Roots Book

Coming Home with Jane Fonda and Penelope Milford

March 25th, 2024

Poster for Coming HomeThe United States’s involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1955 and ended twenty years later in 1975. It was a proxy war between the anti-communist forces (US) and communist forces (USSR and China). Millions of Vietnamese were killed, and the US military engagement cost the lives of 58,281 American soldiers. At its peak, in April 1969, the US had 543,000 soldiers in Vietnam.

As the war intensified in the mid-1960s, the anti-war movement in the United States became one of the most pervasive displays of opposition to government policy in modern times. Initially, demonstrations were organized by peace activists and leftist intellectuals on college campuses. Soon, protests emerged nationwide in San Francisco, New York, Oakland, and Berkeley. When the US began bombing North Vietnam in 1965, some critics began to question the government’s assertion that it was fighting a democratic war to liberate the South Vietnamese people from communist aggression.

Soon, the peace movement swelled to include hippies, primarily young people who rejected authority and increasingly embraced the counterculture. In addition, some members of the entertainment industry, most notably Jane Fonda, became peace activists. During the early 1960s, Jane supported the civil rights movement and met French intellectuals who opposed the war while married to the French director Roger Vadim.

In 1970, Fonda spoke at a rally organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She offered to raise money for the organization, and the group rewarded her with the title of Honorary National Coordinator. That fall, she embarked on a tour of college campuses. Concurrently, Fonda formed a film production company named Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC). She wanted to make a film about an injured vet to raise awareness about the war. She was inspired by Ron Kovic, a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran she met through her work with VVAW.

In 1972, Fonda hired Nancy Dowd, a friend from her days in the feminist movement, to write a script about the consequences of the war as seen through the eyes of a conservative military wife. The project languished for several years until the final team of Fonda, director Hal Ashby, cinematographer Haskell Wexler, producer Jerome Hellman, and new screenwriters Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones took it on. All were united in their opposition to the Vietnam War and were concerned about the veterans who were returning and finding it hard to adapt to life back home.

The movie featured Fonda as Sally Hyde, a loyal and conservative military wife, married to Bob Hyde, a USMC captain about to be deployed to Vietnam. At first, Sally dreads being left alone, but after being forced to find housing off the base, she feels liberated. With time on her hands, she starts volunteering at a local veterans’ hospital. There, she meets Vi Munson, played by Penelope Milford. Sally, inspired by the bohemian Munson, whose brother, Billy, has come home from Vietnam with grave problems, meets Luke, a former high school classmate, played by Jon Voight, another Vietnam returnee who is a paraplegic.

Opening scenes filmed at a vet hospital were improvised, with injured vets expressing their views on the Vietnam War. The 1960s soundtrack, featuring music from The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and Tim Buckley, underscored the story’s immediacy. This sensitive film was released in 1978, and with the conflict still fresh in people’s minds, it began to help people come to terms with the war.

The indie film grossed $32.7 million on a budget of $3 million. It garnered eight Academy Award nominations. Jane Fonda received a nod for Best Actress, and Penelope Milford was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Other nominations included one for Jon Voight, Best Actor. Ultimately, the picture received three awards, with Fonda and Voigt receiving Oscars and the film receiving an award for Best Picture.

Today, after a long and rewarding career as an actor on stage and on the screen, Penelope Milford resides in Kingston and is the musical director for the Christian Science Church in Woodstock.

~Weston Blelock

Coming Home trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0hB7ZyK6yU

HD Film Tribute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVAEsNaQr-Q

Sled Hill Café Posters at Swann Auction Galleries

January 17th, 2024

On February 8, 2024, thirteen posters from the Sled Hill Café are up for sale at the Swann Auction Galleries in New York City. In 1968, the Sled Hill Café, The Elephant, and the Café Expresso hosted nightly music performances in the run-up to the 1969 Woodstock Festival at Bethel, NY. On any given night, folk, jazz, funk, and rock ‘n’ roll music could be heard at the Sled Hill. The owner, Bud Sife, purchased the building in 1946. For a while, it was a lumber-drying shed for a nearby sawmill. However, in 1962, it was re-purposed into an ice cream parlor. By 1965, it was a macrobiotic restaurant; upon receiving a liquor license, it became a nightclub.

Frank Spinelli, one of four bartenders in 1970, recalls, “It was a cobbled-together construction of dump castoffs, bargain lumber, and garage-sale secondhand.” In other words, it was a bit down home and not the chicest spot, but its most significant advantage was that it closed at 3 a.m.—well after the other music venues. So, for musicians playing all-nighters in home rehearsal sessions or finishing up gigs at the Café Expresso or The Elephant, the bar offered the perfect place to decompress and catch up on village gossip.

On any given night, one might see Billy Batson of Holy Moses, Rick Danko, Levon Helm or Richard Manuel of The Band, Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield, and Bob Dylan alternately jamming on Sled Hill’s stub of a stage or sitting at the bar.

A Poughkeepsie, NY, collector is putting the performance posters up for auction in two lots. Jerry Jerominek executed all but two of the posters. Spider Barbour personally signed the one for his group, Chrysalis. The Swann Auction Galleries sale category is “subculture,” and the sale number is 2658. For those who wish to own a piece of those magical times, visit here.

~ Weston Blelock

Candy-O Revisited

February 22nd, 2018

Jean and Jim Young owned The Juggler during the late 1960s in Woodstock, NY. It was an avant-garde bookstore that sold guitar strings and had a magazine rack featuring copies of Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines. In 2008 Jean participated in a panel discussion titled “Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival.” She recalled those days fondly: “And then, of course, the hippies came in . . . new thinking, anti-war sentiment . . . and then, of course, Michael Lang along with it. And I must say when he came into town, and we were in our bookstore, and he was looking for someplace to rent for the land . . . none of the real estate people in town took him very seriously. Like, he didn’t have any money. He wasn’t properly this or that. And so we thought, we’ll help him out, and my husband went around, looking for a place for the festival.”

Michael Young fell into the music business in a most natural way. His parents, Jean and Jim Young, rented a house on Zena Road to Tim Hardin. Every day after school, ten-year-old Michael headed over to Tim’s house to hang out. There he soaked up the vibe and met all the stars of the day, including Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. In those heady months after the Woodstock Festival, it was an exciting time to be in town, and Michael took full advantage of the scene. Soon Michael was playing music and gigging around town at places like the Sled Hill Café. When he was 16, it was time to head off to college. He got Rick Danko, the bassist for The Band, to write a letter of recommendation, and in 1972 Michael started his freshman year at the Berklee College of Music. The coursework must have been dull because, within months, he was back in Woodstock—though not for long. Soon he headed to London and Nashville but returned later the same year with a personal mission to mix tapes of his band’s music.

Michael Young, on right, at the Mink Hollow Studio

He started as a glorified gopher at Todd Rungren’s Mink Hollow Studio. Todd must have observed a mature work ethic in his young protégé because he left Michael in charge of his home while he went out on the road. Over a three-week period, Michael had the run of the studio. There, by dint of ferocious focus, he mastered the studio equipment and mixed his songs on the 24-track recording system. Upon Todd’s return, he promoted Michael to assistant engineer.

Calls came in daily about different record projects—and messages were left on the kitchen’s refrigerator. One day Michael noticed a message from Ric Ocasek, the leader of The Cars. Todd suggested that he follow up, so Michael did. Ric was looking for help recording Candy-O, and he invited Michael up to Boston. Michael’s specialty is creating “a rounded and clean band sound.” In all, Michael engineered seven songs. Unfortunately, none of them made the album. But recently, Rhino released the Northern Studios versions on a 2017 augmented release of Candy-O. Michael got his well-deserved album credit, and Pitchfork says of his tracks, “Listen closely, though, and Candy-O boasts bolder production that emphasizes the band’s heavy attack and gives plenty of space for guitarist Elliot Easton to spin out composed solos. It sounds not just like new wave—the umbrella term for any pop-oriented counterculture music that arose in the wake of punk—but album rock.” The timing couldn’t be better, with The Cars being inducted into the Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on April 14th.

For more info on Michael’s career, visit: https://www.michaelyoungrecordproducer.com

~ Weston Blelock

Lambert & Stamp

April 21st, 2016
Poster for Lambert & Stamp. Chris Stamp at left and Kit Lambert on right.

Poster for Lambert & Stamp. Chris Stamp is at left, and Kit Lambert is on the right.

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Calixte Stamp, Chris Stamp’s wife.

Last April, I saw a review of Lambert & Stamp, the documentary, in Rolling Stone. More recently, I screened a copy from Netflix. Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp managed The Who. Usually, one doesn’t focus on managers of bands, but over the years, the team of Lambert and Stamp built up an undeniable mystique in my mind’s eye. For me, their story naturally begins in the early 1960s. I remember seeing The Who on Ready, Steady Go in the UK. The group’s music, dynamic visual delivery, and destructive hijinks at the end of the show were mesmerizing.

The documentary by James D. Cooper was ten years in the making. Cooper met Chris Stamp in 1995 while the latter was working on a film about Keith Moon, The Who’s drummer. Ultimately Cooper didn’t work on this project, but Stamp liked Cooper’s approach to filmmaking, and a friendship ensued. In 2002 Cooper explored the idea of a film on the creative team behind The Who with Chris and Stamp liked the idea. With Chris Stamp’s endorsement, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey came aboard.

Lambert & Stamp chronicles the formation of the partnership, the signing of The Who, and the band’s rise to prominence. Lambert and Stamp were aspiring filmmakers. Christopher “Kit” Lambert was the son of Constant Lambert, the musical director of the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. He attended Oxford, was an army officer, and was gay. Being gay in the UK at the time was illegal. Chris Stamp was a cockney, the son of a tugboat captain, and straight. Both men were war babies. Despite Kit’s posh upbringing, he was openly gay, and this crimped his prospects. On the other hand, Stamp’s circumstances were dimmed by class and poverty. His section of London, the Isle of Dogs, was severely bombed during the war. The family lived in a partially collapsed building. In the postwar economy, his opportunities were bleak, so he became a hoodlum. His older brother Terrence, a rising actor, intervened and got him a job as an underaged prop man at the Sadler Wells Theatre. There he saw Chita Riviera in West Side Story and became entranced with show business. This transformation is eloquently covered in the documentary. Continue reading

Roots of Woodstock Book Event and Concert

July 31st, 2014
FishCastle in concert

FishCastle in concert

On August 9, at 7 p.m., join Weston Blelock, author of Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to “Woodstock,” for a talk and book signing at the Inquiring Mind Bookstore and Cafe. Blelock will discuss the events—including the Sound-Out Music Festivals in Saugerties—that inspired Michael Lang’s Woodstock Festival of 1969. Also on the bill are FishCastle, a lively folk duoCyril Caster and Catherine Selin, from Landenberg, PA. Caster is a past producer of the Sound-Outs and has played and recorded with Big Joe Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Elvin Jones, Pete Seeger, David Blue, and Nico. His singing partner, Catherine, has performed with numerous choirs here and abroad. In 2006 she won the Virginia Harp Center Challenge for composition.  The group play multiple instruments and are known for their diverse sound. Fans liken their music to the sounds of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, and Neil Young. The Inquiring Mind Bookstore is at the corner of Partition and Main Streets in Saugerties. The event is free and open to the public. For more info, call 845-246-5775, visit www.woodstockarts.com, or link to FishCastle Music on Facebook.