Woodstock

I’m gonna try and set my soul free

Hi all,

Thank you for joining me for today’s song, “Woodstock”, by Joni Michell. If you’d like to hear the song before you read about it, I’ve included a YouTube video below the article.

Below, you’ll find my interpretation of the lyrics which are written in italics. Comments and questions are welcome. For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below. TOEFL (PBT) 450+, Eiken 2, CEFR B1. 

(684 words)

Today I’d like to introduce a song to readers who might never heard of an event called Woodstock. Although the song itself doesn’t directly deal with a particular social issue, the event and what it represented did.

The period of the 1960s was a difficult time for the U.S. The war in Vietnam had become grown wider and more serious, the country was facing a division between those who were working for social justice and equal rights and those who wanted to keep the status quo in American society. Many young people were questioning traditional American values and decided they did not agree with the ideas of their parents who thought that the best life meant have an office job, buying a house and a car, settling down and raising a family. These young people wanted to experience a different way of life. They did it through their choices in clothing and hairstyles, their music, and sometimes by experimenting with alternative relationships and psychedelic substances.

Woodstock poster, 1969 (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was a three-day festival that was held in the summer of 1969 on a farm in Bethell, New York. The farm was owned by a man named Max Yasgur. He allowed the concert to be held there after other towns nearby refused. At the festival, many famous singers performed. 

Over 400,000 people showed up, using any kind of transportation they could find. The song begins with someone walking along a road that led to the farm.

I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him, “Where are you going?"

And this he told me

Said, "I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm

Gonna join in a rock and roll band

I’m going to camp out on the land

I’m gonna try and set my soul free”

Many people in the late 60s were asking existential questions, wondering about the purpose of life, their responsibility to others and to the environment (the “eco” movement began in the 1960s), and what the best way was to live one’s life. The song suggests that the best way was to get ourselves back to the garden (of Eden?), in other words, to go back to living on the land and respecting the Earth.

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

The singer asks the man:

“Then, can I walk beside you?

I have come to lose the smog

And I feel to be a cog in something turning

Well, maybe it is the time of year

Or maybe it's the time of man

I don't know who I am

But you know, life is for learning”

By the time we got to Woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

Woodstock Gathering festival. The main stage and the tent zone.   (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The next few lines reflect a wish (of military bomber airplanes turning into butterflies) and, possibly, the effects of the use of drugs:

And I dreamed I saw the bombers

Riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies

Above our nation

 To “ride shotgun” means to ride in the front passenger seat of a car.

We are stardust

Billion-year-old carbon

We are golden

Caught in the devil’s bargain

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden

There were many problems with the festival. The sound system wasn’t adequate, the traffic was backed up for for miles, and there wasn’t enough food or water. There weren’t enough toilets or medical facilities. On top of that, it rained, leaving people standing or sitting in the mud. But one of the strangest things was that the event was peaceful. People helped each other and just enjoyed the music and the experience (and the drugs).

The songwriter, Joni Mitchell, was not able to attend the festival. She was on tour, and her manager decided it would be better for her to stay there to do a TV interview the next day than to join the festival. That was how she missed this historic festival of American culture.

This week is the 55^th anniversary of Woodstock.

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Question:

In the last chorus, there is the line Caught in the devil’s bargain. What do you think that means?

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Vocabulary

division 分裂

social justice 社会正義

status quo 現状

psychedelic substance 幻覚剤

existential 実存的

eco (ecology) エコロジー

cog 歯車

carbon 炭素

Crosby, Stills & Nash

Matthews Southern Comfort

Sources

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2024, July 19). Woodstock. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Woodstock

Tamarkin, J. (2023, August 19). Joni Mitchell’s “woodstock”: Behind the song. Best Classic Bands. https://bestclassicbands.com/joni-mitchell-woodstock-song-2-27-18/ Accessed 7 August 2024.

Read more about Woodstock here:

Candles in the Rain