Havens at Woodstock 1969

With the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock approaching i will posting some great moments for this special and first of its kind (and last to be true) Music Festival. Also below is an articel expliaing more about this perticular song and how this one moment on stage was pure improve...who walks on stage in front of 500,000 people and just makes up a song that will out last all of us, Richie Fucking Havens Does...

From NPR Studio Session August 11, 2004 - Richie Havens will be forever remembered for his powerful performance of the song "Freedom" at perhaps the best-known music festival ever — the three days of peace, love and music at Woodstock, New York, in 1969.

It was the "coming out" party of the rock 'n 'roll generation. And as Havens tells NPR's Tony Cox, "it was the begining of the world, as far I was concerned."

As Woodstock's opening act, Havens was scheduled to spend just 20 minutes on stage. But after his set, he was asked to keep singing because the second act, Santana, was nowhere to be found.

"So I'd go back and sing three more," Havens says. "This happened six times. So I sung every song I knew."

By that time, Havens had been onstage almost three hours — and still they needed more. "And I thought, 'Gosh, what am I going to do?'"

Then he belted out "Freedom," and his electric ad-lib performance set the tone for the next three days. "The word 'freedom' came out of my mouth because this was our real particular freedom," he tells Cox. "We'd finally made it to above ground."