people’s lives forever, that they were there or they were on their way there or they were on the wrong coast or their parents wouldn’t let them go or, God forbid, they hadn’t been born yet.
Or they were 12 and they lived in Etobicoke, Anyway, way to rub it in, Joan.
