The Black & White Jimi Hendrix photos are not from Woodstock.

The are from the United Block Association Concert in Harlem: New York City 1969

JH version took over my soul
Tara K version rocked my spirit

i was right in front of him at woodstock.amazing performance!

I was particularly intrigued and grateful to hear that Jimi had a different perspective about the war than those around him would have assumed. To Bill from New York:
There were lots of people who quietly held alternative views to those in the peace movement, though comfortably moving within it. My parents were of that group. My parents were progressive, but were also acutely aware of the brutality and massive violation of human rights in the Soviet Union. They feared that much as they had feared the facism of Hitler, and saw that as worth fighting. It's hard for anyone to see the Vietnam war as worth the cost today (including my parents) but they (and I suspect Jimi) were simply responding within the context of their own knowledge and experience.

Thank you for a beautiful and thoughtful piece.
Don't forget Jimi's epic version on the Rainbow Bridge soundtrack. A multi-tracked guitar masterpiece. It's absolutely brilliant!

Jimi's version is still heartbreakingly powerful, magnificent, and awe-inspiring. Still speaks for times, then, and now, if you ask me. Tara's version washes over one beautifully, at turns questioning and inspiring. Really well done. Remember Jimi on his birthday this Saturday!

Love Ms. Key's composition. Thanks for airing it. (Cute comment, Mrs. Key!)

One of the best discussions I've heard lately, brought back the old times for me, hadn't thought about JH for a long time, and he deserves to be remembered..no better way to remember him than by listening to his achingly beautiful, even painful, Star Spangled Banner. Thank you.

His Woodstock performance wasn't the first time he played it in public. It worked especially well at a Denver festival in Mile High Stadium a few months before Woodstock. Three days, with many of the same performers, Big Mama Thornton opened on Friday night with Ball and Chain, Jimmy and the Banner closed it Sunday night. The city police had spent two and a half days spraying tear gas in an attempt to keep gate crashers out. They had new pepper spray equipment and were anxious to try it out. They finally gave up Sunday night, and filed into the empty south end of the stadium, behind the goalposts, prepared to listen to the music. Black leather jackboots and belts, blue helmets and clubs, which they sometimes tapped along with the music. Then Hendrix lit into the anthem, they stood as one, at attention. You can imagine what happened soon, they started to look confused, and eventually drifted back out. By the time he was done, there was only one policeman in the area, in a normal uniform, directing traffic at an intersection, and there was a single demolished police car in the parking lot. A much more pointed performance than at Woodstock.
I also ate the best peach I've ever had that night, but I may have been a mile high at the time. rb

It's interesting that the host highlights Jimi's version of the US national anthem, and Joe McDonald's "Fixin' to Die Rag" as the moments of protest. It's important to remember the Country Joe and Jimi were two of the few veterans who played at Woodstock.

Its kind of hard to believe Jimi agreed with LBJ/Nixon's war policy. In the introduction to Machine Gun in his Filmore East New Years Eve Concert he sounded tired about the continuation of the war and skeptical about surviving the new year 1970. During his Berkeley Star Spangled version he mentioned "big deal" referring to America during the song. Being surrounded /influenced by those young people of those times its doubtful Jimi supported the domino position after the time of his arrival in London 1967.

Jimi Hendrix committed brutality on guitar strings that reached our ears as strokes of love equal to euphoric and opulent orgasms of electrified melodies and rhythms.

Hendrix version of the national anthem reflected the times - turlublent (war: overseas, among ourselves, within ourselves) - and true to the nation's ongoing story of we the people and OUR government struggle to fulfill the promises articulated in the documents that bind us together.

It was moving, honest, and patriotic to the ideals that make the nation worth having.

Unfortunately, we are losing the passion for ideals and thereby may lose the battle.

WoW! thank you for this.
Gone but not forgotten
but finally understood.
The Perspective of time only makes this piece of ART more important, potent, and "beautiful"!

What can mom say? I am so proud of your musical talents and this is payback for all those late nights!

Fantastic! Hard to believe, nowadays, what an impact that piece had at the time.

GREAT video, Tara!