AUGUST 2019 — 103IMAGE : ALAMY (FESTIVAL, MICHAEL), GETTY IMAGES (POSTER)
I GAWKED AT THE BARE
BODIES AND THE HASH
PIPES. I WAS TOO YOUNG
FOR BOTH, BUT SO WHAT. I
BELONGED THERE, CALLING
FOR THE END OF WAR AND
THE RETURN TO LOVE
by the sight and sound in the film, of nearly half
a million people vocalising with Country Joe
McDonald (“There’s about 300,000 of you fuckers
out there. I want you to start singin’!”) – his lyrics
a searing indictment of the inevitable deaths and
dismemberments of young Americans caught in a
futile war. “Well come on all of you big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again/ He got himself
in a terrible jam, way down yonder in Vietnam/ But
down your books and pick up a gun, we’re gonna
have a whole lotta fun.”
My own young and impressionable mind found
resonance and sustenance in the ideas of anti-
establishmentism, racial miscegenation, liberalism
and freedom of expression. I was enamoured with
the free-spiritedness of America’s young. Men and
women cohabited with strangers in rain-soaked
fields, bathed together naked in a lake, made love
in the tall grass and appeared to share a oneness of
heart, soul and purpose. A baby was born in a tent.
The show kept going.
I may have physically been sitting on a seat, or
at the edge of it, in a cavernous Bombay cinema
hall, but in my heart, I was among the hippies,
chanting, “No rain!” when the heavens let loose
their load, and sliding gleefully in the mud after
the storm had passed. I gawked at the bare bodies
and the hash pipes. I was too young for both, but
so what? I belonged there, calling for the end of
war and the return to love. The music, the energies
and the intents of Woodstock have never left me. I
still subscribe to those ideals, even if many of their
original intenders may not any more.
I recently watched the movie again, after many
years. I was an adolescent boy all over again,
grinning widely even as I bemoaned my delayed
and geographically misplaced birth. It may be a
long time gone, but I still water the seed that was
planted in my soul – of peace, love, freedom and a
nice little hash pipe.
Uday Benegal is looking forward to catching the new PBS doc
Woodstock: Three Days That Defined A Generationelse in the movie theatre. It didn’t matter; I was on
a pilgrimage. I entered the darkened hall and made
my way to my seat: dress circle, front row centre, the
perfect vantage point for stereophonic listening and
unimpeded viewing.
As the film opened, with the harmonies of Crosby,
Stills & Nash underscoring scenes of the festival
being set up, I was transported to an alternate reality.
Interviews with Michael Lang, the boy-faced believer
helming the herculean exercise, were intercut with
helicopters ferrying in bands who couldn’t get through
the interstate freeways, jammed by multitudes of
longhairs making their way to Max Yasgur’s farm. I
watched, dazzled, as armies of peaceniks gathered in
a massive field, 12,000 kilometres from my home, to
reclaim their freedom and protest their government’s
denial of it to millions of others – the people of Vietnam
as well as their own kinfolk, many of them draftees
just barely out of high school. I’d never been to a
rock concert, much less a three-day love-in featuring
the world’s best-known folk and rock stars. I was
spellbound, not just by the lineup and the scale, but by
the commitment of so many fresh-faced idealists to the
cause of unity.oodstock was also the confluence
of my two deepest loves: music and
film. While I could identify most of
the musicians who performed at the
festival, I’d only learn many years
later of the two future powerhouse film personalities
that the director, Michael Wadleigh, had hired to put
his footage in place. Martin Scorsese and Thelma
Schoonmaker worked as editors on the historic doc,
well before they became a top Hollywood director-
editor team.
Greatly moved by the audio-visual spectacle, just a
few years later I found myself on stage at an HR College
talent show belting out The Who’s “We’re Not Gonna
Take It” and “Evil Ways” by Santana, two bands that
impacted me the most in the movie. I was awestruckTA L K