Chasing Woodstock.

• Author: Evans, Ron
• Position: USA Yesterday - 1969 Woodstock Festival

FOR TOO FEW YEARS, back in the 1990s, August was the month that Linda and I got to play aunt and uncle to my younger brother's kid, Catherine. The week or so in Vermont, away from her Connecticut home, seemed our only real, one-on-one bonding opportunity. This year, Cat's visit conflicted with our second and probably last chance to catch up with Carlos Santana. Arrangements for the August 1995 tour stop at the Saratoga (N.Y.) Performing Arts Center already had been made through management, complete with complimentary passes awaiting us at the will call window. I do not think our nine-year-old niece ever had been to an ear-popping rock concert before. Would she even know or care who Santana was anyway? I figured her answer would be the usual, "Whatever." We were not sure if she would consent, but consent she did. It was time to pack the earplugs.

Jeff Beck, the former member of the Yardbirds, whom Rolling Stone magazine ranks as the fifth greatest guitarist of all time, was opening for Santana. Both were on our list of artists who had been scheduled to appear at Yasgur's Farm on Aug. 15,16, and 17,1969, at an event that would come to be known as Woodstock. The Aquarian Exposition, the pivotal event that marked that apex of the counterculture peace movement for the Baby Boom generation, was, after all, the force that brought us all together on this day, 26 years later.

As guests of Santana, I sensed there was a slim chance that circumstances would allow us to catch up with both artists. After a half-dozen years doing what we dubbed The Original Woodstock Program Project--an effort to gather the signatures in the official program of all of the festival's original artists--we had learned that, once you cross that security line between ticket holder and credentialed pass holder or tour guest, you become part of a different dynamic, a different energy, a different set of rules, and you had better be tenacious enough to handle the twists and turns.

On this night, it seemed that all of the administration and security at SPAC, where so many of our previous meet-ups had occurred, were aware that we would be crossing that line. Instead of arriving mid afternoon, during sound check, which was our M.O., we entered the secure zone, stage left, an hour or so before the show. I checked in, as I had dozens of times before, with Charlie, or Bill Darcey, or whoever was new to the backstage security post. In the early days of the project, my friends at SPAC...