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Viewing Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock,” we recalled that Joni Mitchell, who’s not in the film, wrote the Woodstock song. Even though she dropped out from making that festival scene in upstate New York in 1969. Why? Her manager insisted she appear on the Dick Cavett Show. All the same, Joni immortalized the event with her lyrics, as did singers Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, who scored a hit on Billboard’s Hot 100 with the Woodstock single from their album, Deja Vu. “By the time we got to Woodstock,” go the lyrics, “we were half a million strong, and everywhere there was song and celebration …”
“She captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who’d been there,” reflected David Crosby. Joni wrote the song in a Manhattan hotel room, while watching the events unfold on her television. Not being there, she claimed, gave her an intense perspective on what was happening during the landmark folk-rock concert of “peace and victory.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2009/08/29/secrets-woodstock-truth-joni-mitchell/#ixzz2OiixcKhq
Joni Mitchell
Uploaded on Dec 18, 2007
http://www.coloradream.com/art.html ~ A look back at a time that brought people together with music, celebration and love! Sure there was lots of sex, drugs and rock & roll…but the true nature of this event was a coming together as one…to experience life to its fullest…a moment in time that will live on forever in our hearts and minds.
I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock n roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I don’t know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Woodstock” is a song about the Woodstock Music and Art Festival of 1969.
Joni Mitchell wrote the song from what she had heard from then-boyfriend, Graham Nash, about the festival. She had not been there herself, since she was told by a manager that it would be more advantageous for her to appear on The Dick Cavett Show. She wrote this song in a hotel room in New York City, watching televised reports of the festival. “The deprivation of not being able to go provided me with an intense angle on Woodstock,” she told an interviewer shortly after the event.[1] It was later released on her third album, Ladies of the Canyon in 1970, on her Shadows and Light album, and again in 1996 on her Hits album.
Mitchell’s original version featured a stark and haunting arrangement – solo vocal, multi-tracked backing vocals and tremoloed Wurlitzer electric piano, all performed by Mitchell herself. All subsequent recordings featured a fuller backing band sound.
Prior to release on any album, Mitchell performed “Woodstock” at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival, one month after Woodstock. The solo performance can be seen in the festival concert film Celebration at Big Sur (released in 1971). The performance was an exception to Mitchell’s mounting distaste for large festival gigs. [2]
The song later went on to be hits for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Matthews Southern Comfort, the latter reaching #1 on the UK singles chart for three weeks in October 1970, and the former reaching #11 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Assembled Multitude’s 1970 instrumental version reached #79 in the US. David Crosby, in an interview in the documentary Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind, said that Mitchell had captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had been there.[3]
Led Zeppelin incorporated Woodstock’s lyrics and structure into live renditions of Jake Holmes’ song “Dazed and Confused” between 1973 and 1975. It can be heard on the currently unreleased “Dazed and Confused” section of the video from one of the 1975 Earl’s Court concerts.
A version was performed by Richard Thompson at the 2000 All-Star Tribute To Joni Mitchell, later broadcast on TNT
A 40th anniversary version of “Woodstock” was released in 2009 by Nick Vernier Band featuring Iain Matthews (formerly of Matthews Southern Comfort).
The band America recorded a version of this song for their 2011 album Back Pages.
James Taylor did a cover on the May 22, 1997 broadcast of The Howard Stern Show.
The band Austra recorded a version of the song for the Deluxe edition of their album “Feel it Break”.
Brooke Fraser recorded and released a version of the song in her 2010 album “Flags”
[edit]In popular culture
In Carl Sagan’s series Cosmos, Sagan refers to us as “Star Stuff”.
A line from the chorus, “We are billion year old carbon,” was used by Corey Mesler as the title of a novel about the 1960s.[4]
The song was also used in an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 where the characters act out the story of a girl from the 1960s whose diary is found by Brenda.
The song was used in a Six Feet Under episode entitled “Back to the Garden” (named after a lyric in the song) in 2002, but the song isn’t featured on the official soundtrack.
Astronautalis references the song in “Dimitri Mendeleev,” when he sings: “Joni Mitchell said ‘we are stardust, / we are golden’, we are all the same.”[5]
Southern Comfort version
Joni Mitchell wrote the song from what she had heard from then-boyfriend, Graham Nash, about the festival. She had not been there herself, since she had instead chosen to appear on The Tonight Show. She wrote this song crying at home watching the show on television.
The song later went on to be hits for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Matthews’ Southern Comfort, the latter reaching #1 on the UK singles chart for three weeks in October 1970. David Crosby in an interview said that Mitchell had captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had been there.
Led Zeppelin incorporated Woodstock’s lyrics and structure into live renditions of their song “Dazed and Confused” between 1973 and 1975.
