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It was Friday, August 8, 1969 and we had just finished playing a noon time concert in Trinity Church on Wall Street and Broadway, NYC. The concert was filmed by NBC News and shown on the Huntley Brinkley News Hour. Cossie, our manager, came in and said "there is something going on upstate NY the next weekend". He said we were invited to play if we wanted to. We were signed to RCA along with the Jefferson Airplane who did go on to that "something" and play, but they had been better informed of what was happening. We were in the running and played the same bill as other Woodstock bands such as Canned Heat, Sly and the Family Stone and Paul Butterfield Blues Band but we didn't know they would be there. Still another group we had appeared with that should have, but didn't play Woodstock was Iron Butterfly. I heard that they waited in a motel for a helicopter that never came to pick them up. in 2005 I asked Artie Kornfeld, the Father of Woodstock, if that was true and he told me the reason the helicopter didn't show up. As for Mind Garage, we definitely made a conscious decision not to go to Woodstock. Each of us had different reasons, one of which was a paying job in Cleveland. We followed the money. It was a life changing decision. See Declined Invitations: http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/music0_woodstock.html So on that Friday afternoon in 1969, I asked Cossie who else was going to play at this concert and he said there were supposed to be some big name groups but he didn't know who. If he had known, and if he had told us our friends were playing, I am sure we would have gone. We didn't know that it would turn out to be WOODSTOCK! No one did, not even Artie. What is so personally daunting is that while we were in Cleveland we were actually invited to go to Woodstock again on a privately chartered bus. But we turned it down again. And as if that wasn't bad enough, it seemed fate was really rubbing it in, or trying desperately to get us there. I was invited for the third time to go in a private car and for the third and last time I turned it down. It was enough to make Beethoven roll over. There are critical moments in every life, crossroads where decisions you make will forever change your life. Sometimes you just don't know until later. How can we ever know what might have been. We are presented with so many doors, some open, some closed. We may desperately try to go through a closed door but no matter what we do it can't be opened, or the door may be open and we decide not to enter, no matter how hard events try to push us through. If there is no such thing as destiny, when its all over history looks very much destiny, and Woodstock was not our destiny. I'm reminded of an anecdote. An elderly woman heard on the radio there was a terrible storm coming and the possibility of flood, and everyone should evacuate. She wouldn't. She put her faith in God to save her. The Sheriff came and ordered her to evacuate and she wouldn't, putting her faith in God once more. The floods came and still she wouldn't evacuate even when the national guard came in boats. She put her faith in God to save her. At last a helicopter came and still she wouldn't evacuate. She died and went to heaven. When she saw God she said, what went wrong? Where were you? Why didn't you save me? God answered, I warned you on the radio, I sent the Sheriff with a message, I sent you a boat, I even sent you a helicopter. Why didn't you listen to me?"
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