It’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since the Woodstock festival, and 39 years since I put on and played the first Woodstock Festival anniversary with my band, Steel. We were a 3 man group, and two of us, myself and drummer Roy Faber were actually longtime summer residents of White Lake, NY, actual site of the festival at Yasgur’s Farm. (I grew up drinking Yasgur’s milk, and loved waiting for their trucks to come around for great desserts, baked goods, and other fresh local farm products.) By the time I had reached the age of 16, I started the group with my college roommate, Sandy Berman, who played keyboards in the band, and who also covered the necessary bass parts with his left hand, and the benefit of some enormous amps! He actually got one of those Ampeg SVT amps, with the two cabinets containing 16 ten-inch speakers, and a warning on the back about potential damage to your hearing that could happen at loud volumes! I would play through 3 to 4 amps at a time, including two of those padded Kustom amps that I used to borrow from someone, usually flanking 2 Fender amps in the middle, and all four of them turned up to ten!
My ’52 Les Paul was my only guitar at that time, and it was a true soldier that stood by me for many, many intense performances where I really pushed it to the limit! We used to specialize in songs that would sometimes stretch into endless jams. In fact, we would somehow make a set of only 8 songs or so, stretch into one and a half hours!
What I remember most about those early years was simply how purely creative I was able to be, and how every day seemed to bring new innovations forward that I’d try out on the guitar, and in my compositions. We all love taking it to new limits, and Steel started to really amass some serious fans in upstate New York, as well as in Philadelphia, where we all lived while I went to the Philadelphia College of Art. Philly was also a great time of creativity and experimentation for me, as we used to be able to get these city permits that enabled us to throw “block party” concerts in certain neighborhoods of Philadelphia, where we would sometimes have a thousand people or more crowded into a block. It was so exciting, and all kinds of local characters would come up onstage with us and sit in. I can recall one time when a guy simply named “spoons” came up onstage and performed the most amazing display of spoon playing I have ever seen to this day! Also, that neighborhood, near South Street in Philly had blues players who would come up and play with us too!
But there was nothing like that incredible Woodstock Anniversary concert we threw! And we were the only band, and we must’ve played for what seemed like 8 hours over a 2-day period. I actually have located the tape of it, and hope to release it as a cd someday!