What was the only number one single played at Woodstock?
The counterculture movement represented a great rupture in the fabric of the status quo. Alternative art really was having an impact on society. Pop culture was edging towards the progressive. This culminated in Woodstock in 1969. It’s an event that is now synonymous with the decade as a whole. That alone is noteworthy: that we can look back upon an era of expansion and unrest, and a ramshackle event showcasing non-commercial hippies, is the towering defining feature that we largely remember it by.
More than 30 different artists took the stage at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in the hot, wet August of 1969. Among them were some of the most famous and iconic musicians of that generation: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. All were titans of popular music, but not all were “pop stars”.
They were artists of integrity. None of the names above could be swayed by the demands of labels or cajoled into good behaviour by the strong arm of, well, anybody. They were not polished and produced hit-makers, yet, for a brief window in time, that also didn’t mean they were niche. You never suspect that the Woodstock organisers wondered, ‘Do we have enough commercial appeal in the line-up?’ as you suspect with modern festivals.
In fact, of the aforementioned musical giants who gathered before the 500,000 “very friendly people”, only Joplin scored a number one hit during her career. And even that was posthumous: Joplin’s only number one, ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 a few months after the singer’s death in 1970. None of those other artists had ever topped the charts in America and would never throughout their careers (minus Young: CSN and CSNY never had a number one, but Young did with his solo single ‘Heart of Gold’).
It wasn’t as though they were devoid of hits, though. Creedence Clearwater Revival famously had five songs reach number two on the chart without ever landing that elusive number one. In fact, Creedence’s first number two hit was featured in their set at Woodstock. The song that kept it from reaching number one was played too, just a few hours later.
So, what was the only number one played at Woodstock?
The only act that went into Woodstock with a number one song to their name was Sly and the Family Stone. The soul-pop-rock hybrid group was one of the most popular bands in America, and their mix of genders, genres and races proved to be revolutionary in desegregating some of the traditional makeup of bands at the time.
As it happens, Sly Stone and his troupe were supposed to headline the Saturday evening, along with The Who and Jefferson Airplane, but by the time rain delays had their way, the group took to the stage well into Sunday morning. The pioneering funksters arrived before a heavily stoned audience at 3:30am. So, in all likelihood, the only number one was likely forgotten by many.
That didn’t stop Sly and his band from giving one of the most electrifying performances of the entire festival. Although they’re best remembered for their enthralling audience participation in ‘I Want to Take You Higher’, Sly and the Family Stone also had the distinction of playing the only number one hit at the Woodstock festival: ‘Everyday People’.
Throughout most of February 1969, ‘Everyday People’ was the number one song in America. During a good portion of that time, CCR’s ‘Proud Mary’ was stuck behind it at number two. CCR performed just a few hours before Sly and the Family Stone (Janis Joplin was sandwiched in between them), but John Fogerty famously saw an audience full of sleeping hippies.
Nobody was sleeping when Sly Stone took the stage, which might explain why he had the number one hit and not Fogerty. His band were a party that nobody could sleep through.
