But I lived vicariously through a skinny, stoned red-headed girl in my freshman class in high school who had made the trek to upstate New York and returned to tell what she remembered of the experience.
I thought she was the luckiest person on earth. And I replayed her scenarios in my mind while listening to the three-record album over and over, anywhere I could. I had it memorized, down to the stage directions and the static on the mikes when an artist got too near.
My favorite? Richie Havens. Sure, Hendrix blew everyone's socks off with his rendition of “Star Spangled Banner” but we heard that song, one way or the other, all the time. But Havens's “Freedom” took us places even Hendrix couldn't dig into. There was something about the way Havens really got down to the ground and spoke to us in a way no one ever had. [Havens was also the beneficiary of Good Fortune that day. Because the roads were blocked by traffic and the concert area was mud soup, rock groups couldn't get their equipment to the stage. As a result, Havens was on stage for one of the longest sets of the festival, giving kids plenty of time to get to know --- and love --- him.]
After Woodstock, my guitar-playing friends all wanted to be Havens, mimicking his guitar riffs, agonizing over that rapid strum that announced a Havens song before he could even start singing.
I just wanted to see him.
Recently, at the Eureka Springs (Arkansas) Folk Festival, I got my wish. Over the course of the 30-plus years since Woodstock, Havens released more than two dozen albums, filled with an amazing array of music ---his own creations and a smart selection of covers that often are better than the original version released by singer-songwriters on their own albums. No one else in folk has produced a sound --- an open D chord, the super-charged strumming --- so fundamentally dramatic. Listen to Havens sing “All Along the Watchtower” and you'll be transported, asking yourself the question, “Dylan who?”
Given a choice between listening to Havens in your home and seeing him in concert --- always take the concert. The audience stood, cheering, before he even walked onstage. Tall, bald with a fraying, salt-and-pepper beard, his fingers covered in large, brilliant rings, he approached the chair and the microphone with the grace of a dancer. And for the next hour, entranced the packed auditorium. Energy? Havens may have aged in body but not in spirit. His guitar sings as mightily as it did in 1969 in front of the millions at Woodstock . And yes, he did finally get around to “Freedom,” which was probably the only song many in the audience knew him for.
Ha vens isn't a Woodstock refugee; he's a dynamo, a fresh breath amidst so many naysayers, a man with a zest for living that he conveys to his audience. What stood out for me the night of the concert was a comment he made about being old and waking up in the morning. His face glowed and his eyes opened so wide that, five rows back, I could see all of the whites. “Yes!” he told us. “Another day, and I'm still here!”
While there are people who automatically choose studio albums over live albums --- and why not prefer honed, perfected, orchestrated numbers over musicians playing over background noise and banter? --- "At the Cellar Door: Live” rewards its listeners with an incredible range of Havens's talents. You won't find “Freedom” here, but what you get is just as rewarding: Havens' version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (if possible, better than The Band's original recording). And Beatle purists will surrender to the beauty of “Here Comes the Sun.” In performance, Havens doesn't rush through a song; he draws his audience in with his guitar work, soothing and stroking for the most part, before opening his mouth. Prime examples of that approach: his takes on James Taylor's “Fire and Rain” and Stephen Stills' “Helplessly Hoping."
Many songs on “At the Cellar Door: Live” are covers of other artists' well-known works, but by the end of the album, they have become Richie Havens songs. What a gracious presence. What a remarkable singer. And what a fabulous attitude.
--- by Mary Mackie, for HeadButler.com
To purchase “Live at the Cellar Door” from Amazon.com, click here.
