Woodstock β Back to the Garden: 50th Anniversary Experience is a live album by various artists, packaged as a box set of ten
compact discs. Released by
Rhino Records during the summer leading up to the fiftieth anniversary of the
Woodstock Music and Art Fair, it contains selections from every performance at the music festival, which took place on August 15β18, 1969, in
Bethel, New York. The discs also include stage announcements and miscellaneous audio material. The package contains essays by producer
Andy Zax and Jesse Jarnow, details about the performers and notable festival figures, and photographs. This box set is a compilation derived from its limited edition
parent box set. A smaller
three-CD or five-LP sampler was also released.
Background
Although expanded issue sets from the festival had appeared for the
25th anniversary in 1994 and the
40th anniversary in 2009, this set proved more ambitious both in method and scope. Producer and archivist Zax spent more than a decade putting it together from hundreds of tapes that had never been consolidated in one place. In the process of reconstructing the festival for these sets, Zax corrected for some flaws in how the music was issued earlier. To wit:
These recordings have suffered a lot of indignities over the years: bad mixes, poor mastering, vocal and instrumental overdubs, rerecordings, sweetenings, deceptive edits, fake applause, fake cricket noises, fake rain chants, fake audience members yelling along with '
The Fish Cheer,' and entirely fraudulent tracks recorded at [other locations]...[5]
Zax, along with
mix engineerBrian Kehew and
mastering engineer Dave Schultz, referred to photographic documentation which allowed them to situate the performers within the mix based on where they were standing onstage.[6] Although efforts were undertaken to limit any interference in the original sound of the tapes, Zax and the production team were able to turn the surviving
mono recording by
Ravi Shankar into a true stereo mix.[7]
Content
Unlike previous collations on record of music from the Woodstock Festival and like its parent box, 50th Anniversary Experience presents music from every performer and in the correct order chronologically they appeared over the course of the festival's three days. Discs one and two include all eight of the mostly
folk artists who performed on the first day, starting Friday, August 15. The 14 performers from the second day, starting in the afternoon of Saturday, August 16, commence with the final performers on disc two
Quill and end with the first performers on disc seven,
Jefferson Airplane. The ten performers on the third and final day starting in the afternoon of Sunday, August 17, continue on the rest of disc seven through disc ten. One artist,
Country Joe McDonald, appears twice having played a solo set on day two and another set with
his band on day three.
Of the 162 tracks on the set, 117 are musical performances. Interspersed among the musical numbers are stage announcements comprising the remaining 45 tracks, mostly by the festival's unofficial
mc'sChip Monck and John Morris. Farmer
Max Yasgur, upon whose farm the festival took place, addresses the assembled crowd on day three. Also included is the 'confrontation' between
Who guitaristPete Townshend and activist
Abbie Hoffman, the latter interrupting the Who's set to pontificate upon the prison sentence of
White PantherJohn Sinclair. The edit for the performance of "
The Star-Spangled Banner" into "
Purple Haze" by
Jimi Hendrix seems to duplicate that found on the
original soundtrack album. Although not appearing at the festival, the presence of
counterculture iconsBob Dylan and
The Beatles is felt via songs covered in this box set β five artists sing Dylan songs, and three sing the Beatles.
Track listing
Disc one β Richie Havens, Sweetwater, Bert Sommer, Tim Hardin
Sweetwater Nansi Nevins β vocal, guitar; Albert Moore β
flute, vocal; August Burns β
cello; Alex del Zoppo β
keyboards, vocal; R.G. Carlyle β
electric guitar,
bongos, vocal; Fred Herrera β
electric bass, vocal; Alan Malarowitz β
drums; Elpidio 'Pete' Cobian β congas
Bert Sommer β vocal, guitar; Ira Stone β electric guitar,
organ,
harmonica; Charlie Bilello β bass
Arlo Guthrie β vocal, guitar; John Pilla β guitar; Bob Arkin β bass;
Paul Motian β drums
Joan Baez β vocal, guitar;
Richard Festinger β guitar; on "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" Jeffrey Shurtlieff β vocal, guitar
Day two
Quill Dan Cole β vocal; Phil Thayer β keyboards,
saxophone, flute; Norman Rogers β guitar, vocal; Jon Cole β bass, vocal;
Roger North β drums