“People say that moment defined the ‘60s”: Woodstock’s greatest guitar solo
When you ask people if they could revisit any gig of the past, the majority of them will lean towards Woodstock.
There was something about that festival, about that specific moment in time, when a switch went off in people, as they realised that music could be used to inspire genuine change around the world. People gathered in a big field, as the rain came down, and danced in the mud to great songs. There was a lot of pain around the globe at the time, but none in that specific moment, as songs from some of the biggest acts in the world were belted out for all to hear.
Of course, these few days weren’t just filled with the magic of music. There were some people who turned their nose up at the event, both for personal and professional reasons. For instance, The Who famously despised the whole affair, saying that they didn’t think the people attending were genuine, and were lost in a rose-tinted ideal, and they ultimately wound up writing ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ as a response to Woodstock.
“All those hippies wandering about thinking the world was going to be different from that day,” said Townshend, “As a cynical English arsehole, I walked through it all and felt like spitting on the lot of them, and shaking them and trying to make them realise that nothing had changed and nothing was going to change.”
Similarly, the Grateful Dead had some technical issues when playing at Woodstock, making it ironic that a festival which many consider one of the greatest live events of all time, fell short of the mark for one of the greatest live bands on the planet. It was through no fault of the band themselves, but they had problems with their sound engineer.
“Our sound man at the time decided he was going to change the ground in the middle of the whole thing,” said Bob Weir, “It was not done right or something. Every time I touched my instrument, I got a horrible shock, and [Jerry] was getting the same thing.”
If you look at the event as a whole, there were a lot of issues, but if you isolate singular moments, you can understand why so many people thought that these few days marked a real moment of change. One of these singular moments came in the form of Jimi Hendrix’s electric performance, which, for many, is the definitive gig when it comes to Woodstock.
Billy Cox, Hendrix’s bassist, spoke about how much time and dedication the lead guitarist put into the show, noting, “Jimi was Woodstock, in mind and body. It’s been said that we only had two rehearsals for the festival. That’s rubbish. We rented a place there for about a month, rehearsing.”
However, there was one moment that even Cox wasn’t aware was going to happen despite so much preparation going into it, and that was Hendrix’s solo of ‘Star-Spangled Banner’. It might be the most famous guitar solo in the world, and Cox, who saw Woodstock first hand, believes its beauty defines the festival, and the entire decade.
“We played for almost two hours,” he said, “I didn’t know Jimi was going to play the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’. I played the first few notes and then just stopped and let him play. I’ve never heard anyone play guitar like that. People say that moment defined the ’60s. It did.”
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