Who closed the show at Woodstock Festival?
There probably isn’t any festival or open-air live concert as shrouded in countercultural mythos as 1969’s Woodstock Music and Art Fair Festival. Promising “an aquarian exposition” in New York’s White Lake, nearly 500,000 revellers and hippies descended onto Max Yasgur’s 600-acre Bethel dairy farm in August that year, braving the frequent rain and muddy fields to see the 32 acts billed for the “free festival” at one of the most celebrated events in popular music.
Having been a part of the Miami Pop Festival’s core team the previous year, organiser and co-creator Michael Lang, who’d manage the following anniversary Woodstock, including the 1999 disaster, came from a respectable festival pedigree.
Clashing with the various New York City financiers and entrepreneurs with his nonchalant organising style, coupled with the late ‘venue’ changes and legal wrangling with the Bethel residents unhappy with “Max’s hippy music festival”, Woodstock hit a calamity of having to choose between a stage or walls and ticketing booths.
Opting for the former, the notion of the ‘free festival’ was quickly embraced despite the approximate 186,000 tickets sold in advance. Backers Joel Rosenman and John P Roberts were saved from financial ruin due to their ownership of the film and recording rights. Woodstock and its accompanying soundtrack achieved great commercial success in 1970.
Creedence Clearwater Revival were the first big name to sign up, and swiftly, some of the era’s most prominent names followed suit. Janis Joplin, Santana, Grateful Dead, The Who, and Sly and the Family Stone are just some of the names that graced Yasgur’s farm. Notable are Woodstock’s omissions and near misses in its historic schedule. The Beatles were tempted out of their touring abstinence but were obstructed by John Lennon’s visa complications, hippie fatigue resulted in a rejection by Bob Dylan, and Frank Zappa later told the Class of the 20th Century TV special: “A lot of mud at Woodstock…We were invited to play there, we turned it down.”
But who closed Woodstock?
Due to technical delays wrought by bad weather, the last act’s set was pushed into Monday morning. Taking the stage at 9am and playing to a crowd that had dwindled down to 40,000, Gypsy Suns and Rainbows played a two-hour set, closing the iconic festival and gifting the epochal music event with its defining moment.
Gypsy Suns and Rainbows was the name of Jimi Hendrix’s short-lived band post-Experience. Comprised of bassist Billy Cox and guitarist Larry Lee, whom he’d played with early in his career, plus Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell back behind the kit, Hendrix’s Woodstock closer was full of anomalies. Lee played lead on several songs and even fronted the band with vocal duties for his own ‘Mastermind’ and a cover of a Curtis Mayfield medley ‘Gypsy Woman/Aware of Love’, and Hendrix performed a rare encore of ‘Hey Joe’ as his parting finale.
Contrary to popular belief, the immortal rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner wasn’t played in isolation but part of a medley lasting over half an hour across his biggest cuts, including ‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return)’ and ‘Purple Haze’, plus a five-minute unique solo. It wasn’t even the first time he’d played it, performing the politically charged cover nearly 30 times before his legendary slot at America’s most famous festival.
