Drugs, parties and other reminisces of Woodstock festival
By IANSWednesday, October 7, 2009
PANAJI - While drugs, hippies, parties and all-pervasive bohemia may be a Goa politician’s nightmare, for rock singer and musician Uday Benegal they are probably the perfect setting for a Woodstock music festival.
Benegal, who is here to attend the premiere of the Ang Lee film “Taking Woodstock” Wednesday, hastened to add that he was not advocating the use of drugs. “Goa’s laid back attitude too is very conducive to a Woodstock-like event here,” the lead singer of erstwhile band Indus Creed said.
“Only the drugs used then were more gentler. Not the kind found around today. You can’t deny it. I am sure drugs are happening in Goa now too,” Benegal said, recalling the legendary music festival in the US in 1969.
Benegal, who is working on a film “which has a lot to do with music”, said that a film on Woodstock, which he saw when he was a kid changed his life forever.
“I watched it when I was 12. My life was completely transformed then,” he added.
Head of the Mumbai-based Fountainhead events Brian Tellis, who attended the 30th anniversary of the Woodstock festival in upstate New York in 1999, said that the three day musical camp-out had to be seen to be believed.
“It was opened by James Brown and we had 60 to 70 bands playing. There was AC/DC, Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morisette. I can just reel out names. The main event was from 12 noon to midnight, but there were other side shows after that too. It was a 24/7 party,” he said.
Tellis, who is also an RJ, is in the process of organising a similar music camp-out ‘Open Sky festival’ on the lines of the legendary Woodstock festival. But he said that laws in India were a deterrent.
“Law prohibits such shows from going on throughout the night. The ‘Open Sky festival’ will be more controlled the first time round. We are working on the modalities. The show should be on in about six months,” he said.
Tellis added that while the Woodstock festival in New York 1969 was birthed in times of the Cold war and the US invasion of Vietnam, its relevance reached beyond geographical boundaries now. “Considering the times we live in, in India, Woodstock is relevant even today,” he said.
