One more from the (Woodstock) road

In the Audience section of the Maine Sunday Telegram on Aug. 9, we ran a series of anecdotes from Mainers who attended Woodstock 40 years ago this week. Based on feedback, readers apparently appreciated hearing from people who were there. Their stories were funny, insightful and powerful.

Here is one more from Ken Bedder, who now lives in Freeport:

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I was 19, working for the summer
at an electrical and plumbing outlet in Yonkers, N.Y., after my freshman year of college. It was Friday 5 p.m., I stood waiting on the corner where the
Chinese laundry had been since I was a kid.  My friends were an hour late and I wondered whether they’d
show.

Finally the old Packard rolled up
and three long-haired faces beamed out at me; John, Chris and Jimmy.  We had been to a lot of concerts since
graduating high school, particularly at the Filmore East. But this concert was different; no
concert hall, no tickets, we weren’t sure where we were going, who was playing,
where we’d sleep, or what we’d eat; but we were on our way.

It rained on the way up and we hit
bumper to bumper traffic by 7 p.m. It was bumper to bumper going both ways for miles and miles. If 1 million people claim to have been
at Woodstock, I believe it. We
pulled off into an old churchyard and spent the night in the car.

We trekked the few miles to the
concert site Saturday morning, passing a corner store doing the business of a
lifetime and lines of cars parked on both sides of the small town streets. We had been through a lot in the '60s and now we were following the movement of people being lured by the
promise of peace and our universal elixir; music.

We passed over what must have been
an entry fence and came out into a vast field. The farther we advanced, the more people we encountered,
sitting, dancing, playing music, selling wares, passing around joints; there
was celebration in the air. The
flatness of the field eventually gave way to the edge of a great amphitheater
filled with people. At the bottom
of the hill stood the stage framed by tall scaffold towers that held lights and
sound equipment.

We settled in on the edge of the
crowd and joined in the celebration as we listened to Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice,” Canned Heat’s “Goin Up the Country," Grateful Dead’s “High Time” and Mountain’s
“For Yasgur’s Farm.” We were
thrilled along with a half-million others all Saturday long.

My friends and I made it back into
the woods to sleep in our tiny tent except for Jimmy who had somehow
disappeared.  We were bushed, no
one knew how long the music would continue or who would play next. I was settling down when I heard the
familiar guitar intro and …”when I was just a little boy, a standin to my
daddy’s knees, my papa said son don’t let the man getcha, do what he done to
me, gonna getcha.”  John Fogerty’s
bayou drawl and the CCR beat drew only me from the sleepy tent to stumble back
down alone  through the campfire
lit woods to keep on “Chooglin.”  A
huge bonfire now lit up the amphitheater as the lights on stage caressed Janis
Joplin as she took another little piece of my heart.  I’ve seen a lot of concerts before and since then, but the
next four hours were for me, the best of all time.

Sly and the Family Stone came on
and talk about the biggest dance party of all time! Imagine a half a million strong dancing to the music and
following Sly who insisted on taking us higher and higher. And just when you thought it couldn’t
get any better than this … ladies and gentlemen, The Who.  “Tommy can you hear me?”, Abbie Hoffman
interrupting with a rant about injustice and Pete Townsend kicking him off the
stage, the set continued with “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” “Summertime Blues” and “My
Generation,” followed by the destruction of the instruments … and this finally
seemed a good time to call it a night … actually it was dawn by now and even
the Jefferson Airplane’s Plastic Fantastic Lover could not keep me going. Back at the tent, John and Chris had
just slept through the greatest night of music and Jimmy was still nowhere to
be found.

Sunday we survived well through
some rain, people gathered under makeshift tarps, frolicked down mudslide
sluices while Joe Cocker urged us to “Get By With a Little Help From Our
Friends,” Country Joe gave us the fish cheer, and Ten Years After frenetic “Goin
Home” had us screaming for more.  If it weren’t for the Hog Farm and their huge caldrons
of rice, carrot and raisin combo we would have had nothing to eat and not
survived the long weekend. All through the Band’s set we swore Bob Dylan would
show up any song, but he wouldn’t ”Do It,” he would break our hearts. But Crosby, Stills and Nash who had
just recently gotten together came on and assuaged us with a wonderful set of
acoustic and electric music that left us “Helplessly Hoping.”

Lack of food, water and sleep
finally caught up to us and we began the long trudge back to the car. The hillside was a muddy mess with soggy
sleeping bags, blankets and salted pretzels left behind and the once full
amphitheater now held a bedraggled, soaked and dwindling crowd. Paul Butterfield serenaded us as we
drifted and drifted away. Our
decision to leave seem vindicated when we could hear the faraway sounds of
Sha-Na-Na “Jackety Jaking” us through the dawn. No the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors wouldn’t be playing, nor
Led Zeppelin. By the time we got
to our car we were out of earshot and Jimi’s Message to Love went unheard by us
and hundreds of thousands of others. But somehow it didn’t matter and the Star Spangled Banner nor any of us for
that matter would ever be the same.

Ken Bedder, Freeport