As soon as I inched between two total strangers, who welcomed me with warm smiles, I turned to face the stage. Instead of Joe Cocker, I saw Leon and me up there, with a massive theater curtain slowly closing between us. The moment the sides met, oscillating from the blow, my eyes stung. As hard as I had tried to keep the tears at bay, they fell anyway.
While Joe Cocker serenaded the crowd with an otherworldly, enormous voice, I just stood there, a tiny krill inside the vast Woodstock ocean. Each salty tear that slipped into the corner of my mouth turned into a bitter taste of loneliness. And more reflections of Leon.
I looked down at my filthy toenails, ran a hand through my tangled hair. Why, why, why did I have to meet Leon’s old girlfriend looking like this? Shelly looked as if she’d just stepped off the runway. Why the heck hadn’t she and Leon come to Woodstock together in the first place? It would have saved me an ocean of heartache. I’d been right. You couldn’t trust boys. Not one of them.
Determined to concentrate on Joe Cocker instead of Leon, I forced myself to give him my full attention. With his gritty, soulful gravel, he sounded like Ray Charles. He certainly screamed like Ray Charles. I stared at him up there on the stage, noticing everything about him. His bell-bottoms and tie-dyed Henley T-shirt, his cool blue cowboy boots speckled with white stars, his handsome face, his muttonchop sideburns, which, of course, reminded me of Leon.
Everything reminded me of Leon.
As Joe’s set continued, it crossed my mind there might be something wrong with him. At first, I thought he might be having an epileptic seizure by the way his eyes rolled back and how he crippled his fingers. He’d flail his arms in spasmodic movements, endlessly strumming an invisible guitar. I considered he might have taken LSD like Janis Joplin or Arlo Guthrie, and we were all witnessing his acid trip.
“We’re gonna leave you with, uh, the usual thing,” a sweaty Joe Cocker told us a few minutes past three. “But all I can say, as I’ve said to many people, this title just about, uh, puts it all into focus. It’s called ‘With a Little Help from Me Friends.’ Remember it.”
No way anyone at Woodstock could forget it. From the moment the song’s first B3 organ chords sounded, you could sense the spirit of Woodstock catching fire. The weekend of peace, the communal love, paralleled with the best music in the world, all blended into one alleluia.
I thought about Richie Havens’s version. It might not have been as dynamic, but it sure had been a great way to open the festival.
After the last note, Joe waved, then leaned in to the mic a final time. “The Grease Band. And meself. Thank you all for watching. See you again. Beautiful.” He left the stage amid engine-like roars from a half a million people. A star was born.
But that star never returned for an encore. Black thunderclouds had gathered out of nowhere.
John Morris did return, pointing behind the audience. “While we switch over, it looks like we’re gonna get a little bit of rain, so you bettercover up. If it does, if we should have a slight power problem, just glue it up. We’ll sit here with you. You’ll be okay.”
I turned around to see a sky so dark and eerie it looked like a tornado was headed straight for the festival.
Minutes later, a fierce wind howled through the city of Woodstock like a pack of angry wolves. Stagehands scurried about, trying to cover the gear with plastic sheeting, but the wind made it impossible. Cracks of thunder shook the ground, while lightning strikes squiggled across the blackened sky. People scattered like beetles. Yet plenty of others, like me, had nowhere to scatter.
Meanwhile, John Morris stayed true to his post. “All these people in the towers, all of you up in the towers, please come down! You are making it very, very dangerous. Please come down off those towers. If it does rain, it will be slippery and dangerous.Please.Come. Down!”
What is wrong with you people? A lightning strike could take your last breath.As Chip had said the night before, their bodies could be welded to the poles. I shuddered at the ghastly image.
Five minutes after John Morris said the wordrain, his prediction came true. It started out slow, but within seconds the raindrops felt like BB gun pellets hitting my bare shoulders. They bounced angrily against the bare earth, pooling into giant puddles. When I looked down, my feet were gone, sunk inside the mud soup.
“All right, everybody, just sit down; wrap yourself up. We’re going to have to ride it out. Hold on to your neighbor, guys,” John told the audience with a growing panic in his voice.
I had nothing to wrap up in but my own bare arms. I’d abandoned my muddy blanket a long time ago. A few people around me had umbrellas, but there was no extra room underneath. Some took cover under water-soaked blankets, and others under sheets of plastic, but lots of people had no covering at all. No neighbor to hold on to. I had accidentally left the jacket Livy gave me in the butterfly meadow when I’d changed into my new halter top—the one Leon had given me. Cometo think of it, I’d left Livy’s pink top in the meadow. And my new bra.Dammmmmmit.
Some new guy took over the microphone, yelling, “Hey, if you think really hard, maybe we can stop this rain!”
We were all drenched and the storm fierce, yet the audience responded with enthusiasm, cheering like mortals had the power to stop the rain. Looking around at the people near me, I noticed most of them weren’t even bothered by the storm. They were cheering.
Not me. Dad would say God was punishing me for all the terrible things I’d done. Dancing, lying, smoking pot, drinking alcohol, going too far with Leon.
I was doomed.
I checked my watch for the time, but it was no longer ticking. It was ruined. My new purse was ruined. My new tie-dyed halter top was definitely ruined. The ink had bled onto my chest and stomach. My soaking-wet jeans were cemented to my body. I’d lost my blanket. And my jacket. I was freezing cold. I hated my new life.
I hated Woodstock.
“Thanks a lot, Livy,” I yelled. “I tried to tell you there was no way I could go with you. But, like always, you refused to listen. And now I’m in an even bigger pickle. This, like everything else, isyour fault!”
Looking up at the black sky, John Morris pleaded, yet again, “Everybody just get away from the towers, and clear them. Like Barry says, let’s think hard to get rid of the rain, please. Everybody needs to think hard. Let’s go! Let’s think! We’ve done all of this. We can keep doing it.” He sounded like a motivational speaker.
It worked. The crowd started a new roar, shouting and clapping as if they were enjoying themselves. “No rain! No rain! No rain,” people chanted over and over and over, as if they truly believed they could make it go away. Along with the wooden blocks Quill had thrown from the stage, they banged cans together. They banged flashlights together. They banged anything they could find to make lots and lots of noise, all the while imploring the rain gods to cease their fury.
John had one final announcement. “We’re gonna have to turn off the microphones for a minute. Hang in there with us. God bless you. Watch those towers. Kill the power!”
Some girl in front of me screamed, “Hey, Joe Cocker, isn’t the rain beautiful?” But Joe was long gone.
