White Lake, New York

This weekend marks 40 years since the Woodstock Music & Art Fair held at Max Yasgur’s 600 acre dairy farm. Thirty-two acts performed during a rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers—little did they know at the time that ‘Woodstock’ would come to be regarded as both the height of the peaceful counterculture revolution as well as one of the greatest moments in popular music history (the three top acts of the 1960s, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan had all declined to appear at the festival). Later that year Joni Mitchell wrote a hit song commemorating the event—performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The song’s lyrics:

Well, I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him, Tell me, where are you going?

This he told me

Said, I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm,

Gonna join in a rock and roll band.

Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.

We are stardust, we are golden,

We are billion year old carbon,

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Well, then can I roam beside you?

I have come to lose the smog,

And I feel myself a cog in somethin’ turning.

And maybe it’s the time of year,

Yes and maybe it’s the time of man.

And I don’t know who I am,

But life is for learning.

We are stardust, we are golden,

We are billion year old carbon,

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

We are stardust, we are golden,

We are billion year old carbon,

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock,

We were half a million strong

And everywhere was a song and a celebration.

And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes

Riding shotgun in the sky,

Turning into butterflies

Above our nation.

We are stardust, we are golden,

We are caught in the devil’s bargain,

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.