A face in the crowd at Woodstock reflects on 40 years later

When Don Fraser saw Santana on TV recently, he laughed and thought to himself, “That guy was at Woodstock!”

It was a simple sentiment that spoke not only to the longevity of the leader of the Latin rock band, but also the enduring legacy of those 3½ days on Max Yasgur’s farm 40 years ago.

Fraser, a 56-year-old resident of Richmond, was one of the 400,000-plus who witnessed what became a touchstone in music history.

A native of Manhasset on New York’s Long Island, Fraser was camping with friends in upstate New York the weekend of Aug. 15, 1969, when they decided on a whim to head toward the festival site in Bethel, N.Y.

“Little did we know we would be part of a musical celebration that would define our generation. It still amazes me that some of those performers are still around today producing some great music,” he said.

Little did Fraser also know that he would be immortalized in a random photo from the event, which is plastered on the back cover of the original “Woodstock” soundtrack album.

A framed copy now hangs in his living room.

Career changer

Of the 33 acts who participated in Woodstock, some, such as Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joe Cocker and Jimi Hendrix, watched their careers inflate as a result of that single performance.

Others — Bert Sommer, Quill, Sweetwater among them — fizzled into obscurity, remembered only for their attachment to the music festival.

Andy Zax, a California music historian and archivist who co-produced the upcoming box set, “Woodstock — 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur’s Farm,” believes the music of Woodstock is its own time capsule.

“That place and time don’t exist anymore. It was a climate of music that doesn’t exist anymore. But that doesn’t mean the music itself isn’t relevant or vital or instrumental,” Zax said. “If you look at the roster of artists who played, a great many of them we still care about. I think as many people as ever are interested in Hendrix or The (Grateful) Dead . . . and, there are certainly people who played Woodstock whose work hasn’t held up as well.”

Zax attributes public perception and, in some cases, the actual post-festival success of some performers, to their placement — or absence — in Michael Wadleigh’s seminal 1970 documentary, “Woodstock.”

“When Michael edited his documentary, he really wrote the history of Woodstock. You can see the effect the movie had if you look at careers before and after Woodstock,” Zax said. “Melanie, and to a certain extent, Richie Havens and even Sha Na Na, all received massive career boosts. But by leaving Burt Sommer and Quill out of the movie, they kind of got written out of history, too . . . And Hendrix played to almost nobody — maybe 15,000 to 20,000 tops. If you think about it, 20 times more people saw Quill (live) than saw Hendrix. But because of Hendrix’s place in the movie, millions saw that performance.”

The “Back to Yasgur’s Farm” set is the first time all of the performances (except, because of legal wranglings, those from Ten Years After, The Band and the Keef Hartley Band) are being presented in order.

It’s also the first time the Grateful Dead has allowed an official release of its performance of “Dark Star.”

And, to maintain authenticity, the collection includes stage announcements from emcees John Morris and Chip Monck, whose advice to stay away from the brown acid and directions to “those of you who have partaken of the green acid” are legendary.

Beer, and PB and J

The stage proclamations from Monck are Steve Alley’s most vivid memories of Woodstock weekend.

“You just heard him all the time — telling us what was going on, about not taking the green acid, about the storms moving in. You just heard his voice constantly,” said the 59-year-old Chesterfield County resident.

Alley and two high school buddies traveled from Wyomissing, Pa., to the festival.

“We had heard about it in June of that summer. I remember seeing a poster with a bird perched on a guitar and reading something about three days of music and peace and we said, ‘We’re going to that.’”

Alley and his friends missed the first night of performances, which included Richie Havens and Joan Baez, because they were stuck in a wall of traffic that prevented who knows how many thousands more fans from entering the site.

“It took us six hours to go 12 miles. We were determined to bring our car in, and there were something like five or six makeshift lanes. We just sat there drinking some beer and talking to people,” Alley said. “Everybody got along so well. We saw people who didn’t have food, and others throwing them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was memorable that people could get together in adverse circumstances and work together.”

Little piece of history

Bob Tarren and four friends in New Haven, Conn., rented a U-Haul for the drive to Bethel but hadn’t planned on food being an issue once they arrived at Woodstock.

“We had no idea that we had no idea,” Tarren, a 57-year-old Midlothian, Va., resident, recalled with a chuckle. “There was a guy near us who was a little older from Babylon, N.Y., and he asked us to call him Babylon. So we did. He had hot dogs, and for three days, we traded him beer for hot dogs.”

Tarren, who makes a fleeting appearance in the “Woodstock” documentary — you might see him stepping over the fence in a cutaway scene during John Sebastian’s set — is an avid music fan who remembers being “blown away” by Ten Years After’s performance and discovering Crosby, Stills and Nash, whom he still adores today.

While Tarren happily shares his Woodstock memories with his 19-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son, making sure to point out Grace Slick’s tremendous rock voice when showing them the “Woodstock” film, he’s also cognizant of the festival’s place in history.

“You couldn’t do Woodstock a year later. It might not have worked so well five years before. It was one of those moments when a certain audience felt like there was much more going on than just the music. Nowadays, it would just be a concert,” Tarren said.

“The stuff that was going on in society and with people of that age group, it was very unique and I carried a lot of that forward. A little piece of that still floats around inside me.”