Sound Check: The great myth of Woodstock

Forty years ago, not long after man landed on the moon, half a million wayward youths went to a different kind of outer space at the Woodstock festival in upstate New York. They danced, took drugs and didn't sleep or eat properly for three days — yet this was an event that, if you believe certain eye-witness accounts, ranks in significance with the Apollo 11 mission.

Was it really all that? Woodstock, over the weekend 15-18 August 1969, set the template for the worldwide explosion of music festivals that we now take for granted. Like Glastonbury, it even took place on land belonging to a dairy farmer. But with four decades to tweak and improve, might Bestival or this weekend's Big Chill offer a better experience than the shambolic efforts that are now legend?

Anyone able to offer first-hand memories of Woodstock is likely to spin tales of purple unicorns, so thankfully there's a glut of anniversary material to paint a more accurate picture. A 77-track, six-CD collection, Woodstock 40 (Rhino), features live recordings of performances by lesser-known participants such as Tim Hardin and The Incredible String Band as well as Jimi Hendrix and The Who. Ang Lee's film Taking Woodstock, released in the US later this month but not over here until November, depicts the naïve farming folk who gave up their fields to the revolution. There are half a dozen books and the Oscar-winning 1970 documentary, Woodstock — 3 Days of Peace and Music (Warner Home Video), has been reissued on DVD and Blu-ray in a four- hour director's cut, with two extra hours' footage.

It is through this famous film that most people remember Woodstock, but the reality would have been very different.

Logistically, it must have been horrific. Sixty thousand were expected to turn up and pay $18. In reality, the organisers were completely overwhelmed, fences were trampled and they were forced to proclaim it "a free festival from now on". While stationary traffic stretched 90 miles back to New York City, the rain came down and Woodstock was declared a disaster zone. People queued for hours to be fed as though at a refugee camp.

As for the music, there was only one stage and a pretty limited selection of musical styles. Without the giant screens we have today, Sly Stone and Joe Cocker, who the film has allowed us to remember in sweaty close-ups, would have been minuscule stick figures. Hendrix's crowning moment — his ravaged take on The Star Spangled Banner — was witnessed first-hand by barely anyone, as it took place on the Monday morning after most people had gone home. And how good can the sound really have been in that field?

Other aspects might appeal to the modern festival-goer, specifically the stage announcer's advice about which drugs to take — the brown acid was "not specifically too good" — and the non-musical activities, from yoga to naked swimming and talking rubbish to documentary makers.

But essentially Woodstock acquired its peerless reputation thanks to its timing. It was a last hurrah for peace and love which fell between the riots at the Chicago Democratic convention a year earlier and the violence of the Altamont festival a few months later. Unlike today's gigs, where everybody is plugging their new album, here the musicians were really singing about something important, from Richie Havens repeating "Freedom" in Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, to the political folk of Joan Baez and Country Joe's anti-Vietnam singalong, I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag.

Yes, we can organise these mass gatherings better today, but even if you're a cynical youth rather than a whacked-out sixtysomething, watching this inspiring footage makes clear there was something magical going on 40 years ago. It wasn't just the brown acid talking.

NEW ON THE NET
*A lovely surprise has just appeared online, a new Radiohead song in tribute to late First World War veteran Harry Patch. Harry Patch (In Memory Of) features simply soft, unfussy strings and Thom Yorke (below) singing at his most angelic, though lines such as "I've seen devils coming up from the ground" give a darkness to its beauty. It can be downloaded for £1, which goes to the British Legion, at http://download.waste.uk.com/Store/did.html.

*It's all gone a bit David Byrne round these parts, following a triumphant live performance by the Talking Heads man earlier this week at the Barbican, and with his extraordinary musical installation, Playing The Building, opening at the Roundhouse tomorrow. So download a four-track live EP of songs from his latest album with Brian Eno, with all profits going to Amnesty International. Get it at http://everythingthathappens.com.

*The third Arctic Monkeys album draws ever closer. Those who missed a tantalising live performance on their website last week can see them play two songs at www.arcticmonkeys.com. The drums and sudden gear changes of Potion Approaching and a powerful cover of Nick Cave's Red Right Hand are a good pointer towards their new darker direction.