“Woodstock” by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

"Woodstock" appeared on Déjà Vu, the 1970 album from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and though Joni Mitchell wrote it, this is the version that became a fixture of American classic rock radio. Mitchell couldn't make it to the festival in August 1969; she wrote the song after hearing about it from Graham Nash, her boyfriend at the time, who had played there. It follows a concert-goer on the road to Max Yasgur's farm in New York State.

CSNY turn it into a charging electric anthem: Crosby, Stills and Young on guitars, Nash and Stills on keys, Greg Reeves on bass and Dallas Taylor on drums, with those famous stacked harmonies soaring over the top. The four produced it themselves, and between the song and the festival it remembers, it came to stand for the whole 1960s counterculture.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.