inger-songwriter Melanie
Safka-Schekeryk, 72, describes
herself now as having been “the
oddball” of her high school, a
pigtailed beatnik out of place in small-
town Long Branch, New Jersey. Painfully
shy, she found release in music. Her
mother, also a singer, would take Melanie
into Greenwich Village on weekends,
frequenting the proliferating jazz and folk
venues. There the youngster planted the
seeds of her 50-year career.
So, it was you and your mom in the
Village? We’d see jazz greats like Sun Ra
and Horace Silver and sometimes my
mother would sit in and sing. And I’d
bring my guitar, strapped over my back,
of course, because no self-respecting
folk singer carried a guitar case—those
were Juilliard people. Sometimes I’d sing
in Washington Square Park, which was
much different then, just a quiet little
park. I had a really big voice, which was
one of my assets, though some might
have thought of it as a nuisance. I’d sing
and attract a crowd, but I was so shy that
after I sang, I’d just walk away. I also sang
in cafés and coffeehouses.
When you got to Woodstock, you were
largely unknown. I had recorded a song,
“Beautiful People,” that became what
they called a turntable hit. But it wasn’t
promoted, and I bet only about 2 percent
of those 400,000 people at Woodstock
knew of me.
How did you even get invited to
perform at the festival? Peter Schekeryk,
my husband [who died in 2010], was a
producer and he had an office in the same
building as Artie Kornfeld and some of
the people putting together Woodstock.
Peter said to them, “Oh, Melanie should
be there.” I had no idea it was gonna be
big. I had this picture of families and picnic
blankets, arts and crafts.
So tell me about the big day. My mom
drove me up from New Jersey. We hit
traffic, I figured there must’ve been an
accident. We got closer and now I know
this traffic has something to do with
where I’m supposed to go. We head up to
this hotel in Bethel and I get out of the car
and I walk into the lobby and there’s Janis
Joplin! Now the only famous person I had
ever met before was Marcel Marceau in
high school. She’s surrounded by media
and she’s slugging Southern Comfort
and being Janis Joplin. And I’m like, oh my
God, I gotta get out of here. What am I
doing here?
Suddenly I hear my name, and
someone’s telling me, “Melanie, Melanie,
we gotta get into the helicopter.” And this
is when the terror starts to mount—we’re
talking terror as in I’m probably going to
die here. We take off and I look down and
I see what looks like some weird, colorful
crops, and I said to the pilot, “What is
that?” And he said, “It’s people.” I said,
“No, I mean the stuff with color.” And he
said, “Yeah, it’s people.” And I’m thinking,
no, no! I’d never been in anything bigger
than a little Greenwich Village box stage,
you know? I’m thinking, God, I’ve got to
get out of here!
So they let me into this little tent.
Every once in a while, they’d come
and say, “You’re on next,” and I tried to
breathe, and I’d think, What am I going
to do? What am I going to do? I didn’t
even have a set list. Then someone would
come along and say, “Never mind.” It
started to rain and I thought, Ah, that’s
it. It’s raining. Everybody will go home
because it’s raining! Of course they’re
gonna go home, it’s raining! And rightin the middle of my reverie, after Ravi
Shankar, they said, “You’re next”—and
this time it was for real.How’d it go? I got up onto that stage and
I had a moment I don’t think one other
person had. Mind you, I was not altered,
I did not do any drugs, didn’t drink. I was
a purist. I was very uncool in that time
to be that way. I started walking toward
the stage, feeling like I’m walking the
plank to my certain doom. And then—I
left my body. I actually watched myself
get on the stage, and I hovered over
my shoulder. I heard nothing, it was
very silent, and I watched this person
who was me sit down, and at one point
instantaneously I came back to myself.
Something verging on magic happened.
I was singing “Beautiful People” and it
so resonated with the crowd that I got
an instant response, just from me and a
guitar. I sort of sensed this flow of power,
this appreciation of what I was doing, a
kindred spirit thing happening.Your life pretty much changed
overnight. The next day I was being
called by television shows to be on
panels of anthropologists to discuss the
significance of what had happened. I
was so ill-prepared; I wasn’t even slightly
articulate. But I realized it was something
really big I’d just done.A Conversation with Melanie
When she arrived to perform at Woodstock, she was little-known—and terrified