Pop Talk by George Varga

"I've never been called a hero before," said Jefferson Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner, who performed earlier this month as part of the "Heroes of Woodstock" concert at the San Diego County Fair. "If I would have been born anywhere else but San Francisco, I would have been shot by now."

Unwounded and unbowed, this former 1960s counterculture icon is now a 68-year-old grandfather. But he still embraces many of the hippie-inspired Woodstock ideals, which are at least partly behind the "Heroes" tour, also featuring Country Joe McDonald, ex-Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten, Melanie, Canned Heat and Big Brother & The Holding Co.

Held over three days and nights in 1969, the legendary Woodstock festival in upstate New York irrevocably expanded the impact of rock and popular culture. Its music is still a source of nostalgia, if not inspiration, for baby boomers.

But its 40th anniversary is being celebrated — and exploited — not just by concert tours. There are 13 new books, an Ang Lee film, "Taking Woodstock," and commercial gimmicks, such as the "Summer of Love" promotion at Target stores, which features licensed Woodstock beach towels and other merchandise.

"Heroes of Woodstock," meanwhile, was just a musical appetizer at this year's San Diego County Fair. The fair's lineup also included the latest versions of The Guess Who, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Poco, Tommy James and The Shondells, Creedence Clearwater Revisited (two of whose members played Woodstock with Creedence Clearwater Revival) and San Diego's Iron Butterfly (who had been booked for Woodstock but got stuck at an airport en route).

The appeal of the festival and the era that fueled it also extends to younger fans, including San Diego musicians Anna Troy, 25, and Joe Harrison, 19.

"I don't think rock will ever be like that again," said Troy, whose father, attorney Sandy Troy, attended Woodstock and wrote an acclaimed 1995 biography of Jerry Garcia. "A lot of young musicians like me wish we could have experienced Woodstock, but we can learn from the people who did."

Harrison, also well-versed in classic rock, has spent the past three summers touring as the youngest member of The Adolescents, a pioneering Southern California punk band that was formed in 1980. He has performed at Street Scene, Bamboozle and a dozen other outdoor festivals.

"I've seen the 'Woodstock' movie, and it was awesome; the newer festivals don't seem so genuine," said Harrison, who is also the lead guitarist in the San Diego band The New Archaic. "Nearly all the bands who played Woodstock are legendary. At a lot of festivals now, it seems there aren't many bands that will be remembered."

Woodstock — which was held in Bethel, N.Y., and featured such doomed young stars as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin — drew more than 400,000 fans, making Bethel New York's third-largest city, at least for a weekend.

"It was amazing. It was like watching a (Federico) Fellini movie," said Creedence bassist Doug Clifford, 64.

Only a small number of attendees bought tickets for the festival, whose producers were unprepared to handle such a massive crowd. Heavy rains turned Woodstock into a mud bath. But that only added to the festive spirit, despite an acute shortage of food, water and sanitation.

"I'm amazed I was able to be on the side of the stage for 12 hours before we played — without having to take a pee," said retired Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick, 69.

Michael Lang, who booked many of the bands for Woodstock, was the only one of its four co-producers who also helped stage the 1994 and 1999 editions of the festival. Held at different locations in upstate New York, neither achieved much of a legacy.

"There isn't a place I've been in the world where people don't know about Woodstock and don't think of it in positive terms," said Lang, who apparently never has been to Phoenix.

During the presidential primaries in 2007, Sen.

John McCain, R-Ariz., blasted Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for having sought a $1 million earmark for a Woodstock museum.

"Forty years ago, I would have laughed, as I'm laughing now, at the idea of a 'Heroes of Woodstock' tour," Lang admitted. "Just the idea of it seems so strange and bizarre."

That sentiment is shared by Sam Andrew, one of the three original members of Joplin's former band, Big Brother, still playing in the band.

"A hero is somebody who fights in a war or who acts to save someone when they don't have to," said Andrew, 67, who stopped working with Joplin the year before her fatal 1970 heroin overdose.

"We're proud to represent Janis' part in Woodstock, even though she played there with another band. I'm not sure what she'd think about this."

As one of the partners in Woodstock Ventures, Lang licensed the use of the festival's name for the "Heroes" trek. The tour includes a month of European dates and an Aug. 15 stop at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, an outdoor venue located at the site of the original Woodstock festival.

"My biggest regret is that the fences, gates and ticket booths never got up for the 1969 festival," said Lang, 64, whose book, "The Road to Woodstock," is due in July.

"My partner, John Roberts, put up a lot of money, and I hated to see him take that loss. It took a while, but — happily — he got it back, through the (Oscar-winning) film documentary and (soundtrack) album."

The festival featured dozens of musicians, whose appearances at Woodstock and in the subsequent film boosted their popularity worldwide and made some of them very wealthy.

"A whole generation grew up on the Woodstock album," said Country Joe McDonald, 67, who was in the U.S. Navy before becoming a full-time musician. His anti-war song "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" became an anthem after his rousing performance of it at Woodstock. He still plays it.

McDonald, who appeared on the 2007 and 2008 Hippiefest tours, regards the "Heroes of Woodstock" tag as "obviously a marketing gimmick." But, he noted, the festival "has now assumed almost a cultural persona of its own. It's been great for me because it allowed me to have a career. People may remember me as being 'revolutionary' or foulmouthed, but in entertainment, if you're not recognized for something, you're forgotten."

Jefferson Airplane alum Kantner doesn't mince words about taking advantage of Woodstock nostalgia with the "Heroes" tour.

"We're whores for playing. We hire ourselves out to Republicans, Hells Angels and anyone in between," said the singer-guitarist, whose "Heroes" set is with his post-Airplane band, Jefferson Starship (which was not formed until 1974).

"The basic element is playing good music. What's important to me is for Americans to struggle and celebrate the lives they live. I'm a Catholic, so I don't think I'll die."

Canned Heat's drummer, Adolfo "Fito" De La Para, 63, is still bitter about the music biz politics that led to his band's being edited out of the Woodstock movie, despite the use of its song "Going Up the Country" as the film's theme song. A native of Mexico City who moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, he takes some solace from Canned Heat's belated inclusion in the expanded DVD and Blu-ray versions of the film.

But De La Para, who has led different lineups of the band almost nonstop since the 1980s, is more focused on mortality than Kantner. This may be because three of Canned Heat's original five members are dead.

"I never expected to be alive at this time," said the drummer, whose 2000 book, "Living the Blues: Canned Heat's Story of Music, Drugs, Death, Sex and Survival," has also been published in German and French.

"This will probably be the last chance for many people of our generation to see all these bands, on the 'Heroes' tour together. Many of us are trying to recapture those feelings, knowing that we'll be gone in just a few years. This is our chance to feel what we felt before."

To find out more about George Varga and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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