All tagged Richie Havens
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about 1969 — and Woodstock. And Max Yasgur.
There are a lot of reasons for this. This past weekend, of course, marked the 50-year anniversary of Woodstock. And it also would’ve been commemorated by Woodstock 50 — which, at one point, had confirmed as headliners The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Halsey, Miley Cyrus, Robert Plant, The Raconteurs, Cage the Elephant and Janelle Monáe.
Early this week marked the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. It was, by all accounts, the defining cultural event of an entire generation. It was also, in many ways, much more than that. It was at once a cultural crescendo and a heavy, ideological tombstone — the final punctuation mark on a decade of revolution and activism. It was the culmination of a generation’s revolt against war; it was a celebration of the successfully-waged sexual revolution.
Folk rocker Richie Havens has witnessed some of Rock and Roll’s most memorable moments. Emerging from the Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk scene in the mid-Sixties, he came up with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary. He played the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Bob Dylan “plugged in” for the first time — going electric, much to the crowd’s dismay. Havens was the first act to take the stage at Woodstock, playing a set that would last almost three hours. As you might imagine, he has a few stories to tell.
