All summer, Europe 1 looks back at the artists who played the Woodstock revolution at this iconic festival in 1969. In this sixth episode, Jean-François Pérès is interested in Canned Heat, a blues band that has become a disparate collective. .. still active today.

STORY

There was a before, there was an after. Fifty years ago, the Woodstock wave swept the world. Europe 1 makes you relive, at the time of the festivals of the summer, the history of this revolution, not only by what it brought, but also by those who incarnated it. Today, the group Canned Heat.

Five guys with dazzling resume

They are more real than life bluesmen, but they are all skin white. And on the second day of Woodstock, they will deliver their most famous performance. The men of Canned Heat, five fellows who became known at the Monterey Festival two years ago, play at sunset and take a global dimension. With a title, which will become one of the hymns of Woodstock and the documentary film of the same name, Going Up The Country. The story of a man fleeing urban hell, heading for the countryside. All the hippie ideal summed up in a few rhymes.

Despite their young age, Canned Heat members line up dazzling resumes. There are founders and rare record collectors, Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who formed the group in 1965 in Los Angeles, in the home of a blues enthusiast. The first is the one who plays Going Up The Country in his falsetto voice, falsely naive. The second is "The Bear", so nicknamed for its extreme build.

Beside, the others are almost aristocrats. Henry Vestine, the guitarist, has just been fired from Frank Zappa's group for excessive drug use. Larry Taylor, the bass player, is the former musician of Jerry Lee Lewis. Frank Cook, the drummer, played with Chet Baker. And Fito De La Parra, who also feels the bass drum, is the accompanist of the Platters. All this beautiful people do not necessarily get along well in life, but make sparks on stage.

Blues revisited

As for the name of the group, he says a lot of his inspirations and his roots. Canned Heat is the name of a cheap alcohol, a twisted gut that has been responsible for a lot of damage during the Prohibition era. But this is also the title of a blues Tommy Johnson, composed in 1928. Blues, Canned Heat has continued to revisit. Like the one signed Floyd Jones in the 1950s, On The Road Again. An eminently personal, strange and mesmerizing version, delivered at dusk on August 16, 1969 in Woodstock, when the group is at the top of its game.

Considered by his peers as one of the best harmonica players in history, Alan Wilson, the singer, is a bad boy in his skin. Very concerned about the problems of the world, wars, racism, threats to the environment, he also suffers from chronic failure among the fairer sex. Barely a year after Woodstock, he will be found lifeless at Bob Hite, on the heights of Los Angeles, victim of an overdose of tranquillizers.

A collective group

Bob Hite, in fact, will be the second to leave this world, in 1981. He had started to test the heroine but the mixture with other illegal substances will be fatal. Charismatic character of this time, "the Bear" presented 140 kilos of excess of all kinds, long hair, a beard of three years. And a voice as raucous as his friend Alan Wilson's was airy. The proof with the third great success of Canned Heat, on the album Future Blues in 1970: Let's work together, a cover (still) bluesman (always) Wilbert Harrison.

This piece will be number one in more than 30 countries worldwide. The biggest hit and the last tube of Canned Heat. This group tragically fate has, despite the enormous loss of his soul Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, through the decades. In the 1970s, he has the honor of recording two albums with one of his heroes, the bluesman John lee Hooker.

The accidents of life, the ravages of drugs and alcohol have not stopped him from being active today. From five, the number of members has risen to about fifty, more or less ephemeral. For 55 years, this legendary collective has been serving blues and boogie.

Find all the other episodes of our series "Woodstock, 50 years later":

> Episode 1: The origins of the most iconic festivals

> Episode 2: Richie Havens, the story of a fate that topples

> Episode 3: Tim Hardin, dubbed by Bob Dylan, destroyed by drugs

> Episode 4: Joan Baez, the consciousness of a generation

> Episode 5: Santana, and the legend was created