The 20 Most Iconic Sets at the Legendary 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Music

Featuring Jimi Hendrix, The Who and more.

General view of the crowd and stage during the Woodstock Rock Festival circa August 1969 on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York.

Howard Arnold Collection/Getty Images

When we think about the first Woodstock Music and Art Fair we think about the hippies. The mud. The brown acid. The helicopters. The chaos that became a utopia and a definitive statement for the ideals of the 60s counterculture.

And, oh yeah, the music.

The artists — three days of ’em — were, of course, the primary draw to the festival, and Woodstock boasted a lineup of formidable names, some of which were already historic, others that were on their way there and some who would use the festival to launch their careers. “We wanted the biggest and the best, and we worked hard to get them,” the late Woodstock producer Michael Lang told us in 2009, while preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary. He acknowledged that it took a minute for the festival to be viewed seriously by booking agents and managers, but once Creedence Clearwater Revival signed on, interest was stoked and the gets became easier.

Thirty-three bands played in total, and there was even an impressive list of could’ve-beens: Lang made a run at the Beatles, for instance, but could only get John Lennon to offer a basically non-existent Plastic Ono Band, which wound up making its debut a month later at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival. Bob Dylan was invited but never showed. The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, The Doors, The Moody Blues, The Guess Who, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Love were among acts that turned down offers. The Jeff Beck Group canceled its slated performance after breaking up shortly before it. Iron Butterfly attempted to change the day it would perform at the last minute and never made it to the site.

But nobody at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, N.Y. was complaining about what they did get to hear.

“I guess by Saturday, when everybody had arrived or everybody who was gonna get there arrived, we knew that this was gonna be a historic moment,” Lang said. “Nobody ever thought about or how it would resonate, but we knew that this was extraordinary. I knew that we were all freaks and there were many of us out there and we were disbursed around the country and around the world really, so it was like a gathering of the tribes if you will.”

Through the Academy Award-winning 1970 documentary and an array of music releases — both individual titles and multi-disc compilations, including the Woodstock Back to the Garden — 50th Anniversary Experience in 2019 — we’ve come to know their sets well, which has kept a little whiff of The Garden fresh during the ensuing decades. They demonstrate that even amidst turbulent conditions, there were amazing — and also, again, historic — performances all the way through the extra, unplanned Monday morning.

With Woodstock turning 55 on Aug. 15, these are our picks for the 20 most iconic sets on that fateful weekend…

John Sebastian

Saturday’s second surprise act after Country Joe McDonald, Sebastian was fresh out of the Lovin’ Spoonful and working toward his first solo album, from which he previewed three tracks, along with two Spoonful favorites.

Arlo Guthrie

He told the crowd he was “freaked out” by its size, but Woody’s boy was in fine form nevertheless, covering Bob Dylan (“Walkin’ Down the Line”) — but unfortunately without enough time to play his signature epic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” for what surely would have been an appreciative crowd.

Blood, Sweat & Tears

The brass-rock group’s big lineup change from 1968 (swapping lead vocalists from Al Kooper to David Clayton-Thomas) was still reverberating, but a hit album and singles such as “Spinning Wheel” mitigated any of the turmoil — as did a strong performance that included a Joe Cocker cover (“Something’s Coming On”), nearly 12 hours after Cocker performed the original himself.

Melanie

The New York singer-songwriter wasn’t on the festival bill; she just showed up and was slotted in to Friday’s acoustic-flavored lineup around the time of the rainstorm. It was quick-hit — just 25 minutes at 1:00 a.m. — but the crowd loved her. The experience inspired her first Top 10 hit, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” and her first gold album, Candles in the Rain.

Johnny Winter

Ten Years After wasn’t the only blues-rock favorite to light up Sunday’s portion of the show. Winter ripped through a hot midnight set comprised of mostly covers, with younger brother Edgar Winter joining the group for three of its nine songs.

The Band

Booked because it, along with Dylan, defined the laid-back, rustic ethos of the actual Woodstock (where the group resided), there were high expectations for The Band’s Sunday night set after Ten Years After, and a lingering sense of disappointment that it ultimately wasn’t all that. A listen to the performance — including the full show on the 50th anniversary edition of The Band’s classic self-titled LP — says otherwise, however. The group members have acknowledged some wear and tear while waiting for its start time, but it still played songs from its first two albums with an unassuming (but crowd-pleasing) confidence.

Canned Heat

With four albums already out (the latest, Hallelujah, arrived just a few weeks before the festival) the Los Angeles blues ‘n’ boogie troupe regaled the faithful with a set of lengthy jams, including the for-the-occasion “Woodstock Boogie” and a cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Rollin’ Blues.” Its “Going Up the Country,” meanwhile, became the subsequent film’s kick-off song.

Joan Baez

Image Credit: Fotos International/Getty Images

Already an icon of the folk and protest movements that were so much a part of the Woodstock spirit, Baez — six months pregnant with son Gabriel — closed the first night in the wee hours of Saturday morning, with a 13-song set that covered Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger and The Rolling Stones. Baez warmed up by performing, unannounced, on the festival’s free stage after the Friday night rainstorm.

Mountain

Talk about a set-up; the quartet had established local notoriety, but its debut album wouldn’t be Climbing! for another seven months. Nonetheless, Leslie West staked a claim as one of the best guitarists in Woodstock’s august ranks, raising Mountain’s stock exponentially — although to his dying day, he complained about Janis Joplin scarfing up the last bagel backstage.

Ten Years After

Though “Going Home” is what lives on in split-screen glory in the film, the British blues-rock troupe played five other songs during an eclectic hour on stage, showing its ensemble strength beyond Alvin Lee’s lightning-fingered guitar heroics.

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Image Credit: Tucker Ranson/Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images

In the midst of a hit-filled three-album run, CCR was able to load its set up with favorites such as “Proud Mary,” “Bad Moon Rising” and “Green River.” “Keep on Chooglin’” and “Suzie Q,” meanwhile, showed that the quartet could jam with plenty of fire, too.

Sha Na Na

What exactly were a bunch of Columbia University students dressed up like 50s greasers, playing Danny and the Juniors hits doing at Woodstock? Entertaining those that remained into Monday morning, of course, with enough crazy choreography to make any festival goer surmise that those hand-out sandwiches may well have been dosed.

Richie Havens

The first man on, somewhat reluctantly, got Woodstock started with a furious, passionate performance whose highlights — “Handsome Johnny,” covers of The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Hey Jude,” and an iconic medley of “Freedom” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” — quickly planted a flag that something special was about to go down in Bethel.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Image Credit: Fotos International/Getty Images

The quartet’s second show suffered a bit for the late hour (3:30 a.m. Monday) and its own nervousness (“We’re scared s–tless,” Stephen Stills told the crowd), but the blend of acoustic and electric sets was a key part of launching a supergroup that would go on to great, and mythological, heights.

Country Joe McDonald

With festival organizers still getting their act together on the second day, McDonald was cajoled into getting the crowd ready for Santana on Saturday. His ad hoc solo set included the “Fish Cheer” (“Gimme an F!…”) and “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” fixtures for any Woodstock playlist. (He and his band The Fish returned for their scheduled performance on Sunday, which was delayed by that afternoon’s rainstorm.)

Joe Cocker

Not many knew who the British singer was when he and his Grease Band opened Sunday’s portion of the festival. By the time Cocker finished with his indelible, spasmodic take on the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” no one could forget him.

The Who

Tommy in its near-entirety, for a start; Pete Townshend whacking Abbie Hoffman off the stage with his guitar for a second. You couldn’t ask for a more eventful performance, with bookend rarities (“Heaven and Hell,” “Naked Eye”) that sometimes get lost in the shuffle.

Jimi Hendrix

With a new and under-rehearsed band, Hendrix’s closing set was admittedly shambolic. But if anybody’s going to pull off something still worthwhile out of such circumstances, it would be Hendrix. And turning “The Star Spangled Banner” into a psychedelic opus ensured that it would be legendary, regardless of any other shortcomings.

Sly & the Family Stone

Image Credit: Film PublicityArchive/United Archives/Getty Images

The rainbow coalition group from San Francisco wanted to take Woodstock higher, and it did — with a nine-song, wee-hours performance that brought Woodstock to life as assuredly as any good DJ does at a late-night rave in current times. 

Santana

Image Credit: Victor Englebert/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images

The element of surprise gave this other Bay Area troupe an edge on Saturday afternoon. Some knew Carlos Santana from Al Kooper’s Super Session, but the release of his own band’s debut album was still a couple of weeks off. But the sextet killed it, putting some rocket fuel into a career that’s still going strong 55 years later.

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