What was the closing song played at Woodstock 1969?
While Woodstock was truly historic, standing out as one of the most magical and obsessed-over moments in music legend, the one thing it definitely wasn’t was timely. The logistics of the iconic 1969 festival were all over the place. So, while the final song of the weekend should have been set against the stars on Sunday night, it came with the sunrise instead.
But that’s part of the mystique of Woodstock. You look at the photos and footage now and still think how on earth did they pull that off? It was the first festival the organisers had ever put together and was one of the biggest and most adventurous undertakings in the entire history of festivals up until that point. Yet really, the team were kind of just feeling their way through, figuring things out as they went along and hoping for the best.
The result was bigger than anyone anticipated. Beforehand, even when they’d sent out invites and offers to artists to come to play, people had doubted it would be anything special, turning them down in favour of more established events, thinking Woodstock simply wouldn’t take off. Obviously, they kicked themselves for that later down the line when the scenes of the over 460,000-person strong crowd made TV and then the history books.
It’s a legacy made up of happy accidents. Part of the reason it is so revered and mythologised is because we remember Woodstock as free—that was an accident, as they simply didn’t build ticket booths in time. Some of the most iconic scenes from the festival, captured in a documentary by Michael Wadleigh, see artists set against beautiful sunsets when, really, they should’ve played hours prior. On average, across each performance at the festival, stage times were running on around a five-hour delay, meaning that artists who were supposed to perform in the late evening were only just getting onstage by the morning.
But that again birthed some of the most memorable moments of the festival, including it’s finale performance and closing number.
What was the closing song played at Woodstock?
When Jimi Hendrix said yes to playing Woodstock, he requested the closing slot. He wanted to be the finale, and the festival obliged, thinking that at midnight, as Sunday night ticked into Monday morning, the musician would take to the stage and deliver a hypnotic final set to the huge crowd.
It didn’t work out like that, though. Technical faults, weather issues and the general logistical stress of trying to get artists to be on time during a big weekend for drugs meant that by that Sunday night, everything was five hours behind. The disruption started way back at 15:00 when Joe Cocker’s opening set of the day was paused for a thunderstorm. The next act then couldn’t go on until 18:00 rather than 45 minutes later as the plan initially stated. From then on, making back that time proved impossible; the delay only grew.
By the time it hit midnight, the fifth act of the day, Johnny Winter, hadn’t even gone on stage. The organisers turned to Hendrix and offered him the chance to go on then, knowing that the big crowd were still hanging on but might not want to forever. He flatly refused; he still wanted to be last.
It was 9:00 by the time he finally made it to the stage. The crowd had dwindled to only around 40,000, but still, Hendrix delivered a career-defining set. Set against the bright morning sky, that image remains a cornerstone of his legacy as he shredded through his hits, the iconic cover of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and then, finally, ‘Hey Joe’.
Despite being almost 11:00, having had no sleep while waiting for this moment, his final delivery of ‘Hey Joe’ is electric, just as the closing moments of this history-shaking event deserved, despite all the logistical chaos.
