All posts by Woodstock Whisperer

Attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969, became an educator for 35 years after graduation from college, and am retired now and often volunteer at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts which is on the site of that 1969 festival.
Beatles, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

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Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Released August 26, 1968

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

The Smile Orchestra playing ukulele, melodika (pianica), piano and e-bass.
Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Iconic notes

Some song’s first notes are so embedded in our lives that hearing them immediately transport us to a place, a time, a person, an era.

For me, the Beatles “Hey Jude” is one of those songs. It is late August 1968, just before going away to college for the first time and leaving behind the tanned friendship-ringed beautiful girlfriend whose September letters will only made me make more homesick. “Don’t make it bad.”

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

John and Cynthia on the verge

Just a year before in August 1967 the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had enchanted the Beatles. On their group trip to see him, John had left behind Cynthia struggling with luggage to keep up at the station. She missed the train and  had to get a car ride to the site.

John Lennon had met Yoko Ono in November 1966 and they began a friendship that blossomed into a close relationship when the two recorded Two Virgins on May 19, 1968 while Cynthia was away on a vacation.

Cynthia Lennon had discovered the two of them together after coming home early from that vacation.  They separated that month and John sued for divorce accusing Cynthia of adultery, an accusation she denied.

On August 22, 1968, Cynthia counter-sued. Lennon did not contest the divorce. It became official on November 8, 1968.

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Hey Jules

In June Paul McCartney  visited Cynthia and Julian Lennon. Though she was now separated, Paul and she had been friends since 1957 when Paul joined the Quarrymen and she was already John’s girlfriend.  Paul thought of Julian and in the car on his way out wrote the lines, “Hey Jules [Julian], don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.”

Paul would later change the name to Jude.

A month later, on July 26, Paul played it for the first time to John. John loved it from the beginning.

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

Hey Jude

The Beatles recorded the song over four days: July 29 – 31 July and 1 August.

According to the Beatles Bible site the personnel were:

  • Paul McCartney: vocals, piano, bass
  • John Lennon: backing vocals, acoustic guitar
  • George Harrison: backing vocals, electric guitar
  • Ringo Starr: backing vocals, drums, tambourine
  • Uncredited: 10 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, 2 double basses, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 1 bassoon, 1 contrabassoon, 4 trumpets, 2 horns, 4 trombones, 1 percussion
Paul McCartney Hey Jude

August 26, 1968

Apple released “Hey Jude” August  26 in the US [Aug 20 in the UK].  “Revolution” was the B-side.

It reached number one on September 28 and stayed there for nine weeks, the longest time a Beatles single was at number one. It was also the longest-playing single to reach number one.

“Hey Jude” was the 16th number-one hit for Beatles in America, They would eventually have 20, the most of any group.

Paul McCartney Hey Jude

4 September 1968

The Beatles asked Michael Lindsay-Hogg to film a promotion for the song. He had done the same for “Paperback Writer” in 1966. The idea was to film it in front of a live audience, albeit, a selected one.

David Frost played the part of an MC and introduced the band as ““the greatest tea-room orchestra in the world”.” The audience is not seen at first and the two-tiered  orchestra, seen during the playful introductions during which the Beatles also briefly play Elvis’s “It’s Now or Never.”  Frost plays it straight and doesn’t crack a smile.

After the last chorus, the cameras pan back and suddenly the Beatles are surrounded by that unheard audience. Now, though, they clap along and sing the famous “Naa naa naa na na na naaa….”

They settled on the idea of filming with a live, albeit controlled audience. In the film, the Beatles are first seen by themselves, performing the initial chorus and verses, and then are joined by the audience who appear as the last chorus concludes and coda begins; the audience sings and claps along with the Beatles through the song’s conclusion. Hogg shot the film at Twickenham Film Studios on 4 September 1968,

Paul McCartney Hey Jude
Beatles

Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

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Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

August 25, 1967
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi “The Origin of Thought”
Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Swami Satchidananda

Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

When looking at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair’s line up, it surprises or even confuses some to see someone named Swami Satchidananda in that line up. Even with the varied approach that Woodstock and most 1969 festivals took to create their events, having a swami was unusual.

As is often the case with music and the 60s we can “blame” the Beatles.

Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Beatles Meet Meditation

Though George Harrison had played the sitar on Rubber Soul‘s “Norwegian Wood” in 1965 it was not until 1966 that he and wife Pattie became interested in eastern philosophy during a six-week holiday in Bombay.

Back in England, Pattie continued to explore meditation and later attended a lecture on Transcendental Meditation in London.

In 1967 Pattie read that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was giving a lecture in London on August 24.

Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

In her 2007  book, Wonderful Tonight, Boyd said, I was desperate to go, and George said he would come too. Paul had already heard of him and was interested, and in the end we all went – George, John, Paul, Ringo, Jane and I. Maharishi was every bit as impressive as I thought he would be, and we were spellbound.

“At the end we went to speak to him and he said we must go to Wales where he was running a ten-day summer conference of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. It started in two days’ time. We leapt at it.”

Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

John Runs Ahead of Cynthia

On August 25, 1967, the Beatles, along with Pattie, her sister Jenny, Cynthia Lennon, Beatle friend Alexis Mardas (“Magic Alex”), Mick Jagger, and Marianne Faithfull traveled to Bangor, North Wales, left for a 10-day conference on Transcendental Meditation.

Well not quite. Cynthia left the house with John, but at the railroad station John jumped out and ahead leaving Cynthia to follow with the luggage.

Fans, passengers, and the press filled the station and Cynthia could not keep up. A policeman, unaware of “who” she was, kept her away and she missed the train.

Beatles personal assistant, Neil Aspinall, gave her a car ride. She wrote in her book, John: “the incident seemed symbolic of what was happening to my marriage. John was on the train, speeding into the future, and I was left behind.”

Beatles Meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Bangor Beatle Bunks

The Beatles arrived and found their rooms in a dormitory at Bangor College. Not quite what their life had become.

That night, the group went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Also no longer accustomed to carrying cash, they had none to pay for the dinner.

Luckily, George, perhaps from an old habit, took off his shoe and took out a 20 £ note.

Here is more from the Beatles Bible.

Anniversary, Arts, Festivals, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Hervey White Maverick Festival

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Hervey White Maverick Festival

August 24, 1915

I have blogged about the many 1969 festivals with the Woodstock Music and Art Fair as the keystone. It continues to confuse people that that iconic event was not in Woodstock, but Bethel, NY.

Woodstock was an obvious choice. By 1969, Woodstock, NY had become a magnet for Boomer artists of all types.

It had been that magnet for nearly a century.

Today’s blog is about an festival that actually took place in Woodstock, NY. Not in 1969, but in 1915.

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Hervey White

Hervey White was born in 1866 on a Iowan farm. He began his college education at the University of Kansas, later transferred to Harvard University, and completed his degree there in 1894.

He traveled to Europe and the social reform movements he observed there influenced him for the rest of his life.

Back in the United States, White began work at the Hull House in Chicago. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Star had founded Hull House in 1889 as a place to educate  poor immigrants. She also encouraged them to express themselves through the arts.

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Shared views

While working at the Hull House, Hervey met others who shared his views of helping talented young people become artists despite economic poverty. Carl Eric-Lindin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead were three of these fellow travelers.

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Byrdcliffe Arts Colony

Whitehead invited White to the Catskills to help him establish an artist colony. In 1902, Whitehead purchased 1500 acres near Overlook Mountain and Woodstock, NY,

The group built houses, studios, and workshops. Established artists became teachers to young aspiring artists. Hervey White married Vivian Bevans in 1903. She was a printmaker and one of the Colony’s students.

As an interesting aside, in 1965 a Mr Bob Dylan moved to a home that was once part of Byrdcliffe.

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Maverick Art Colony

Many artists have a wide perspective, but are short-tempered. In 1905 Hervey White left Byrdcliff and with Frits van der Loo purchased a farm near Ohayo Mountain, also near Woodstock.

He hoped it would be a place of creative freedom, a freedom he felt Byrdcliff’s strictures had limited.

By 1910 the farm had become a year-round residence for the Whites and several other artists. Art can be a full-time preoccupation excluding family and Vivian White left the colony with their two sons.

She never returned.

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Festival

In 1915, resident musicians suggested to White that the colony organize a festival to help pay for a needed well. The Maverick Festival was born.

The festival became an annual one and the primary way the colony supported itself.

The festival continued until 1931 when the economic issues of the Great Depression forced the festival’s cancellation. The colony continued but struggled, never again to be the vibrant artist residence it had been.

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Georgia

White, as many before and more since, found the Catskill winters too much of a challenge and he purchased a farm in Georgia. His heart remained at the Maverick Colony and he returned every spring.

He died on October 20, 1944.

Hervey White Maverick Festival

Another festival idea

25 years later, another Woodstock resident had an artistic idea: build a recording studio there for the many young musicians who had discovered the area’s beauty and serenity.

Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman formed Woodstock Ventures the spring of 1969 for that purchase.

You might be familiar with the rest of their story. The funny part is that Woodstock, NY continues to be famous for their festival despite the fact that the event occurred 60 miles away in Bethel, NY.

If you’d like to read more, here’s a 2006 article from Harvard magazine.

Hervey White Maverick Festival