Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut)

Starring:Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Keith Moon, John Entwistle, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, 'Screamin' Scott' Simon, Lennie Baker, Johnny Contardo, Donald 'Donny' York, Frederick 'Dennis' Greene, Jocko Marcellino, Joe Cocker, Barry Melton, Bruce Barthol, Country Joe McDonald, Arlo Guthrie, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills
Director: Michael Wadleigh
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
The three-day Woodstock music festival in 1969 was the pivotal event of the 1960s peace movement, and this landmark concert film is the definitive record of that milestone of rock & roll history. It's more than a chronicle of the hippie movement, however; this is a film of genuine historical and social importance, capturing the spirit of America in transition, when the Vietnam War was at its peak and antiwar protest was fully expressed through the liberating music of the time. With a brilliant crew at his disposal (including a young editor named Martin Scorsese), director Michael Wadleigh worked with over 300 hours of footage to create his original 225-minute director's cut, which was cut by 40 minutes for the film's release in 1970. Eight previously edited segments were restored in 1994, and the original director's cut of Woodstock is now the version most commonly available on videotape and DVD.

Amazon.com essential video

The three-day Woodstock music festival in 1969 was the pivotal event of the 1960s peace movement, and this landmark concert film is the definitive record of that milestone of rock & roll history. It's more than a chronicle of the hippie movement, however; this is a film of genuine historical and social importance, capturing the spirit of America in transition, when the Vietnam War was at its peak and antiwar protest was fully expressed through the liberating music of the time. With a brilliant crew at his disposal (including a young editor named Martin Scorsese), director Michael Wadleigh worked with over 300 hours of footage to create his original 225-minute director's cut, which was cut by 40 minutes for the film's release in 1970. Eight previously edited segments were restored in 1994, and the original director's cut of Woodstock is now the version most commonly available on videotape and DVD.

Description

3 days. 3-million people. And memories to last a lifetime.Year: 1970Director: Michael WadleighStarring: Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, The Who, Crosby, Stills & Nash, much more

Customer Reviews:

WOODSTOCK 3 days of Peace & Music DVD.......2007-06-27

My daughter used this as part of an oral report on Woodstock, she got a 95%

eh.......2007-06-10

i expected more from this dvd. was not an enjoyable watch, but i may give it another chance someday

Great content, lousy DVD production.......2007-06-10

Great time capsule of a great era; highly recommend it. It's a shame the studio DVD production is up to par! The content is a 5, the DVD production is a 2. Much more could have been presented.

Either the end or the beginning of a dream..........2007-05-07

My kids gave me this, probably to stop me binding on about the old days, and it is intresting to see some of this about 37 years after I first saw it on the big screen in Edinburgh.

Something that you don't realise from early cuts is just how lamentable some the the bands were - no wonder it was so swingingly edited. Jefferson Airplane are beyond awful, and Canned Heat are quite dire - I don't know what Henry Vestine was on but his guitar is out of time, out of tune and out of it completely. Some acts managed to get it together, such as the Who, Santana, and even Country Joe and the Fish (nice, if out of tune, guitar from Barry Melton) and it is easy to see why dear old Alvin Lee in 10 Years After was such a hit - coming from a country that boasted Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Clapton, Rory Gallagher, Jimmy Page, Kim Simmons, Mick Green and many others, it was the norm to be very good and to play very well. Excellence was expected and the British Blues Scene led the world. Muddy, BB King and many others have paid tribute to the Stones, the Beatles, Clapton, Green and all the others for making sure that anybody who isn't from the planet Zark knows who Robert Johnson is.

If you had to sum the whole thing up, I suppose that the performances by CSN and Ritchie Havens sum it up pretty well musically - lots of flailing at acoustic guitars and sweet vocals. And Hendrix ... well, Hendrix. I blow very hot and cold about Sir Jimi, and I am cold about this performance too. Thank goodness somebody else has had the courage to say that he was not actually that good. In 1968, at the Woburn Abbey Festival, I saw a dreadful performance from Hendrix, and I mean dreadful, when he was completely upstaged by a 20-year-old Rory Gallagher with a primitive version of Taste. And here they are again, a year after Woodstock, at the Isle of Wight Festival, and those who were there told me at the time that the absolute show-stoppers were Procol Harum (don't laugh - they had Robin Trower, BJ Wilson and Gary Brooker)and ... Rory Gallagher with Taste. Luckily we have "Taste At The Isle Of Wight" available so you can judge for yourselves..... but that great Deceiver, Memory, has put Saint Jimi forward as the star of the IOW show.

Anyway, as a social document it is fascinating, lots of Peace and Love and rolling in the mud. But like all dreams it had to stop, and what this self-contained village (supported by food drops and an army of social and medical volunteers) left behind was a bloody awful mess, an emerging account of some very threatening back-stage scenes and an acreage "ankle deep in human s***", as one American (called Berry - where else?) who was there told me. It reminds me of the Travellers, who want to be "left alone" and not "victimised" - as long as some silly bu**er in full-time work is prepared to pick up the tab, hand over the dole, pay for the schooling, pay for the medical needs, pay for everything in fact. I know that's a bit cynical, because there really was a soft feeling to the 60s and early 70s, but there was also a buzz of anger and violence. Perhaps you had to live through Nixon, Vietnam and the Hell's Angels to really get the point of Woodstock. Perhaps not.

Buy? Yes, I guess so, because there are good parts musically and socially, and it surely won't happen again. But FF the dreadful bands - there's a lot of them, too - almost all from the U S of A.

TO BE YOUNG WAS VERY HEAVEN.......2007-03-23

Harmless nostalgia. Those should be the first words that anyone old enough to have been able to be there or who was actually there should shout after seeing this updated version of the Woodstock Festival of 1969. The second thought should be- did we really dress (or undress), act and talk that way? It is almost like coming out of a time machine. I do not think that today's youth with their worries about getting into good colleges, making money and being members in good standing on the information `superhighway' would get the point of many of the interviews with the young of my generation, the generation of `68.

Enough said on that, though. The real point of the film and the reason for taking the time to watch it is the music. (It is the music, man!) At one time many of us thought that music and the counter culture that would evolve from it was the revolution. Well, life itself proved the folly of that idea, however, some of the music presented here still is worth listening to. Some of it, however, also sounds and feels very dated like we used to think about the music of the early 1950's. There are several highlights here. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, obviously. The Jefferson Airplane and Carlos Santana, surprisingly. And, if one performance defined the whole festival and what music was all about in the summer of 1969 in the lives of those who were young `hippies' or `politicos' then it is Jimi Hendricks. If man and musical instrument ever acted in total unison it was in this performance. Watch it.

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