Woodstock – some went and some missed it


To celebrate the Woodstock festival anniversary, here is a wonderful quote from Muff Winwood, ex the Spencer Davis Group bass player and brother of Stevie who was by now working for Island Records. This quote is from the RockHistory book: ‘Inside Looking Out’ book

While I was still at Island, I was taking Joe Cocker across America and we were doing… we were doing really well with Joe. He’s done ‘A Little Help From My Friends’which was a Beatles cover and that’s why Musician the Americans loved it. But he was a bizarre act and they loved that, too. And we were doing fantastic business all over America and I was taking him over there, looking after him, and we were on the road with the band. It was my birthday, so it was in June, and the manager of Traffic and Joe Cocker threw a birthday party for me in Manhattan when we were in town. And somebody in this birthday party absolutely slammed me with LSD and I was in a serious bad way. I always remember the drummer of Joe Cocker walking me through New York all night long, all night long. I was in a complete… and it didn’t really go away very much the next couple of days and I felt really bad. Oh, they’d taken me to a doctor and they’d poured all kinds of downers down me and stuff and I’d gotta go to this, with Joe, this whacky rock festival up in Woodstock which was some new festival they were having. And in town and at the party was John Glover and John Glover was our ex-road manager of Spencer Davis Group who had since become the road manager of Traffic for Chris Blackwell, so was working for Island Records. He had come over with Spooky Tooth who we were trying to break in America and I said to him: I feel sick. He was going home, he’d finished his tour and they were going home the next day and I said to him: Oh God I feel so bad. I said: I’ve just had it. I’ve just gotta go home. And I said: I’ve gotta go up to this place, Woodstock. And he said: Look. He said: I’ll tell you what. He said: If you like, you take Spooky Tooth home right and I’ll take Joe up to this thing in Woodstock. Of course, he went to Woodstock and I missed it. The amazing story of Woodstock. There you go, how these things how, see just how a little thing in the day changes and there you go; and he got the history of Woodstock and I completely missed it. I was on the flight home.