Woodstock 20: A Mj Hit With Janis
Woodstock Festival of Music and Love
Bethel, New York
Notation: Woodstock, the legendary music festival taking place on the cow field of a dairy farm located in the foothills of the Catskill mountains was also a miserable manure infused mud pit.
August 16, 1969
11:06 AM
About 5’5”. The woman was young, maybe twenty- five, dressed in black, extremely flared bell bottom slacks and a plain, loose fitting, white cotton blouse. Actually rather homely with long brown-blond hair and about a half dozen bracelets of varying widths on her left wrist.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, you looked so comfortable, and…” nodding her head backwards “...so clean.”
“No, no, it’s okay, and…” nodding her head upward “... the last rain did it.”
Looking somewhat familiar, thinking she might know this young woman.
Holding her hand forward. “I’m Sharon.”
“Glad to meet you, Sharon. I’m Janis.”
“I’m not sure, but do I know you?”
“You do now, I’m probably who you think I am.”
“Joplin? You've Janis Joplin?”
“Shhh!” Holding her forefinger over her lips. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Standing.
Both Janis Joplin and Sharon Murphy stood facing to the north. To the massed pinhead like four-hundred and fifty thousand people.
“How’d you get here, through all those people without being mobbed?”
Smiling. “You take people out of their familiar element, out of context, so to speak and they don’t look like people think they look. Besides, I took the road around those…” gesturing to the centre field “...You have any idea how many people there are there? And why’s that paring lot smell like shit?”
“Well, they expected about thirty-five thousand, but they just kept on coming.”
“I couldn’t believe it. When we flew over…”
“Flew over?”
“Yeah. The road is jammed for fifty miles in each direction, so we came in by— scared the shit out of me— an old rickety world war two helicopter early this morning.”
“I was asleep and thought I heard that noise a helicopter makes.”
“It was about at daylight and they said there were almost a half million people here.”
“ I saw it was big, momentous in fact, and I was frightened. Knowing how easily riots can break out and with freeways clogged for 50 miles?”
“ ‘Fifty miles’! How the hell are they…” gesturing to the mob “...ever going to get out of here?”
Shrugging her shoulders in a ‘have no idea’ fashion, then reaching into her shirt pocked, Janis removed a perfectly rolled joint, then into a pocket in the black bell bottom slacks removing a small gold cigarette lighter. Lighting the joint and, taking a deep drag offered it to Sharon whom, after hesitating a moment took it, and also taking a deep drag, then gave it back to Janis Joplin.
"We arrived in daylight and saw all those people and it was like, ‘Jesus’! Once I was on the ground and I looked around I knew I was here with…” gesturing also “… a half million young people, where there were no rules.”
Sharon’s deep draw of maharajah from Janis’ strong joint overcoming any residual effect of last nights LSD —Forming an instant liking for this non-presuming woman that seemed impervious to her fame.
“About a half million here? I believe it! And about the parking lot? In the storm we had yesterday, the wind blew a bunch of the ‘trust me’, overloaded Andy Gumpps spilling a hundred gallons of shit into a stream running downhill into the parking lot. And I was stuck there.”
“No pun intended, but ‘no shit’? How’d you get out?”
“Puking as I went, as fast as I could.”
“Yeah, I’d guess so.”
Both still for a moment listing to the non-intelligible mummer from the field below.
Taking another drag on the joint, then offering it to Sharon, who declined.
“I almost never get a chance to do this, but always like to know, so tell me, Sharon, how do you like it here? You enjoying yourself?”
“To tell the truth, other than you, Joan Baez and a couple others, I really don’t recognise or know most of the performers here, and most of it — other than you and Joan Baez, I’m not into this kind of music at all and… To tell the truth, I hate it here: The mud and stink and openly sexual rowdyness and really should have told Clyde…”
“Clyde?”
Reaching for the joint and taking another hit. “My husband.”
“Where’s he?”
Jerking her thumb in the direction of the pavilion. “Down there somewhere, living his second childhood.”
11:34 A M
Hearing the ‘chop-chop’ sound of an incoming helicopter. Looking at the watch on her right hand. “That’ll probably be part of my crew coming in, so think I’d better head back.”
“When are you scheduled to start?”
“It’s going to be a long day, or rather night. The schedule is in constant flux, but as of now I’m due to go on after ‘Sly & The Family Stone’ at about 1:30 in the morning.”
“ See…” Sharon said “...Sly & The Family Stone; never heard of them, but I’ll do my best t to stay awake till you’re on.”
Offering Sharon the last draw on the stub of the joint.
“Thanks, but I’ve had enough.”
Taking the last hit, then grinding the bit of paper between her calloused thumb and forefinger. “Tell you what, Sharon! You stay awake till I’m on, I’ll dedicate a song to you.”
“Really!”
“Yeah…” turning away “...but better be sure to have your old man checked for clapp...” slang term for a venereal disease “...and crabs once you get home.”
Saturday, August 16 to Sunday, August 17
12:15 PM
The day opened at 12:15 PM and featured some of the event's psychedelic and guitar rock headliners.
Finding his way back to his wife minutes before this day’s lineup began — Found Sharon and Clyde watching and listening as the day officially began around 12:15 PM.
Day two’s line-up was:
Saturday, August 16 – Sunday, August 17
Quill
12:30 pm – 12:45 pm
Country Joe McDonald
1:20 pm – 1:30 pm
Brought in for an unscheduled emergency solo performance when Santana were not yet ready to take the stage. Joe performed again with The Fish the following day.
Santana
2:00 pm – 2:45 pm
John Sebastian
3:30 pm – 3:55 pm
Sebastian was not on the bill, but rather was attending the festival, and was recruited to perform while the promoters waited for many of the scheduled performers to arrive.
Keef Hartley Band
4:45 pm – 5:30 pm
The Incredible String Band
6:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Originally slated to perform on the first day following Ravi Shankar; declined to perform during the rainstorm and were moved to the second day.
Canned Heat
7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Mountain
9:00 pm – 10:00 pm
This performance was only their third gig as a band.
Grateful Dead
10:30 pm – 12:05 am
Their set ended after a fifty-minute version of “Turn On Your Love Light.”
Creedence Clearwater Revival
12:30 am – 1:20 am
Janis Joplin
with The Kozmic Blues Band
2:00 am – 3:00 am
2:20 am— True to her word, pointing to the high ground at the far southern end of the cow field… “For my Woodstock friend, Sharon! A song scheduled for release sometime next year: ‘Me and Bobby McGee’!”
Sly and the Family Stone
3:30 am – 4:20 am
The Who
5:00 am – 6:05 am
Briefly interrupted by Abbie Hoffman.
Jefferson Airplane
8:00 am – 9:40 am
Forcing herself to remain awake, or forcing herself to awaken every few minutes, then, truly shocked when at 2:20 AM: “For my Woodstock friend, Sharon! A song scheduled for release sometime next year: ‘Me and Bobby McGee!’!”
2:25 AM
Amazed, moving the flashlight to Sharon’s face. “How the hell’d you get her do that?”
“Janis wandered up here…”
“ ‘Janis’?”
“Yeah…” speaking matter of factually “...Janis told me to call her Janis.”
“I’d loved to say I’d met Janis Joplin! When did you meet her? When was she up here?”
“While you were out there…” gesturing to the field “...sowing your wild oats. And when I told her I had a husband and where he was, Janis told me better be sure to get you to a doctor to be checked for clapp and crabs once we get home.”
Having sown his wild oats in a number of — usually very drunk and very stoned— willing fields, the thought of a communicable disease had entered Clyde’s own besotted mind.
Sitting inside the lean-to, Autumn Dawn and Franklin AKA Morning Lust’s eating a cold breakfast of grape and strawberry tarts, while drawing on two thickly made joints.
Day two ended for Autumn Dawn, Franklin, Clyde and Sharon Murphy around 9:45 AM on Sunday, August 17. Actually the start of the third day.
Woodstock Day 3 – August 17, 1969
12:o5 PM
His mother and Clyde both roaming the lower field attempting to find standing positions closer the pavilion in order to get a closer look at this last days festival of music and love.
Thinking this very well might be his last opportunity to speak to Sharon without the company of his mother or her husband.
As this mid-day was notably cooler than the past number of days here in this miserable shit stinking cow field, wearing loose fitting—if Sharon allowed, and the opportunity presented itself, easily removed white slacks and T-shift.
This afternoons sky once again cloudy and promising rain, walking the few steps from the lean-to and the tent— still asleep from the late night, or early hours concert, still asleep, Franklin stood alongside the cot looking ant her.
Sensing someone standing over her, thinking it her husband and awakening with a start. “You!”
“Sharon, I…”
“What the hell do you want?”
A bit taken back by her attitude. “Mother said we might be leaving early, to get a start…” chuckling “...if we can even find the car, she thinks we’ll go before everything ends, to get a start on the traffic.”
Sharon’s tone as hard as she could make it. “Leave me alone!”
Thinking a moment. “You found out? She told you!”
“That you’re only seventeen! Yeah, she told me!”
“We had a good time together, didn’t we?”
“In that storm? I didn't even know what you were doing! I thought you were protecting me from that horrible wind and it ended so fast, I wasn’t even sure you did it, especially with your, you know, hard-on problem.”
“You solved the problem for me, and I love you for it.”
“You ‘love me for it’! I’m old enough to be your mother and you’re a God-damned minor!”
“You had a good time last night, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, when I got rid of that ass-hole that was crawling up your back.”
Becoming angrier by the moment. “No, I don’t know.”
“You know, when you and me fucked after I pulled you away from that orgy.”
Disbelievingly. “You and me fucked? Where?”
“Right there, on the ground.”
“We fucked outside, on the ground, in front of all those people?”
Remembering the layer of dirt over her body when she woke this morning.
“Your mother gave me something, and I don’t remember anything that happened after that.”
“Yeah, she slipped you an LSD tab and you were really flying and screaming when we fucked.”
“Listen to me you lying son-of-a-bitch!”
The pure anger within Sharon’s voice, and upon her face causing him to step back.
“I’m thirty-five and you’re seventeen and the ‘age of consent’ in New York is nineteen. You know I could be arrested and sent to prison for doing what I did with an underage kid.”
“That’s why we never give our real name, or where we're from so no-one can blame no-one.”
“What if you have have gonorrhoea and infected me? Or— and it can’t happen to me— if you knocked me up?”
Well, I don’t have gonorrhoea, and if you were to become pregnant…” giggling “...think what a beautiful baby you’d have.”
“I see nothing funny about this! And what about me? What about my conscience over taking advantage of a minor?”
Realizing how serious she was. “It wasn’t you taking advantage, it was me that took advantage…”
”Yeah, sure! You think any court would buy that?”
Shrugging his shoulders. “Don’t know.”
“Do me a favor, Franklin; or whatever your damn name is!” Her voice rising. “Get the hell out of here and leave me alone!” Adding. “And the next time you feel like getting fucked…” shoving him out of the tent “... fuck that incestuous bitch you call mother!
2:00 PM
Day three began around 2:00 PM. Joe Crocker was the first musician to perform. The remaining line up included:
Next: Woodstock 21: Repercussions
