RIP Ritchie Havens

I was born less than a year before Woodstock. My parents, middle-of-the-road Republicans from Southern California, were too far geographically and politically to think about attending. As a history buff, though, U.S. history 1950-1970 is my favorite period. I first saw the Woodstock concert on Night Flight in 1987 as a high school senior. Havens' performance immediately stands out, though a lot of fantastic artists followed. An obscure "folk poet", called to open the concert when the intended act's gear had not arrived, performs a fantastic 45-minute set, then another, then another, then another, until he had sung every song he knew. The energy moves into the crowd. They stand up. They clap. They dance. From that point forward, it's no longer a concert. It's a happening. You can see where a recently burnt-out H.S. Thompson could write half a decade later.

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.… So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

For Ritchie Havens, the wave never broke. He noted soon after his 70th birthday, "I don't feel any different from when I walked into Greenwich Village 50 years ago...Everything I hoped for has happened. In 1969, he opened Woodstock with a message of energy and hope. He leaves us in body, but his energy remains for those who can still feel it.