Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More is a live album of selected performances from the 1969Woodstockcounterculture festival officially known as "The Woodstock Music & Art Fair". The album was compiled and produced by Eric Blackstead. Originally released onAtlantic Records'Cotillion label as atriple album on May 11, 1970,[3] it was re-released as a four-CD box (along withWoodstock Two) byMobile Fidelity Sound Labs in 1986 followed by a two-CD set released by Atlantic in 1987. Atlantic re-issued the two-CD set in 1994 correcting a few mastering errors found on their 1987 release. Veteran producerEddie Kramer along with Lee Osbourne were the sound engineers during the three-day event.
Although largely authentic, a number of tracks feature truncated performances or overdubs recorded after the festival, and two tracks not recorded at the festival at all. Some of the audio material on the album was recorded by the sound crew of the Wadleigh-Maurice film crew. The 2025 book,Buzz Me in: Inside the Record Plant Studios, reports that there were many problems with the recordings such as "a high-frequency squeal on some performances," Sly Stone's "'I Want to Take You Higher' was marred by a high-pitched signal," "Santana's 'Soul Sacrifice' was...marred by a sixty-cycle buzz," and so forth.
The album was packaged in a triple-gatefold sleeve featuring a three-panel photo of the crowd taken from the stage by photographer Jim Marshall.
A second collection of recordings from the festival,Woodstock Two, was released a year later. In 1994, the songs from both albums, as well as numerous additional, previously unreleased performances from the festival (but not the stage announcements and crowd noises) were reissued by Atlantic as a four-CDbox set titledWoodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music. In 2009,Rhino Records issued a six-CD box set,Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm, which includes further musical performances as well as stage announcements and other ancillary material.[4]Rhino Records also reissued a remastered version of the originaldouble CD album in 2009.Target issued a version exclusive to their stores that included a bonus disc of 14 tracks, including one previously unreleased track, "Misty Roses" byTim Hardin.
It was certified Gold on May 22, 1970, and 2× Platinum in 1993.[5]
In 2014,Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More was inducted into theGrammy Hall of Fame.[6]
The couple on the album cover were photographed byBurk Uzzle[7] for the Magnum agency. In 1989,Life magazine identified them as a then 20-year-old couple named Bobbi Kelly and Nick Ercoline,[7] who married two years later and raised a family inPine Bush, New York, just 40 miles (64 km) from the festival site.[8][9] That claim has been disputed by a Vancouver Island woman named Jessie Kerr, who claims that she and her friend John were the subjects of the photograph, and has a photograph of herself from about the same time in which her dark hair and tinted eyeglasses appear to match those of the woman in Uzzle's photograph.[10][11] At the time of Kelly's death in March 2023, it was reported that she and Ercoline were the couple featured on the album cover photograph and that the picture was taken when they stood up and embraced duringJefferson Airplane's performance.[12] In contrast to her future husband, Kelly's face is partially seen in the photograph.[13][14] In an interview with Longreads in 2019, Uzzle said that he opted to photograph the couple because "It was just so beautiful, the way they were holding themselves up and wrapped in a blanket."[15]
On the LP release, side one was backed with side six, side two was backed with side five, and side three was backed with side four. This was common on multi-LP sets of the time, to accommodate the popularrecord changer turntables.
Most of the tracks have some form of stage announcement, conversation by the musicians, etc., lengthening the tracks to an extent. Times are listed as the length of time the music was played in the song, while times in parentheses indicate the total running time of the entire track.
Side one
John Sebastian – "I Had a Dream" (Sebastian) – 2:38 (2:53)
^The performance on the album picks up mid-song at the very end of the "We're Not Gonna Take It" portion and then finishes with the "See Me, Feel Me" and "Listening to You" sections. The final 1:50 of the track is an emergency announcement and the statement that declared "It's a free concert from now on".
^ This performance features additional background vocals added by Cocker's band during the album's post-production. In the CD version, the first disc would close with this track, with a 1:30 long recording of the rainstorm.
^The first three minutes of the track is the "Crowd Rain Chant", a chant started by the crowd as an attempt to stop the rainstorm.
^The final 34 seconds or so of the track is a speech byMax Yasgur, praising the crowd for coming to the festival.
^"Instrumental Solo" was retitled and re-edited when Hendrix's Woodstock show was released more fully in the 1990s. The improvised, fast solo section immediately following "Purple Haze" was heavily cut in the originalWoodstock film and soundtrack, and most of the track here is what would later be titled "Villanova Junction", a slow bluesy ballad with the band joining in the background. The uncut version of the solo was restored in the director's cut of theWoodstock film and on the Hendrix albumLive at Woodstock and titled "Woodstock Improvisation".
