PETE TOWNSHEND : NEW YORK 1998

Disc One (68:09)

1. On The Road Again
2. A Little Is Enough
3. Save It For Later
4. Drowned
5. Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
6. You Better, You Bet
7. Behind Blue Eyes
8. I Am An Animal
9. Now And Then

Disc Two (76:13)

1. Going Up The Country
2. Eyesight To The Blind
3. Heart To Hang Onto
4. North Country Girl
5. Let My Love Open The Door
6. The Kids Are Alright
7. The Acid Queen
8. Won't Get Fooled Again
9. Magic Bus
10. See Me, Feel Me

Label : Super Sonic

Venue : Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, New York, USA

Recording Date : August 15, 1998

Quality : Soundboard recording (A+)

Review : Excellent concert recording of Pete Townshend's set at the 1998 Festival "A Day In The Garden".

Concert review (San Diego Union Tribune) : BETHEL, N.Y. - Twenty-nine years ago, Joni Mitchell - extrapolating on an event she did not attend - sang that "we've got to get ourselves back to the garden." That's just what the music world did over the weekend, when a combination of modern and classic rockers joined an estimated 75,000 music fans for A Day in the Garden, a three-day festival held at the site of the original Woodstock festival here. It was a markedly different affair from its predecessor. It was clean and orderly. Friendly and well-organized. Drug use was discreet. Nudity was non-evident. There were no births, no deaths and no arrests on-site. The fence stayed intact, the garbage was being picked up and the New York Thruway remained uncongested. It did rain, during Stevie Nicks' set on Friday night, but not enough to create the muddy mess of the first Woodstock and its 1994 25th anniversary sequel. So it wasn't your father's - or, dare we say it? - grandfather's Woodstock. But for those who attended, the festival's spirit was still intact. "This is amazing," John Wozniak of Marcy Playground said after his band brought "Sex and Candy" to the land of peace and love. "It's just about as surreal as it gets. I sucked it in, drank it all in, every minute detail. It was amazing." Even Third Eye Blind singer Stephan Jenkins, who was critical of the new festival before his band played, conceded that "when we drove over the hill here and saw this thing that was actually a movie, it's hard to stay completely jaded." Rather than the landmark statement of a generation's cohesiveness and mission that was the original Woodstock, the Garden party was a multigenerational homage to that event and a step toward the site's future as permanent entertainment facility, which is the stated desire of its owner, former cable TV impresario Alan Gerry. Due to modest ticket sales (capacity was 90,000 for the weekend), Gerry lost money on the $5 million-plus festival, which he financed through his nonprofit Gerry Foundation. But he wrote it off as a necessary "research and development" expense. Pete Townshend - who had an "absolutely rotten" time with The Who at the first Woodstock but resolved that with a relaxed concert that was easily the festival's musical highlight - noted that "the very fact that somebody has bought this bit of land and wants there to be music here, it says a lot about what really was important about the original occasion. If anything, what this is doing simply is honoring what was meant to happen back then, picking up the pieces." Even Richie Havens, surveying the peaceful, family friendly gathering on the same ground that housed a chaotic hippie happening 29 years ago, surmised that the Woodstock site's future could well be bright. "I think everything gets sophisticated after it is created," he said. "I think this is the sophistication of what was started (in 1969). It now just has the idea of safety . . . and convenience around it." A Day in the Garden also left a legacy of good music, though not of career-making performances that marked the original Woodstock. Townshend's lengthy concert on Saturday was the most striking and engaging, during which he and his band offered rootsy and pleasantly loose-limbed rearrangements of songs from The Who and his solo career, plus surprising covers of two Canned Heat songs - "On the Road Again" and "Going Up the Country," the latter featuring guest Taj Mahal. Noting that "the last time we played this here, the sun was coming up," Townshend closed his show with a majestic rendition of the "Tommy" finale "See Me, Feel Me/Listening to You," accompanied by a local choir. Many of the festival's acts used their sets to preview new material. Backed by an ace band that featured trumpeter Mark Isham, Joni Mitchell played several songs from her next album, "Taming the Tiger," as well as older favorites such as "Hejira" and "Big Yellow Taxi." She finished her Saturday show by finally performing "Woodstock" at the site of its inspiration. The Goo Goo Dolls rocked the field on Sunday with a number of energetic new songs, including "Broadway," "Flat Top" and "Wake Up in Your Arms," though the hit ballads "Name" and "Iris" drew the biggest response. Marcy Playground abetted its smash "Sex and Candy" with tunes slated for its second album, including "Wave Motion Gun," "And I Knew," "Teenage Hypochondriac" and "Crazy Katie and her Red Jet Air Balloon." An animated Joan Osborne slid a couple of fresh selections - "Libertine" and "Sensitive" - into her set but told the crowd only that her next album would be out "someday." Most of the other performances featured a highlight or two. Don Henley covered a pair of John Hiatt songs ("Shredding the Document" and "Feels Like Rain"), while Third Eye Blind covered U2's "I Will Follow" with blazing energy. Meanwhile, some of the old-timers rekindled the Woodstock spirit with familiar selections - including Ten Years After's guitar opus "I'm Going Home" and Melanie's "Candles in the Rain," for instance. And though Ziggy Marley was sick and had to miss the gig, brother Stephen Marley capably fronted the Melody Makers for a set that brought father Bob Marley's spirit to the proceedings with renditions of "No Woman No Cry" and "Get Up, Stand Up." A Day in the Garden may not live on in the way the original Woodstock has, but it certainly showed that getting back to "the garden" was a fine way to spend a summer afternoon. And when Townshend told the crowd that "maybe all of us will come back here some day soon" - referring to next year's 30th anniversary, perhaps - it seemed like a hard invitation to turn down.

Concert Review (Los Angeles Times) : BETHEL, N.Y. - "It's all so different now, isn't it?" said Pete Townshend on Saturday from a stage in the same alfalfa field where, 29 years ago, the Who gave a career-making performance at 1969's Woodstock Music & Arts Fair. Indeed, those differences were seen throughout the first two days of a three-day series of daytime concerts marketed under the name "A Day in the Garden." The original Woodstock festival, which drew more than 400,000 mostly nonpaying rock fans to this small rural town, is celebrated for the fact that a weekend that became a dangerous--and muddy--logistical mess turned not into a drug-addled disaster but the defining event of the late-'60s counterculture. Woodstock also defined the potential for huge profits to those who could successfully tap into the quickly maturing rock culture. The "Day in the Garden" concerts were the first events approved by the local community to be held at a site that had become something of a holy shrine to latter-day hippies, and the scene of impromptu annual fests. In 1994, the community declined to host the 25th-anniversary event that Woodstock Ventures, promoters of the original event and owners of the "Woodstock" trademark, subsequently staged in Saugerties, N.Y. (A 30th-anniversary festival is already being planned for south of Vienna, Austria, with a companion festival likely to occur in New York state.) What changed? The involvement of Alan Gerry, an influential Sullivan County native who'd made a fortune in the cable business, and who quietly bought 2,000 adjoining acres that include the fabled field of dreams. "This is the only thing this area has that ranks as a world-class attraction," says Gerry. "So instead of chasing people away, we've decided to make a business out of it, and to create a catalyst for growth in this county." Toward that end, the "Garden" concerts were designed to attract a well-heeled older demographic that would leave at dusk to fill local hotels and restaurants. There would be no camping, no refreshments brought onto the site, and no more than 30,000 tickets sold for each day. The acts were booked accordingly. Friday featured Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, Ten Years After and Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers. Saturday's bill included Townshend, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, Richie Havens, Donovan and Melanie. Only Sunday's lineup, advertised as "not your father's rock festival," and presenting Third Eye Blind, the Goo Goo Dolls, Marcy Playground, Joan Osborne and Dishwalla, came close to selling out. Promoters say they took a financial bath on the festival, whose budget was modestly pinned at $5 million (Townshend alone was rumored to be receiving around $500,000). But Gerry has very deep pockets, and during the weekend he declared the event a successful trial run for a proposed schedule of a dozen events each year featuring a variety of musical styles. His associate Michael DiTullo, noting that the total site was larger than Disneyland, talked of creating a musical theme park. He pointed across the field to where he imagined such facilities as a Four Seasons Hotel and a Hard Rock Cafe. "I want to dedicate this song to Max Yasgur," said Don Henley, scanning a field covered with older rock fans who'd come equipped with blankets and beach chairs. "He had a nice farm. I understand it's not going to be that way much longer. This is for Max," he concluded, as his band struck the opening chords of "The End of the Innocence." Henley and Friday's other attractions all offered their standard concert sets, and the result was akin to a daylong event at a summertime shed. Woodstock nostalgists were treated to a rainstorm during the closing set by Nicks, who told the crowd that ever since seeing the movie "Woodstock," she has dreamed of arriving at Yasgur's farm in a helicopter. Saturday's bill included artists who were profoundly touched by their original appearances at the Woodstock festival. Melanie, who has sung at the site on every festival anniversary but one, opened the day with her two daughters singing backup and her son playing a second guitar. But Havens is the bohemian folkie most defined by his Woodstock performance, and his set underscored the enduring appeal of his hard-strumming approach to interpretive singing. When Lou Reed's quartet opened its set with a symphony of feedback followed by the chunky chords of "Sweet Jane," the uninitiated learned that his world is not defined by peace and love. The tedious, two-hour set that followed also suggested that Reed's live performances are not concerned with pacing or pleasing the crowd; absent from the set list were such Reed standards as "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Rock and Roll." Mitchell saved the inevitable "Woodstock" for her encore, but aside from a handful of old chestnuts (including "Coyote" and "Just Like This Train") led her excellent quartet through a jazz-inflected set that showcased songs from her upcoming album, "Taming the Tiger," before concluding with a fine version of Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man." Townshend had enlisted five players for this performance, including a harmonica player and a percussionist but, pointedly, not a standard drummer. Musically, the tack worked perfectly, for removed from the quartet format of the Who, Townshend was given license to be playful, and to rock not like a kid but like an adult. He opened with a surprise--a wonderful version of the Canned Heat tune "On the Road Again," and those other Woodstock veterans were recalled later in the set when Townshend was joined by Taj Mahal on guitar for an equally fetching version of "Going Up the Country." He dedicated "Behind Blue Eyes" to the late political activist Abbie Hoffman, whom Townshend had booted off the stage at Woodstock during the Who's set. Calling Hoffman a "Chicago revolutionist who could go off a little--like me," Townshend looked back on both himself and Hoffman as angry young men who just happened to meet on the same stage. But it was with a pair of dramatically rearranged Who songs--"Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" and "The Kids Are Alright"--that Townshend essentially bridged the past to the present. Paced by a synthetic bass drum that should have been sacrilegious but instead sounded like a sincere statement that Who drummer Keith Moon could never be replaced, Townshend imbued these tunes of his youth not just with musical passion but with hard-won wisdom. Where Townshend might have been expected to simply punch the clock at "A Day in the Garden," his performance evolved into a kind of personal catharsis. "This feels kind of like the end of a chapter," he said at one point. "It's been really cool to be here. This one's 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' " And when his arm cocked up for the inevitable windmill sweep across the strings of his Stratocaster, more than a few old hippies dropped tears into the earth of Max Yasgur's farm.

Concert Review (The Times) : BETHEL, N.Y. -- The mantra of real estate -- "location, location, location" -- was at the heart of "A Day in the Garden," the three-day rock festival that started here on Friday. The site is a gently sloping hillside that was Max Yasgur's alfalfa field and then, more famously, the amphitheater for the 1969 Woodstock festival. Two major songwriters who rarely perform, Joni Mitchell and Pete Townshend, headlined Saturday's concert. Lou Reed, who also performed on Saturday, said backstage that he wasn't haunted by "the ghost of Woodstock." But most performers on Friday and Saturday, including some who appeared at the 1969 festival, measured the distance between then and now: between idealism and disillusionment, between bravado and practicality, between youth and middle age. On Saturday, Ms. Mitchell sang "Woodstock," about the festival she never saw, as an elegy for a vanished moment. Introducing the song, she said, "My generation, which was given a pocket of liberty like no other generation in a century, did some of the right things for a short time." The festival site has not been used for commercial events since 1969. Woodstock '94 took place in Saugerties, N.Y., and was presented by Woodstock Ventures, which owns the Woodstock trademark but not the site. Alan Gerry, a cable-television billionaire, bought 2,000 acres here in 1997, including the hillside; "A Day in the Garden" was produced by his Gerry Foundation. After 1969, visiting Yasgur's farm became a pilgrimage for people who wanted to commemorate the Woodstock legend of cooperation, idealism and communal pleasure. Melanie, who performed on Saturday, has been back each year, singing for the tens or hundreds of people who have shown up on the festival's anniversaries. "I left a piece of me in this field," she said from the stage. With "A Day in the Garden," the site of the unintentionally free festival of 1969 unveiled its new commercial role as the center of a projected theme park devoted to American music. It's surrounded by split-rail fences now, and the festival setup included souvenir stands, effective security and a magnificently clear sound system. A second stage, over the crest of the hill, presented local bands. The festival sold 12,000 tickets for Friday, 18,000 for Saturday and more than 25,000 for today. Even with the addition of children (admitted free), daily attendance was less than one-tenth the size of the crowds at Woodstock in 1969 or at Woodstock '94. And where Woodstock was a youth gathering, "A Day in the Garden" started with two days aimed at baby-boomers now in their 40's and 50's. Today had a schedule of seven younger bands, including Joan Osborne, Third Eye Blind and the Goo Goo Dolls, and lower ticket prices; that's when the moshing started. For the festival, concertgoers hauled out the tie-dyed shirts and peace-symbol jewelry. And nostalgia was the rule as Don Henley, Stevie Nicks and Ten Years After dispensed their hits on Friday. with Ziggy Marley sick, his brother Stephen Marley led the Melody Makers in songs by their father, Bob. Donovan, Melanie and Richie Havens harked back to the 1960's on Saturday. Melanie sang about community; Mr. Havens sang about freedom and compassion. Bill Perry, playing lead guitar with Mr. Havens, copied Jimi Hendrix's wrenching version of "The Star-Spangled Banner," now separated from its context, the Vietnam War. But Ms. Mitchell only looked back briefly. The bulk of her set drew from the albums she has made since she released "Hejira" in 1976. They share a private, contemplative style that barely acknowledges pop's demands. Wispy, attenuated melodies float in arrangements without edges, built on reverberating guitar chords and liquid, shifting rhythms. She writes melodies like a jazz singer's improvisations, using flexibility and fragmentation instead of pop's repetition and hooks. One of the least abstruse songs she performed was from Billie Holiday's repertory, "Comes Love." Ms. Mitchell's lyrics are diaristic, drifting from reflections on the news to questions about the purpose of life to updates on romance. In songs from her next album, due in September, Ms. Mitchell sang about lovers hiding the sounds of passion behind train whistles, about bringing a new partner home to a disapproving mother and about how "lawyers and loan sharks are laying America to waste." Even when her opinions grow cranky, what holds the songs together is Ms. Mitchell's voice, pearly and assured, making her free-floating vagaries sound like shared confidences. In his set, Mr. Townshend looked over his shoulder at the 1969 festival. He played two songs popularized by Canned Heat, who performed at Woodstock in 1969, and for his finale he played the same song the Who concluded with in 1969: "Listening to You," from "Tommy," this time joined by a gospel choir. Backstage, he admitted that the Who had prolonged their 1969 set to play at sunrise; this year, he stretched songs with long vamps that shifted from meditation to filler, apparently to end past sunset. His set ambled through his long career, from mid-1960's Who songs to one from his most recent album, "Psychoderelict," which, he cheerfully noted, was a "complete commercial bomb." Songs from his solo career were about a search for love, including divine love; songs from the Who, including radically rearranged versions of "The Kids Are Alright" and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," were about youthful energy, and Mr. Townshend made them explode when he finally started playing windmill power chords on electric guitar. Mr. Reed, whose 1960's band, the Velvet Underground, wasn't invited to perform at Woodstock, was a magnificent sore thumb. Amid the tie-dye, he and his band wore black; amid the greenery, he sang about urban grit; amid the invocations of love, he sang about random violence and violent impulses. Mostly, however, his set was about guitar muscle: lean, wiry guitar riffs, from basic three-chord rock to a furious funk crescendo. The music was smart, bruising and elegant, with no wasted motion. Friday's show could give a younger generation ample reason to scoff at its elders. Ms. Nicks, playing through the traditional Woodstock rainstorm, was a model of baby-boomer self-absorption. "Can we do this again?" she said after her last song. "It would be so good for me." Ms. Nicks presented herself as princess, dreamer and scorned lover; the scratchiness of her voice was once the earthy balance to her fantasies, but she now sounds mostly tattered. Ten Years After trotted out its repertory of leering blues attached to extended, repetitive jams; in one song, Alvin Lee played the same speedy guitar lick 26 times in a row. He has learned one new trick over the last three decades: tapping the strings with both hands like Eddie Van Halen. Mr. Henley played an indifferent, professional set that reproduced the album versions of his hits, down to the guitar solos; rather than introduce any new songs, he sang material by John Hiatt, Leonard Cohen and Randy Newman. But as the Woodstock site took its first steps toward becoming a theme park, he did have a song for the occasion: "The End of the Innocence."

Concert Review (USA Today) : BETHEL, N.Y. -- Missing: The mud-encrusted masses of humanity that defined both 1969's Woodstock music festival and its 1994 anniversary. A Day in the Garden wasn't a sex-and-drugs free-for-all, either. But there was plenty of the old Woodstock's main ingredient - rock 'n' roll - at the three-day music festival held over the weekend here at Max Yasgur's farm, the original Woodstock site. And if a couple of expected performers weren't in evidence, the varied genres and cross-generational appeal of the stars who did get here made for a memorable affair. Of course, the near-total abandon of the half-million hippies who flocked here nearly 30 years ago was gone, probably for good. For this year's more manageable crowds (estimated at 18,000 Friday, 26,000 Saturday), the Garden was an expertly controlled experience, with each day's acts running pretty much on time from late morning through early evening. The huge stage was the same used by Garth Brooks in Central Park, and there were 30 food vendors and 400 portable toilets, in marked contrast to the absence of both at the first fest. There was a phone bank and a mobile cash machine and a play area for kids, a field hospital and four satellite first-aid stations - and a sturdy chain-link fence to keep '69-style gate-crashers from sharing space with those who'd shelled out up to $69 to get in. But there was very little outlandish behavior in evidence the first two days - all bets were off for Sunday's bill, featuring youth-oriented acts such as Third Eye Blind and Goo Goo Dolls - and when the music commenced Friday with Brit singer/songwriter Francis Dunnery's late-morning set, the crowd was largely paunchy, graying grown-ups with young kids in traditional tie-dye in tow. The operative word was "mellow," both for the crowd and for Dunnery: There wasn't even any cheering when he sang the lyric "You make me high," which surely was more about love than about the smoke-induced state of mind prevalent here in 1969. Certainly no herbal help was needed to groove to Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers' ecstatic set, which followed - albeit minus its big-name front man, son of late reggae hero Bob Marley. Taking over was Ziggy's brother, Stephen, otherwise a member of the Melody Makers' backing group, which includes sisters Cedella and Sharon on backup vocals. Their set was marked by versions of their dad's classic Rastaman Vibration and No Woman No Cry, both chilling in their evocation of the senior Marley's spirit. Then came Ten Years After, the recently reconstituted British boogie band that shot to fame after its performance of Goin' Home was featured in the 1970 Woodstock documentary. Almost 30 years after, guitarist Alvin Lee missed not a lick on that anthem, which further recalled the past with its extended jamming. A pair of still-active '70s artists closed out Friday's lineup. Don Henley's set mixed songs of John Hiatt, Leonard Cohen and Bruce Hornsby with his own estimable solo and Eagles hits; he was followed by an emotional Stevie Nicks, wrapping up a tour promoting her career-retrospective boxed set, Enchanted. This being Woodstock - or at least a facsimile thereof, since the original presenters own the rights to that name - it began to rain during Nicks' set, but her frequent costume changes gave the crew time to towel down the stage. Three vintage folkies made up the first half of Saturday's schedule. Woodstock original Melanie, a regular at unofficial annual celebrations at the site, was particularly charming and a marked contrast to the generally mercenary nature of this festival, speaking out in behalf of Amnesty International before launching into Freedom Knows My Name. She was followed by Donovan, whose warbling vibrato remains intact, and Richie Havens, who recaptured the '69 spirit with songs of Bob Dylan and '60s peace-and-love vibes that hit home with the aging hippies in the crowd. Lou Reed, whose Velvet Underground bridged the Woodstock generation and the '70s punk-rock wave, was an abrupt stylistic change. His riveting quartet pumped at full throttle on the Velvet classic Sweet Jane and his early solo hit Vicious. Joni Mitchell followed with a diametrically different set relying heavily on her jazzier free-form side and including songs from her forthcoming album Taming the Tiger. Pete Townshend's day-ending show was spectacular, with highlights including The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, capped by his trademark windmill guitar licks, and the surprise addition of guitarist Taj Mahal for a blues segment. (Maybe that was to make up for the absence of Ringo Starr's drummer son, Zac Starkey, talked up in advance as an addition to Townshend's band.) Also unexpected: Townshend's dedication of Behind Blue Eyes to late Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, whom Townshend yanked off the stage when he interrupted The Who's 1969 set, trying to politicize the Woodstock Nation. Other ghosts of Woodstock past were invoked by Melanie, whose rendition of Beautiful People identified the departed Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon and even Max Yasgur, the dairy farmer whose hospitality made the first Woodstock possible. Havens' set, meanwhile, climaxed with a tribute to Hendrix's famed Woodstock performance of the national anthem, and Mitchell for an encore offered Woodstock — whose lyrics gave A Day in the Garden its name. Townshend also cleverly opened his set with On the Road Again, by original Woodstockers Canned Heat, and closed it with the See Me, Feel Me grand finale from Tommy - which ran till dawn the night The Who did it here in 1969 and this time featured a local 26-piece gospel choir. About the only sour note was sounded by Henley, who prefaced The End of the Innocence with a gibe at efforts to make these hallowed grounds the site of an annual commercial venture. But the quality of the Garden performances and the smooth operation make it likely Yasgur's farm will become a living monument to a still-resonating memory.