...is the research. Blissful hours uncovering minutiae, some of it useful, much of it just plain fun or suited to odd Jeopardy categories.
As many of you know, my brain has spent a great deal of time at The Woodstock Music and Art Festival of 1969, even if my body didn't. And my brain discovered some cool stuff in the process of creating Anywhen, like:
Roy Rogers was invited to conclude this hippiefest, this countercultural protest, this seminal moment in American history, with his signature rendition of "Happy Trails." Predictably, Roy politely declined. But as weird as it sounds on the surface, it was a thoughtful choice the promoters made: the Woodstock generation grew up with him. He'd have been a familiar and comforting presence, though my brain can't quite conjure him following Jimi Hendrix.
Carlos Santana was only a few months removed from playing in Tijuana bars when he appeared at Woodstock at 22 years of age. He electrified the crowd with his guitar skills and the frenetic drumbeats of his band had hundreds of thousands dancing.
Nobody knew who he was, before.
Everyone did, after, and still does.
If you watch videos of Soul Sacrifice, you can see Carlos with his eyes clamped shut through most of the song. That’s because Jerry Garcia, believing it would be much later when Carlos took the stage, gave him some acid. Santana was convinced the neck of his guitar was composed of slithering snakes. He was afraid to look at it.
He later said he was praying for God to help him play well, in exchange for avoiding drugs the rest of his life.
(I’m fairly sure he broke that promise.)
Sly and the Family Stone delivered, inarguably, one of the best performances at Woodstock in 1969. If you can hear the live version of I Want to Take You Higher without dancing, see your physician.
Sly is a common nickname for Sylvester now, but came about when he was a kid because a classmate misspelled his name “Slyvester.” He studied music in college and worked as an extremely popular disc jockey in San Francisco. He once played keyboard at a “Twist Party” concert by Chubby Checker at the legendary Cow Palace
Sly moved to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, Deborah King, who later married Carlos Santana (who was probably still recovering from his snakey guitar).
By the way, if you’ve been singing that chorus “boom shaka-laka-laka” (looking at myself here), you’re wrong. It’s “boom laka-laka-laka”.
But one of my VERY FAVORITE Woodstock "nuggets" like this is hidden in Anywhen, and you'll have to read it to find out. Let's just say someone whose name is undoubtedly familiar to you was there to witness history being made, but you don't know it. Yet.
Love,
Beth
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