“Woodstock” (24) is a song written by Joni Mitchell. She composed the song based on what she had heard from her then-boyfriend Graham Nash about the Woodstock Music & Art Festival 1969. She had not been there herself, since a manager had told her that it would, instead, be more advantageous for her to appear on The Dick Cavett Show. She composed it 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.The lyrics tell a story about a spiritual journey to Max Yasgur’s farm, the place of the festival, and make prominent use of sacred imagery, comparing the festival site with the Garden of Eden (“and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden”). The saga commences with the narrator’s encounter of a fellow traveler (“Well, I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road”) and concludes at their ultimate destination (“by the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong”). There are also references to the horrific “mutual assured destruction” of the Cold War (“bombers riding shotgun in the sky…”) contrasted against the peaceful intent of the festival goers (“…turning into butterflies above our nation”).
About the same time that Ladies of the Canyon appeared, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s upbeat hard rock arrangement was released as the lead single from their 1970 Deja Vu album. This version opens with a lead guitar riff played by Neil Young, who also plays the solo. Stephen Stills sings the lead vocal with backing harmonies from David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Young. The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version of “Woodstock” is also notable for the stop-start instrument patterns, just prior to the “We are stardust, we are golden…” chorus. The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version of “Woodstock” peaked at #11 on the Billboard in May 1970 and #3 in Canada. A different recording of “Woodstock” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was played under the closing credits of the documentary film Woodstock released March 1970.
“Woodstock” became an international hit in 1970 and 1971 through a recording by Matthews Southern Comfort. The group performed “Woodstock” on the Live in Concert program broadcast live by BBC Radio 1 in June 1970 – frontman Iain Matthew would recall that the group required an additional song for their set on the scheduled radio session, and that the choice of “Woodstock” was his own suggestion, Matthews having just become familiar with the Joni Matthews version as he had purchased her Ladies of the Canyon album earlier that week. Due to the positive response to that song, the BBC contacted Matthews’s label, Uni Records. According to Matthews, the label “had no idea what the [BBC] were talking about and contacted my management, who asked me about it. Uni suggested that we record the song and add it to the newly recorded Matthews Southern Comfort album, Later That Same Year, I declined to mess with the completed album, but agreed to have them release the song as a single.” Issued in July 1970, “Woodstock” debuted on the UK Top 50 in September 1970 and reached #1 in October remaining there for two additional weeks: a #2 hit in Ireland, “Woodstock” also had widespread success on the European continent, charting in Austria (#15), Denmark (#9), Finland (#23), Germany (#27), the Netherlands (#17), Norway (#2), Poland (#2), and Sweden (#2).
The 2000 album release Time After Time by Eva Cassidy featured her live rendition of “Woodstock” performed at the Maryland Inn in Annapolis in the winter of 1995. Cassidy was a fan of the song due to the Matthews Southern Comfort version.
