Think Woodstock and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that
crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But the town
of Woodstock, New York, the original planned venue of the concert, is
located over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million
flocked. Long before the landmark music festival usurped the name,
Woodstock--the tiny Catskills town where Bob Dylan holed up after his
infamous 1966 motorcycle accident--was already a key location in the
'60s rock landscape.
Drawing on numerous first-hand interviews with the remaining key players
in the scene--and on the period when he lived there himself in the
1990s--Hoskyns has produced an East Coast companion to his bestselling
L.A. canyon classic Hotel California. This is a richly absorbing study
of a vital music scene in a revolutionary time and place.