Is Woodstock well on its way to being a folktale? What high points help the Folktale description?
The movie certainly helped its mythic status. I would not say, though, that anyone achieved an apotheosis they weren’t nearly already at in those days. As the above comments have pointed out, the context of all this has been forgotten — the chants of “No Rain No Rain” call to mind the Levitation of the Pentagon. And of course, most of us at the time saw Hendrix’s National Anthem as just an example of someone saying “This is beautiful music” without knowing that he had played in the U. S. Army band and that the song had REAL meaning to him. Most of the bands were doing very very well in touring. People don’t seem to realize any more that Richie Havens was very much a link to Dylan and Pete Seegar. While certainly Woodstock and the movie didn’t hurt anybody’s exposure, I really don’t think it “made” anybody mythic who wasn’t becoming mythic because of the psychedelic posters coming out of fillmore east for example. Is Woodstock well on its way to becoming a folktale? Yes. Unfortunately
