From Visions of Garleyville
They all Sang at Woodstock
The club Bizzare
looked outright ugly in daylight, nothing to disguise the patchwork of cheap
plyboard repairs done to the front over the years. At night, multi-colored
flood lights made the place look hip, with a pschadelic touch Hank found cool.
Just why the owner
had asked him to come back in the morning, bothered him, though the shrinking
crowds for Hank's performances did give him some clue. He pushed through the
door, feeling the same despression he had when fired from his job at the
laundry, his throat dry and scratchy, while his hands sweated.
And the man was
waiting for him near the stage as one of the local bands set up drums and
tested their sound system, the music screeching out with
television-test-pattern annoyance.
Drunk music, Hank
thought. The bastard was importing drunk music like many of the other formerly
folk clubs around the Village.
"So you're
getting rid of me, eh?" Hank asked, before the pudgy man could say
anything.
"It's not
you, Hank," the man said, his nervous gaze saying he was relieved not to
have said it. "It's the times. People are looking for a different kind of
music these days."
"Like
this?" Hank asked, referring to the band on the stage. "Next you'll
be having someone like Led Zepplin in here."
"Too big an
act for me," the fat man said, wiping his brow with a large dirty
handkerchief. "But that's the idea. We tried to get David Peel and his
band, but one of the other clubs already snapped him up."
David Peel?
Hank couldn't
believe that! David Peel had always been the talentless slob singing off key
songs in the park, drawing crowds more for his obsenities than for his talent.
It said something about where taste in music was going when David Peel was
getting popular.
Drunk music.
It didn't take
talent, just appeal to the beer-can mind.
"Why don't
you learn music like that," the fat man was saying. "I'd hire you if
you sang like him."
"I'd rather
cut my throat," Hank said, snatching his pay from the pudgy fingers before
storming back out to the street.
***********
Max found him
sitting in the park, head down, a little stoned, but clearly lost, the way Hank
had been lost in the early days when he had wandered here from New Jersey, a
teeny-bopper, full of strange ideas about hippie life and free love. None of it
panned out except the music, and now even that had faded away, along with the
costumes, dreams, and petty sayings. The Summer of Love might as well never
have happened for what showed in the village these days. Only the junkies and
the drunks seemed to endure, lasting from before the hippie time, vowing to
continue on afterwards.
"So what's
eatting you?" Max asked, sliding down into a seated position beside Hank,
the frisbies flying back and forth between the people like miniature UFOs-- the
saturday crowd thick, though paranoid. The cops had raided the park twice last
week, hawling people in for minor offences. The tension was thick, despite the
illusion created by mimes, jugglers and musicians who made it look almost like
the old days again.
"They let me
go at the club," Hank said. "They said they want more drunk music and
less folk stuff."
Max nodded.
"It's been happening all over," he said. "And there have been
more drunks on the street, too."
The note of fear
in Max's voice made Hank look up.
Max was a young
gay Hank had met taking self-defense classes at Alternate U over on Sixth Ave,
a happy-go-lucky character who sang songs along the street as if it was still
1967, drawing looks of admiration from straight and gay alike.
"Trouble?" Hank asked.
"People
getting beat up," Max s!. "But I appreciate good music no matter who
does it. And I've been in love with Hendrix since Moteray Pop. I saw him last
year at the Filmore when I was tripping. It was like seeing God. What people
David Peel couldn't learn from him!"
"So are you
going to go?" Max asked.
"If it's
really what they say it is," Hank said, rising from the booth to study the
poster more closely. Names like Joni Mitchel and Country Joe were listed, which
gave Hank hope. If they were playing and this thing was popular, it might even
revive folk music in the downtown clubs again. Maybe he could climb up out of a
sewer like the club Bizzare and into a classier joint like "The Club
Who" or "The Bitter End."
"What about
your illness?" Max asked. "This thing is going to be outside, you
know."
"I'll be all
right," Hank said.
He knew the
pattern of his illness and how it always took time creeping up on him, growing
worse gradually. If he was lucky, it wouldn't hit him with any force till he
came back-- then, he could go lean of his mother's sympathies for a few days,
letting her make chicken soup for him. At least he didn't have to worry about
missing any gigs.
But Max still
looked concerned, shaking his head. "I don't like it, Hank," he said.
"This thing is just too damned big already. I know lots of people planning
to go, and if they all do, there's liable to be a riot."
Then, in through
the door came David Peel, a smug little long-haired man with an enterage of
fans, crude gathering that settled in the series of booths just across from
Hank and Max, laughing and obviously stoned.
"Hank
Sterns?" David Peel said, waving some of his followers to silence.
"Is that really you?"
"It's
me," Hank mumbled.
"I heard you
got fired from your gig."
Hank slumped
deeper into his chair. "They let me go," he said. "If that's
what you mean."
"Poor
sucker," Peel said. "But it's your own fault. You just don't keep up
with the times."
"Like you
do?"
"Sure. I give
the audience what it wants to hear."
"Insult and
injury," Hank said, pushing his coffee away and starting to rise. He
didn't want to stay in the same room with the man.
"That's not
nice, Hank," Peel said, grabbing his arm as he tried to slip passed.
"I don't have anything against you personally. Maybe you should try and
get a spot on this thing they're doing upstate. I've been promoting it all
day."
"Promiting
it?" Hank asked. "It doesn't sound like your kind of thing."
"Sure it's my
kind of thing," Peel said. "I'm going to be performing, too. Haven't
you heard?"
Hank felt
something in him sink, and when he was outside again, he leaned against the
side of the building and coughed. His lungs hurt with it, the way they might
have at a later stage in his disease. Maybe he'd been pushing himself too hard
with all the gigs. Maybe this firing from the club was a blessing in disguise.
It just didn't feel like a blessing and the fact that David Peel would be
performing at this upstate concert, only made him wonder about Max's warning--
maybe there would be a riot!
***********
"So what's
wrong with you?" Peggy asked when he got home. She could read his face as
easily as a road map, though didn't always understand where he was or what he
was feeling, just that something was wrong.
"I got fired
from the club," he said, reaching for the humador above the refrigerator
where he stored fresh pot.
"What?"
she said, wiping her hands in her arpon as she slapped his hands away from the
humador. "Don't just go and get stoned on me, I want some straight
answers."
"I told you
everything," he said.
"But
why?"
"Drunk
music," he said interruped by a series of hacking coughs. "They want
drunk music. I told you the crowds were down."
"Damn it,
Hank. Are you sick again?"
"Just the usual
bronchitus," he said. "Do I still have my pills around?"
He was snooping in
the dusty recesses of the cabinet and came up with three bottles left over from
his previous year's bout, prescriptions his mother had obtained for him from
New Jersey when he'd refused to see a doctor.
"The usual
bronchitus nearly killed you last year," Peggy said, taking the bottles
from his hands. "Go get undressed, I'll bring you super in bed."
"Peggy, I'm
not a kid! I should know when I'm ill and when I'm not."
Then, she stopped
and stared into his face again, her gaze working over the odd shape as if
reading some new message there.
"You're up to
something, aren't you?"
He turned his own
gaze away, and moved into the bedroom to search that closet. "You know
where I put my backpack?"
"Backpack?" she howled. "What
on earth do you need a backpack for?"
He had found it,
stuffed in the bottom with the shoes. It was only a little moth-ridden. It
didn't need to be water tight, just solid enough to carry a change of
clothing-- and some lyrics.
"Do you mind
telling me what's going on? Are you so ill you've decided to go home to
mother?"
"I'm not
going home to mother," Hank said.
"But you're
going somewhere?"
"Well, just
for the weekend."
"Where?"
"It's a place
called Woodstock."
It took a moment
for the name to register, but Peggy's eyes opened wide. "You mean you
intend to go to that silly concert everybody's talking about? As sick as you
are?"
"I'm not that
sick yet," Hank protested and dug out an extra pair of jeans from the
bureau.
"So you admit
you're sick."
"Only a
little."
"And yet you
want to go prancing through the woods like some nature freak."
"I'm sure it's
not going to be as bad as all that."
"It's
outside, Hank," Peggy growled. "I'll be bad. They're predicting rain
for the weekend."
"Look,"
he said, turning sharply on her. "I have to go."
"Why?"
"Because
David Peel is going to be playing there, and if he's going, I'm going,
too."
"Oh God,
Hank! Are you going to start that again?"
"Start
what?"
"This
childish competition you have with David Peal. I thought you were over all that
when you got your gig at the club."
"I was over
it-- at least enough not to think about it. But David Peel's the kind of act
the club wants these days, so they can drawn in all those drunken Jersey
idiots."
"So?"
"So if I can
play this gig up there, maybe someone'll rehire me down here."
"And you're
just going to go up there and beg someone to let you on the stage?"
"I know
people, Peggy," Hank said. "If I see someone I know, maybe I can get
a shot!"
"With
bronchitus?"
"I don't have
bronchitus yet!" he said and started to cough again.
"Oh no!
That's just a little tickle in the throat. Get to bed, Hank. You're not going
anywhere near that concert."
"Aren't you
listening to me!" Hank howled. "I have to go!"
"Have to?
Based on the hope you'll meet someone in the crowd who'll let you sing?"
"It's more
than that. It's the others who'll be performing..."
He stopped. He
could read her face, too, and saw the creeping doubt in her eyes.
"Oh? Like
who?"
"Never
mind," Hank said, stuffing his clothing and lyric sheets into the bag.
Peggy grabbed his arm as he tried to move around her.
"Like who,
Hank? Who are you really going to see up there?"
He mumbled a
reply.
"What was
that?"
"Jimi
Hendrix," he said with a cough clearing the phlem from his throat.
"No!"
she said. "You are not going to repeat that New Years Eve thing of
yours."
"Peggy!
Please! I'm not going to take any acid."
"That's what
you say down here, but I know you, Hank, and I know what Jimi Hendrix does to
you."
"I promise,
no acid," Hank said, and he meant it. But he always meant it and always
found a way to break his promise. Yet, with the cough and the potential for a
gig, he wouldn't trip. He'd never been able to sing on LSD and couldn't chance
a good performance this time. It was not a pleasure trip, and maybe Peggy read
this in his eyes. She let him go with a sigh.
"All
right," she said. "Do what you want. But if you wind up in the
hospital, I won't visit you. I can't take watching you go out of your
mind."
"I won't take
any acid, Peggy."
***********
The Renasance
switch board was packed. There was no Abbie Hoffman, but plenty of other people
Hank knew from kicking around the Village, a whole parade of Village elders who
seemed to sense the importance of the event, as if there was indeed something
magical about to happen, and they didn't want to miss it.
Cars and vans and
rented buses pulled up out front, loading with all the effeciency of Grand
Central Station, the chatter revealing more and more specifics about who and
what was going to happen up there. People were quoting numbers as high as
seventy thousand, and bands like The Who, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane,
and the recently constructed Crosby, Stills & Nash.
But there was
fighting, too-- thugs pushing and shoving their way to the front of the line.
"Hey!" someone
yelled. "Why don't you wait your turn?"
"And why
don't you drop dead," one of the thugs said, eyeing the crowd to see just
who had spoken.
Hank didn't know
any of them, but knew their kind, having seen them invading the village, the
drunken and drugged new breed hippie who didn't care about anything but the
thrills, wearing motory cycle books and headbands, as much a model of the old
Aliens and Pagan biker gangs, than the love and peace hippies.
And no one stood
up to them either, letting them shove their way onto the bus, ahead of people
who'd camped a large part of the night for a seat.
Somewhere a tape
player ranted out with a cut from David Peal's one and only record album. Up
against the wall, motherfucker, the talentless voice sang to the beat of
drums, guitars, and tamborines. Up against the wall!
Hank wanted to say
something, but there was a general acceptance, drunk people and love people, as
if all had come to accept the change as inevitable, and David Peal as an
village insitutition. He sat in the corner of the room, waiting for his turn,
trying to phase out the voice. And even when the tape ended, it was replaced by
another tape and another vulgar drunk-music band, Led Zepplin or Deep Purple,
neither of whom could remotely compete with Hendrix, or the era of talented
musical beings who had preceded them. It was if people had given up expecting
anything good of music and accepted what was handed them. When Hendrix came on,
many of the same people hummed to him, too, as if they couldn't tell the
difference between them and the less talented bands played previously.
The only relief
from it was his own hacking cough, which seemed now to take on a musical life
of its own, chanting in his chest as if to the beat of a drum. He fiddled in
his bag for one of the bottles of pills and stuffed a few down his throat. But
he was so discombobulated by then, that he wasn't sure which pills he was
taking or for what.
***********
Someone kicked at
his boots and he opened his eyes. He must have fallen asleep, for the room was
darker and less full, and the buses and vans and cars had disappeared from the
curb. Only a few hangers-on stood waiting on the sidewalk, and a tall hippie
with straw-like hair and thick round glasses was looking down on him.
"You want a
ride?" he asked, indicating the VW van parked across the street.
"I'd
appreciate it," Hank said, rising, his limbs stiff, as if he hadn't moved
in days. It was part of the illness, too, and for the first time, he truly
understood just how far along it had come-- too far, too quickly, but he wasn't
going to let that stop him. The medicine would kick in, and he would take more
once he got settled at the concert.
"No one
should miss this," the man said saying, waving the few remaining freaks
in, too.
Hank got the front
seat next to the man, the others, maybe figuring he was too sick to sit on the
floor, though Hank craved to lay out and sleep some more.
"You can tune
in the radio if you like," the man said as he started the van towards FDR
drive, then north.
WABC-FM was
playing rock, not David Peal, and the DJs were hot over the subject of the
concert, saying it would be the biggest event in the history of music, and
their list of bands had increased in number and reputation. And to each name,
they played a tune, and the tunes filled his head and lungs with hope again.
Maybe there was a
chance the times wouldn't change, that they could fight back the future for a
while, keeping drunks and their music from inheriting the earth.
It was a nice
thought. But not a real one. Maybe Hank had known about the change long before
it had happened, when most of his own friends had started vanishing from the
streets, moving west to communes or back to the homes from which they had run
away, seeking refuge against the coming of a new age, a selfish age, an age in
which things like love and peace were mocked in favor of the greed and
self-indulgence of which their parents had been guilty.
Hank had run away
from his father's indulgences, and shuddered to think he might turn out the
same way someday, drinking scotch and smoking cigarettes which waxing his
cadilac.
He popped a few
more pills from his magic bottles and accepted a joint gratefully from the
straw-haired man, part of the hippie communion which had once meant so much to
him. Arlo Guthie came on the radio, followed by Richi Havens. He sang their
songs of hope, and the ones which followed, drawing looks from the others in
the van, getting them to sing, too-- the way hippies used to do before the
likes of David Peal or Led Zepplin. It felt good to hear them, though his own
voice struggled out of a rapidly declining throat.
It didn't rain
much down-state, but the Djs talking about heavy rain up at the sight, yet the
dribble of wet on the windshield despressed Hank, making him wonder if his
coming had been such a good idea. Maybe he should have listened to Peggy and
stayed home. But it wasn't until later when his eyes were jolted open and the
van came to a stop, and the highway before them was a-wash in cars, parked side
to side across the throughway.
"What's going
on?" someone in back asked.
"It looks
like we walk from here," the straw-haired hippie said.
It was a parking
lot, with thousands of people marching along the sides of the road towards the
festival. Not just hippies or love people, but all sorts of people, dressed in
all sorts of ways, waving, drinking, laughing, cursing.
Half of it was
Hank. He could barely stand as he slipped out of the van. He felt as drunk or
drugged as those he saw around him. It was muddy, too, and raining, though not
the downpour now of which the Djs had been warning, just a steady drizzle
dripping down the back of his neck, adding to the chill of his skin.
It was too late to
go anywhere but foward and he stumbled behind the others as they moved on, like
a lost child clinging to the skirts of the first adult remotely resembling his
mother, coughing and feeling his head swell with the first stages of a serious
fever. His clothing was soaked through now, but he was afraid to stop and
change; he didn't want to lose sight of the straw-haired hippie, though as they
walked, it became more and more difficult. Around him, people were gathering,
coming together in ways the Beatles never envisioned, shoulder to shoulder,
breast to breast-- so many people Hank began to believe one or two of the pills
he'd taken had been LSD by mistake. This many people couldn't have come for
just a concert, and yet, they swelled as they walked, filling the dips of the
land like bobbing corks on a sea. He could see nothing of the mud now, only
people spread upon it, over each swell, into each dip, tents and sleeping bags,
blankets and coats, children running naked in the rain, adults making love like
squirming creatures of earth in the mud.
A halucination!
There could be no
other explanation. And yet, he didn't feel like a trip, or like none he'd ever
experienced before, stumbling on, over the limbs and torsos of his fellow man.
But long before
the reached the concert grounds, people had stopped, setting up little camps on
the path, drunken, raging, laughing insane people, flipping peace signs like
they were buttering toast, tape players raging with Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd,
drunk and mindless music made for drunk and mindless beings-- the next generation
stealing the soul of the last, trading prayers for love & peace for screams
of revolution.
None of it
reflected the sounds the radio said they would shortly be hearing inside, as if
it didn't matter in the least, as long as they could show proof and conection
to the past, like dirty little barefoot children walking towards a mansion with
a verifiable copy of the love-generation's last will and testament.
"See! We are
too legitimate! We belong here, too!"
"Are you all
right?" the straw man asked.
"Yeah,"
Hank said, waving him away like flies from his face. "I'm fine!
Really."
And they walked
on, and after a time, the straw man wasn't there any more, or was lost in the
lines of marching people, hippie-looking people who's faces and clothes were
covered with mud, each saying they had spent the previous night induring the
rain, thinking maybe nothing would come of it, that the bands would cancel or
the police would haul them all off to upstate jails, keeping them from hearing
anything but the click of keys.
Just exactly when
he arrived at the staging area, he didn't know. It was hard to know anything
for the haze he was in, and for the seas of people which now filled every
square inch of space. He couldn't walk without bumping into or stepping on his
fellow man. Faces popped up in front of him, smiling and waving, handing him
joints to suck on, or pills to take. He sucked on the joints, but waved off the
pills, Peggy's warning echoing in the back of his head. Besides, he had his own
pills, miracle pills that would ease the pain in his chest and cease the
hacking cough.
If only everything
didn't seem to far away-- as if a gap in reality existed between his fingers
and anything he wished to touch. It was the fever, of course, creating echoes
of every sound, as if he was indeed tripping out.
Then, there was an
open space big enough for him to lie down in. He dropped his back-pack and fell
next to it, drawing a thin blanket out. The drizzle swarmed around his face,
dripping from his hair. He rolled himself in the blanket and stretched out in
the mud, closing his eyes, waiting for the music to begin.
How long he slept,
he didn't know. But it was dark and there were fires lit around him, glittering
jewels in the night over which food was being cooks and pot smoked, or insense
offered to the gods of music. He didn't open his eyes. He wasn't sure he could.
They seemed so heavy and he seemed so tired, despite his sleep, and cold,
despite the blanket. He reached for the back again, dragging the sweater out of
it, pushing it over his chest like a second blanket.
It was then, he
hear the music. Not Jimi Hendrix. Not Sha Na Na. Not Joni Mitchel. But David
Peal.
His eyes popped
open and saw the performer a few feet away from him, the whole band of
stringed, music-abusers sitting in the mud in the midst of the crowd, sending
out a howl of indeceny-- which should not have been in this place any more than
those silly drunk bands along the path-- some violation of feeling Hank could
not describe.
He tried to raise
his voice against it, but couldn't get the words out through his swollen
throat. But others around him shouted, too, telling Peal to shut his trap or
they would break his instruments, telling the man to sit and listen to what
real music sounded like-- and indeed, the strands of something finer began to
rise from the distant stages, aplified by speakers propped on poles at various
points in the field of people.
"Hush!"
the people said to Peal, and he hushed, though not without curses, picking up
his abused instruments and moving on, to find some other place where they might
play, where they might be chased again, and again, on into eternity, for to
Hank, there was no end to this crowd now, nor an end to the music beginning to
rise up over them.
When it came,
there was no mistaking it, though he couldn't shake the internal echoes which
gave it an added psycadelic quality, it talked of the past and the present, it
hinted of the future, though the future was not in it. Even ill, even with his
head full of reverberations he knew this
was the end of something not the begining, not the woodstock nation which
people talked about around him-- but the sad fairwell to the Summer of Love and
the people who were growing up from it, already a little too experienced to
ever have the same sense of hope again, or thoughts of kindness, or dreams of
new worlds. This was the new world. It was muddy and stained and full of
half-crazy, half naked people, all swaying together for the very last time, all
of them moving on from this place to some new, unimagined future that would
never see them together again, that would never hold as special a place in
their hearts at this.
And in the midst
of all that music and all those swaying people, Hank cried.
And people hugged
and kissed him and passed him yet more dope, misunderstanding the reason for
his tears, thinking it was an over indulgence of joy seeping out of him, adding
to the thick mud at his feet. He tried to tell them, but they didn't
understand, couldn't quite see beyond the wall of music which kept the future
dark.
It was all totally
now.
For them there was
no past or furture, only this moment stretched out like the crowds into
eternity.
And for some
reason, maybe the illness or his own angry position as a washed-up folky from
the West Village, Hank could peirce that curtain of words and music and see the
logical death of his generation.
And he cried.
And between the
tears he coughed, till hands took him up and led him away, pushing him into the
medical tent, saying there's something wrong with him, maybe he's freaking out,
but he doesn't sound good, and the doctors, frowning, listening to his chest,
asking him to cough or breath or sneeze or vomit-- he didn't know. He couldn't
stop crying.
Even as they led
him towards the medical evauation helicopter, he couldn't stop his tears,
crying out one last time as the rotors started and blades swished and he rose
from the ground, crying out only once, wish to hear Hendrix again.
He never did.