Forty years ago, in a small town of just over 6,000 people, over half a million people from across America gathered to see one of the most monumenous events in music history.  That event, of course, was Woodstock.
Last Tuesday, the Centre for American Studies kicked off its speaker series for the 2009-2010 school year with David Clayton-Thomas, the former lead singer of Blood Sweat and Tears — one of Woodstock’s headlining acts.
“I’m here to talk about Woodstock,” began Clayton-Thomas, “but unfortunately I can’t remember much of it,” he added, referencing the culture of drugs and alcohol that surrounded the event.
But Clayton-Thomas was by no means short of things to say about the festival. “To understand Woodstock, it has to be viewed in a political context,” he said, referring to the Vietnam War.
Clayton-Thomas treated Woodstock as a political statement against the unpopular, conservative government locked in a drawn-out war. “No way in hell anyone was going to Vietnam after [Woodstock], Clayton-Thomas said. “People were burning their draft cards.”
He went on to discuss the Kent State shootings, which saw the Ohio National Guard open fire on unarmed students at a university protest only a few months before Woodstock.
“Just imagine what would happen now if the National Guard shot at students in Canada or the United States,” he said. “[Musicians at the time] got the feeling that something big was going to happen soon. We didn’t know what, but some big protest was about to go down.”
Clayton-Thomas then pointed out there were a dozen or so state troopers and local police present when more than 500,000 concert-goers went to see some of the biggest musical acts in the world.
“The [state] of New York knew that if those 500,000 pissed off people didn’t get to see Crosby, Stills and Nash, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Jimi [Hendrix] and Janis [Joplin], it would have been pandemonium,” Clayton-Thomas explained, “National Guard helicopters shuttled us to the stage because there was no other way to get to the stage.”
However, despite the huge risk of violent outbreak, the festival was relatively peaceful.
“The legacy of Woodstock is that a small city’s worth of people, up to their asses in mud, sharing only a few Port-a-Potty’s with little refreshments didn’t kill one another. There was not one assault reported,” he added. “The three days of love and peace could have easily been a bloodbath.”
In a time when music is downloaded and concerts are more a spectacle of lights than music, Clayton-Thomas is doubtful the spirit of Woodstock could ever be duplicated.
“It won’t happen again,” he said to the audience. “Just like no one will ever sell 50 million albums anymore.”