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New Book on Woodstock’s 50th Anniversary  Offers Front-Row Seat to Greatest Concert in History

STEVENS POINT, WI – The year was 1969. Richard Nixon was in the White House. Neil Armstrong was on the Moon. And revolution was in the air. In that backdrop, 500,000 young people gathered on a mid-August weekend in upstate New York for the promise of three days of peace and music. What they experienced at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was something far greater.

Celebrating “the greatest peaceful event in history,” Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm (Krause Publications) offers a dazzling and compelling front-row seat to the most important concert in rock history, an implausible happening filled with trials and triumphs that defined a generation.

Author and Woodstock attendee Mike Greenblatt brilliantly captures the power of music’s greatest performers such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Santana and the Who, while sharing stories both personal and audacious from the crowd of a half million strong who embraced not only the music but each other.

The book features a Foreword by Country Joe McDonald, whose rousing solo acoustic version of “The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” was one of the most memorable performances at Woodstock. Readers will enjoy interviews with such rock icons as Graham Nash, Carlos Santana, Joe Cocker, Richie Havens, Country Joe McDonald, Edgar Winter, members of Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sly & The Family Stone, Canned Heat, Sha Na Na, co-host Chip Monck, fans and countless others. In addition, all 32 performances at the festival are showcased.

Equal parts circus and surreal, Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm tells a transcendent tale of a musical and mythical moment in time.

Advance Praise for Woodstock 50th Anniversary

“Straight from a long-haired hippie who experienced all that Woodstock had to offer — the beauty, the mud, the music and the cultural eccentricities — Mike Greenblatt has carried Woodstock deep within his soul ever since. Fifty years later, he writes with charming alacrity about that weekend, his memory on fire, lighting up the personal details of what occurred at this once-in-a-lifetime communal concert event.

— Pat Prince, editor, Goldmine magazine

“Mike Greenblatt’s long-awaited debut book on Woodstock— filled with his own hilarious memories and impressive interviews and research— is fascinating and dazzling. It’s definitely the definitive book on the wild festival fifty years ago that rocked America.”

— Susan Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Lighting Up, Unhooked and The Byline Bible

About The Author

All Mike Greenblatt has done in life is listen to music and tell people about it, be it as a New York City publicist, editor or freelance journalist. It’s been five decades of chronicling rock ’n’ roll in all of its permutations. Whether sitting front row at Woodstock, flying with Hank Williams, Jr. in his private jet, driving around the Jersey Shore with Bruce Springsteen, getting angrily thrown against a backstage wall by Meat Loaf, or being locked in a dressing room with Jerry Lee Lewis threatening to kill him, Greenblatt’s voice has sung the praises of rock loud and long.

Greenblatt has interviewed Elton John, the Eagles (where he extemporaneously interviewed Joe Walsh at side-by-side urinals deep within the bowels of Giants Stadium), Paul McCartney, Blondie, The Allman Brothers, Waylon Jennings and hundreds of others.

He lives in Easton, Penn., with his music-teacher wife and their two rescue beagles.

Woodstock 50th Anniversary: Back to Yasgur’s Farm

By Mike Greenblatt

8 x 8, hardcover, 224 pages

300-plus photographs

ISBN-13: 9781440248900

List Price: $24.99

Krause Publications

Available in July wherever good books are sold

For more information contact author Mike Greenblatt: Mikeg101@ptd.net;

610.253.9324; or contact Editorial Director Paul Kennedy at paul.kennedy@fwmedia.com/715.318.0372

Tajana (*sighs*) found a bookish Q&A on Tumblr and recently shared it on her BookLikes blog. One of the items on the list is:

"Make a mini playlist for one of your favorite books."

Well, seeing as music in the Rebus books is very much about Rebus's overall tastes, as well as Ian Rankin's own (the latter, smuggled in through Rebus's sidekick, Siobhan Clarke), there really isn't any point in singling out any individual book ... let's go the whole hog and have a list for the entire series, shall we?

As Rankin is fairly explicit about Rebus's major favorites -- Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones, and then some -- to a certain extent this list almost writes itself; all the more since in his nonfiction companion book, Rebus's Scotland, Rankin himself actually reels off a pretty extensive list of artists that either Rebus or he himself (or Siobhan Clarke) would consider favorites.  But there's still plenty of room to be creative, as Rankin's focus is more on the artists themselves, not on individual songs or albums.  And anyway, what's to stop me from adding a few choices of my own? So, here we go:

Obviously the list needs to be built around those albums and songs (chiefly, but not exclusively, by the Stones) that even provided book titles for the series:

* The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Black and Blue

* Radiohead: Exit Music (for a film) (album: OK Computer)
* Jackie Leven: Another Man's Rain and One Man One Guitar (both from the album Oh What a Blow That Phantom Dealt Me!)

And since Rankin himself, like Rebus, also has a particular and lasting fondness for Jackie Leven and in 2004 even appeared live together with him at Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, which later yielded their joint release, Jackie Leven Said, obviously that whole recording needs to go onto the playlist as well.

Moreover, as Rankin specifies that Rebus is generally a fan of "mid-period Stones" (by which he means the albums from the late 1960s and the early 1970s), let's also throw in their two other major blockbuster albums from that period; as well as, for my own gratification, the very first Stones song I ever heard, and which is stll one of my absolute favorites (even though it's early and not "mid-period" Stones):

* Sticky Fingers

* Exile on Main Street

* (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (album: Out of Our Heads [U.S. version])

Moving on to other artists, as bands and artists that Rebus does, or would probably like, Rankin mentions the following -- for whom I've taken the liberty to add one or several fairly iconic song titles or, in individual cases, entire albums:

* Leonard Cohen: Songs of Leonard Cohen (entire album)
* The Who: My Generation (album: My Generation), Pinball Wizard (album: Tommy), Who's Next (entire album)
* The Surfaris: Wipe Out (album: Wipe Out)
* Frank Zappa: Bobby Brown (Goes Down) (album: Sheik Yerbouti)
* Maggie Bell: Midnight Flyer (album: Midnight Flyer)
* Frankie Miller: Darlin' (album: Falling in Love)
* Status Quo: Whatever You Want (album: Whatever You Want), Rockin' All Over the World (album: Rockin' All Over the World)
* Jethro Tull: Locomotive Breath (album: Aqualung)
* David Bowie: Heroes (album: Heroes), Space Oddity (album: Space Oddity)
* Van Morrison: Moondance (album: Moondance)
* Barclay James Harvest: Child of the Universe and The Great 1974 Mining Disaster (both from the album Everyone Is Everybody Else), Hymn (album: Gone to Earth)
* Tom Waits: Ol' 55 (album: Closing Time), Tom Traubert's Blues (album: Small Change)
* Nazareth: Love Hurts (allbum: Hair of the Dog), Dream On (album: 2XS), This Flight Tonight (album: Loud'n Proud), Shanghai'd in Shanghai (album: Rampant)
* Alex Harvey / SAHB: Next and The Faith Healer (both from the album Next), Delilah (album: Live)
* The Incredible String Band: A Very Cellular Song (album: The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter)
* Donovan: Universal Soldier (album: Universal Soldier), Hurdy Gurdy Man (album: The Hurdy Gurdy Man)
* John Martyn: May You Never (album: Solid Air)
* Carol Kidd: The Night We Called It a Day (album: The Night We Called It a Day)
 

 The next group of artists are those that Rankin either mentions explicitly as among the ones that have played a pivotal role in his own life (especially the first five; for the first three, he even specifies the songs listed here), or suggests they'd be artists that Siobhan Clarke would like -- some of the series's books indeed have her listening to some of them -- which by extension, as per his general explanations, also means there's a certain likelihood that Rankin himself listens to them:

* The Clash: London Calling (album: London Calling)
* Big Country: In a Big Country (album: The Crossing)
* Simon & Garfunkel: The Boxer (album: Bridge Over Troubled Water -- and for my own gratification, let's add the title track as well, shall we?)

* Peter Gabriel: Solsbury Hill (album: Car), Games Without Frontiers (album: Melt), Sledgehammer (album: So)

* Rory Gallagher: Tattoo (entire album)
* The Beatles: A Day in the Life and She's Leaving Home (both from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)
* Cream: Sunshine of Your Love (album: Disraeli Gears), I Feel Free (album: Fresh Cream), White Room (album: Wheels on Fire)
* Deacon Blue: Real Gone Kid (album: When the World Knows Your Name)
* Edwyn Collins: A Girl Like You (album: Gorgeous George)
* Mogwai: Mr. Beast (entire album)
* The Blue Nile: Easter Parade, duet version with Rickie Lee Jones (originally from the album A Walk Across the Rooftops)

* Josef K: It's Kinda Funny, Sorry For Laughing, The Missionary (all from the album The Only Fun in Town)
* Cocteau Twins: Iceblink Luck (album: Heaven or Las Vegas)
* Belle and Sebastian: Seymour Stein and The Boy with the Arab Strap (both from the album The Boy with the Arab Strap)
* Tommy Smith: Seal (album: Beasts of Scotland)

* Rod Stewart: Downtown Train (album: Storyteller – The Complete Anthology: 1964–1990)

Finally, just for myself I'd add to the above:

* Guns'n Roses: Sympathy for the Devil (from the soundtrack for the movie Interview With the Vampire)
* Dire Straits: Sultans of Swing (album: Dire Straits), Brothers in Arms (album: Brothers in Arms), Telegraph Road and Private Investigations (both from the album Love Over Gold)
* Mark Knopfler: What It Is, The Last Laugh (duet with Van Morrison), Silvertown Blues (all from the album Sailing to Philadelphia), 5.15 AM (album: Shangri-La), Going Home (from the soundtrack for the movie Local Hero)

* The Police: Don't Stand So Close to Me (album: Zenyatta Mondatta)
* Sting: Moon Over Bourbon Street (album: Dream of the Blue Turtles), Fields of Gold (album: Ten Summoner's Tales)

* Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here and Shine on You Crazy Diamond (both from the album Wish You Were Here), Money (album: Dark Side of the Moon)
* The Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime (album: Remain in Light), Burning Down the House (album: Speaking in Tongues), And She Was and Road to Nowhere (album: Little Creatures)

* U2: Sunday Bloody Sunday (album: War), The Fly and Mysterious Ways (both from the album Achtung Baby), Elevation (album: All That You Can't Leave Behind)

* Muse: Invincible (album: Black Holes and Revelations), Uprising, Resistance, Undisclosed Desires (all from the album The Resistance), Survival (album: The 2nd Law)

* Hurts: Wonderful Life and Stay (both from the album Happiness)

* The Cranberries: Zombie (album: No Need to Argue)

* Annie Lenox: Medusa (entire album)
* Amy Macdonald: This Is the Life (album: This Is the Life), Slow It Down (album: Life in a Beautiful Light) 

Well, I can't believe that I have just finished my 16th Terry Pratchett Discworld novel, and that is over two years (no, not sixteen books in two years, 16 Discworld novels in two years) since I decided that I would give Pratchett the benefit of the doubt and actually read them again prior to writing up a commentary, and this isn't even the last of the Discworld novels on my 'to read' list (I think there are another six, which would bring it up to The Lost Continent). Anyway, enough of my pondering over the Terry Pratchett books that I have read because I think it is time to say a few things about this particular book.

As I was discussing this book with a friend last night we came upon the conclusion that there were a number of things in this book that felt forced, such as the parody of Rock n Roll. While the concept was good, and amusing in a way, I felt that the term 'Music with Rocks In' just seemed a little too forced. It seemed as if Pratchett had come up with another modern phenomena to throw into Discworld but struggled with a suitable name, which suggests that maybe Pratchett's creative juices in regards to Discworld are starting to run out. However, as I suggested above, there are another six books on my to read list (Discworld novels that is) so we will see where they go from there.

Soul Music was a little strange in that while wikipedia lists it as a 'Death' novel (that is a novel starring the favourite Discworld character, not the state one enters when one ceases to live) it seemed that Death was a minor character, and the whole Susan Sto Helit storyline was more of a subplot. I say this because he focus of the novel was more on Buddy, Cliff, Glod, and their Music with Rocks In band. To me it felt more like Moving Pictures, in that a new idea arrives in Anhk-Morpork and takes the city by storm, which is the modern phenomena known as 'Rock n Roll'.

When I say Rock n Roll, Pratchett is referring to:

or:

as opposed to:

or:

though he does give a tribute to:

and:

(You can click on the image to open up a video-clip on Youtube).

Well, that is enough of me showing off my limited HTML skills (even though some of the limit is imposed by Goodreads) and time to get back to the book. Considering the content of this book (and others like it) I sometimes wonder whether Pratchett has a conservative outlook on life since, once again, we have a modern phenomena invading Discworld and by the end this phenomena is defeated and Discworld goes back to being your normal (or not so normal) fantasy world. In Moving Pictures we had an invasion of, well, moving pictures, and in Reaperman we had an invasion of shopping centres. In another sense it could simply be satire, and here were have Pratchett taking aim at the music industry, especially with CMOT Dibbler successfully (or not so successfully since he doesn't get any of the money) profiting heavily off of the band (we have five thousand dollars for Dibbler, and out of that comes our cut of twenty dollars).

I guess in another sense Pratchett is using the absurdity of Discworld to poke fun at the absurdity of modern life, in this case being rock n roll music. The phenomena that arose in the fifties saw a change in the way music was performed. Then again there was not actually all that much of a change. I guess what changed is the style of music in that prior to the fifties much of the popular music, such as jazz, was played in pubs and clubs, while classical music would be played in the concert halls. What musicians like Elvis and The Beatles did was take the popular music out of the club and moved it to the concert hall (or more fittingly the outdoor stage). Where as before you had huge orchestras performing in concert halls, the number of musicians suddenly shrank significantly, usually hovering between three to five. Then there was the mass marketing of music, and this came about with the development of the record player, the radio, and then the television (though while record players had been around for quite a while, we suddenly begin to see them in every home).

What I guess Pratchett is really poking fun at here is the effect that the music seemed to have on people. As Pratchett points out, applause would begin at one spot and then radiate out, however when the Band with Rocks In arrived on stage, the entire crowd erupted simultaneously. We have the wizards changing hairstyles and clothes (with one wearing a leather jacket with 'Born to Rune' studded on the back, and this jacket plays a rather interesting role at the end of the book) and we have fans going absolutely crazy when the music is played. In fact that is the key to the antagonist in this book: music changes people - in fact the music has a life of its own.

Where does Death fit into all of this. Well, the book opens with Death, and it closes with Death, and it seems that Death is going through another of his crises. I would suggest that it is a mid-life crisis, but this is Death we are talking about, and he is technically not mortal (and as such cannot have a 'mid-life crisis', but rather is a personification of an idea. This time it is the realisation that he cannot forget anything, so he goes on a quest to learn how to forget. Obviously, when he goes off on his merry adventures somebody needs to fill in the void, which is where Susan Sto-Hellit comes into the picture, the daughter of Mort and Ysabell. In fact, what we discover that sixteen years (or longer) has passed since the events of Mort, which is longer than the amount of time that passed between the publication of Mort (1987) and this book (1994).