I happened to catch Woodstock the other night. Don’t know the channel or network, and I came in late. One of those channel-flipping things. When I recognized what it was, it was during a documentary portion where local residents were being interviewed and at that point, I started to change the channel.
Then Carlos Santana was introduced.
How young and beautiful he was then, so far ahead of his time as a guitar artist. This was 1969 and most of the players of the time were still playing lead riffs that sounded like: ding-ding-duh-ding, twang. Twang. Ding-ding.
Whooo-eeee. It was take a nap between licks stuff. Don Cornelius and Soul Train had not even hit the airwaves. It was white-bread time for US music and the major blues influence had not yet kicked in. It was still Ferry-cross-the-Mersey. Look it up.
Watching the crowd shots during the performance by Santana and his band – fortunately most of the time the lens was trained onstage, but when the faces of the young hippie audience made the camera, it reflected pure amazement. Who had ever been in the presence of such mastery?
There were some who had seen Hendrix. Others had seen the guitarist of the New Yardbirds, latterly known as Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. There were others, too – to be sure. But most of the music world was still being lead-guitared by musicians like Robby Krieger of The Doors, later voted 76th on the best guitarists list by Rolling Stone Magazine – but in 1969? I’m sorry. He was proficient, if uninspired.
No, it was at Woodstock in that year that some of the top acts of the English-speaking world were gathered on a stage on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in New York State, and the throng gathered there was exposed to some of the most revolutionary-sounding guitar playing on the planet.
1969. That was the year that Led Zeppelin II was released with Whole Lotta Love/Heartbreaker. It was shortly after that release that one of my high-school associates brought a copy of the record in to our first-hour mechanical drawing class where our silence-loving teacher had a phonograph (this was a primitive audio device that would have played MP3s or downloads, had they been invented). He normally played Bach or Beethoven. Zeppelin didn’t stay on the turntable long and I wondered at the time if he had produced a major scratch in the vinyl on its removal from the player. Gary F.? Surely you remember that morning!
I watched the rest of the festival, commercials and all. Sly and the Family Stone, Hendrix. Classic music from another era. Purple Haze at its inception.
It was a divisive time in our nation’s history. Vietnam. Protests. They called young people of that time members of the “peace and love” generation. My great friend Craig suggested that we travel to New York for the festival, but it did not happen. It was an era to have lived through, even if I missed the 3 Days of Peace and Music on Mr. Yasgur’s farm.
And Carlos Santana.
