Woodstock 1969 is a hallowed moment in time. While those who were there – from participating artists such as Grace Slick to the fans – remember it in more sobering, nuanced terms than being the mythical swansong of the hippie era, this has not stopped it from being broadly deemed as one of the most significant moments in cultural history.
It saw Jimi Hendrix play his most stirring, iconic performance, Janis Joplin solidify her status, and Sly and the Family Stone deliver one of the stand out sets of the weekend, famed for its energy and intensity. Despite such highlights, though, the festival – held on August 15th-18th, 1969 – on a New York dairy farm, was missing the era’s biggest act, The Beatles.
There are several reasons for this. The first, and most important, is that the ‘Fab Four’ were finalising their penultimate album, Abbey Road. The sessions for the record finished on August 20th, with it released the following month. Moreover, the group had already long since retired from playing live.
Regardless, festival organiser Michael Lang was a big fan of the British band, and wanted them on the lineup, in spite of him also knowing that they would add increased pressure to an already bloated lineup.
He reached out to John Lennon through Chris O’Dell, the Personal Assistant at The Beatles’ label, Apple Records, in whom they shared a mutual friend. O’Dell then sent a memo to Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono about Woodstock. He informed her that he wasn’t interested in playing, but would like to attend.
However, Lennon couldn’t even attend Woodstock. He was denied entry to the US in May 1969 due to his London arrest for cannabis possession the previous year. Later, in a letter O’Dell sent to Lang on July 7th 1969, she informed him that although The Beatles would not play, Apple Records could send performers from their roster such as Billy Preston, James Taylor, and, in a reflection of the widening creative and personal gulf between the ‘Fab Four’, Lennon and Ono’s new project, The Plastic Ono Band, who had released two albums by that point.
The label also wanted a stall at the festival to be able to sell products and show an unnamed colour film made by Lennon and Ono, however, when it came to the festival taking place, no trace of The Beatles or Apple Records was on hand. For the Liverpudlians, it was simply a case of the wrong place at the wrong time when it came to Woodstock.
“I think afterward we regretted it,” drummer Ringo Starr told Canada’s Entertainment Tonight years later, “which you always do.”
“There were plans,” he admitted. “We were going to fly in with a helicopter, just going to land, anyway it never got together.”
It’s slightly surreal that The Beatles weren’t at Woodstock. However, in expected form, the group were already looking to the period following hippidom. They always were one step ahead, no matter how painful this final period was for them.
Editors’ Picks
- 1960s Counterculture
- Abbey Road
- Apple Records
- Festival History
- John Lennon
- Ringo Starr
- Rock History
- The Beatles
- Woodstock 1969
- Yoko Ono
