Born in Brooklyn, Max Yasgur eventually found his way to Sullivan County, NY where he became the most successful dairy farmer in that county.
1969 was another turbulent year of that turbulent decade and Woodstock Ventures hoped that their festival would provide a place in the country where young people could peacefully enjoy their music and sleep under the stars.
Happy Birthday Max Yasgur
We know the story. After the town of Wallkill realized what Woodstock Ventures was doing and “who” was going to attend, it put one legal roadblock after another in the concert’s way. Wallkill finally succeeded and Max was the man who came to the rescue.
Woodstock Ventures announces that they will have the Festival in White Lake. Advert was done by Arnold Skolnick, the artist who did the famous poster.
He showed Michael Lang a big grassy bowl at the intersection of Hurd and West Shore Roads.
Perfect.
Woodstock Hero Max Yasgur
Bethel hurdles
Like Wallkill, many Bethel locals were against the idea and threatened Yasgur telling others to boycott his milk. Max Yasgur stood his ground and basically told locals where they could put their protest.
At a Bethel Town Board meeting before the festival he reportedly said: “I hear you are considering changing the zoning law to prevent the festival. I hear you don’t like the look of the kids who are working at the site. I hear you don’t like their lifestyle. I hear you don’t like they are against the war and that they say so very loudly. . . I don’t particularly like the looks of some of those kids either. I don’t particularly like their lifestyle, especially the drugs and free love. And I don’t like what some of them are saying about our government. However, if I know my American history, tens of thousands of Americans in uniform gave their lives in war after war just so those kids would have the freedom to do exactly what they are doing. That’s what this country is all about and I am not going to let you throw them out of our town just because you don’t like their dress or their hair or the way they live or what they believe. This is America and they are going to have their festival.”
local paper article
Woodstock Hero Max Yasgur
On the last day of the concert, the New York Times published an article about Max: Until a few days ago Max Yasgur was just another dairy farmer in Sullivan County. Now he gets phone calls threatening to burn him out. And even more calls praising him and asking how the callers can help.
On the same day, he spoke to those young people whom he had defended:
Woodstock Hero Max Yasgur
Max Yasgur
He died less than three years later on February 9, 1973. (NYT article)
In 1967, Rose Simpson was attending college and loved the outdoors. She liked hiking and mountain climbing so much, she was president of her college’s Mountaineering Club.
And she had learned to put up with the national Rock and Ice Club‘s misogynistic attitudes.
Returning after one wet day on a Scottish mountain, she saw the open door of Mary’Stewart (not the novelist) and her children’s Temple Cottage. A welcoming place of organized chaos that greeted all, including offbeat musicians.
The vision of hippies and the sounds their music made include a wide range of styles. The Incredible String Band’s style certainly fit within that range, albeit, at the edge.
The Incredible String Band did not make it into the Woodstock movie or onto the Woodstock triple album [it did make it onto the expanded 25th anniversary CD and finally onto Rhino’s 50th anniversary complete set]. If it had some exposure from the beginning, they, like other performers who did, would likely have enjoyed a bump in their popularity and benefited financially from increased album sales.
Having said that, I’m not sure that the ISB members ever intended to find a path to rock-stardom. Success, surely, but super-stardom?
ISR Rose Simpson
Rose Simpson
ISR had started as a trio: Williamson, Heron, and Clive Palmer, but became a duo. Gradually, Licorice began to join in their recording sessions and then after meeting Rose Simpson enlisted her as well. It was those four who belatedly performed at Woodstock.
From the Herald Scotland site: Simpson has mixed feelings about the biggest gig in her life. “We could have done better, “ she says. “It was a disaster, really. By the time we played on Saturday, the crowd wasn’t in the mood to hear contemplative songs. It is uncomfortable when you see you’re only getting through to one in a hundred.”
Simpson recalls that the Friday afternoon at Woodstock was “like a big party”. “We spent the afternoon eating strawberries and cream, talking and laughing, splashing in the creek,” she says. “It was lovely. But then the rain came, the atmosphere changed, the roads were blocked and we were trapped. We couldn’t get away to a hotel, the organisers threw tents at us. Before I met the String Band, I used to do a lot of winter climbing in Scotland, so I was used to discomfort. It was damp and miserable, like camping in the rain in Glencoe.”
A quick online search reveals a picture of Simpson from the time, wearing a floaty white diaphanous dress and nothing else. “There was a lot of nudity, but when I see the pictures of myself there’s a certain innocence about it,” she says. “It wasn’t a come-on, it wasn’t like many pop singers today – a lot of that is just porn. It was part of the thing at the time, that women could dress as we pleased. It wasn’t a sexual thing. We were saying we were free.”
Woodstock had a lifelong effect on Simpson, and left her feeling that nothing could ever rival the sensation. “It wasn’t our best performance, but it was still an amazing experience – the high of highs,” she recalls. “There is nothing like playing to a crowd that big. There is nothing else you can do in life that comes even close.”
And as Simpson said in an informative and lengthy Richie Unterberger pleasekillme.com interview: “I definitely think it would have been better to play on the previous night, even if it had only been M&R doing early stuff, e.g. from Hangman. They had always managed to hold audiences with that music, and Lic and I were more or less incidental to it. We could have been mainly decorative on that occasion, and I think we’d all have risen to the challenge if we’d known what it was. Obviously, we couldn’t know that.”
Photo by David Marks, Hidden Years Music Archive Project, University of Stellenbosch, Cape South Aftrica www.3rdearmusic.com
According to the band’s manager, Joe Boyd, “The day Robin proposed that Christina Licorice Mckechnie join the group, Mike went out and bought Rose an electric bass. ‘Learn this,’ he said, ‘you’re in the group now, too.'” That may be a hazy recollection, but it is true that Simpson didn’t know how to play a bass when she became the band’s bassist.
In 2020, Rose published the wornderful and well-written Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden: A Girl’s Life in the Incredible String Band and according to Rose, herself, ““When Licorice decided she wanted to be a stage performer as well as a disembodied voice, my presence redressed the balance. There were no discussions or arguments, decisions or arrangements made between the four of us—none that I know of, anyway, or that [producer] Joe Boyd remembers. There were no rehearsals, either, beyond the usual casual playing together in the latest rented flats Joe had found us.”
She writes that she left the band when “it clear that I must join them in their commitment [to Scientology]… I walked out of all of it, on my home…on my future with ISB and on my friendships of the moment.”
She also left professional music after that and settled in Wales where at one point she was the Lady Mayoress of Aberystwyth.
Out of the limited limelight that she was in, Rose continues to live in Wales.
ISR Rose Simpson
ISR Rose Simpson, ISR Rose Simpson, ISR Rose Simpson, ISR Rose Simpson, ISR Rose Simpson,
Alex Del Zoppo was one of the original members of Robert ‘Bob’ Barboza’s west coast reincarnation of his east cast band called Jay Walker and the Pedestrians. Del Zoppo was the band’s keyboardist.
It is easy to think that in the 1960s young people were simply divided into two groups: pro Vietnam War vs anti Vietnam War. It is also easy to think that anyone in a rock band was automatically anti Vietnam.
Those of us fortunate enough to get into a college and receive a deferment, which often meant a permanent deferment since by the time the student received his college diploma, he might be too old to be drafted.
Alex Del Zoppo was not in college and to avoid the draft joined the Air Force Reserves. When a person was in the Reserves, he received a 1-D – (Member of a Reserve component) classification.
The classification meant a longer obligation–8 years, monthly weekend meetings, and a two-week summer training.
Del Zoppo was able to balance his musician’s life with his Air Force–most of the time.
It was the Jay Walker and the Pedestrian’s Alex Del Zoppo who suggested to a few other Pedestrians that they form a new group with the recently discovered Nancy Nevins. Barboza had no problem with that and Alex became Sweetwater Alex Del Zoppo.
Sweetwater Alex Del Zoppo
More gigs
The band gradually got more and more gigs, opening for concerts, and in 1969 doing many festivals (see Sweetwater Nancy Nevins piece for that list)
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In September 1968 Reprise records released Sweetwater’s eponymous debut album, ‘Sweetwater‘. Dave Hassinger produced it and Del Zoppo and Herrera arranged it. They had recorded it at Hassinger’s The Sound Factory recording studio located at 6357 Selma Avenue, West Hollywood.
Sweetwater Alex Del Zoppo
Woodstock
Bruce Blatman was Sweetwater’s manager. He suggested the band add another festival to their 1969 summer itinerary: “an intimate, no-pressure music and art fair in the countryside of upstate New York called Woodstock.” (see Horror stories).
Del Zoppo told Blatman that his 2-week summer training started Sunday that weekend. Blatman said they’d be the opening act on Saturday afternoon, Del Zoppo could get to JFK Airport in plenty of time to fly to California and his base on time for Sunday.
We know that didn’t quite work out as planned. The word plan that Woodstock weekend had a very loose meaning.
Del Zoppo got in trouble but also eventually got out of the reserves without having to actively serve.
Alex has also played and/or recorded with The Beach Boys, Eric Burdon, Gene Clark of the Byrds, Donovan, John Beland of the Flying Burrito Brothers, Chi Coltrane, Patrice (Candy) Zappa, Barry Goldberg,Johnny Tillotson and Severin Browne.
Sweetwater Alex Del Zoppo
Google news
Del Zoppo is still active, at least he was when (from a google news search) I found something about Mark Newman: Having begun the new year on a high note playing two shows in sunny California with Fred Herrera and Alex Del Zoppo, founding members of Sweetwater. (source: broadwayworld)
1. Sing (or play your instruments) as often as possible in as many situations and different types of music (as long as it’s enjoyable to you) as possible, until what you want to accomplish becomes intuitive. In other words, almost done without having to concentrate on it. That includes your voice too, so that it leaps right to where you want it to every time, with the perfect strength, inflection, pitch and attitude. Keep trying, it’ll all fall into place at some point.
2. Love what you’re doing. Believe in yourself and your music. Even if you are doing covers (other peoples tunes), make them YOUR OWN. That is, PERSONALIZE them! Be unique, you already ARE! Don’t be afraid to be YOU. (it’s always much more interesting seeing an act which is “Different” than some clone band, no matter HOW good they are).
3. Imagine yourself right where you’d like to be: a local gig or Carnegie Hall . . . but be PRACTICAL. Visualize yourself singing (or playing) with a band (or by yourself, if you’d like to be a solo) doing EXACTLY what you’d want to be doing. Lock that vision in your mind. It can be altered from time to time, according to your new tastes (and your listening-publics tastes), but generally, KEEP that vision HANDY. Pull it out from your memory banks every so often to keep yourself on track (especially when you’re getting discouraged about how LONG it seems to be taking to learn that chord or to sing that particular line, etc.)
4. Make some practical goals. You’ll need to Be LOGICAL when it comes to your future. Be HONEST with yourself when it comes to WHERE YOU ARE TODAY in your overall plan. Then try to envision the steps you’ll need to take along the way to reach your ultimate goal (the vision of yourself exactly where you want to be).
5. Picture yourself part of the way up a mountain and your ultimate goal is to reach the top. If you look at this goal as ONE BIG, SWEATY, BACK-BREAKING CLIMB . . . you’ll NEVER START! Try to see “plateaus” or shelves, ledges or steps along the way. Even the worlds best mountain climbers stop to rest now and then! Set smaller or incremental goals for yourself (within REASON, you won’t be playin’ in your parents’ living room and go straight to Madison Square Gardens by the weekend)! As you achieve each intermediate goal, you can stop to congratulate yourself on a job well done, then envision your ultimate goal and plan your next logical step.
6. You’ll be surprised how easy it seems once you’ve made a few of those goals. Also how satisfying it feels to accomplish something constructive with your life.
7. Keep your ears open along the way for legitimate opportunities that can help you reach your mountaintop. And most importantly:……..
8. Nancy says: “Never give up your dreams”. I have to go along with that. It worked for us, even with all of the crap we had to endure and all the years we had to wait… she believed in our band and told her story over & over until enough people listened. Thanks, Nancy! I’ll say it again, if you want to make something of your life and believe that you have real talent: Never give up your dreams! Go for it!
Alex Del Zoppo (right), Fred Herrera (top left) speaking w Joyce Mitchel (in charge of administration of the Woodstock Ventures offices) at the opening.
When Bethel Woods Center for the Arts had its 2019 season’s grand opening, Alex was there to speak and feel the love so many expressed to him for his and the band’s presence 50 years earlier. Those at the opening found him to be a thankful and gracious speaker.
Thank you.
Sweetwater Alex Del Zoppo
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
