PEACE, love, freedom, happiness… actually, I stole that from a song in the 1967 “tribal” rock musical “Hair”, but the words apply to the tone of ArtSound FM’s coming “Woodstock 50th Anniversary Special”.

All morning on July 20, Paul Conn, Mike Kennedy and other presenters will go live with music, interviews and trivia questions about the celebrated festival which “Rolling Stone” magazine has listed among the “50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll”.

The show, ArtSound says, “is guaranteed to take baby boomers back to the day, enthrall a second generation of fans of the music that Woodstock piped into Western popular culture and introduce a third generation of younger Canberra listeners to the pivotal event.”

Held from August 18 in 1969 near the rural town of Woodstock in New York State, it was officially billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music”.

Instead of an estimated 10,000-50,000 people, half a million peace-loving fans turned up so that organisers were forced to make the event free of charge. It rained, food supplies ran out, people got sick and muddy and the toilets didn’t work, but 32 acts still performed on the outdoor stage and it was considered a happy event.

The festival was recorded in Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary film “Woodstock”, a soundtrack album and the song “Woodstock” by Joni Mitchell, who described the festival as “a spark of beauty”.

At the time, I rushed out to buy a copy of the Woodstock album, which my cheap record player wore out in six months, as well as a Santana record and one by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, all relative newcomers when they played in the festival.

Everybody was there.

Well that’s not really true, but Joan Baez, Ravi Shankar, Melanie Safka, Arlo Guthrie, Santana, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Blood, Sweat and Tears and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were. Last on the line-up was Jimi Hendrix, who sang his psychedelic rendition of the US national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

But as the producer of the coming ArtSound FM special, Paul Conn tells me, the list of those who weren’t at Woodstock was impressive, too.

Top of that list, Conn says, was Bob Dylan, who coincidentally, resided in the town at the time.

In the program on July 20, he’ll tell all, although he hints to us that Dylan was probably never going to come, and it was much the same story with The Beatles. Others who declined were Simon & Garfunkel, The Byrds, The Doors and Led Zeppelin.

Other secrets to be unveiled will include the identity of the couple draped in a blanket that appears on the cover of the album and the fact that Martin Scorsese was a cub editor on the “Woodstock” movie, which went on to win an Academy award.

Conn is a self-confessed music tragic who has been collecting music seriously since 1968 and has done radio shows for local ABC radio and several different public radio iterations. He considers himself truly eclectic in taste except, as he tells us, “I don’t like punk and rap”.

He was also on the team that’s responsible for a program in 2017 commemorating the 40th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death and another in 2018 marking the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles’ album “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”.

“I thought this was too good an opportunity to miss, what with all the music and stories,” he says. “And besides, ‘Woodstock’ was the biggest display of youth culture and counterculture ever, and still resonates.”

He and ArtSound are doing it a month ahead of the actual anniversary, but he has an excellent excuse – on the real weekend in August, he’ll be in Woodstock.

“Woodstock 50th Anniversary Special”, ArtSound FM, 92.7 MHz Canberra and 90.3 MHz Tuggeranong, 9am-noon, Saturday, July 20.

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