Blind Leap into the History Books
Terry’s older brother Warren attended Woodstock at the tender age of 17. Regretfully he passed away in 2007. Seven years younger than Warren, Terry remembers nothing of the event, nor do I. The concert’s 50thanniversary this year stoked embers of old regrets…why didn’t we get more details from Warren when we had the chance? Luckily, Terry was able to connect with the friend who accompanied Warren on this epic trip, their cousin (by marriage), Jean-Luc Rouette of Pointe-du-lac Québec.
Jean-Luc and Warren, 16 and 17 years old respectively, were working during the summer of ’69 in New Brunswick for the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were labourers on a rail gang, hard and at times hazardous work. Jean-Luc remembers travelling home to Trois-Rivieres at one point during the summer where he saw a concert poster for Woodstock. He badly wanted to go, and once back at work on the gang, he learned Warren did as well. If posters were starting to show up in Trois-Rivieres…something indeed was happening here, although exactly what wasn’t clear.
Terry remembers Jean-Luc arriving at their Côte-St-Luc house several days before the concert. According to family lore, Jean-Luc arrived barefoot and Dick, Warren and Terry’s father, had to give him a pair of shoes. Jean-Luc corrected this: he arrived in sandals and Dick insisted he head out in a proper pair of shoes.
Terry & Warren’s sister Carol, age 12, doesn’t remember the shoes but vividly recalls Jean-Luc’s leather vest. Sans T-shirt dessous, it was the signature outfit for many a concert goer that year, male and female. “He was really buff, Jean-Luc was,” she laughs as she tells the story, “It had quite the impression on me.” Terry would start work on the CPR a mere four years later, as was expected of males in the family, at the rather astonishing age of 14. I have seen summer photos of him during those days…he too became sculpted. Wielding spike hammers will do this to young men. When the work stops…and Terry will admit this (happily it did, it was grueling) but so too did the muscle definition.
Woodstock Producers
Jean-Luc recalls that he and Warren were the worst prepared concert-goers ever. They brought no sleeping bags, no food and had no identification to cross the U.S. border. Dick Davies managed to get an attestation letter for Jean-Luc, and perhaps for Warren as well, from the Dorval Chief of Police in the days leading up to their departure.
Of course they weren’t the most ill-prepared concert-goers ever…they were part of a massive wave of ill-prepared concert-goers (half a million if you believe Joni Mitchell’s count). Woodstock would of course become known as the most poorly planned music event in history. The numbers of attendees overwhelmed the young organizers. For both them and the attendees, it was a giant leap of faith into the unknown and then straight into the history books.
Jean-Luc and Warren took the bus from Montreal to New York City, an 8-hour trip. (Today I wonder if it was the midnight bus. In 1980, eleven years later, I would take that bus for a girls’ weekend in NYC; I remember beholding the NYC skyline at dawn, weary and bleary).
Jean-Luc and Warren weren’t finished by a long shot. They switched buses and made their way to Monticello, NY, the largest town in that area of the Catskills. And then they walked. A famous trek; the majority of the concert goers needed to do this. Ten miles on average for most, as the tiny country road to Max Yasgur’s farm soon became impassable. Jean-Luc recalls getting a ride in the back of a Volkswagon, at least part of the way, and riding on the hood of a Mustang.
Traffic to Bethel NY
Jean-Luc doesn’t believe they bought concert tickets, as at this point they learned that it had become a free event. There simply was no time to build gates or perimeter fencing. Carol recalls however that Warren did have a ticket, which he returned home with and kept as a keepsake. Unfortunately some years later it was accidentally thrown out by their mother Marie.
Somewhere during the journey, Jean-Luc and Warren bought tickets for food, but, famously, food was scant and then there was none. “So we lost our money there,” Jean-Luc said, “I remember corn…somebody donated it?” Many area farmers did indeed pitch in on compassionate grounds.
“I remember the mud, and I remember the cold, and the storm,” Jean-Luc says. “We had a tent made of garbage bags.” He laughs ruefully. “It was a special trip!”
That said, he has positive memories of how he and Warren got close to the fence protecting the stage. Close enough to see Joe Cocker, and memorably, Joe’s leather boots painted with stars. Boots that would become iconic symbols over time.
Jean-Luc remembers Richie Havens. Warren would go on to become a Richie Havens fanatic. And Santana. Few people knew Carlos Santana’s music but he would put on one of the most highly-regarded sets at the festival. “And,” Jean-Luc recalls, “It was the first time I had ever seen naked women.” Perhaps one of the most vivid memories of all for the 16-year old boy from Trois-Rivières.
Richie Havens
He and Warren departed on the Sunday as the majority of concert-goers did. Only 30,000 or so would see Jimmy Hendrix at dawn on Monday. Warren was apparently interviewed by NBC news when they disembarked their first bus in New York City. How precious it would be to find this in TV archives somewhere.
Jean-Luc bought a Blood Sweat and Tears album at the concert, but regrettably left a commemorative Woodstock poster on the bus coming home. Both he and Warren would be passionate music fans thereafter. Warren would take up the guitar.
Jean-Luc had watched the new PBS American Masters Woodstock documentary last week, prior to our phone call. The footage newly drives home the drama of the weekend, the degree of deprivation, the sheer biohazard that was the site, and yet the cheerfulness of many, but not all of the attendees. “I don’t know how we did it,” Jean-Luc says.
Terry and I remember nothing of Woodstock. He recalls the U.S. moon landing one month earlier, which happened on his 10thbirthday. Family friend Joan Neuheimer made him a moon cake with mint green icing and tiny world flags.
The following spring, Crosby Stills Nash & Young released Joni’s Woodstock song. My friend Marjorie Hill used her portable cassette recorder to tape it from the radio. She transcribed the lyrics onto lined foolscap paper (one copy, there were no photocopiers or printers). Music was becoming our new obsession; we began turning 12 in 1970. Instead of “… I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm …” Marjorie misheard it as “I’m going down to Caska Pop…” An odd mondegreen, but no one in our girl group had a better theory. No one owned CSNY’s album and there was no Lyrics.com. So that’s what we all happily sang, heads touching, singing from the one available song sheet. In the schoolyard at recess in the spring sun of 1970.
Jean-Luc remembers his English as being basic at the time, as basic as Warren’s French. But they learned to communicate over the course of the weekend, united in the drive to make a pilgrimage together, the need to withstand the harsh conditions and enthralled by the music they had the exceptional opportunity to share.
Warren Davies, post Woodstock
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