At Woodstock, after Joe Cocker the flood

It all started with i Beatles and with their 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (read the review here), perhaps the most important album in the history of pop rock, and with one of the songs included in that album, “With a Little Help from My Friends”. The song was written by the association John Lennon/Paul McCartney for it to be sung on the album by drummer of the Liverpool quartet Ringo Starr.

John Robert Cocker called Joe, born in 1944, born in Sheffield, a city in central northern England known for its steel production, took his first steps in the music industry at the beginning of the Sixties. His first recording, in September 1964, was – you see – “I’ll Cry Instead”. Song of the Beatles included on their third album in 1964 “A Hard Day’s Night”which had been published only a few months earlier, in July of the same year.

Joe Cocker he was an exceptionally talented performer, he had the uncommon ability to empathize completely with the song he found himself interpreting, managing to perfectly embody its spirit, with a final result that was often better than the original. On November 9, 1968 his version of “With a Little Help from My Friends” of the Beatles reached number one in the UK singles chart. In the song, on the guitar, he figures Jimmy Pagein that period in smell of Led Zeppelin.

What can be considered a good song, like many other gods Beatlesmade his fortune, launched and indelibly marked the career of the then 24-year-old English singer. In the wake of that success, in 1969, Cocker was invited to the United States to perform in the most famous three-day musical event of all time: the Woodstock festival. The performance of the English musician, accompanied by his Grease Bandtook place on August 17th and was unforgettable like few others.

The setlist proposed by Cocker that day included, as per the manual, a good number of covers with three songs by BobDylan. Here it is: Bob Dylan’s “Dear Landlord,” “Something’s Coming On,” “Do I Still Figure in Your Life?” by the English band Honeybus, “Feelin’ Alright” by Traffic, “Just Like a Woman” by Bob Dylan, “Let’s Go Get Stoned” by the vocal group the Coasters, “I Don’t Need No Doctor” by Nick Ashford, ” I Shall Be Released” by Bob Dylan, “Hitchcock Railway”, “Something to Say” and then, to close, “With a Little Help From My Friends” After his concert, as if it were a sign of destiny, to underline the performance even more, a storm interrupted the festival for several hours.

After him, the flood.

Joe Cocker on the Woodstock stage in that summer of 1969 he delivered to history a memorable version of “With a Little Help From My Friends”. In front of around half a million people he sang it with such intensity that it seemed his life was at stake (and perhaps it was exactly like that), making it the very anthem of the three days of peace and rock music; the song which, with its message, united an entire generation in hope. And he handed it over to the myth…then came the seventies.