Trivia
This documentary was reportedly edited from 120 hours of footage shot at the three-day concert.
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While The Grateful Dead did perform and were filmed for this movie (Jerry Garcia can be seen in brief interviews), the band members felt their performance was not to their normal standards. At the band's insistence, the footage was never used. However, some of their performance was included in the discs of extras that were released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the festival.
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The performances of Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin were not seen in the original version of the film when it was released in 1970. Also, the Canned Heat song "Going Up the Country" was heard earlier in the movie but the band was not seen in the movie until the director's cut was released in 1994.
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Grace Slick is seen in the original version of the film, but footage of her performing with Jefferson Airplane wasn't released until the director's cut debuted in 1994.
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Even though Neil Young performed with Crosby, Stills and Nash at Woodstock, he was not in the movie. He is, however, on the soundtrack album performing with them on the songs "Sea of Madness" and "Wooden Ships".
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Joni Mitchell was invited to play at the festival, but didn't perform because her manager was afraid that she would miss her national television debut on The Dick Cavett Show after he saw how bad the traffic was. She later wrote the song "Woodstock", which was a hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Graham Nash was her boyfriend at the time.
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The studio versions of Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country" and Crosby Stills & Nash's "Wooden Ships" are used in the movie. However, the live versions are used in the various soundtracks that have been released over the past 30 years.
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John Sebastian wasn't originally scheduled to perform. He was enlisted to perform when several of the acts were late in arriving due to the traffic going to the festival.
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Richie Havens' song "Freedom" was totally improvised. He was called for so many encores that he ran out of songs to sing, so he just picked up his guitar and started singing "Freedom".
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Country Joe McDonald wasn't scheduled to perform the second day. He was forced into it because many of the acts that were scheduled to perform that day hadn't arrived yet. He also performs on day three with the rest of the group Country Joe and the Fish.
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The Who's performance was interrupted by Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman. Hoffman ran onstage to make a speech about the recent marijuana arrest of radical John Sinclair. As Hoffman was shouting about Sinclair and his displeasure about the festival, Pete Townshend kicked him off the stage.
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Among the bands that appeared at the festival but not in the movie were Creedence Clearwater Revival, Mountain, The Band and Tim Hardin. Clips of Hardin's and The Band's performances were released several years later on the outtakes video. Also, Hardin was in the film, but he wasn't performing. He was filmed making a rather bizarre speech on Japanese technology.
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Another act that was invited to play the festival but declined was Led Zeppelin. Instead, they played a concert that same weekend not too far away from the site in New Jersey.
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The Who almost didn't perform at the festival. The band was near bankruptcy at the time and demanded to be paid in cash or else they would pull out.
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Creedence Clearwater Revival, who at the time were the #1 band in the U.S.A., performed right after The Grateful Dead. Because of problems with the sound, and because he thought their performance was sub-standard, singer/songwriter/guitarist John Fogerty didn't allow any footage to be included in the movie, nor for any song to be released on the album. However, four songs from Creedence's set have been later released on the 25th Anniversary box set and some footage was included on a DVD of extra footage in the 40th anniversary DVD box set of the film.
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Then New York governor Nelson Rockefeller threatened to send in National Guard troops to break up the festival when he saw how huge the crowd was.
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The festival was famous as a financial disaster. The film and soundtrack were the only items to make money, and they were also the only items that the concert promoters did not invest in - they thought there was no money in it.
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Warner Bros. did not want to release the film theatrically at first, because several other concert documentaries had failed badly in releases before that time, but did a release anyway; there was so little money involved that one executive said they could have cut up the film and sold it for bookmarks if they needed to.
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Among the bands invited to play the festival but who didn't due to various reasons were The Jeff Beck Group (featuring Rod Stewart), Iron Butterfly and The Moody Blues.
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Crosby Stills Nash & Young almost didn't perform at the festival. The helicopter that Graham Nash and the group's bassist, Greg Reeves, were on was less than 25 feet off the ground when the tail rotor failed and it began to spin. The helicopter almost crashed and Nash and Reeves were almost killed when it not only made a hard landing, but barely missed some high tension power lines.
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The filmmakers and distributor were sued by the man who was interviewed while cleaning the Port-O-San portable latrines, on the grounds of mental anguish, embarrassment, public ridicule, and invasion of privacy. An appellate court opinion in this lawsuit may be read at Taggart v. Wadleigh-Maurice, Ltd., 489 F.2d 434 (3d Cir. 1973).
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The filmmakers and distributor were sued (unsuccessfully) by the musician who played "Mess Call" on his Flugelhorn at 4:00 a.m., on the grounds of violation of a New York privacy statute. The court opinion may be read at Man v. Warner Bros. Inc., 317 F.Supp. 50 (S.D.N.Y. 1970).
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Michael Lang once said that his original idea was to have Roy Rogers close the festival by singing "Happy Trails".
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The 2 and 3 panel screen presentation seen throughout much of the movie was an innovation born of necessity on the part of the film makers and a young film editor named Martin Scorsese. With so much footage shot, and the studio's unwillingness to expand the length of the released movies running time, it was decided that a way must be found to maximize the amount of footage that could be used. Because of the wide-screen aspect of the release, it was realized that the multi-panel format could be used most effectively to not only include as much film footage as possible, but to also have concert footage AND crowd reaction shots together on the same screen. It was important for the filmmakers to impart upon the viewing public just what a monumental event the Woodstock festival had unintentionally become. This method also allowed them to show many behind the scene activities that demonstrated all the hard work put in by the production staff and hired-hands...another important detail that the concerts producers thought was very important for the public to see as they had always contended that without the efforts of the entire production staff, this event could have easily degenerated into a disaster.
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Jethro Tull was also invited to perform at the festival. However, lead singer Ian Anderson didn't want to perform in front of, as he termed them, "a bunch of unwashed hippies".
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Procol Harum were invited to play the festival, but they refused citing two reasons. The first was that they were at the end of a long tour and the other was that Robin Trower's wife was about to give birth to her first child back in England.
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Richie Havens originally was scheduled to go on later that evening, but because many of the artists were late in arriving he was pressed into duty to open the show. Lang also was going to ask Tim Hardin to open the festival, but Hardin was in a very stoned condition and when asked he ran away. Hardin did perform a very ragged set later that evening.
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When the promoters were negotiating to get The Grateful Dead to perform at the festival, Bill Graham, who was managing the band at the time, insisted that the promoters include one of two other acts he managed on the bill. Michael Lang listened to recordings of both bands and liked both bands so much that he couldn't decide which one to put on the bill and wound up flipping a coin and the winner would be booked. The losing band was It's a Beautiful Day. The band who won the flip was Santana, who would achieve super-stardom on the basis of their appearances at both the festival and film as well.
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Abbie Hoffman wasn't the only one to feel Pete Townshend's wrath during The Who's performance. As they were walking onstage Townshend kicked one of the cameramen filming the documentary. The cameraman happened to be none other than the film's director Michael Wadleigh.
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Even though it was a long shot, the promoters sent out an invitation to The Beatles. In fact, John Lennon said that the group sadly had to decline, but that he would gladly appear solo with a version of The Plastic Ono Band. Needless to say the invitation was withdrawn.
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The Byrds were invited but they refused citing their distaste for large festivals following a violent incident at the Atlanta Pop Festival a month earlier.
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In an interview, John Phillips admitted that he was invited to become part of the board of directors of the festival due to his experience as one of the board members of the Monterey Pop Festival. However, Phillips declined due to the fact that the festival was a profit making venture as opposed to Monterey, which was a non-profit event with the proceeds going to charity.
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The Moody Blues' reason for not performing at the festival was that they had already been booked to play a show in Paris at around the same time the festival was to take place. Years later the band admitted that they regretted not accepting the invite.
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The festival organizers offered Bob Dylan the chance to headline the festival. In fact, that Dylan and The Band had taken up residency in Woodstock, NY was a principle reason for choosing the location. Dylan refused to appear. Years later, he derided the organizers for "exploiting the hell out of that town" and declared that the festival-goers were just a bunch of "kids on acid with flowers in their hair", adding that the festival was not his "scene".
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Tommy James and The Shondells were also invited the perform, but when they heard the festival would be on a farm they refused. Later on they regretted not playing the festival.
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'Paul Revere and the Raiders' was another act that was invited and turned down an invite.
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The duo of Zager & Evans, who had a huge hit that year with the song "In the Year 2525", were invited to perform but refused.
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Santana was supposed to go on later on the evening of day two but due to all the delays the band was forced to go on much earlier. However, Carlos Santana had taken a dose of mescaline and was still peaking when the band was performing. As a result, he imagined that the neck of his guitar had become a snake and was moving. Fortunately, he still was able to perform and the band's star making performance went off without a hitch.
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The reason the Jeff Beck Group pulled out of the festival was due to the fact that the band broke up a couple of weeks prior to the festival. Interestingly, the band's piano player Nicky Hopkins did perform at the festival with Jefferson Airplane.
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Chicago were invited to play the festival but pulled out due to the fact that they were already booked to play the Fillmore West that same weekend.
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