Photo: Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
The trio recorded their first album, which shot into the Top 10 in the summer of ’69 — but they were faced with a problem: touring was a necessity, and the songs were incredibly difficult for the trio to perform live. The elaborate harmonies were layered with multi-tracking, and Stills (dubbed “Captain Many Hands”) overdubbed a number of the instruments himself.
They would need to augment the band in order to perform concerts. Drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Greg Reeves were brought on board, and Stills tapped his former Buffalo Springfield bandmate Neil Young, who was already emerging as a major solo force, to join the fold. CSN added a “Y” and they booked their first tour.
The 39-date trek began on Aug. 16, at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, with Mitchell as their opening act. Then they were off to the “Aquarian Exposition” that had kicked off the day before in upstate New York. Individually, they’d played festivals before (notably the Monterey Pop fest two years earlier) but as they helicoptered to the concert site in Bethel, New York, and gazed down at the sea of people below, they realized this would be different.
The playful disorder that reigned over the proceedings meant that the group didn’t hit the stage until just after 3 a.m., long after the festival had technically ended, and a healthy percentage of the original crowd had departed. But as Stills colorfully announced, they were indeed nervous — though not because of the multitudes stretched out in front of them.
Instead, they were more concerned with the small group that had gatheredbehindthem. A circle of highly respected musical peers like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Robbie Robertson and Sly Stone gathered in the wings to see if this new band could bring the goods. As they launched into the sprawling “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” it was clear that they could. And they did.
They capped off the acoustic portion of their set with a new song, “4+20,” which would surface the following year on CSNY’sDéjà Vu. Neil Young, who felt that documentarian Michael Wadleigh’s cameras were a distraction and refused to be filmed, joined Stills for a brief Buffalo Springfield mini-reunion as the duo performed “Mr. Soul,” “I’m Wonderin’,” and “You Don’t Have to Cry.”
Then the full band returned for the rocked-up five-song finale (“Pre-Road Downs,” “Long Time Gone,” “Bluebird Revisited,” “Sea of Madness” and “Wooden Ships”) before sending the audience off for a few hours of sleep with a pair of acoustic numbers: “Find the Cost of Freedom” and “49 Bye-Byes.”
He recounts a memory that crystalized the experience, speaking in rapid-fire present tense as if the long-ago moment is unfolding in real time.
“A girl — pretty girl — tan, blonde, is walking in the mud. Cuts her foot. Glass in the mud. Bad cut, bleeding. She’s hurt. She’s standing like a stork on one leg, holding her foot. Bleeding bad. A policeman just came on duty: sharp crease in his pants, mirror-shined shoes. Beautiful. This guy could be a recruiting poster. He sees the girl. Immediately, without hesitation, he walks into the mud with the shiny shoes. Gets the mud and the blood all over himself, all over his brand new shiny uniform. Picks the girl up, carries her gently — and nicely, obviously being careful and nice with her. He carries her to his car, lays her in his back seat very carefully and gently. He’s obviously a gentleman. He’s obviously a nice cat. He lays her in there and gets ready, and his car’s stuck in the mud. Fourteen hippies pushed that car out of the mud. And I said, ‘Okay. This is it. This is working. This is what I wanted to see. This is how it’s supposed to work.’ That’s my Woodstock story. I saw it with my own eyes. There was a moment where we had hope. We saw how it could be better — plainly, obviously, right there in front of us. And we said, ‘Ah, that’s what I’m looking for. I don’t want a war. I want this.’ And that’s what Woodstock was. That’s why it’s stuck in everybody’s head: because, for a minute, we hoped.”
source: people.com
