Which Act Was The Breakout Star Of Woodstock?

The breakout has to be Santana. They were a complete unknown and on a national stage they killed it. At the time I was crazy for the TOMMY album, so The Who really jumped out as well. The music sounded a lot different live!

The Woodstock Album was a big release at my school (suburban Cleveland 1972 or so...). One teacher would play it during art class, another during shop. Those teachers were just looking for a long album that they knew didn't have George Carlin in the title. Someone kept sneaking "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" on their turntables when they left the class for a minute. We heard a lot of Neil Young and Crazy Horse for the same reason.

The big class was Social Studies. Mr. Ripley spent an hour dissecting the Hendrix take on the National Anthem. Students who hadn't said a word all year had an opinion about the music. This wasn't that liberal of a HS. It is just that the album hit during the year where I started to pay attention... Before that I was kind of looking out of windows for the first eight or nine grades.


On a quick side note, there are of course, groups for whom Woodstock was extremely frustrating. Back in 2005 I was working on a small piece about Poco and the great steel player Rusty Young was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Given that Poco was respected by both the press and fans at the time I had always wondered why they weren't at the festival. In my mind Poco should have been a shoo-in for an invite! He replied:

"I remember a few things about the big festivals of the seventies.
I was at our managers apartment one day when the phone rang. They called to ask us to play the Woodstock Festival. I was jumping up and down. I knew everyone who was anyone was going to be there. Dickie said ' no thanks' and hung up the phone. I couldn't believe it. What was he thinking? He said we had a 'better offer'. We played a high school gymnasium instead for $500 more than the Woodstock offer.

I'll never forget the Atlanta Pop Festival. The swimming pool at the Holiday Inn we were staying in was black. People were coming from everywhere to jump in and wash off the mud. If you could offer a shower you could pretty much name your price. We played that night between The Chambers Bros. and Jimi Hendrix. Not a slot you'd really want to be in. But the set went well and everyone had a great time."

 

The latter bands were only known because of Woodstock while the former would probably have been big anyway. I mean Led Zeppelin didn't play Woodstock and became bigger than any of them.

 

I don't think of The Who as "the breakout star of Woodstock". They were already one of the biggest live attractions prior to the festival. Saying that, the movie did catapult them to an even higher level of stardom, putting Tommy back in the charts.

 

Everyone that appeared in the original movie, got a big bump in business from the film. Prior to Woodstock most of the acts were playing College Gyms, afterwards they were filling Arenas. Unfortunately Mountain, Johnny Winter, & Canned Heat weren't in the original film, they were added later for Home Video.

 

As far as the Who and their payment for Woodstock, it was supposed to be $12,500 according to this document, which I'm sure most of you have seen before.
Sounds like they only got half of it. And to get that the promoters had to wake up a banker and get the money in the middle of the night, because the Who were refusing to play if they didn't get paid.

 

I always thought the crowd looked confused at what they were watching when Sha Na Na performed. On the 40th Anniversary release there is an outtake of them performing
Teen Angel. There is a great shot of Jimi Hendrix and Larry Lee on the side of the stage waiting to go looking quite amused at their performance.

About the 1:10 mark in the video. But, all the crowd shots are priceless.

 

They did not want to be called that...

 

I've met one person who was at Woodtock and asked him who impressed him and his friends the most at Woodstock. He quickly replied, "Santana," and said they were all impressed because here was this young guy they'd never heard of playing amazing guitar.

 

Sly
The Who
CSN

 

Yeah, in retrospect Santana imo were the stand out acts along with JH.

 

I think, except for the bald guy at 1:25, everyone we see in the audience seems to be loving it, sort of on a "remember when we thought this melodramatic stuff was cool?" basis. I'm reminded of when I was in college in the '90s, playing '80s pop at a party was always a surefire win on a so-bad-it's-good basis.

 

Someone on antiques roadshow presented this as a genuine article and wanted to know what it was worth

 

Nade

Pawn Stars. And Cory BOUGHT IT! I was screaming at the set NOOOOO! Then brought mine out to show my wife.

 

The guy on antique roadshow told her the truth. I called the wife in and said 'watch this woman get her balloon broken.'

 

They had headliner status. S/T album that year was bit seller, featuring a couple of hit singles and they bagged Grammy for "Album of the Year."

 

I think his being ripped on acid (even though everyone was at Woodstock) probably gave the broader audience an odd view of a moment in time...and his future sales suffered, except for "Welcome Back".

 

Yeah, very interesting, Grammy came in 70, but Grammys tended to hurt credibility with rock audiences rather than help. Though they did have 1 gold album, and two gold singles leading up to Woodstock. Yet Joan Baez had 3 gold albums going into the festival. Creedence received 5 gold albums and 5 gold singles in '70. Which can lead one to think they were in a very strong place even at the time of Woodstock prior to the award audit, and didn't negotiate as well as lesser commercially successful bands as BST.

 

I think he was born ticked off.

 

Same thing the Clash did with their US Festival loot I imagine.

 

Its hard to argue with Santana. I do think Joe Cocker would be next. And then Ten Years After.

 

I agree with what everyone is suggesting, so many great bands had their coming out during this festival. If however I were to vote for the one band that would never have had any notice if it weren't for Woodstock then I would vote for Sha-na-na. Go figure a bunch of goofy guys making tribute to the greasier age of the 50s at a Hippie festival. Comic relief at its best.

 

Ladies and gentleman ...........................feedback.............................................The Who..................................

 

Definitely Santana, TYA, and it certainly pushed the Who up several notches...

 

I wasnt aware that Joplin played Woodstock until just now, so, I'm definitely not in the camp that she was the break out star.

Then again I detest her singing and her awful band, there, I said it.

I'd go with Santana or Ten Years After - those do seem to be the general odds on favorites here.

 

Coincidentally, The Who received their first US gold the day after the festival ended, Aug 18th, for Tommy, but the award audit was probably already happening before Woodstock.