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If you’ve ever been to Big Sur, California, it is a very far-out place up in the woods overlooking the Pacific Ocean. So cool is it that me and Dawn once walked past David Crosby coming out of a diner on Pacific Coast Highway, just before the turn off for Big Sur, as he was going in. I didn't want to hassle him, but I wanted to say something, in my dithering, the moment was lost.
It has long since been a bit of a hippie central and this was certainly the case back in 1969 when the Celebration at Big Sur festival was held over two days on 13th and 14th September, just a month after Woodstock.
If you’ve ever seen the movie 'Celebration At Big Sur' you’ll know it was a small affair but really gives us a flavour of the times.
About 15,000 attended, paying $4 each. There was no gate, presumably because gates are uncool. Unusually though, the gate, despite not existing, was respected and those without tickets listened to the music from outside of the perimeter. Whereas people had tore down fences at many festival in the late 60s and demanded free music, here that wasn’t the case. Don't you love it when people are nice and polite?
For some reason all the band played on the far side of a swimming pool with the ocean behind them. It looks quite chilly actually - as it can be up there. The music was notable especially for Joni doing an as yet unrecorded version of Woodstock
and CSNY being filmed with Neil Young for the first time. It is their music which dominates the soundtrack as they play superb versions of 'Down By The River', '4 + 20', 'Sea Of Madness' and other classics. Joan Baez is there too, breaking wine glasses with her trademark warble. The Incredible String Band played too; a long way from Edinburgh for Mike Heron. Delaney & Bonnie were there too but I don't think they're in the film. Judy Collins and Mama Cass were also on hand
The funniest part of the movie is a contretemps between Stephen Stills and a heckler which ends in a brief physical confrontation. For all it’s a hippie gig, it looks like every Friday night barroom brawl, albeit one by a swimming pool, halfway up a mountain, in front of the ocean.
There is the obligatory nude freaking out by men with beards, footage of roads being jammed up with traffic and yes, John Sebastian turns up stoned out of his gourd. Some traditions are worth keeping.
I thought this had been released as a soundtrack album but apparently it wasn’t. However the 1970 gig with Joan, Linda Ronstadt and Kris Kristofferson was. So maybe that’s why I got confused.
You can watch most of the movie in various sections on YouTube and it’s a lovely thing. In comparison to today’s well-organised, policing, sponsored, marketed and merchandised festivals, it looks shambolic and all the better for that. Man, it looks like peering back a thousand years, not just 54.
