Part 38 (2/2)

summer of 1969 with Woodstock. It was a celebration for him of youth

and music, of love and brotherhood. It symbolized the chance to turn

around the year of bloodshed and war, of riots and discontent. He knew,

as he stood on stage and looked out at the sea of bodies, that he would

never do anything so huge or so memorable again.

Even as it thrilled him to be there, to leave his mark, it left him by

turns depressed and terrified that the decade, and its spirit, were

ending.

He rushed through his three days in upstate New York at a fever pitch of

emotional and creative energy, fueled by the atmosphere, heightened by

the drugs that were as handy as popcorn at a Sat.u.r.day matinee, and

pushed by his own fears about where success had taken him. He spent an

entire night alone in the trailer the band used, composing for a

marathon fourteen-hour stint while cocaine stormed through his system.

On one illuminating afternoon he sat in the woods with Stevie, listening

to the music and the cheers of four hundred thousand. With the help of

LSD he saw whole universes created in a maple leaf.

Brian embraced Woodstock, the concept of it, the reality of it. His

only regret was that nothing he had said had persuaded Bev to come with

them. She was, once again, waiting for him. This time she waited in

the house they had bought in the Hollywood hills. Brian's love affair

with America was just beginning, and his second American tour felt like

a homecoming. It was the year of the rock festival, a phenomenon Brian

saw as demonstrating the strength of rock culture.

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