Subject: RE: Richie Havens' birthday
From:
GUEST
Date: 24 Jan 07 - 10:51 AM
Here's a review from Mondays"s "Guardian" of recent concert he did at Gateshead. It gets 4 out of 5 stars.
**** Sage, Gateshead
Dave Simpson
Monday January 22, 2007
The Guardian
Richie Havens will always be synonymous with his phenomenal festival-opening set at the original Woodstock. Almost four decades later, there are no Hare Krishna banners over his stage, and the once-black beard is wispy grey. However, Havens wears a robe-like outfit similar to 1969's and carries on the Woodstock spirit as effectively as any of his generation.
He opens by talking about his days in Greenwich Village, recalling one song that a "friend" gave him a demo of and he in turn taught the tune to another "friend". The song was All Along the Watchtower, as written by Bob Dylan and "nailed" by Jimi Hendrix. But Havens doesn't need to name-drop; his aura is magnetic enough, and the fearsome Woodstock spirit permeates his playing. His unique, self-taught rushed strumming style allows him to massively reinterpret Dylan's Just Like a Woman and George Harrison's Here Comes the Sun.
Accompanied by lead guitar and cello, his newly anguished version of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock is indescribably mesmeric, and he closes with Freedom ("Sometimes I feel just like a motherless child") as performed at the festival. When Havens turns audience clapping into a whirling hurricane of percussion and cries for "Freedom!", it somehow seems a metaphor for what people coming together can achieve.
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sj
