David Crosby on why Woodstock ’94 was “absolutely fucking awful”
When it comes to icons of the 1960s, they don’t come much bigger than the late David Crosby. From his time in the Byrds to his work with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash in one of the world’s most significant rock supergroups CSN, Crosby was always a cut above the rest of his contemporaries.
During an interview with Stereogum, Crosby was asked about the moment at which he knew that “something was going on” in the 1960s. He unequivocally said that it was “obviously Woodstock”. “That was the first time we knew how many of us there were and that it was across the whole country,” he said.
Crosby continued: “That there was a definite new set of ethics and morals and values being proposed, and that there was something else going on. It was gigantic. You couldn’t quite cope with it when you were faced with it right here because your mind trips out. But that’s when we knew. The exact point.”
However, Crosby had far fewer kind things to say about the Woodstock revival festival in 1994. “It was awful. Absolutely fucking awful,” he said. For the folk-rock icon, CSN’s slot was all wrong. “Man, are you kidding? We went on after Nine Inch Nails,” he added. “Does that give you a clue? Can you imagine us singing ‘Heeeelplessly hooooping’ to a mosh pit? OK? Are we getting it? Is the picture coming in clear?”
Indeed, it’s a strange prospect for CSN to be playing immediately after an industrial rock band, and Crosby thought it was about the worst lineup choice that the promoters could have possibly made. He added, “It was about as inappropriate and as bad a setting as you could possibly think of for us.”
Perhaps the worst thing for Crosby, though, was that the spirit of the original Woodstock and the 1960s had completely disappeared, becoming a capitalist hell instead. “It was a very bad scene anyway,” he continued. “Everyone was trying to capitalise on it. A bottle of water was five dollars or some shit. It was not funny, not good. I didn’t like any part of it at all.”
If that weren’t bad enough, disaster struck the festival. Crosby explained, “And then a high power cable, a power line fell on our bus. If you touch that, you died. Cute, fun. It was a bad experience.” All in all, Crosby felt that the whole recreation of Woodstock was doomed from the off.
“It proves you can’t really try to duplicate something like that and have it work,” he concluded. “Everybody tried to take advantage of it, and they screwed it up. It was a descendent of Altamont, not a descendent of Woodstock. It was shitty.” Just as well CSN didn’t play the widely-publicised travesty that was Woodstock ’99 then.
