The 1970 Festival Express

In the summer of 1970 the Grateful Dead, with The Band, Janis Joplin, the Flying Burrito Brothers. Buddy Guy, Mountain, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends and Great Speckled Bird undertook a tour of Canada during which they played three festivals, in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary. Sha Na Na apparently, flew in for one of the shows.

The main group of bands travelled by train from city to city, hence the name of the venture.

The 2003 documentary, with footage from 1970 interspersed with contemporary comments from participants, covers events at the shows, both musical and otherwise, and on the train, mostly musical. The musicians and hangers on seemed to drink, drug and jam nonstop.

Fascinating as it is to see this frozen fragment of the time between the hight of the power and influence of 1960s counterculture and the dissolution of those forces into the glam, cocaine fuelled corporate money rock scene of the mid 1970s, the most interesting aspect for me was to see the holdovers of the free music movement of the hippie era, where the slogan was something like “the music is ours” and should therefore be provided free of charge, especially by the musicians who came to prominence during that era and should therefore be deemed to share the sentiment.

This kind of attitude and behaviour is documented in the Woodstock movie and might’ve applied to many, if not all, rock festivals of the time. The general story is that the organisers and promoters of the festivals spend a good deal of money setting up the infrastructure of the event, including paying the musicians, and therefore charge admission, whereas, on the day, many people who don’t have tickets arrive outside the festival site and demand free entry and if this is denied, attempt to force their way into the site.

Their attitude is, as said, “the music belongs to everyone” and, as happened at these Canadian shows, that the promoters have obviously made their money from the people who did pay to attend the event and that allowing the ticketless in won’t cause any financial harm.

The truth, generally, is that the promoters may  have lost money anyway, without allowing in non-paying audiences but that they absolutely did lose money when acceding to the counterculture demands for free music.

It’s a fascinating view of a generation who were supposedly from the times of love and understanding being violent to achieve aims at odds with even hippie, or hippie friendly,  promoters’ commercial interests. The activists don’t care that somebody has put up money to put on the festival and seem to believe that they should benefit from this  hippie capitalist enterprise regardless of the consequences for the entrepreneur. Furthermore, not only do they demand free entry, but they’re also willing to force entry with violence.

Audience and musicians are informed by the same ideals, or are supposed to be, and should be part of the same broad counterculture movement yet the activists are happy to screw over their own for their own ends.

The Grateful Dead, as headliners and probably the most concerned and influential musicians, do their best to mediate, up to the point of playing free shows outside the grounds of the commercial festival and there’s also a fascinating scene where Bob Weir, with Jerry Garcia nearby, argues the point with an activist, pointing out that the musicians are entitled to earn a living and that the actions of the activists deny the musicians this opportunity and also questions whether injuries to police officers  who try to control the violent crowds, is justified. Of course, the activists, who refer to the police as “pigs,” don’t seem to be bothered by Weir’s questions and arguments and perhaps would accuse Weir of being a sell-out apologist for the establishment. 

Interestingly, as the Woodstock festival, the promoters do take a financial bath, acknowledge it yet still allow the show to go on and to cushion the musicians from the reality of it all. The party on the train never stops.

The jams on the train are entrancing (I would’ve like to be there) and the stage performances are equally fascinating as that snapshot of the past but the most endearing yet also, in hindsight, tragic performances are those by Janis Jopliin who died in October of that year. There are glimpses of Joplin bas passenger and at one jam session with a trashed Rick Danko, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, doing “No More Cane” but the stage performances of “Cry Baby” and “Tell Mama” are enduring records of the fiery force of nature, tinged with melancholy she was in front of an audience.

One can’t help but think, if this kind of tour were organised today, it would be done with professional efficiency and strict financial controls but I suppose one could still put together a bunch of musicians that would party and jam as hard the guys and gals did in 1970.  I know the history of those days and I may never know the rock music history of the 21^st  century but the sense is that the giants who once walked the earth are not only mostly gone but a new race of giants hasn’t appeared to take their place as influences and inspirations for future generations.