“Do you believe in rock ‘n roll? Can music save your mortal soul?”*

by chuckofish

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Over the weekend the OM and I watched the Oscar-winning 1970 documentary Woodstock, the film chronicle of the legendary 1969 music festival, which neither of us had seen. It is four hours long! We fast-forwarded through some of it, but we invested three hours in watching it.

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I think our older brother (who graduated from high school in 1969) always wished he’d been there.

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Our bro a few years after Woodstock. See–he even had a picture of Dave Van Ronk on the wall!

He would probably have enjoyed it–all the music, the drugs, the free love, man.

But not me. I wasn’t nearly cool enough for Woodstock. I really didn’t even enjoy watching it from the historical perspective of almost 50 years.

And, hey, Bob Dylan wasn’t even there. According to IMDB, the festival organizers offered him the chance to headline the festival. The fact that he had taken up residency in Woodstock, NY was a principle reason for choosing the location. But Dylan refused to appear. Years later, he derided the organizers for “exploiting the hell out of that town” and declared that the festival-goers were just a bunch of “kids on acid with flowers in their hair,” adding that the festival was not his “scene.”

Not my scene either.

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Hey look, there’s a historical marker there now. Well, follow your bliss.

*Don McLean