THE FINAL NOTE

In his 1988 autobiography Long Time Gone, David Crosby writes of Woodstock, “Woodstock was a time when there was a prevailing feeling of harmony. Was it really an ‘Aquarian Festival of Peace and Love and Music’? Hard to answer because I didn’t give a damn about Aquarian this or Aquarian that. I think astrology is complete bullshit…

“The other notable thing about Woodstock was that we were scared, aas Stephen [Stills] said in the film. What wasn’t said in the movie is why w we w were so nervous: everyone we respected in the whole goddamn music business was standing in a circle behind us when we went on. Everybody was curious about us. We were the new kid on the block, it was our second public gig, nobody had ever seen us, everybody had heard the record, everybody w wondered, ‘what in the hell are they about?’ Every band that played there, including all the ones that aren’t in the movie, were all standing in an arc behind us, and that was intimidating, to say the least. I’m looking back at Hendrix and Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm and Janis and Sly and Grace and Paul, everyone that I knew and everyone I didn’t know. We were so happy that it went down well that we could barely handle it.”

Graham Nash, though, had no trouble hndling it.

Graham Nash: “Woodstock didn’t freak me out at all because I’d already done it. I’d done seven years with The Hollies. Certainly not as big a crowd as that but it was the same fervor. We had girls grabbing our ties trying to rip our clothes off, trying pull our hair out. I’d been through all that. Nothing, even Woodstock, could rattle me after that. To me? It was no big deal. I was pretty chill throughout. Look at the footage. Does that look like a man all freaked out? I was very comfortable on that stage.”

Still, the group had major misgivings about the gig. David Geffen had told them