The Woodstock Music and Art Fair is famous for it’s amazing line up. Of course, some of that line up was famous before they got to Woodstock. Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, and Jefferson Airplane fall into that category.
Some became famous because of the event. Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and Ten Years After are a few.
Some were not known and got no Woodstock bump because neither the record nor the movie included them.
Miller Anderson unfortunately falls into both latter troughs. Miller was the guitarist for the Keef Hartley Band. Quite a guitarist. And Miller continues to play quite a guitar.
Guitarist Miller Anderson
Previously
He and Ian Hunter worked together before even a whiff of Fame wafted their way.
AsCraig Harris writes at the All Music site: Since cutting his musical teeth in bands with Ian Hunter (pre-Mott the Hoople) and Bill Bruford (pre-King Crimson and Yes), Anderson has been a member of such bands as the Keef Hartley Band, Savoy Brown, T. Rex, Mountain, the Spencer Davis Group, and in groups led by Deep Purple’s Jon Lord and folk-rock balladeer Donovan.
In 1968, Miller Anderson joined the Keef Hartley Band. Miller was with the band when they played Woodstock and was with them for five albums before going solo.
Miller Anderson has a wonderful retelling of his Woodstock experience:
Guitarist Miller Anderson
Through the Mill
In addition to his solo projects (which he continues to do with his Miller Anderson Band) since Keef Hartley he’s worked with withmany many more.
When asked which of his recordings he likes the most, Anderson replied, “I usually do not listen to anything I have recorded. When I play my songs live, I like to make them a little bit different each gig. I helps to keep me and the band, and I hope the audience, interested each night . You have to take chances with music!”
In 2016 he released his Through the Mill album:
Thank you Miller Anderson
…and happy birthday
Get out and see his band the next time he’s nearby.
l-r Ira Stone, Bert Sommer, and Charlie Bilello at Woodstock
Starting out, we may think our path will be a singular one. Simple. Straightforward.
Looking back we can see that there were many places where we made a choice or Fortune turned us in a direction that led to places we could never have anticipated.
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Queens, NY
In the early 1950s, when Ira Stone was a toddler growing up in Queens, NY and playing piano, how could he or anyone have predicted that in 1969 he’d play guitar on a damp stage in upstate New York in front of 400,000 people at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair?
In high school, Ira Stone met Jonny and Jeff Geist. They played guitar and Ira took lessons from Jonny. They had a band called the Fortunes and played behind acts that WMCA-AM’s DJs, the “Good Guys” produced.
The Fortunes (l. to r. Ira Stone, Jon Geist, Jeff Portney, Jeff Geist)
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
The Last Word
Other bands followed, including The Last Word, which released a single called “Hot Summer Days.”
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Leslie West and Bert Sommer
In the mid-60s, Stone lived in Westbury, Long Island and had a band called the Stonehenge Circus. As happens with most bands, while playing gigs he befriended other musicians. One of those musicians was Leslie West from the Vagrants. It was through that friendship that Stone met Bert Sommer who wrote some songs for the Vagrants.
Taking work from whence it came, Stone became part of The Music Explosion road band. Little did I realize that a band’s members not only have not played on their hit, but even if they had, they might not always be the band you saw at a concert.
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Road band
The Music Explosion had a “A Little Bit of Soul” hit and occasionally Stone was part of their road band. Later he became part of the Crazy Elephant road band.
In 1969, back in New York, he saw an ad in the Village Voice. Bert Sommer, a star in the play Hair, was looking for a guitar player. Capital Records (think Woodstock Ventures’ Artie Kornfeld) had just released Sommer’s first album and Kornfeld had invited Sommer to play at Woodstock.
Stone replied to the ad. Stone and Sommer hit it off. Stone got the gig.
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Woodstock Music and Art Fair
Stone with Sommer (on guitar)
Bert Sommer’s appearance at Woodstock (and thus Ira Stone’s appearance at Woodstock) did not have the impact that others’ appearances had. He was not in the movie, nor on the album. Had either happened future paths might have changed.
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Ira Stone’s Woodstock story
But he did have his story to share:
“In 1969 I answered an ad in the Village Voice newspaper. They were looking for a guitar player to work with a Capitol Records recording artist. I had seen Bert around because he wrote a few tunes for the ‘Vagrants’; Leslie West’s band before ‘Mountain’. Leslie and I were friends, played guitar together and hung out back then. Bert met with us (my wife Maxine & I) before he had to go play ‘Woof’ in “HAIR”. We both took our guitars out and started to tune down to open ‘D’ at the exact same time. That was a magic moment because not many guitar players were using an open D tuning at that time. We then played ‘Jennifer’ from his first album. Little did I know that our very first gig would be at the Woodstock Festival and we’d open with that song!”
“We arrived in upstate New York on Thursday and hung out until Friday when we had to get to the festival site. The caravan of cars that we were in got caught in the traffic gridlock so we had to wait in a big field for a helicopter to fly us over the hill to the stage area. Can you imagine waiting in a field with (among others) the Maharishi, Tim Hardin, & Bert ~ not too surreal. None of us realized the scope of this event until the chopper cleared the hillside. Then we were in awe! All we saw were hundreds of thousands of undulating colors. So many people. It was a sight that I will never forget!”
“We went on stage and played a full 10 song set. The eighth song into the set, we did that cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘America’ and got the only standing ovation of the Festival. Looking into Bert’s eyes and hearing the roar of that huge audience… WOW! We finished our set and were totally blown away. All of us were unaware at that time what this concert would later become!” The spirit of a generation… The Woodstock Generation!”
And regarding wife Max’s role at Woodstock: Maxine was on stage with us but did not sing. She wrote some of the guitar and Hammond parts that I played and was always helping us at the many rehearsals at the the studio and Bert’s apartment! She and I were helicoptered in together after waiting in the field with Tim Hardin, Bert and the Swami!”
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Other paths
Ira Stone
Stone continued working with Sommer. One of Stone’s most vivid memories is opening for Poco at Carnegie Hall on February 12, 1971. He traveled to India for a couple of years performing and writing songs while living in there as well as Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In 1982, Stone, his wife Maxine, and other formed Max. It stayed together until 1985 after which Ira and Maxine performed together. “We were still playing in many different incarnations. We did some solo gigs, just me and Maxine between 1985 and 1989.“
Woodstock Performer Ira Stone
Stoneband
Since 1995 he, Maxine and others formed and continue to play as Stoneband.
Most of this information was gotten from Ira’s site. The site has lots of pictures, especially of his gear.
Also, if you’re looking to listen to Ira’s Stone Band, check out…
Guitarist Miller Anderson speaks about Keef Hartley Band’s Woodstock experience
The Beatles were not at Woodstock, but a few of their songs were sung, most notably Joe Cocker‘s “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The Beatles were not at Woodstock, but the drummer who replaced Ringo Starr when he joined the Beatles was.
The threads of rock’s tapestry are trivial taken singly, but together tell the story. We all know that when Pete Best was let go, Ringo replaced him. Ringo had been in Rory Storm and the Hurricanes at the time. Keef Hartley replaced Ringo.
Keith Hartley was born in Preston, England andsaid that because he had small hands, found the drums an easier instrument to learn than guitars.
He said to Spencer Leigh in an Independent interview: “I have very short hands and I couldn’t manage the guitar neck so the drums were for me. My biggest influences were Tony Meehan, Sandy Nelson and the guy who did that wonderful drumming on the Ventures’ ‘Walk – Don’t Run’.”
The first band he was in was the Heartbeats (who opened for the Beatles once) and in 1963 joined the aforementioned Rory Storm, but he soon replaced that band by joining Freddie Starr and the Midnighters.
Drummer Keef Hartley
More bands
He joined the Artwoods with Art Wood (brother of Ronnie) before leaving them and joining John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers. Among the Bluebreakers during Hartley’s stint with them was Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Peter Green, and Harvey Mandel who later played at Woodstock with Canned heat.
Before Hartley left Mayall, the friendly two recorded “Hartley Quits” with the Bluesbreakers.
Drummer Keef Hartley
Keef Hartley Band
Keef formed his own band in 1968. True to their humorous relationship the first track on the band’s premiere album, Halfbreed, is called “Hearts and Flowers” in which there is a tongue-in-cheek phone call in which Mayall fires Hartley.
Hartley “returned the favor” in another song.
The All Music review describes the album as “some of the best ever late-60s jazz-influenced blues, and the album remains an undiscovered classic.”
Drummer Keef Hartley
Hard and brassy set
Invited to Woodstock, Rolling Stone magazine described the band’s performance there as “a hard and brassy set.” They came on after John Sebastian unscheduled appearance on Saturday.
Halfbreed Medley: Sinnin’ For You (Intro) > Leaving Trunk > Just to Cry > Sinnin’ for You
In a 1994 interview Hartley said of Woodstock, “They were hiring some incredible names but they had a fixed budget to stick to so they needed some lesser known names as well. I can’t remember what we were paid now but it was two or three thousand dollars and I got the lion’s share!”
Drummer Keef Hartley
Five band albums
The band released five albums between 1969 and 1972. Hartley released one solo album and two other albums as part of Little Big Band and Dog Soldier. (Wikipedia discography)
Drummer Keef Hartley
Out of music
Eventually the band dissolved, particularly after Miller Anderson, who had been the band’s mainstay composer as well, left.
In the early 90s Hartley left music and took up work as a joiner, working as one part of Hunter Hartley of Preston, England.
Keef Hartley is one of those “unknown” Woodstock performers. Not on the triple album. Not in the movie. No Woodstock push, but the quality of the music that Hartley, his own bands, and the bands he was simply a member of remains undiminished.
He died on November 11, 2011.
On his death, John Mayall said: “When I think back to all the adventures we had over the years, both on and off the road, it seems hardly possible that my friend of so many years will not be showing up to sit in with any of my bands in the future. His sense of fun and love of life will always remain in my thoughts as special memories.” (>>> British Blues archive site)
