By Bob Gaydos

Tony Bennett
… made my list twice

They — whoever “they” are — say that once you hit a certain age all you do is talk about how great things used to be and how not as great they are now.

Guilty. Child of the ‘50s and in full faculties.

I’m thinking about this because a lot of my recent conversations with somewhat younger colleagues were of the “I just saw Freddy and the Hot Tones at Central Park and they were still great!” variety. “100,000 people!” Or, “Just saw The Undead do The Dead Tribute in the Grand Canyon! Killer!” Or, “Manny, Moe and Jack are coming back! Gotta make my list! Can’t believe they’re still alive!”

I blame Woodstock. This drive to be surrounded by thousands of others somewhere outdoors to hear someone they never heard of, or once heard, or sounding like someone they once heard to add to the list of wow, wasn’t that concert something!

It’s kind of a status thing, I think. A friend (younger) of mine said he once had to skip some event because he got to hear some famous aging singer perform at Bethel Woods, site of the original Woodstock gathering in upstate New York.

Feeling a little snarky, I replied that, once upon a time, I got to hear Tony Bennett sing in the Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. Not quite Woodstock, but nice. Heads nodded. Talking with another friend about this phenomena, I recalled that, once upon a time, I heard Ahmad Jamal play the piano at a club in Greenwich Village, saw Ray Charles at the keyboard in Carnegie Hall, caught the Moiseyev at Lincoln Center and had a couple of drinks with the Clancy Brothers at a hotel bar in Binghamton, N.Y. Oh yeah, I saw Harry Belafonte at The Concord in the Catskills.

Not sure what the point here is except maybe that those things just happened with no sense of urgency that they had to happen because, well, that’s the way it is. Or was.

While I’m at it, once upon a time it was more important in baseball to have a .300 hitter on the team than to have someone whose meaningless occasional singles got to the outfield faster than a speeding bullet. Or to have a starting pitcher last more than five innings or to actually get a runner to second base in scoring position rather than having one placed there automatically in extra innings to speed up the game and remove any drama.

Once upon a time, the box scores of those baseball games used to be printed in newspapers around the country along with comics pages and articles about what was going on in local communities, including political news, which I will avoid here so as not to spoil the nostalgia.

People in most decent-sized communities knew what was going on there because they actually had fully staffed newspapers and had the newspaper delivered to their door daily, sometimes by teenagers looking to make a few extra bucks so they could go to the movies Saturday. This was possible because the teenagers didn’t have to carry phones around with them feeling they would miss something important if they weren’t constantly looking at them. I may be somewhat prejudiced here, but I believe reading levels were higher all around, once upon a time, when the news was delivered in print on paper without worrying about the Internet being down.

But hey, what do I know? Old and full faculties. Well, I know that Tony Bennett was great at the Waldorf in the 1970s and also at the Paramount Theater in downtown Middletown, N.Y., about a decade later, where I heard him again. And I’d be willing to bet that one of the songs he sang was “Once Upon a Time.” Beautiful. Check it out on YouTube.

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Full disclosure: I did attend the Woodstock 50th reunion concert at Bethel Woods along with a whole lot of others where I heard Santana and the Doobie Brothers. I also caught James Taylor and Carly Simon at the Naval Academy in Annapolis back in the ‘70s. Enjoyed all. Cross them off my list.

By Bob Gaydos

Turning on the lights at the Woodstock 50 celebration.

By the time I got to Woodstock, I was 78 years old and walking with a cane. I fit right in.

And it was fun.

Unlike the ill-fated Woodstock 50 concert that was apparently planned with the same “whatever-I-think-of-next” model Michael Lang used 50 years ago, the Woodstock 50 celebration at Bethel Woods, site of the original festival in 1969, was a well-organized, enjoyable tribute that attracted fans of all ages, although it definitely trended geriatric. The gray-haired easily outnumbered the tie-dyed, although some were both.

I missed the original festival of peace and love, even though I was within striking distance, working as city editor for The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton at the time. It was about an hours’ drive away and I’ve kind of regretted the missed opportunity as the Woodstock mystique grew. As I vaguely recall, we didn’t think it was worth the time (and money) to send someone to a hippie fest on a farm for three days.

Anyhow, the Middletown paper had it covered and, as the fates would have it, I wound up working for that paper (for 29 years), living and retiring in Sullivan County, not far from Bethel and Yasgur’s farm and available as an emergency fill-in for a friend with an extra ticket who called and said, “Want to see Santana at Bethel Saturday?”

Which is a run-on sentence on how I got to Woodstock.

I said yes. Honestly, not because I’m a big Santana fan, but because of the history and the quiet hope that it would be an event to remember in the spirit of the original. It was

The Doobie Brothers as an opening act did a great job of loosening the crowd of 15,000. Women danced, beach balls bounced, the Doobies rocked and everyone sang. The early rain stopped, the later lightning went away. No rain.

Also no arguing. No loud drunks. No fights. A faint aroma of pot from time to time. “A mellow Woodstock,” a tie-dyed Social Security recipient strolling by said to no in particular.

Which was what I was hoping for. We are not a mellow nation at the moment. Nor were we 50 years ago when nearly half a million mostly young, many stoned individuals brought traffic to a standstill, then enjoyed and eventually survived an utterly unprepared event thanks to the kindness of countless strangers. Peace and love.

It’s what Santana talked about when he come to the front of the stage to welcome the crowd: “Unconditional love. Compassion. Peace.”

That’s what this anniversary concert was about, he said, and in my mind I agreed with him that, at least that’s what this concert ought to be about.

He had only gotten a few bars into “Turn Your Lights On,” when the hillside came alive with thousands of swaying lights, as cell phones added a new dimension to the song, which for me had a message of hope for trying times: “There’s a monster living under my bed, whispering in my ear.” But also: “There’s an angel with a hand on my head. She says I’ve got nothing to fear.” I used to doubt angels.

The moment was special, but it was his version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” that cinched the deal for me:

“You may say that I’m a dreamer 

But I’m not the only one 

I hope someday you’ll join us 

And the world will be as one …”

The words came easily and knowingly from thousands of voices, young and old, across the Bethel landscape and I uttered a silent, “Please” to myself.

Santana rocked on quite a bit longer, there was more dancing and there were fireworks to seal the deal, but my (good!) friend and I left early, more than satisfied with Woodstock’s golden birthday. Many others came early and stayed late, also happy to have been there. The people who run Bethel Woods had the event planned to the smallest detail. Traffic control, the biggest concern, was no problem.

Also no anger. No fighting. No name-calling. Just music, dancing, singing, peace, love and respect for all, for one night at least, on a hillside in Upstate New York. Just what I hoped it would be. Sure, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I did finally get to Woodstock.

Bob Gaydos is a freelance writer. rjgaydos@gmail.com