Back to the Garden
Life Magazine
August
1994
I wasn't there. Crosby, Stills, Nash and myself all went to the
airport. Woodstock had been declared a national disaster area, so we
were informed that we couldn't get in and get out. I had to do /The
Dick Cavett Show /the following day, so I left the boys there, thinking
they were going someplace else. But they rented a helicopter. I felt
left out. I really felt like the Girl. The Girl couldn't go, but the
Boys could. I watched everything on TV. But I don't know if I would
have written the song "Woodstock" if I had gone. I was the fan that
couldn't go, not the performing animal. So it afforded me a different
perspective.
It was the turning point, the apex of the hippie experience. After
Woodstock was Altamont, the "hate" festival. And the commercialization
set in, and you'd hear women saying, "Oh, I'm going down to Macy's to
get some love beads for Fred's Nehru suit." The drug scene got
heavier. The bad and the ugly, the criminal and the cruel have since
that time been front row center.
|
The singer-songwriter, 50, who composed the Woodstock anthem tends her
garden in a Los Angeles canyon |
Woodstock was a spark of beauty. Some white, middle-class kids popped
some Owsley LSD and saw that they were part of a greater organism. And
that experience primitivized them. The essence of the song "Woodstock"
is, like here we are, this creature from the dust of exploded stars, on
this planet. /We've got to get ourselves back to the garden/ is
extremely romantic but extremely realistic. If we don't wake up
ecologically, our organism is doomed.
Crosby, Stills and Nash showed up unannounced while I was on /The Dick
Cavett Show/. Crosby is saying, "Man, you shoulda seen it, the biggest
bunch of gypsies." I'm holding back from expressing terrible
crestfallenness. I gave them a tape of my song. They recorded it and
got it out immediately.
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