The soundtrack album for the Ang Lee movie, “Taking Woodstock,” comes out via Rhino Records on August 25.
The disc features score, composed by Danny Elfman, plus tracks by Woodstock-friendly usual suspects, Richie Havens, The Doors, Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Grateful Dead, etc.
We saw the film at Cannes. It’s sweet, tender, but also, polite, congenial and in some ways, really forgettable to be completely honest. The film opens in limited release on August 28.
One thing people tend to forget is that Martin Scorsese was one of the players involved with the filming of Woodstock.
“My perspective on Woodstock is . . . limited. How limited? Well, for most of that long weekend in August 1969, I was confined to a platform about 9ft wide, just to the right of the stage, just below a bank of amplifiers, fiercely concentrating on the musicians and their performances,” he wrote in the foreword of the new book, “Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the World,” which was excerpted on the London Times site earlier this year. “I was to be one of the Woodstock film’s editors, and my job was to keep an eye out for images we would need when we started to put it together. We had seven cameramen working every performance and, to the degree that I could communicate with them (surprisingly well, all hardships considered), I was trying to direct their attention to activity they could not perceive, since their eyes were glued to their viewfinders.”
Unfortunately, the best song performed at Woodstock, Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice” is not included in the film or soundtrack. We’re not necessarily huge Santana heads, but that performance in the documentary is the memorable hot fire as far as we’re concerned (though in this small youtube clip all it’s power seems sapped).
“Taking Woodstock” soundtrack tracklist
1. Freedom (2009) (Richie Havens)
2. Taking Woodstock Titles
3. Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
4. China Cat Sunflower (Live)(Grateful Dead)
5. Maggie M’Gill (The Doors)
6. Elliot’s Place
7. Coming Into Los Angeles (Live)(Arlo Guthrie)
8. I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag (Live)(Country Joe McDonald)
9. Going Up The Country (Live)(Canned Heat)
10. Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) (Live)(Janis Joplin)
11. A Happening (Office #2)
12. The Red Telephone (Love)
13. Beautiful People (Live)(Melanie)
14. I Shall Be Released (Live)(The Band)
15. Perspective Extended
16. One More Mile (The Paul Butterfield Blues Band)
17. Volunteers (Jefferson Airplane)