many other parts of this country.
But the entire success is in your hands,
not in the hands of a few organizers.
Naturally, they have come forward to do
some job. I have met them. I admire them.
But still, in your hands, the success lies.
The entire world is going to watch this.
The entire world is going to know what the
American youth can do to the humanity.
So, every one of you should be responsible
for the success of this festival.
The Swami then led the assem-
bled multitudes in a mystical Sanskrit
chant: “Hari Om, Hari Om, Hari Hari
Hari Om... Hari Om, Hari Om, Hari
Hari Om... Rama Rama Rama Rama
Rama Rama Rama Ram.”
AFTER WOODSTOCK: Satchidananda
became an American citizen in 1976
and soon after founded the Integral
Yoga Institute in Greenwich Village and
Yogaville, an ashram in Buckingham
County, Virginia. He was also spiritual
adviser to numerous musicians and
Hollywood stars. The swami died at 87,
in 2002, shortly after speaking at a peace
conference in Chennai, India.
Sweetwater
6:15–7 PM
Chaos continued that first evening as
performers struggled to make it to the
megagig. Finally, Sweetwater, originally
slated to open the festival, managed
to arrive via chopper. A multiethnic,
mixed-gender septet that had played
with both the Doors and the Animals,
the band was rather a complicated
act to stage. Along with lead vocal-
ists Albert Moore and Nancy “Nansi”
Nevins, their instrumentation included
a flute, cello, keyboards, conga, drums,
and bass. That amalgam strained the
already flawed technical accommoda-
tions. “We were the first electric group
onstage with mics for the amps and
drums,” bassist Fred Herrera recalled
to music journalist Rona Elliot. “So
we were essentially the sound crew’s
sound check, so everything was inter-
mittent. I could sort of hear from the
main speakers what was going out
to the audience. But I could not hear
what was going on on the other side of
the stage, and they could not hear us.”
Added keyboardist Alex Del Zoppo,
“Albert [Moore] ran into someone he
knew and dropped a little of that brown
acid, which was not a good idea.”
Nonetheless, Sweetwater assembled
onstage and opened their nine-song
set with an altogether different inter-
pretation of Richie Havens’s closer,
“Motherless Child,” and finished with
“Let the Sunshine In,” from the musical
Hair, and the rousing gospel tune “Oh
Happy Day” which drew a big hand
from the audience.AFTER WOODSTOCK: The promising
band played The Red Skelton Show later
in 1969, but three days afterward a run
of terrible luck began to strike—lead
singer Nevins suffered serious injuriesin a car accident that left her with
some brain injuries for a number of
years and permanent vocal cord dam-
age, though she later recovered and still
sings today. Sweetwater produced two
albums before disbanding, but tragedy
continued to hound its members—
cellist August Burns fell out of a con-
struction elevator in 1979 and died of
pneumonia shortly thereafter; drum-
mer Alan Malarowitz was killed in a
1981 car crash; and flutist and vocalist
Moore, a former police officer, died of
lung cancer in 1994. That year, the sur-
viving bandmates reunited for the 25th
anniversary of Woodstock. In 1999, a
VH1 TV movie titled Sweetwater: A True
Rock Story starred Amy Jo Johnson as
the 1960s Nevins and the Mamas &
the Papas vet Michelle Phillips as the
older Nevins.27