The players - Woodstock Music Festival - Interview

Interview, July, 1994 by Mark Marvel, Peter Galvin

Joan Baez played at WOODSTOCK '69

The first thing that comes to my mind about Woodstock is that it's something that can never be repeated, which is why this is the only interview I'm doing about it. I can't fathom why anybody would try to do it again. It was one of those extraordinary moments in history. By the time I was on a helicopter with my mother and Janis Joplin [laughs] on the last flight in, coming from my motel room, I knew this was something that was going to be big. But at the time of Woodstock, I was also so into the seriousness of my own politics that I didn't really have much fun. I mean, I didn't understand about having fun until many years later. I knew it was exciting; I was excited. There was no way not to be excited. Seeing fellow stars, and then having a chance to say what I wanted to say in front of a city of people.

Because, in those days, we were not living in a vacuum. We felt we had some kind of role to play. You counted whether you wanted to or not. Whether it was civil rights or the war in Vietnam, you were either for or against--period. And things were talked about, everywhere and every day. There wasn't any way out of that. So it created a kind of a friction that kept things alive. And I believe that that's what has been lacking since--literally since the day in the park when we celebrated the end of the war in Vietnam. People started saying, "What are you going to do now?"

And maybe that's why, today, people are so mystified about the '60s. Young people will come up to me and say, "Oh, man, I wish I'd been there." They don't think about the draft, the war in Vietnam. But on the other hand, at Woodstock, those three days were three days when people were almost forced to be kind to each other. And they were. And they enjoyed it.

You know, I have this image of a man who was clearly in an altered state, walking across the rubble of the third day of Woodstock toward me and a couple of policemen who were cooking hot dogs on an open fire. This guy was stark naked--the only thing missing was his briefcase. I mean, it was so clear to me that this was his first experience with being liberated! [laughs] And the policeman had put his guns in the car, because it was absolutely useless carrying them around, and he was cooking hot dogs. What it taught me was that there are times when we really can change our instincts and our lousy training and the good training can come out. You know, our moms basically loved us and tried to teach us how to be decent people. [laughs] And a policeman can be nice to that guy who was walking naked across the lawn, and look at a hippie and realize that it's a human being. It was an extraordinary three days of togetherness and many revelations; however, when you get back out in the big world, it's hard for any of that to sustain itself.

SPEECH AND HIS BAND ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT WILL PLAY AT WOODSTOCK '94

PETER GALVIN: Why did Arrested Development decide to play Woodstock '94?

SPEECH: Basically because we were asked to do it. Anytime we get a chance to do some shows where we can reach a lot of people, we try to do it. We call our shows celebrations, and we celebrate life, death, and the struggles of our ancestors. Regarding Woodstock, we wanted a lot of people to see what we do, and to catch our vibe. African-Americans are sometimes perceived as so limited, and Arrested Development tries to show the diversity of African-American reality, the diversity of the African diaspora. We're going to do a lot of live African dancing, some African percussion, and then, of course, we'll bring in hip-hop, so you'll see samplers. We have an elder now in our group who is sixty-two years old. And we have a younger sister in the group who is nineteen. So you have like a whole community of people onstage. That's important for the people to see, and that's why we wanted to utilize the Woodstock event.

PG: Where were you in 1969? Were you born yet?

S: Yeah, I was one year old, and I wasn't at Woodstock. [laughs] I was overseas in Africa at the time.

PG: According to what I've read, many of the people at the original Woodstock were stoned on drugs. As it's been mythologized, it all sounds like good clean fun. Today we have a huge drug problem in this country, and a lot of people are focused on recovery. The idea of 450,000 people on drugs doesn't sound like a very cool thing.

S: If you want to see 450,000 people stoned on drugs, you just have to go into some of the unfortunate communities in the nation. It's definitely not a light-hearted situation.

PG: You sing a lot about unity on your new album, Zingalamaduni, which seems to be a big part of what the original Woodstock was about. The concert brought a lot of different kinds of people together. Do you think that Woodstock '94 can capture that spirit of unity that people seem to have felt back in 1969?

S: I think it's about us creating a new spirit, learning from old spirits and creating some new ones. It's a new world, a constantly growing world, and there are so many new things to do. I hope more black people come--I can say that honestly. I think the meaning behind the concert is very important. For it to be just like everybody dressed in Afros and stuff like they did back in the '60s would be wack. Woodstock needs to relate to these times, not just the '60s. The spirit of our music is optimistic. Nowadays, when someone is optimistic, people are like, "Ahhh, you're not realistic; you're naive." But I think optimism is very real. Optimism was real to the Moors in Jamaica when they were fighting against slavery. Optimism was real to Harriet Tubman. Optimism is something that the powers that be may want us to just leave alone so that we'll take things as they are, but we need to look at optimism as an option.