It took 29 years, but on Saturday, Aug. 15, I finally made it back for "A Day in the Garden". What attracted me to the day-long concert on the site of the original Woodstock festival in Bethel, New York, was the same thing that lured me and about half-a-million other young people there in 1969: the music.

The day's lineup — Richie Havens, Donovan, Lou Reed, Joni Mitchell and Pete Townshend — was too alluring to pass up. I had no interest in Friday's roster (capped by those twin-peaks of California Schlock Stevie Nicks and Don Henley), and even less in Sunday's line-up of '90s bands (sue me, I'm old). That the concert was on the site of the original "mother-of-all festivals" was an added bonus that I couldn't pass up.

Back in '69, I was a bell-bottomed 15-year-old addicted to rock 'n' roll. Was the unintentional free festival a galvanizing coming-together of the tribes, the last gasp of the counterculture, or a blissfully stoned weekend before the corporate music vultures realized the money to be made in marketing? Everyone has their own opinion. To me it was a mix of all three — and the only place to be that weekend.

My Woodstock experience, while cherished, was unlike what was captured in the 1970 Academy-award winning documentary. Actually, I was alone for most of that weekend after my ill-equipped Brooklyn buddies (I had been a Boy Scout!) hightailed it back to the city after the first rainstorm on Saturday. Being a somewhat introverted 15-year-old, I didn't hook up with any other people, let alone partake in any "free love." I just hung out on the hill and tried to see as many bands as I could: no sex, some drugs and a lot of rock 'n' roll. Just to have survived that muddy, three-day mess was always a private source of pride, but never anything I've needed to boast about. (Only in recent years has the anti-'60s backlash waned). Yet I can't deny that I've always wanted to see the site again through, ahem, clearer eyes.

After all these years encountering what was once Max Yasgur's farm (the late farmer passed on in 1973, and the hillside is now owned by cable TV mogul Alan Gerry, who plans to build some type of '60s theme park on it) was really more profound than I had anticipated. But not in terms of any dewy-eyed nostalgia. Quite simply, the hillside — a broad, gradually sloping field with that stage set on a slight rise at the bottom — is a beautiful natural amphitheater. With the welcoming, rolling Catskill Mountains fanning out around it, you don’t have to be stoned to be affected by the "Oh, wow" vista.

Back in 1969, my friend Preston and I got a ride to the festival with a client of my Uncle Ben, who owned a jewelry store on upper Lexington Avenue. Our ride took us as far as the Monticello Racetrack, at which point Route 17B resembled a parking lot. Preston and I walked the last 10 miles to the site and arrived after nightfall, as a light mist fell and Ravi Shankar performed on the far-away stage.

This year, I took the Shortline bus to the concert with my wife, Barbara. It brought us around that far side of the meadow and deposited us behind the stage area, a locale that was impossibly off-limits during the original festival. Yes, there was now an ATM machine and lots of vendors stationed by the ticket takers, but why should that surprise anyone? This is the 90's, and Friday and Saturday's shows were aimed at the Boomers and their fat wallets. People have to eat, and if they want to buy souvenirs of what some people see as a generation's defining moment, what's the big deal? Maybe I'm so jaded that nothing surprises me any more, although this year's security policy ("No cameras, No bottles, No camping, No coolers") sucked. Since children under 12 were admitted free, there were lots of kids, and all in all was a pretty mellow affair, only a shadow of the "great goddamned party" as the late '60s activist Abbie Hoffman once called the '69 event.

Melanie, Saturday's opening act, was a last-minute addition and was in fine voice, albeit boomy and bellowing. One of her newer songs, ‘Glory, Glory, Psychotherapy’, however, was downright embarrassing. Donovan, a long-time fave of mine, delivered a satisfying solo set, which included classics like ‘Mellow Yellow’, ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven’ and ‘Catch The Wind’. However, I was disappointed that he performed not one song from his fine 1997 album Sutras. Now a grandfather, the Scottish-born folksinger did play a newer song for the little ones in the crowd that concerned "taking a pee in the woods". Yikes!

Richie Havens, who opened the '69 festival, was joined by a conga player and an electric guitarist who, at one point, performed a noble yet tame approximation of Jimi Hendrix's feed-back-drenched rendition of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. A unique and stylized performer, Havens hasn't changed much since the '60's and that's fine. With his raspy, compelling voice, Havens' sincere, impassioned interpretations of chestnuts like ‘Just Like A Woman’, ‘Here Comes The Sun’ and ‘Handsome Johnny’ never sound dated. While a little long on hippie-psychobabble, Havens is a timeless artist who truly embodies the "Woodstock spirit" without making me cringe. Okay, fine, I cringed a little bit.

Lou Reed is another performer I have a hard time being objective about. As far as I'm concerned, people who can't sing (or who make no attempt at singing) don’t belong near a microphone. Reed stomped through a muscular set that seemed to delight most of the crowd, although he could not find it within himself to perform the one song he ever landed on the charts, ‘Walk On The Wild Side’.

Throughout the afternoon, the changeable skies threatened rain but, luckily, it never came. The sound system was crystal clear, and access to the front of the stage was possible for those who didn't mind snaking their way through the crowd. That's what Babs and I did for the day's final two performers.

Joni Mitchell – who, save for a one-off show at Fez last year, hasn't performed in the New York City area for nearly 15 years – was joined by four-piece band that interpreted her newer, jazzy tunes with finesse. Her bell-like voice has deepened over the years, no doubt due to her heavy cigarette smoking, but there are others colors in her singing now, the yellow and greens are replaced by indigo and smokey blue.

Mitchell's set, which included several songs from her forthcoming new album — as well as a cover of ‘Summertime’ — was light on nostalgia but imbued with the mature, jazz-inflected composition of recent years. She resurrected ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and encored with the song that immortalized the 1969 festival, ‘Woodstock.’ Cranky and uncompromising as she may be, it was magical to hear Mitchell sing of "Yasgur's farm" and "bombers … turning into butterflies above our nation." Though that "nation" is gone, scattered into mid-life concerns, Mitchell evoked something inexpressible — a conflicting range of emotions — that was difficult to resist feeling.

If anyone needed confirmation that the times have changed, Pete Townshend's tongue-in-cheek stage entrance said it all. Wearing a leather motorcycle jacket with a metal-studded peace symbol on the back, Townshend walked to the lip of the stage and flashed the peace sign. Although he's as cocky as ever, one had to smile at Townshend's choice for an opening number, ‘On The Road Again’, made famous by Woodstock alumni Canned Heat, two of whose members have since passed on.

Backed by a lean five-piece band, the former leader of the Who served up a two-hour set culled from his long career. Playing an electric guitar (something he has shied away from in recent years due to his tinnitus), Townshend's voice and guitar playing were in excellent shape in a set that included ‘A Little Is Enough’, ‘You Better You Bet’ and a mellowfied version of the Who's ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’.

Townshend dedicated an inspired rendition of ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ to Abbie Hoffman, referring to an incident at the original festival. During the Who's early morning set in '69, Hoffman jumped onstage during the band's performance and blurted an acid-soaked rant about jailed activist John Sinclair, only to be clunked on the head by Townshend's guitar.

There was no guitar-bashing at this show, nor any nudity. The only bare breasts to be seen, outside of a mother nursing her infant, were probably down at John's Topless Bar in Monticello. And while the pungent aroma of marijuana wafted over portions of the crowd, the demon "brown acid" (rumored to cause bad trips at the original festival) was not a threat in 1998.

In 1969, nothing save a lightning bolt could have gotten me off that hill until Hendrix's mind-searing performance on Monday morning. When it was all over, I took a bus back to the Port Authority, and I remember being amazed at the front-page headlines about the festival that I encountered when I arrived in the city.

This year, my wife and I had to miss the last half of Townshend's set because the last Shortline bus left at 8 p.m. and we weren't going to stay overnight for the next one. That doesn't mean that music isn't as important to me at age 44. It's just that Townshend is no Hendrix.

In the next few years Alan Gerry plans on heavily promoting the anniversaries of the Woodstock festival to help fill his pockets and revitalize the ailing economy of Sullivan County. What other concert-goers will find on that field is subjective. Alas, the times have changed and maybe not for the better. The world is a cynical, difficult place, and maybe yearning for the utopia that Woodstock represents is not a bad thing. Peace, love and music? I think the world could still use a lot more of it.

© Richard Younger 1998

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