Bert Sommer at Woodstock!
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It was around 8:00pm and just before sunset on day one, Friday August 15th, when the chance of a lifetime came for Bert. The rain hadn't started to mist on the crowd yet. The mood was still mellow and the timing was perfect. Woodstock's producer Artie Kornfeld couldn't even watch his young 20 year old star set up he was so nervous... this was too personal for him. He had signed & directed Bert's musical career almost from the very beginning and finally Bert was getting his first real taste of major concert exposure in front of close to a half a million people!
'Jennifer' was on "The Road to Travel" released on Capitol Records which had been out a few months and they were in the studio recording his second album on Artie's new indie record label Eleuthera Records called "Inside Bert Sommer". The choice of songs to perform at Woodstock was difficult to say the least. Artie wanted some new material that would capture the attention of the Woodstock feeling.
Bert showing Artie his new song 'We're All Playing In The Same Band' written at and about Woodstock!Bert was thinking of opening with something off the first album called 'Jennifer' ~ a song about love & emotional attachment. This was the 'fantasy song' he had written about Jennifer Warnes who was in the LA cast of "HAIR" with him and who also appeared as a regular on The Smothers Brothers hit TV show. Not that I had anything to do with his choice of songs; but I had just completed an album cover for Jennifer on London Records (Parrot Label) and used Bert's song lyrics about her on the back cover of that new release.
Bert could have done any songs he wanted and for as long as he wanted... he had put together an incredible hour long set with studio musician Ira Stone on electric guitars, Hammond organ and harmonica. Charlie Bilello is on bass in this performance that has been 'lost' for over 35 years. Despite many inaccurate printed reports and song set lists that have Bert only performing 'Jennifer' & 'America' at Woodstock ~ the actual 10 song set sequence was: Jennifer / The Road To Travel / I Wondered Where You'd Be / She's Gone / Things Are Going My Way / And When It's Over / Jeanette / America / A Note That Read / and Smile.
Bert & Ira Stone at Woodstock from a photo by Jim MarshallThe Pennebaker film clip of Bert doing Jennifer from "Woodstock Diaries" isn't all that exists no matter what rumors you might have heard. I have seen some of the rejected Michael Wadleigh cut filmed versions of Bert, but it was all close-up and fixed camera footage of just his head from an unmanned camera. Seems statements that the progression into darkness during his set, and with the camera film settings for daylight lost anything remotely called a performance isn't quite true. Supposedly this was why Bert was left out of the movie, but recently we have heard directly from Michael Wadleigh that Bert's whole pristine performance actually EXISTS today in the Warner Brother's vaults; but unreleased due to record company politics. Since Bert was on a different major record label ...Warners did not really want to promote his and other's 'lost' performance business.
Thanks to Andy Zax the soon to be released 40th anniversary Woodstock audio CD box set from Rhino Entertainment will have 3 new unreleased songs by Bert. (Jennifer, And When It's Over and Smile.) All will be live from the direct feed PA system at Woodstock. This is stuff nobody has ever heard! Zax calls Bert's Woodstock performance "the absolute highlight of the first day".
http://www.rhino.com/woodstock/
British filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker (and his crew) were there pushing to get co-producer Mike Lang to sign & approve them as the official Woodstock filmmakers; but Artie just two days before the festival began, finally signed the deal with Warner Brothers in NYC for mainstream distribution with Michael Wadleigh (and his partner Bob Maurice) through their company called Paradigm Films. Seems distribution was something that Pennebaker couldn't provide ~ but Mike Lang hired him anyway to get whatever coverage he could as a backup. Wadleigh had an entire large crew of cameramen, but couldn't get enough raw film stock from Eastman Kodak on such short notice to document every single moment. What is nice about the 'Woodstock Diaries' video version is the crowd shots, different distances & angles...
The Backstage Couch...
Bert Sommer withTom Feher (The Left Banke), Peter Sabatino (The Vagrants)
and Joan Padney (The ultimate hippie chick).The Band...
Ira Stone was Bert's lead guitar player at Woodstock '69: pictured here in 2007Ira Stone, gives us the whole inside Woodstock story: "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!
Bert (barefoot) with Ira & Maxine Stone waiting onstage at Woodstock ©1969 Life magazineIra remembers how they had sitting on the stage with them two small battery powered Sony TC-55 cassette recorders with built-in microphones that captured the magic of the experience. This less than perfect recording technique has now become the lost treasure of their whole Woodstock performance! We are placing the song 'America' here in honor of Bert's memory and what would have been the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival.
Ira Stone's signed Woodstock electric guitar sits on my wall and is also signed by Artie Kornfeld
Bert got that only standing ovation at Woodstock after his version of 'America'.
Paul Simon has agreed and states"This was the best cover of my music by any performer".
Years later Bert would joke about his Woodstock performance and tell the people
"Yeah, I got the standing ovation... on their way to the bathrooms!"
Click the>play arrow below to hear the live audio Sony TC-55 version of the song 'America'.
NOTE: For those fans with sharp ears you might pick up on
the spoken words at the end during that standing ovation....
"Dig it Bert ~ Um, I wanted to introduce the rest of the group,
On bass this is Charlie, he came here from Brooklyn ~ The
long hair is Ira... and Ira is operated by Max... ~ Hi Artie".
Artie Kornfeld said of Bert in his first book '30 Years of Peace & Music & Other Things' "Bert's performance fit right in the string of Richie Havens singing 'Freedom' and John Sebastian singing 'Younger Generation' and of course Country Joe McDonald's protesting against the war. Bert Sommer should have been someone accepted on the same level as any of the Superstars that played at Woodstock."
Interesting how this experience so meaningful to Bert and the festival's producers would be left out of Michael Wadleigh's film in its mainstream release. Michael Wadleigh personally has noted that Bert's performance of "America" at Woodstock was one of the highlights of the entire festival! Most have never heard or seen any of Bert's lost Woodstock performance... he jokingly started calling this 'The Woodstock Curse'. Being left out of the recollection of all things Woodstock became the norm. The worst was probably his name being left off the Woodstock Memorial Plaque on the original site of the festival. Bert never lost his sense of humor about himself ~ in a twenty year Woodstock interview he is quoted saying:
"I was involved in the two most famous counterculture events of the 60's... HAIR & Woodstock. That and a token will get you on the New York subway!"
TRIVIA: Performers who appeared at Woodstock, but were not in the final released movie!
The Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Paul Butterfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, Keef Hartley, The Incredible String Band, The Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Melanie, Sweetwater, Leslie West & Mountain, Ravi Shankar, Johnny Winter, and Bert Sommer.
The performance video of "Jennifer" is from Pennebaker's dvd release "Woodstock Diaries".
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