It was 52 years ago today…

The cover of Abbey Road, The Beatles' eleventh and final studio album (released on September 26, 1969), famously depicts the four members of the band dressed in tailored suits (other than George Harrison) crossing Abbey Road, a street in North-West London, along a zebra crosswalk just outside their recording studio. However, a careful perusal of the cover (Abbey Road Photograph) reveals several non-Beatles in the background of this celebrated image, including a man standing on the sidewalk just to the left of the head of John Lennon. [1] Interestingly, the impromptu photo was taken on August 8, 1969, one week before the first day of the legendary Woodstock Music and Art Festival in Bethel, New York which was scheduled for August 15-17, 1969. [2]

Although the Beatles didn't appear at Woodstock, four of their songs, most notably Joe Cocker's fervid version of "With A Little Help From My Friends" from their seminal Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band "concept album" were performed. [3] While it was initially believed no musicians from Ardsley appeared at Woodstock, according to Jeanie Schram (AHS Class of 1966), folksinger/songwriter Bert Sommer(1949-1990), was a student in Ardsley for a few years beginning in either junior high or the first two years of high school. Sommer performed ten songs on the festival's first day (his first live performance in front of an audience of several hundred thousands) including several from his first album “The Road to Travel.” which was produced by Artie Kornfeld, one of the four principals behind Woodstock and a champion of Sommer’s music. Sommer later penned the single “We’re All Playing in the Same Band” about his experience at Woodstock which reached #48 on the Hot 100 in September 1970. Online articles about Woodstock report Sommer received the first standing ovation for his version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America.” Although Sommer’s apperance at Woodstock is little known, the proto-heavy metal band Mountain, fronted by Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi, performed the song “Beside the Sea,” which was co-written by Sommer, as part of their Woodstock set on the evening of August 16th. Sommer’s early songwriting ability can be heard on his bewitching 1966 single on the Vanguard label entitled “You’re What Makes My Lonely Life Worth Living” which can be heard on YouTube.

A triple live album of selected performances from the festival entitled Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More was released on May 11, 1970. The album cover featured an image of a young couple wrapped in a mud-caked blanket, with the sun breaking through the clouds, amid the multitude of attendees which seemingly conveyed a defining image of what at the time seemed to be a significant cultural (or countercultural) turning point. However, just to the left of the couple, between a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and what appears to be a gold colored butterfly shaped kite, [4] the photograph shows a standing man wearing cut-offs peering downward.

The standing man is Kenny Rosaler (pronounced Rose-a-ler), who had graduated from Ardsley High School a few weeks earlier. [5] Fifty two years ago,on Thursday, August 14, 1969, one day before the festival's scheduled opening day, Rosaler and two other Ardsley High School Class of 1969 graduates (Douglas Olson and Robert Schaefer) (along with twenty-five thousand others), with tickets in hand, left Ardsley and traveled north along the New York State Thruway to Woodstock. The Thruway (built between 1950-1956 and officially known as the Governor Thomas E. Dewey Thruway) is arguably the usung “roadie” of the Woodstock Festival which, if not built, would likely never have been able to allow several hundred thousand people to reach largely rural Sullivan County where the event (described as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music”) was held. The impact of the Thruway (for better and worse) on Ardsley was discussed in a New York Times article entitled “Nicked by Thruway, Solid in Amenities.” [6] Going early proved prescient as The New York Daily News reported on August 16, 1969, that cars were being delayed by as much as eight hours between New York City and the concert site — a distance of less than 100 miles.

How Rosaler ended up (or believes he ended up) [7] on the album cover of the Woodstock documentary’s soundtrack will be covered in a forthcoming article in The Beacon, the Ardsley Historical Society’s biannual journal.

Endnotes:

[1] The man was purportedly American tourist Paul Cole who was waiting for his wife when the photograph was taken. There are also three individuals in the background just behind the head of Paul McCartney.

[2] Due to torrential rain on Saturday and the traffic snarls,, the final headliner, Jimi Hendrix, did not take the stage until Monday, August 18. By that time, most of the several hundred thousand attendees had left and only a fraction saw his searing version of The Star Spangled Banner.

[3] Opening act Richie Havens also sang With A Little Help From My Friends and a medley of Strawberry Fields Forever and Hey Jude. Soon to be “supergroup” Crosby Stills Nash harmonized Blackbird on day three of the festival. A few weeks after Woodstock, on September 13, 1969, John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band (featuring Yoko Ono, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, and Eric Clapton) played the one day, twelve hour Toronto Rock n' Roll Revival, which was filmed by acclaimed American documentary filmmaker and pioneer of direct cinema, D.A. Pennebaker. Previously, in 1968, Pennebaker released his concert film of the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, a three-day event held in 1967, which featured many of the artists who later performed at Woodstock, including the breakthrough performances of The Who, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. One week after his appearance in Toronto, Lennon announced he was leaving the Beatles.

[4]  Newspaper ads promoting Woodstock ticket sales contained the following: 

“Hundreds of Acres to Roam on -

Walk around for three days without seeing a skyscraper or a traffic light. Fly a kite, sun yourself. Cook your own food and breathe un-spoiled air.”

Of course, the butterfly has always been a symbol of transformation. Even though she did not attend the festival, Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock” (later recorded by Crosby Stills Nash and Young and reaching number 11 on the charts) contained the following lyrics that captured Woodstock’s countercultural ethos:

“By the time we got to Woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers

Riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies

Above our nation

We are stardust

Billion year old carbon

We are golden

Caught in the devil's bargain

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden.”

The 50th anniversary box set of the concert (containing every performance and related ephemera) was entitled: Woodstock – Back to the Garden. https://www.rhino.com/woodstock50

[5] Rosaler was also the sports editor of The Panther Voice (Ardsley High School’s newspaper) and lived at 11 Kensington Road in Ardsley. The photograph of Rosaler on the album cover of the Woodstock documentary soundtrack recording was taken early Sunday morning, August 17, 1969. On September 21, 2019, the Ardsley Public Library commemorated the 50th anniversary of Woodstock with a program presented by David Fruci, a musician and adjunct professor at Westchester Community College

[6] August 3, 1997 If you are thinking of living in Ardsley, NY

[7] An often quoted remark is that “If you remember Woodstock, you weren't there.”