Arlo, Janis & me

After the love songs of my teen years in the early to middle 1950s, I fairly well lost contact with and interest in the culture I'd left behind, its music that was changing and thriving around me and my world, oblivious to everything but family and Navy life. When "Woodstock" happened I was a fresh graduate of the U S Naval War College our second tour of duty in Newport, Rhode Island, and we had just PCS'd to San Diego, where I was a lieutenant commander beginning my second tour of sea duty, aboard ship, 

making preparations for an eight or nine month WestPac deployment, and Subic Bay, Okinawa, Hong Kong, and Danang. Music wasn't on my mind, what was on my mind was dismay at leaving Joe and Malinda and Linda for so long, and after twelve years of fun and career promise, it was the tour of duty that made me realize the Navy was not all destroyer duty after all as I had experienced in the beginning as a new Ensign, and that made me decide to end my Navy career at twenty years.

But I knew about Woodstock, of course. At the time, my father was railing at me that America had no business in Vietnam, but I was awash in military thinking, for example, in the auditorium of middle and senior officers, that rose in a standing ovation when our beloved four-star Chief of Naval Operations, after making sure no press was present, made his pitch to us for use of tactical nuclear weapons in places of North Vietnam that, with his long pointer, he showed us on the map. Sitting in front of me in our class, I might add, was Navy captain, Chaplain John O'Connor, later archbishop of New York and cardinal, and I'm sure Father John, Padre, as we called him, stood and clapped as long as the rest of us.

We were in a different world When we still thought that USA was always right and that wars could be won by the military might that America uniquely had, When I had no sympathy for the Woodstock crowd, or their songs. 

For me, it was a Time of beginning uneasily to think rather than to know. When the ship took an R&R break at Hong Kong for a week, all our sailor youngsters went ashore on liberty, straight to the tailors, and returned to the ship wearing their new hippie suits with vests and bell-bottom pants.

You got to love a hippie kid. During our WestPac cruise, the young sailors in one of my divisions decorated the bulkheads of their space, a computer room, 

from deck to overhead, with hippie flowers and symbols,

which I thought the captain would never see, but he did, and lit into me, ordering me to have them removed. Hey, WTFO, this is a warship, no? By then we had taken part in a program, I forget its official name, of using our Marine helicopters to fly aboard Vietnamese children with hideous injuries from our war on them, for surgery in our ship's hospital, which was staffed with plastic surgeons. I watched as maimed children terrified beyond imagining were carried from the flight deck to the hospital below decks, and thinking, "please, nobody say 'Jesus Christ' and have Him come present thinking we are gathered in His Name and see what we have done to these children", in retrospect a corny sentiment perhaps. The idea of that program was to help build more positive relations with the Vietnamese people. Many years later, a retired Navy captain, a physician, was one of my dearest parishioners of all Time, and Bill recalled the program, had been part of it.

Soon enough the songs of Arlo, and Pete Seeger, John Lennon "Imagine", Simon & Garfunkel, and "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore", John Prine, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, an anti-war movement that brought down an Administration and proved that in a democracy the people have power, and my own about face. Though I didn't change my party affiliation back to my roots until Reagan sent Marines to Beirut.  

So, enough already. A side trip down a lane of my life. War, Woodstock, and not helped by images of Afghans clinging to U S transport planes fleeing Kabul.

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

How many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly

Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist

Before it is washed to the sea?

And how many years can some people exist

Before they're allowed to be free?

Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head

And pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, and how many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

And how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

RSF&PTL

T+ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czFr_kJCdKQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_performances_and_events_at_Woodstock_Festival

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-woodstock-1970

  

1969

August 17

Woodstock Music Festival concludes

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On August 17, 1969, one of the all-time grooviest events in music history–the Woodstock Music & Art Fair–draws to a close after three days of peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll in upstate New York.

Conceived as “Three Days of Peace and Music,” Woodstock was a product of a partnership between John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang. Their idea was to make enough money from the event to build a recording studio near the arty New York town of Woodstock. When they couldn’t find an appropriate venue in the town itself, the promoters decided to hold the festival on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York—some 50 miles from Woodstock—owned by Max Yasgur.

By the time the weekend of the festival arrived, the group had sold a total of 186,000 tickets and expected no more than 200,000 people to show up. By Friday night, however, thousands of eager early arrivals were pushing against the entrance gates. Fearing they could not control the crowds, the promoters made the decision to open the concert to everyone, free of charge. Close to half a million people attended Woodstock, jamming the roads around Bethel with eight miles of traffic.

Soaked by rain and wallowing in the muddy mess of Yasgur’s fields, young fans best described as “hippies” euphorically took in the performances of acts like Janis Joplin, Arlo Guthrie, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The Who performed in the early morning hours of August 17, with Roger Daltrey belting out “See Me, Feel Me,” from the now-classic album Tommy just as the sun began to rise. The most memorable moment of the concert for many fans was the closing performance by Jimi Hendrix, who gave a rambling, rocking solo guitar performance of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

With not enough bathroom facilities and first-aid tents to accommodate such a huge crowd, many described the atmosphere at the festival as chaotic. There were surprisingly few episodes of violence, though one teenager was accidentally run over and killed by a tractor and another died from a drug overdose. A number of musicians performed songs expressing their opposition to the Vietnam War, a sentiment that was enthusiastically shared by the vast majority of the audience. Later, the term “Woodstock Nation” would be used as a general term to describe the youth counterculture of the 1960s.

A 25th anniversary celebration of Woodstock took place in 1994 in Saugerties, New York. Known as Woodstock II, the concert featured Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills and Nash as well as newer acts such as Nine Inch Nails and Green Day. Held over another rainy, muddy weekend, the event drew an estimated 300,000 people. Another, less successful Woodstock was held in 1999. A major 50th anniversary festival was planned for 2019, but never came to fruition.