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Oh, for heaven’s sake JUST GO HOME would you! The matter of TYA at Woodstock

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I recently bought a cheap copy of the Woodstock 4disc Director’s Cut DVD – a longer cut of the film proper (with a sensational, and fabulously filmed ‘new’ Canned Heat performance the standout) plus a couple of discs of extra: a nice set of featurette interviews and 2+ hours of unseen performances (mostly very good, sometimes great, bar a bloody interminable load of rubbishby the Grateful Dead).

Anyway…

I couldn’t sleep a couple of nights back so poured a whisky or two and watched some of the film. It got to the bit where TYA play ‘I’m Going Home’. Dear me. I seem to recall thinking this was quite exciting when I first saw it on TV sometime in the 80s – and my friend Carol From Luton only yesterday told me it’s her fave bit in the whole thing – but, my goodness, I thought on this recent rewatching, this is boring. And self-indulgent. And uninspired in every way – or at best one minute of in-the-moment ad-libbery stretched to ten times its limit bubbabubbabubba-reddressonreddresson-goinhomegoinhome-bubbabubbabubba-OW!!!-homebabygoinhomebaby-OW!!!-gngngngnnnnnnnnnnnn [ad infinitum]

The bonus disc interviews make it abundantly clear that the director/editors were forensic in choosing the most impactful moments, lyrically (this was a bigger deal than one might have thought) and socially, etc. So at one point in history people REALLY thought this 11 minutes needed to be in the film, even after Warner Bros demanded cuts (getting it down to 3hrs-something from 4hrs-something).

Don’t get me wrong, TYA’s ‘Can’t Keep From Crying’ in the same-period Isle of Wight film is majestic – but ‘Goin’ Home’ is boredom in triplicate.

My question is this: did anyone who saw this film at or near the time it was released (1970) think ‘ Wow! TYA – amazing!!!’ or did you think ‘Jeez, get on with it – enough already – just go home, would you…’?

I have a feeling this, like ‘The Goon Show’ and ‘Monty Python’, is just one of those things that ‘you had to be there’ for. The impact (assuming there was one) just hasn’t survived the intervening years.

The funny thing is, though, that this one performance bought then a five-year career of incessant US touring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5M5xljdCI

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Comments

  1. There is a lot of stuff out there you only get if you were there for. very little related to folk rock and it’s consequences touches me, and I knew plenty of 60s people who never understood glam or progressive (let alone punk). Though avant-noise skronk and metal bashing (Test dept, etc.) once sounded cool to me, it now sounds like studenty self-abuse and I’d rather hear Ella Fitzgerald. If I was at Woodstock, the only things I’d have enjoyed would be Sly stone, the Who, and Jimi Hendrix – and not even the latter – that was a bloody noise, too, compared to the singles. OOAA.

  2. *Puts hand up*

    Yep in 1970 when film was released I thought they were fantastic. Up there with the Who, Sly Stone and Cocker for impact. Hendrix appreciation came a bit later.

    That’s the thing with those live things , clap along, singalong , guitar and voice mimicking each other. Probably a highlight if you were there but over time it jut gets tedious. Plus these days things are edited much more tightly. Doubt Mike Shrieve’s drum solo would make the cut these days.

    • I saw it when it premiered in London, and got a booklet thingie (actually quite nice) and a HEADBAND, which I threw away but is probably worth a million pounds now. I thought the Ten Years After segment was pretty exciting (maybe my headband was too tight) but several years later, I’d changed my mind. There’s a great book by [name forgotten] detailing the unbelievable scale and organisation of the festival, which is “essential” if anything rock-related is.

      {BTW Col, I find your remarks about the Grateful Dead rather hurtful.)

      • No, HP – GD was a chore that seemed almost endless. I will never watch that clip (er, that 30 minutes) again!

        Interesting perspectives from the time though…

        • Not sure it was the premier night in London but I went very early in that first week. Most acts were applauded in the cinema, my memory is that only TYA got a standing ovation. What simple fools we were, sigh…oh happy days.
          I have a strong feeling that my only response to watching that same segment today would be one of incredulous laughter

      • Missed the premiere (and the headband), but saw it when it opened too. Like the other olds, I was pretty impressed; possibly it had more appeal for people who thought they could play the guitar ok, I don’t know. Impressive demonstration of stretching a modest talent as far as it’ll go…shocking tub-thumping though.

        I found Richie Havens interminable, and was unimpressed by Star-Spangled Banner. Enjoyed Sha Na Na, perversely enough. So much so that I later saw them live at the Kursaal Ballroom in Southend, along with (it says here), Uriah Heep and obscure progsters Paladin. Strange.

        • I distinctly remember the Sha Na Na performance making me suddenly realise that there was a load of music I had ignored/forgotten just because it was ‘old’. The whole idea was that music was progressing in some linear way and getting better and better but, of course, this was my first inkling of nostalgia. I even wrote a piece in the student mag about the irony of ‘At The Hop’ being sung at a hippy festival. Within a couple of years we had That’ll Be The Day, American Graffiti, Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets et al, and I rediscovered the joys of the likes of Buddy Holly and the Everlys.

          Now….get down from those lighting towers….no rain, no rain, no rain…..!

  3. Mate of mine attempted to go. Got within 5 miles and gave up.

    Recalling from the triple album, which I still have, the acts that impressed were as above
    Sly, Cocker, who , TYA , plus Jimi, Sha na na, Santana and CSNY even if they did re- record coz they were so out of tune.

    Top ranking tedium Joan Baez, John Sebastian. Richie Havens ok but goes on a bit.

    Fogerty still has shits about manager saying , if memory serves, that CCR should out of film. Ditto Johnny Winter. Imagine the impact he would have had.

    • To judge from the bonus items on the DVD set, Winter was good and CCR great – and I’m not really a CCR fan. Somehow their energy is palpable. The taut jam on one chord in ‘Keep On Choogling’ (or something like that) is surprisingly thrilling. The Grateful Dull could have learned a lot.

      Greater pity, though, should be reserved for the Keef Hartley Band whose manager insisted they not even be filmed let alone not-be-in-the-film (a la CCR).

    • it was the Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, John Sebastian and Ritchie Havens clips in Woodstock that confirmed to me that I was NOT a hippie even when I saw it as a wannabe 15-year old. Give me make-up and moog synthesisers, any day. Still.

    • I always thought it was Fogerty himself who vetoed the Creedence performance being in the film, with not untypical cussedness and control freakery. Creedence went on in the early hours of the morning, much later than scheduled, and performed to a diminished audience half asleep having sat through 15 hours (I may be exaggerating slightly) of the Grateful Dead, and Fogerty was both unimpressed with this and felt their performance didn’t pass muster. Of course had they been in the film their controlled, economical rock and roll would have stood out from the sort of endless twiddling mentioned in the OP and would have been a highlight.

  5. I saw it in the West End when it came out. It was an extraordinary experience seeing rock music in a cinema, up close and with great sound. It remains a favourite film. The TYA bit was fine at the time, but this was the day of the extended riffing solo, and it probably hasn’t worn well. For the record, my favourites are Santana, The Who (the opening bit with Townsend in mid-air and Daltrey’s mic and fringe twirling thrills me to this day), and Sly.

    By the way, it was years before I realised that it was mostly out of sequence!

    • I agree Nigel – the sound and filming are extraordinary, and the multi images groundbreaking, and it manages to be a social document (the director’s intention) as well as a musical one. It’s amazing that the whole thing was done on a wing and a prayer in several ways (e.g. because of cash flow the filmmaker could only buy film stock a couple of days before the event – and the Eastman’s depo, despite promising they’d have enough, had only a few cans and many more were required; the helicopter seen bringing in Arlo Guthrie was also carrying a load of film).

      The Who are indeed thrilling in it, and Richie Havens has a certain mad, compelling aspect. Joan is a bit worthy and tedious but you can’t really imagine the film without ‘Joe Hill’ in it, and she clearly represents a lot about the time/culture that the filmmaker wanted to get in, so fair enough… Cocker is compelling because of his gurning and idiot dancing but I was struck on my recent re-watching of how little of ‘WALHFMF’ he actually sings – after the first verse or so, its the backing vocals (mostly the pianist falsetto-ing) that carry the song with Joe just interpolating his Bugs Bunny Tasmanian Devil impersonations in between the lines, for instance:

      BVs: Do you need anybody?

      Joe: Eeeeuuuurrrghh-wooooeeeeurghnnnngngngn needsomebody bleeeeurrrrrrrrnnnnnggggrrrrrrr….

      BVs: Could it be anybody?

      Joe: WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEUUURGHHNNGNGNGN zomebadddddy LEEEEEEEUUUURRRRGGGHBHBHVE OHYEZADOOOOOOOOOBABYNNNGNGNGNGNNNNNNN…

          • The most amazing thing about that Cocker performances only came to light weeks after I’d interviewed his guitarist, Henry, for that 1994 feature. Henry was a 60s guy through and through, so could be hazy about things. He hadn’t much of detail to say in the interview so only got a line or two in the magazine piece. And then weeks later – because he lived locally, and I would see him at gigs – he happened to mention, as if it were no big deal, that Joe had re-recorded his vocal for WALH for its inclusion in the film – had managed to reproduce all his bizarre WWWWEURGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNgngngBABYOYEZZZZZAAAAADOOOngngngnseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuurrrnnngggoingablueeeeerghabillabongtwiddlediddleLEEEUUVE-OHBABYYEAHgrngrngrnYABBADABBADOOOOO…. stuff by singing along to the rushes.

            Apparently there’d been a problem with the microphone or something on the day.

            Again, a whole career was built on that.

            I recall Dave Pegg, I think, telling me that Fairport Convention had rerecorded their contribution to the 1971 ‘Glastonbury Fayre’ film in a similar way.

            • Live recording was very hit-and-miss in those days, with most of the emphasis on “miss” when outdoors, I suspect. Stage and recording equipment was extremely unreliable, stage monitors were quite a novelty, musicians were off their nuts on anything and everything…
              Almost all “live” rock albums recorded in those days were overdubbed into life back in some studio or other after the event.

              • I’m with you on that Mike, but my point was really that this was SUCH an iconic performance, career-making and seemingly ‘in the moment’, that it seems remarkable to find that it was in effect re-performed – not dissimilar to finding out that all of Frankie Howerd’s ‘oooh-ah-noooooooooooooo-oh-missus-titter-ye-not-ooooh-aaaaaaaaaaah’ stuff was scripted (it was).

  6. Re Monty Python, I would say the opposite is the case in the sense that I laugh much more now than I did then.

    Of course it wasn’t helped having to watch it live on the only TV in the house, with the grown ups tutting and mocking in the background, but if I’m honest there were a lot of forced guffaws from my side and the best part was reliving it at school the next day.

    There was an awful lot of filler between the killer and the perspective of time is a great editor.

  7. Colin – This is entirely unconnected with TYA but I wondered if in your Woodstock research you have come across any record of a John Martyn performance?

    I (think) I have read that he shared a helicopter ride to the gig with my good friend Jimi Hendrix (who comes from Govan – but it may have been another one). So did Martyn actually perform or was he just a visitor?

  8. I too thought that this clip was great at the time. I think it was played on the cinema review programme that went out on Granada TV, possibly networked, wittily titled Cinema. Introduced by Parkie for a time, before he switched to BBC.
    I since recall writing something along similar lines a couple of years back suggesting that never did such lumpen rock owe so much to the work of an editor – Martin Scorsese. Without Scorsese TYA would have continued to plough the Div 2 band circuit instead of being elevated to the realm of bill toppers.
    I think you were part of the discussion as well, come to think of it.

  9. That really is a heart-breaking story about the Keef Hartley Band. I had no idea they were. And that is all thanks to that misguided manager. One of the most famous rock festivals of all time and they are scarcely a footnote.

    Akin to your school choir getting asked to sing on a Pink Floyd song, a Beatles track or a hit by Clive Dunn. And your music teacher turning the gig down and giving you extra homework instead.

    • I interviewed a man from Canned Heat once, for a magazine piece on Woodstock (in 1994), and he was adamant that they were the best band on the festival and there had been a conspiracy to keep them out of the film. I thought both of these views twaddle at the time, and on the latter still do now. But the Director’s Cut includes a fabulous performance from them plus two extra tracks on the bonus disc. If the filmmaker’s criterion had primarily been about getting musical energy on screen rather than a social documenting, Heat would have easily made the cut.

      • as someone else said, I think, the choice of performances was made on the basis of those that were considered (terrible word) transcendent. So, a band like TYA with their adrenalised boogie tune (which was exciting at the time, it really was) or Sly’s amazing show (compare it to other shows they did at the time – the Woodstock performance is magical) or The Who’s climactic show-stopper, or CSNY’s second gig. The Heat’s boogie or The Band playing their hit, whilst good, didn’t have that special quality. Shame about the CCR though, as that would certainly have added to the excitement.

        • CSN are woefully out of tune guitar-wise. Their harmonies manage to conceal it most of the time. Remarkable thatthey could sing in tune above such a ghastly racket from the instruments.

            • I suspect the Arlo performance of ‘Los Angeles’ was flown in from somewhere else as well. We see him synched to the song for just a few seconds plus side view cutaways once or twice plus a couple of those cringeworthy bits of onstage banter. I read about this somewhere once – thart the version of the song on the Woodstock LP is different to the one in the film or something. And perhaps NEITHER were actually recorded at the festival…

  10. Seen the movie about 3 times over the years and the good bits (Sly, Cocker, Santana, Hendrix) were thrilling. But the Ten Years After section is so interminable that I became ashamed of owning one of their LPs so it had to go.

    Now where do I know a ShaNaNa performance from where the guy says, “Hey, we’ve just got one thing to day to you fuckin’ hippies: Rock’n’Roll is here to stay!” Not the movie, obv, but probably just edited out.

    BTW, Colin, love your Cocker impersonation.

    • Think of Alvin shaking a wobble board, while the bass player does his fretboard tapping thing, and doing all that ‘bubbabubbabubbabubba-OW!-mamamamamama-YEEK!-bluesueadeshoes-wholelottashakin-an-awopbopaloobopalimbamboo-boo-boojustdointhedoo-peoplegetreadygonnadorocksteady-ningnangnongyabbadabbadooooooo-GOINHOMEGOINHOMEGOINHOME-bubbabubbabubba… [ad infinitum]

      You can imagine it, can’t you?

  12. FWIW, my recollection is that Canned Heat looked like pretend hippies, with school haircuts grown just a bit, with sideboards to wing their credentials. It was a long time ago and such imagery mattered,
    TYA? mitigated tosh but, hell, o so fab in the context.

  14. Back to the OP. When I first saw it as a second generation hippy in the early 70s I thought it was great. Now it looks dated and is a bit tedious like many things I thought were great back then. Alvin Lee was a great guitarist. Even he regretted it later. Not sure it deserves a dedicated hate thread though.

    • “Dedicated hate thread” – such an internet way of thinking, don’t you think? If we were sitting round a pub table, and Colin said “TYA at Woodstock? Oh, for heaven’s sake JUST GO HOME would you!” you wouldn’t respond with “I say Colin old man, I’m not sure this deserves a dedicated hate conversation”, would you?

        • Plus – Colin H’s Joe Cocker impersonation, delivered with gusto and at full volume, would get everybody chucked out and possibly barred.
          (Unless it was the west of Ireland, where someone would attempt a wildly off-tempo accompaniment with spoons to cheering from the regulars..)

          • Can you imagine Joe down the pub in County Kerry, chipping in to a singalong on ‘Whisky In The Jar’?

            Pub: “As I was goin’ over the Cork and Kerry mountains”

            Joe: WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, OHYEZZADOOO, cawkankerraiiiiiiighhhhhhhhhhhhh, DEEPINMAHsouuuuuuuuuullll, babybabyngngneeeuuuuuuurghNGNGNGNEEEEURRRRngnnnnnn….

            Pub: “I saw Captain Farrell and his money he was countin'”

            Joe: DOLLAHBILLS,DOLLAHBILLS – lawdymamamlawdylawdy BLUUUEERGHHHHHH!!!!! lemmetellyabout, tellyabout,tellyaboutCap’n Farrell – YEZZAWILLYEZZAWILLl Wowyeahwowyeahwowyeah ngngneeeuurghhhhhh….

            Pub: “I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier”

            Joe: YA-KNOW-AH-NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED-ZUMMBADDDDY-TA-LEUUUURRVE!!!! maaapistolyezzzahsaid -downinmahsoooouuuuuullllllll-bluerghhngngngn…

            Pub: “I said stand o’er and deliver or the devil he may take ya”

            Joe: OOOOOOHYEZZZ-DAN-BA-DA-CROSSROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAADS-gngngngneeeeeergle-gurgle-BLUUEEERGH!-znznnznnznnzn–wheeeuuuurrk-ngngn-AH ZEEE-Da DEVVVVVVVVIL heeez-gonna-BLEUEUEUERRRRRGHHZNGN-WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-YEZZADOO-YEZZADOOO-LEMETELLYA-LEMMETELLYA [waves hands wildly, staggers around pub, scares off casual punters]

            Really, from about 3:20 onwards this is priceless:

    • Not a hate thread, Twang – I really was curious about whether ‘Goin Home’ had some magic back in day on screen that, it seems to me, is utterly absent now. The answer would appear to be ‘yes’.

      But as I said in the OP, TYA’s ‘Can’t Keep From Crying’ from the Isle of Wight 1970 film is fantastic and exciting in a way the ‘Goin’ Home’ isn’t, in my view.

      One key difference, I suspect, is that the IOW film was edited/released in the 2000s, so ‘Can’t Keep From Crying’ appears as a 4 minute edit from a 20 minute performance of the thing. If Woodstock had been edited/released retrospectivly, maybe a similar approach would have been taken with ‘Goin Home’…

  15. In The Omega Man Charlton Heston’s character made a habit of going to the dilapidated cinema and threading up Woodstock to watch, to the point where he could recite dialogue…

  16. Can someone clarify what is available..? I have the 2 disc Blu-Ray from 2009 and the 1994 single DVD Woodstock Diaries, but I’m sure I saw a 4 disc DVD version of Diaries the other day on the tax dodgers site which has now disappeared!? Maybe I made that up.

    While I’m here, the 6CD set includes yet more stuff – Bert Sommer (I’d never heard of him either), Sweetwater, Melanie, Mountain, Jefferson Airplane, and 3 CCR tracks. No TYA at all though!! Warning – may contain Incredible String Band.

  17. It’s the cusp, isn’t it, 1969.

    You’re as likely to get a “Lay Lady Lay,” “Something” or “Space Oddity” as you are a 20-minute twiddly-twiddly-wrang-wrang-wrang-wrang-wrrrraaaannnnggggggggggggggggg.

    I always think the festivals before the BIG festivals (exception: Monterey) sound the best to have been at.
    Isle of Wight ’68 maybe, or, best of all, the Hyde Park one in ’68 with Marc Bolan and the Pink Floyd on the day “Saucerful of Secrets” was released. As soon as the great unwashed lump on, you’re in trouble.

    Anyway, like sporting photographs (alas, a lost art), the true joy and revelation of such things are the shots of the crowd, the arena and the incidental things around the event, not the acts themselves … they’re the least interesting.

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