A PUB AT WOODSTOCK

AH WOODSTOCK! HOW I wish I’d been there. 1969, I’m eighteen, about to be expelled from the entire NSW Department of Education due to anti-Vietnam War protesting and meanwhile word is coming through in the middle of August of a music festival in upstate New York. It’s destined to become known not just as a music festival, but as THE Music Festival.

Oh how I wish I’d been to Woodstock. How I wish I’d been there for the Grateful Dead, for Arlo Guthrie, for Credence and Janis, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker and the Who.

But nah, I had to be content with the cracking three-hour film of the shindig which came out the following year and then, sitting in rivetted reverence listening to its director, Michael Wadleigh, in the E7C6 lecture hall at uni during his promo tour for the doco.

One of my teammates in the uni rugby team was mates with a fella I’d played against all through high school. His folks had a decent farm sort of north of Cowra and he was planning a weekend of drinking, partying, music and general debauchery out there.

Why? Well because the place’s name was Woodstock - not much in the