Bert Sommer at Woodstock!
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It was 8:20pm 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!
"The Road to Travel" on Capitol Records had been out a few months and they were in the studio recording his second album on Artie's new 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 had just recorded a cover of Simon & Garfunkle's "America" for the second album that was better than the original; Paul Simon has agreed and states "this was the best cover of my music by any performer". Bert got an incredible standing ovation after his version of 'America'. Years later Bert would joke about his Woodstock performance and tell people "Yeah, I got a standing ovation... on their way to the bathrooms!"
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 to illustrate 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.
The Pennebaker film of Bert doing Jennifer from "Woodstock Diaries" is all that exists no matter what rumors you have heard. I have even seen the Michael Wadleigh cut filmed version of Bert and it's all a close-up, fixed camera footage of just Bert's head from an unmanned camera (actually quite terrible). Seems that the progression into darkness during his set, and with the camera film settings for daylight lost anything remotely called a performance that could have been used. Supposedly this is why Wadleigh left Bert out of his movie; the results were so bad that they actually stopped filming after Jennifer to change camera settings & film losing even the direct audio feed of the rest of Bert's set. So now that I've seen both versions of Bert's filming ~ I am absolutely sure there is no other 'complete set' filmed on that day of his performance.
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. 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 moment; so at the beginning they just flew in with what little they had and couldn't do a very complete job filming (just select moments). The rain that night also screwed up filming the performers and little real good footage from that first full night appears in the mainstream Woodstock release.
"The Backstage Couch" with Bert Sommer, Tom Feher, Peter Sabatino & Joan PadneyWhat you are hearing is the direct audio feed* that sound engineers Gary Kellgren & Eddie Kramer recorded for the Wadleigh official version of 'Jennifer' and Bert's song on that audio tape is a bit longer than Pennebaker's filmed version in Woodstock Diaries. Seems D.A. cut out some of Ira Stone's guitar solo in his editing of 'Jennifer'. What is nice about the 'Woodstock Diaries' video version is the crowd shots, different distances & angles ...rent it if you can find it; but remember it is only one song of 10 Bert did at Woodstock.
The song "Jennifer" is now back on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwNjiIXsE9Q
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 first 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 today (2-7-05) in honor of Bert's memory and what would have been the celebration of his 56th birthday. To be enjoyed by the fans ~ but not to be downloaded, copied or distributed.
Click the>play arrow below to hear this live version of the song 'America' only after 'Jennifer' finishes playing.
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 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! 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 original Woodstock Memorial Plaque on the site of the festival (now corrected). 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 NY 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, Leslie West & Mountain, Ravi Shankar, Johnny Winter, and Bert Sommer.
*This live audio version of Bert's song 'Jennifer' actually came from Michael Wadleigh's audio cuts
and the 2 color performance pictures from Pennebaker's dvd release called "Woodstock Diaries".
The Curse: Even Pennebaker's movie misspelled his last name and credited him as Bert Sommers
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