Woodstock Day Four
Woodstock
Day Four
“Please, there’s been reports that due to wet mud underneath the towers, they are slowly moving downhill.
The guy wires are getting a little tighter.
Well, I am a little worried about my lamps on top of them—as well as you—and the people underneath.
So if you’d be kind enough to come down, you’d save us a great insurance hassle.
And perhaps broken bones. Please come down if you will.
” Chip sounded mighty patient this morning.
“Damn,” said Ron, staring up at the jungle of monkeys on the towers. “I can’t believe that dude’s having to ask people to get down. You’d think it would be obvious.”
A collective laugh sounded from our group.
“You don’t know the half of it, man,” Johnny said. “That’s his four hundredth announcement. He’s had a helluva time.”
Chip made another plea. “Before we begin, and close, could we ask you once again to leave the towers. And then in the same breath, thank you for making all of this possible. It’s been a long one, but it’s been delightful.”
“Four hundred and one,” said Leon.
We all laughed.
Five minutes later, at nine o’clock Monday morning, exactly three years minus a day after missing the concert of a lifetime in Memphis, I got a second chance in Bethel.
Woodstock’s headliner strolled onto the stage with only a fraction of the audience left, but the cheering sounded like a full house.
Chip gave his final introduction. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Jimi Hendrix Experience.”
With his white Fender Stratocaster guitar hanging from a colorful shoulder strap, the one and only Jimi Hendrix strolled onto the Woodstock stage wearing a white leather jacket with beaded fringe on the sleeves.
He looked uncommonly cool, and oh so patriotic, in his faded blue-jean bell-bottoms and a red bandanna tied around his forehead.
After what must have been a long weekend for him, too, Jimi walked straight over to the microphone and spoke in this sexy, deep-throated voice.
“I see that we meet again. Hmm. Yeah, well, well, well. Dig, dig, dig. I’d like to get something straight.
We, uh, got tired of the Experience, and every once in a while, we’re just blowing our minds too much, so we decided to change everything around.
I call it ‘Gypsy Sun and Rainbows’ for short.
’Cause we’re nothing but a band of gypsies. ”
A girl in the audience yelled, “Jimi! Are you high?”
“I am high, thank you. I am high, thank you, baby,” he said.
Ron pointed to ten girls on the side of the stage. “Holy shit. Look at his groupies.”
“They’re not all with him,” I said.
“You better believe they are,” my brother answered, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Ew.”
Leon, who’d been watching me, reached over and tugged my body into his, with a tantalizing grin.
“What?” I said. “That’s gross.”
He cracked a crooked smile, then looked right back at the groupies.
Jimi played six songs before I recognized the opening chords to “Foxy Lady.” Visions of my closet sprang to mind. Instead of crying, I hollered out loud, “Look at me now, Dad!”
Ron gave me a high five with an ear-to-ear grin.
In the middle of the song, Leon and Johnny exchanged fist pumps, as if this was the moment they’d been waiting for their entire lives, especially when Jimi played the guitar with his teeth.
Unable to take his eyes off the superstar, all Ron could do was stand perfectly still, staring at the stage in disbelief. Jimi wielded his Stratocaster like he was riding a bucking bronco. It sounded like one hundred wild Chincoteague ponies locked inside a corral, squealing to get loose.
“I’ll never be able to pick up a guitar again,” Ron said. The blissful look on his face warmed me with a bliss of my own.
But it didn’t last. Instead of seeing Jimi on stage, I saw a giant hourglass with only three grains of sand left. On top of the hourglass hung a banner with a message reading It is coming to an end. I tried blinking it away, but the image wouldn’t leave.
Jimi played another song I didn’t know before slipping into one that sounded vaguely familiar, not from the album Dad had destroyed but from somewhere else. It took a minute for the melody to resonate before I knew exactly what he was playing. In fact, I knew it by heart.
It was “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but no words left Jimi’s lips.
Instead, they warbled through his guitar.
It started out tame, but as soon as he got to “the rocket’s red glare,” the melody shifted into rage.
Simulating the fury of battle with his fingertips, Jimi Hendrix unleashed the nightmarish sounds of the Vietnam War onto the audience.
My blood ran cold as he mimicked machine-gun fire, wailing emergency sirens, and sonic bombs bursting in air. Stop it! I wanted to scream. Please stop it! I was afraid it would remind Ron of his friend Freddy and send him into a full-on panic attack.
Glancing around, I saw other folks grabbing their heads, some even pulling their hair, as if they wanted to rip it out because the sounds were too excruciating to bear.
Jimi replicated the turmoil that existed in the country right there on the ravaged war-torn pastures of Yasgur’s dairy farm.
I could hardly stand it. No one could. We could only look at each other with agonizing, painful stares.
Jimi’s guitar personified the Vietnam soldier ripped apart and abandoned by his own country. Ron.
As our distorted national anthem came to an end, Jimi segued into “Taps,” making the experience even eerier. When it was over, I overheard someone behind me saying Jimi had served in the US Army. While that shocked me, it also made me wonder: Was Jimi’s version protest or patriotism?
The first chords of “Purple Haze” induced a loud roar from the audience.
Each person left sang along with him, knowing every word.
Even me. Thanks to Livy, I’d learned it from listening to Jimi’s eight-track in the car.
I was sure it would be his last song, but Jimi knew I didn’t want him to stop. He played three more, plus an encore.
Then, after a simple “Thank you,” Jimi Hendrix exited the stage.
11:10 a.m.
Once the ballistic cheering died down to a low-level murmur, Chip Monck appeared for the final time.
His hollow, sluggish voice sounded every bit like he’d been up four days without sleep.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so very much. We’ve got one little last trip we’d like to lay on you if it’s at all possible.
There are a couple packages of garbage bags here.
If on your way out you wouldn’t mind taking one, filling it up, and leaving it where you fill it, that certainly would be appreciated.
Anything you can do to give us a hand to leave this area somewhat the way we found it—I don’t think it will ever be quite the same—but somewhat the way we found it, it certainly would be appreciated.
It’s been a delight seeing you. May we wish you anything that the person next to you wishes for you.
Good wishes, good day, and a good life. Thank you. ”
The remaining Woodstock stragglers clapped for Chip, but their applause was silenced by the helicopter flying in to whisk Jimi away.
That was it.
The end.
Woodstock was over.
And our hourglass was empty.