With what we have learned from the performers who were there, such as Pete Townshend of The Who, Graham Nash and David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, and Marty Balin, Grace Slick, and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane, the original Woodstock Festival should have never happened, for a whole myriad of reasons. Instead, the three day outdoor music festival on a hog farm in Upstate New York launched some careers, deified others, and defined a whole generation of Americans.
Classic rock interviews with Woodstock Festival performers Graham Nash, the late David Crosby, and dearly departed Robbie Robertson of The Band; Jimi Hendrix bass player Billy Cox, Hendrix recording engineer Eddie Kramer, the late Joe Cocker; and the late Paul Kantner and Marty Balin, both co-founders of the Jefferson Airplane.
Graham Nash’s first memory of the Woodstock Festival, flying with bandmates David Crosby and Stephen Stills over the enormous sea of people below, was one of awe. Nash’s next memory is one of sheer terror. As Crosby, Stills, & Nash approached to land in the backstage area in a small helicopter, they lost the tail rotor, augering into the ground and crash landing! Their performance later that weekend at the Woodstock Festival was to be only their second gig ever, but it nearly was one & done for Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
If the whole band would have been seriously injured or killed, can you imagine how history would have changed for them, for us, and for how our whole perspective on that original Woodstock event would have been altered permanently? Part 2 of 2. – Redbeard
