Chapter 4. Start.

Half an hour later the concert did not start.

An hour later - also.

On the human field that entered its natural boundaries, excitement began to vibrate. Born at its various ends and elusive at first, it, as if obeying the force of attraction, flowed down to the middle, from which, having absorbed all the vibrations born of expectation and perplexity, inevitably rolled towards the newly built scene. The front rows, with their feelings and emotions, poured into this cloud, and soon an invisible, but so much felt thundercloud of anticipation, which from time to time twisted by puzzled questions and the most ridiculous assumptions that seemed to break out, thickened over Woodstock ... So that exactly? - No one knew. And no one even wanted to think what the excitement and expectation of half a million people could turn into, many of whom had already taken a hefty dose of drugs.

* * *

March 17, 15 August 1969

- Richie, help me out. You are the sixth, but in fact you are the only one now. Timmy Hardin is generally insane - until he is brought back to normal, another hour will pass, if not more. We just sweep away during this time. Look how many there are there ... But John and I thought that there would be no more than two hundred thousand.

The young - no older than thirty years old - an intelligent black man who tunes his guitar, looks at the long, thin person in front of him, with slender features and long straight hair of a barefoot young man wearing only a leather sleeveless jerkin and barely ripped jeans :

- But I'm not ready yet ...

- Richie, anything. Any songs. Around the camera - a bunch of cameras. The film will be shot. Can you imagine this rebellion on film, if we do not release at least someone? ... In the same place, all extinguished completely. Yes, from one smoke of marijuana, you can move out of the coils for a whole day - do you not feel it yourself?

“Yes, yes,” the Negro smiles knowingly. - But, Mikey ...

- Richie, how many songs do you have?

- Well I do not know. Minutes thirty to forty.

- Borrow them. Not enough - sing covers. Well you did a great Beatle, I remember. ”Sweetwater“We have to fly by helicopter, we need to hold out until their arrival. Or until anyone appears. Maybe this damn Hardin will come to himself ...

- By helicopter? - Richie's eyebrows creep up in surprise.

- Yes, Richie, yes. Traffic jams. All highways are packed to capacity - to Wollkville, to Monticello. But what to say - the New York freeway was all paralyzed. Melanie called the hotel to Tayber from New Jersey, said that it was impossible even to go along Seventeenth Highway, let alone pass. All will be delivered by helicopter - Roberts with the army team has already agreed. In general, I will give you a signal when to finish. Everything, let's go. I will announce you.

Negro understandingly, with a barely perceptible hint of doom he nods his head neatly trimmed, rises, takes not fully tuned guitar and together with the person goes to the front of the stage. After a few seconds, the first greeting words of this evening, addressed to the audience, are heard in a tense silence, and the first chords of the first song are heard literally in a minute - Orpheus calms the crowd ...

* * *

... Negro was called Richie Havens; talked with him, and after being presented to the public one of the organizers of this mad in every sense of the concert - Michael Lang. Thus began the first performance at the most ambitious festival in the world - “music and art fairs,” as advertised.

One clock showed 17. 07, others - 17. 08 ...

* * *

Charlie chose a good place from where everything was visible and audible, but at the same time the sound of the stereo system did not put pressure on the ears, although it was still difficult to communicate with each other. They settled near the motorcycle, putting the sleeping bags so that the girls could recline, leaning on the seat, and watch the speakers.Havens was unfamiliar to them, but his folk songs with intonations of soul and gospel were to their liking: Stuart a couple of times saw Florence even singing along in some places, hearing the lines from neighbors who also sang along with the singer. When the Negro, perplexedly inspired by the warm reception rendered to him, switched to his own versions of the Beatles' songs, the audience’s response reached the limit: almost half the field sang to him in Elinor Rigby, and Stewart with friends were no exception, shouting all voice "Ah, look at all the lonely people ...". True, none of them noticed that Florence sang through force, with difficulty restraining nausea and occasionally biting her lips and bending in half so as not to accidentally scream from pain.

The songs ended, but Havens was not released: the audience clapped and asked for more. Everyone saw how he turned around confusedly, looking for someone with his eyes in the back of the stage, but apparently finding no one, he stood for half a minute indecisively and suddenly a capella began to sing an old Negro spiritual, written almost in the 18th century by Africans, forcibly exported to the colonies of the New World:

Sometime I feel like a motherless child

So far away from my home ...

He sang so harshly and doomed that it seemed as if he himself had just returned from a Louisiana cotton plantation after a whole day of exhausting work under the unmerciful southern sun and whip of the overseer, so much like this cruel, alien to the black man. Listeners were silent, absorbing the pain of two centuries ago, which in a strange way turned out to be consonant with the events of the 60s - the murder of Martin Luther King, the Negro civil rights rally, the Vietnam War, the bloody, cruel death of the Chicago anti-war demonstration a year ago ... And Stewart, being a staunch pacifist hiding in a Hippie commune in New York from a call to Vietnam, suddenly began to understand the reasons for the aggression of members of Black Panther, an anarchist Negro radical leftist and already terrified the "white Anglo-Saxon Protestant" America.

Soon, however, the tone of the spirituals changed, and the suffering black man turned into an angry negro shouting the word “Freedom!” Into the Universe. In the original text this was not - Richie improvised on the move, - but this cry seemed to wake the field; he was picked up by all those gathered, and soon he turned into something like a formidable call "Marseillaise", rolling in the environs.

As it began to get dark, no one noticed. Havens finished his improvisation already in the dark under such a barrage of applause that he could not even hear the noise of the screws of an army helicopter. Only Lewis, out of the corner of his eye, noticed movement of some lights in the sky towards the pond and jabbed Charlie in the side, trying to get his attention, but he dismissed it. Finally, Havens left, and Bert Sommer was literally shoved in his place, thrusting the guitar of Tim Hardin, who had not yet recovered from his overdose, thrust into his hands: Sommer needed to sing only a couple of songs so that those who arrived "Sweetwater" could at least unload from the helicopter with their congas, cello and flute and walk to the stage.

And just above the field, a warm crystal voice of a fair-haired eighteen-year-old nymph Nancy Nevins rang out, beginning to play “Here we go again” with a flute and short-cut keys, when suddenly Lewis grasped his arm tightly and squeezed in such a way that the guy involuntarily cried out. Turning around, he saw Florence's huge eyes, in which pain splashed.

- What happened, Flo? - the guy asked confusedly, but immediately interrupted himself with a question: - What, already? ..

Florence nodded silently, biting her lip and barely holding back a cry.

Lewis looked around in confusion.

Nancy's voice, supported by confident male choruses in the chorus, poured in the dark evening air far into the outskirts with a bright vibrating spot, which was hard to imagine, looking at her delicate frail aristocratic figure. All, not looking up, looked ...