Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More is a live album of selected performances from the 1969
Woodstockcounterculture festival officially known as "The Woodstock Music & Art Fair". The album was compiled & produced by Eric Blackstead. Originally released on
Atlantic Records'
Cotillion label as a
triple album on May 11, 1970,[3] it was re-released as a 4 CD box (along with Woodstock Two) by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs in 1986 followed by a two-CD set released by Atlantic in 1987. Atlantic re-issued the two-CD set in 1994 correcting a few mastering errors found on their 1987 release. Veteran producer
Eddie Kramer along with Lee Osbourne were the sound engineers during the three-day event.
Although largely authentic, a number of tracks feature truncated performances or overdubs recorded after the festival, and two tracks not recorded at the festival at all. Some of the audio material on the album was recorded by the sound crew of the Wadleigh-Maurice film crew. It was packaged in a triple-gatefold sleeve featuring a 3-panel photo of the crowd taken from the stage by photographer Jim Marshall.
A second collection of recordings from the festival, Woodstock Two, was released a year later. In 1994, the songs from both albums, as well as numerous additional, previously unreleased performances from the festival (but not the stage announcements and crowd noises) were reissued by Atlantic as a four-CD
box set titled Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music. In 2009,
Rhino Records issued a six-CD box set, Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm, which includes further musical performances as well as stage announcements and other ancillary material.[4]Rhino Records also reissued a remastered version of the original
double CD album in 2009.
Target issued a version exclusive to their stores that included a bonus disc of 14 tracks, including one previously unreleased track, "
Misty Roses" by
Tim Hardin.
It was certified Gold on May 22, 1970, and 2× Platinum in 1993.[5]
Cover
The couple on the album cover were photographed by
Burk Uzzle[6] for the Magnum agency. In 1989, Life Magazine identified them as a then 20-year-old couple named Bobbi Kelly and Nick Ercoline,[6] who married two years later and raised a family in
Pine Bush, New York, just 40 miles (64 km) from the festival site.[7][8] That claim has since been disputed by a woman named Jessie Kerr from Vancouver Island, and her friend John.[9][10] At the time of Bobbi Kelly Enricole's death in March 2023, it was reported that Bobbi and Nick were in fact the couple featured on the album cover photograph and that the picture was taken when they stood up and embraced during
Jefferson Airplane's performance.[11] In contrast to her future husband, Bobbi's face is partially seen in the photograph.[12][13] In an interview with Longreads with 2019, Uzzle that he opted to photograph the couple for the album cover because of "the way they were holding themselves up and wrapped in a blanket."[14]
Track listing
On the LP release, side one was backed with side six, side two was backed with side five, and side three was backed with side four. This was common on multi-LP sets of the time, to accommodate the popular
record changer turntables.
Most of the tracks have some form of stage announcement, conversation by the musicians, etc., lengthening the tracks to an extent. Times are listed as the length of time the music was played in the song, while times in parentheses indicate the total running time of the entire track.
Side one
John Sebastian – "I Had a Dream" (Sebastian) – 2:38 (2:53)
^The performance on the album picks up mid-song at the very end of the "We're Not Gonna Take It" portion and then finishes with the "See Me, Feel Me" and "Listening to You" sections. The final 1:50 of the track is an emergency announcement and the statement that declared "It's a free concert from now on".
^ This performance features additional background vocals added by Cocker's band during the album's post-production. In the CD version, the first disc would close with this track, with a 1:30 long recording of the rainstorm.
^The first three minutes of the track is the "Crowd Rain Chant", a chant started by the crowd as an attempt to stop the rainstorm.
^The final 34 seconds or so of the track is a speech by
Max Yasgur, praising the crowd for coming to the festival.
^"Instrumental Solo" was retitled and re-edited when Hendrix's Woodstock show was released more fully in the 1990s. The improvised, fast solo section immediately following "Purple Haze" was heavily cut in the original Woodstock film and soundtrack, and most of the track here is what would later be titled "Villanova Junction", a slow bluesy ballad with the band joining in the background. The uncut version of the solo was restored in the director's cut of the Woodstock film and on the Hendrix album Live at Woodstock and titled "Woodstock Improvisation".