Freak Flags and Woodstock
The impact of David Crosby
“Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It was getting kind of long
I could have said it was in my way
But I didn't and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly…”
- David Crosby
I. David Crosby
David Crosby’s passing hit me harder than I expected. I was born at the tail end of the “Baby Boomers,” in 1960. I never felt like a real boomer. I always defined a Baby Boomer as a person who was old enough to go to Woodstock, and young enough to have wanted to go. I was nine years old that rainy Woodstock weekend in August, 1969. I remember it well because we lived outside Philadelphia, and my 14 year old cousin Dennis, who was living with us at the time, begged my dad to let him go. “But it’s Woodstock, man!” I’ll never forget it. I had no clue about Woodstock. My favorite song at the time was “Gentle on my Mind” by Glen Campbell. A reminder: Glen Campbell did not play Woodstock.
The following year, my cousin got the three-disk record album of Woodstock, and at the time I did not care for it, except for two songs: Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem, which, by the way, is astounding, and Country Joe and the Fish’s “Fish Cheer,” which included the “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” There’s not a nine year old in the world who wouldn’t love the Fish Cheer: “Give me an F!” “F!!!”, “Give me a U!”, “U!!!” I couldn’t believe it was on a record! But the Fixin’ to Die Rag? Another marker of being a true Boomer was being old enough to be drafted into Viet Nam, and believe me, the war was ever-present. I used to deliver papers to the ladies who worked at the court house in our county seat, and when a draft lottery drawing was published, these women would pore over the newspaper to see what numbers their sons drew and they would end up looking either relieved or distraught at the results. The lyric “Be the first the one on your block to have your boy come home in a box” hit me hard in the chest, even at nine years old. Hell, you’d see the flag-draped boxes on TV.
A few months later, the album “Deva Vu” from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young was released, and I remember the brown texture of the cover. Of course, they played at Woodstock and even after a few months, the mystique and myth of Woodstock being a miraculous alignment of the stars was fully developed. The song “Woodstock,” written by Joni Mitchell, told the tale of harmony and perfection and of being golden stardust, and the song defined Woodstock as the defining moment of our generation, especially older half.
It’s a great record. A dramatic record. A defining record. I loved Carry On and Teach Your Children, Deja Vu, and Our House. I felt at home in that album, somehow. It was inspiring. But then I listened to Almost Cut My Hair.
At first I thought it was silly - a song about cutting hair? But then Crosby sang the lyric “I feel like letting my freak flag fly,” and it resonated inside my young mind. I knew that I was not going to be a person who wore his hair short, who wore ties, and buttoned-up shirts and dress shoes. This was visceral; I didn’t consciously stick a stake in the ground and cry out “no more haircuts for me!” It just became part of my identity, my definition: long hair, T-shirt, jeans. And it was that way until the mid-eighties. This song alone didn’t cause me to eschew short hair, but it coalesced the reasons why.
David Crosby was the lynchpin to me of that whole era, and I think it was because he was always that guy. Throughout the decades since Woodstock and CSN and The Byrds, he personified that era because he was that era. It was not like he was stuck in the past, it was that he brought that mindset with him as he went along. He didn’t grow out of it, he was it. All the rockers from that era either changed with the decades or became has-beens, stuck with that one hit from 1967. But not David Crosby. He played his music. And he never tried to fold himself into anything else.
When I heard that David Crosby passed away, it hit me hard. As I said, his impact on me was unconscious but it suddenly became clear in his passing. Yes, he affected me more than I thought. And his dying does not mean that Woodstock is dead, or that his ideals are fading away into the past. It’s as if he is ascending. He’s moving on, but what he represented and personified is still very much with us. Maybe now, now is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Lord knows we need it.
Vaya con Dios, David. Fly your freak flag high!
II. Things to Realize, the Podcast
I released the first episode of the Things to Realize podcast yesterday. It has been a while since I put together a recording, and it was fun! My initial plan was to record a reading of last week’s post and make it as clean as I could. But, the bug got hold of me - how can I talk about music, and have audio, without actually playing the music? I am assuming fair use, since I am critiquing the music with high praise. So, I recorded the intro, had to figure out how to do a fade-out in Garage Band, and added the music snippets. It is amazing what you can do with a MacBook and a good mic.
I am pleased with your response! Thank you. The recording of this edition of the newsletter is forthcoming. And please, as always, let me know what you think, subscribe if you haven’t already, and share!