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The Tavis Smiley Show, August 11, 2004 - Richie Havens will be forever remembered for his powerful performance of the song "Freedom" at perhaps the best-known music festival ever — the three days of peace, love and music at Woodstock, New York, in 1969.

It was the "coming out" party of the rock 'n 'roll generation. And as Havens tells NPR's Tony Cox, "it was the begining of the world, as far I was concerned."

As Woodstock's opening act, Havens was scheduled to spend just 20 minutes on stage. But after his set, he was asked to keep singing because the second act, Santana, was nowhere to be found.

"So I'd go back and sing three more," Havens says. "This happened six times. So I sung every song I knew."

By that time, Havens had been onstage almost three hours — and still they needed more. "And I thought, 'Gosh, what am I going to do?'"

Then he belted out "Freedom," and his electric ad-lib performance set the tone for the next three days. "The word 'freedom' came out of my mouth because this was our real particular freedom," he tells Cox. "We'd finally made it to above ground."

According to PC's own archives I believe that Santana could not be found because he was under the impression that he was scheduled to go on later and decided now would be a good time to drop acid. I found some info that supports my archives.


Carlos (in an interview on The King Biscuit Flour Hour)said that he didn't remember if it was Acid or Mescaline that he had dropped. They were scheduled to go on later in the evening so taking it was ok. Thing was though, that they changed the time on him and it was "go on now or forget it". So they went on, all "peaking" and everthing. Oh! and about that "jam session" I watched them at Aquatic Park in S.F. jam on weekends, he had his brother Jorge (from Malo) jamming with them.
- Bob, San Jose, CA




Carlos Santana later said he was on acid during his Woodstock performance, and the reason he looks a little harrassed is that his guitar kept turning into a snake, and he would have to change it back so he could go on playing. It's not certain whether he took the brown acid (which was initially given out free to musicians at the show) but perhaps this is one of the experiences that led announcers to warn people that the brown acid wasn't too good.
- Ekristheh, Halath, United States

Source


You can watch Carlos wrestle the snake here