Original subtitles

- I think it's gonna be the most exciting concert

I've ever been to.

- Yeah!

- I was driving along in my car one day,

listening to the radio,

and, oh, it popped into my head,

it would be so great

to put on one of these Woodstock-type festivals.

- This is the beginning of a new decade.

The end of the me and the beginning of the us.

(upbeat music)

- I wanted a rock and roll festival for a million people.

- This was a huge challenge.

- And I have an awful lot of money

that I really didn't need or ever want.

- He had the vision and the money.

- Money flying around like confetti.

- And the bands were paid more money

than they'd ever been paid.

All we saw was a gig

and everyone's gonna get rich, including us.

- But lo and behold,

that particular gig

was the highest paying gig that we had ever partaken in.

- We know we had to go out there

and prove ourselves in front of all these people.

- You know, the audience was a really big audience.

To the people who were there,

it was huge.

- Bigger than we've ever done.

- Metal heads, punk heads, rock heads,

blues heads, folk heads, there were nerds, geeks.

- We had Tom Petty, we had Fleetwood Mac,

- [Graham] Everything from Jerry Jeff Walker to the Dead

to Buffet and Jackson Brown.

- I especially remember seeing the Ramones

and Talking Heads.

- [Announcer] Pat Benatar, the Cars, the Kinks, Santana.

- I read the books on Woodstock.

Every page was a disaster, it was horror.

- Woodstock wasn't really thought out.

This one was.

- And it's even bigger and better

and more well put together than Woodstock.

- This is fucking amazing.

- This is very special.

It's turning out to be very, very special.

- So it really laid the groundwork for, you know,

a kind of high mark of festivals.

- And all of the Bonaroos and Outside Lands.

- [Man] The Us Festival was really the precursor to that.

The idea that a festival isn't misery.

- I always wished that I was at Woodstock.

Now I can tell my grandchildren

that I was at the Us Festival.

(upbeat music)

- [Graham] I would imagine everybody is having

a very, very good time.

- It should be heralded as

a really important moment in time.

The Us Festival.

We're having a great, great, great weekend of rock and roll.

We love you.

Thank you very much, ciao.

(crowd cheering)

(acoustic guitar music)

- Well, as I recall, Woz sort of had it in stages.

- There was this radio station nearby, KFAT,

playing this type of music

that today would be called Americana

and I'd never really heard this stuff.

- Woz loved KFAT, which was a local radio station

that played alternative country type music.

- It was like Americana, talking about ideas,

stories about people and their real life

and kind of rebellious.

The words had the deep meaning, like old Bob Dylan songs,

which is what Steve Jobs and I fell in love with,

when we were best friends, leading up to Apple computer.

- We had an idea,

because there had never been a festival for that genre,

to have something like that.

- I've got way more money than I need for life

or want for life.

I can actually put out this money

and put on a Woodstock-type show

and I was still very young.

I didn't have any management skills,

I did not know how you would go out and find sites,

how would you rent things,

how do you hire companies,

how do you plan things,

I wouldn't have known how to do any of that stuff.

- And I got a call to put together a strategic work plan

for Wozniak, Woz, who wanted to have

a rock and roll festival for a million people.

I thought okay, set up a meeting,

I'll come and see what's going on.

So, that's how we got involved.

- I was practicing law here in San Jose,

and one of my neighbors was Dr. Peter Ellis.

And Ellis called me up and said,

do you want to be a part of this, it needs lawyering.

I had no idea what it would become

but I'm always up for something.

(rock guitar music)

As you can imagine, we were all wondering

how real this really was.

- John Collins and I were driving up there

and kind of saying to ourselves,

what are we getting into here?

So we go up and we meet.

Woz was at Berkeley under the pseudo name Rocky Clark.

- It seemed like kind of a wild deal.

- I tell him my spiel about we can put a plan together

and it's good to put a plan together.

"I don't need a plan," he says.

He says, "I just want you to go do it."

I go, okay.

- Ellis asked him to put up some money.

- So he walks out to his car to get his checkbook,

he comes back in, and hands John and I a check...

Writes out a check for two million bucks.

This ought to get you started.

- There's these guys that,

two of whom he had never met before that day.

- And I think I presented him, the second time he came up,

presented him a two million dollar check to get started.

- I think we were all kind of stunned, in a way.

- I remember John and I going to the bank the next morning,

before they opened up, and we knocked on the window,

and they're looking like what do these guys want?

And we held up a two million dollar check.

The banker came running out of there.

(laughing)

- And opened the account, check cleared,

and we were off and running.

("You Really Got Me" by the Kinks)

- So we flew out there

and then we rented a van from the airport to drive there.

So we're driving along, we get to the back,

and then we...

I remember me and Dee Dee walking out to the side

and seeing the audience.

That's a lot of people.

We were amazed.

It was very hard to see the back of the audience,

that's how many people there were.

And that was definitely, by far,

the biggest audience we played in front of in America.

So, it was something else.

Yeah!

(audience cheers)

We are...

We are the Ramones, yeah.

♪ Rock, rock, rock, rock,

♪ Rock and roll high school

♪ Well I don't care about history ♪

♪ Rock, rock, rock and roll high school ♪

- When we started playing,

I was very happy to see the audience liking us.

They were a little curious to see what we were about.

Not everybody, really, at that point,

had heard of us or knew about us.

- Our type of music, I don't think we really...

Is good for transforming large crowds to our way, you know?

Punk rock was around for about three or four years already

but not really in the mainstream.

So we were very grateful

that the audience liked what we did.

We solidified the punk sound and the energy.

Not too many people could do that.

It was a rapid fire,

one, two, three, four,

for that long.

That particular show, we knew we had to go out there

and prove ourselves in front of all these people.

And we did.

After that show,

we were taken aback, we were very effected by it,

just because of the sheer size of it,

the temperature, the set up, the tents,

the professionalism of the sound.

We were very grateful to have been asked to play that show.

It just seemed to me that everyone just had a great time.

Will that ever happen again, who knows?

(audience cheering)

- No, I really felt that it would turn out good.

I think tonight's probably the best night.

It's great being in the company of the B-52's

the Talking Heads, and the Police, and everybody else.

I think it's a great American show, you know what I mean?

Rock and roll was born here and this is the place for it.

♪ The change will do you good

♪ I always knew it would

♪ The sins of the flesh

♪ Are simply sins of lust

♪ Your kiss so sweet

(audience cheers)

(guitar music)

- UNUSON was formed for the sole purpose

of doing the US Festivals.

It stands for Unite Us in Song.

- This is a celebration of song.

UNUSON stands for Unite Us in Song.

That's what we're all about.

I hope to see a lot of smiles.

- The US Festival concept

was the idea of community

and the idea that technology's gonna make us a community.

- Not only something for music,

but I think Peter was the one who expanded it into

social good and connecting the USSR and America

and having technology exhibit as part of it,

and Woz was very excited about all those ideas.

- So it was more than the music.

It wasn't for good music.

It was for people coming, driving from all 50 states.

I guess you don't drive from Hawaii,

but people showing up, camping out,

camping out with their little campers, meeting other people

and sharing that experience for three days.

So it's the center of an experience.

- I could tell that he was driven

by a huge sense of passion with what he was doing.

- He had the vision and the money.

And the opportunity arose and he took it.

And he made his move.

- There was a rumor backstage

that there was some higher motive,

some unite-us-all-in-song thing going on.

- That unite-us-in-song was a very great aspect of that,

because it's just thinking positively

and how music can create this worldwide, positive vibe,

was a great thing, a great idea.

More than jus a concert, more than just a party.

- In all of the chaos,

I remember that very profoundly.

- The us is great, instead of the me and the I.

It was us, it was about everybody.

And that's what I liked about it.

And then eventually came the me generation.

♪ Sooner or later

♪ Your legs give way, you hit the ground ♪

♪ Save it for later

♪ Don't run away and let me down ♪

♪ Sooner or later

♪ You hit the deck, you get found out ♪

♪ Save it for later

♪ Don't run away and let me down ♪

(audience cheers)

- [Dave Wakeling] Thank you!

(acoustic guitar music)

- My recollection was,

that in the initial discussions,

it was made pretty clear to us

that this was not an Apple deal.

It was a Wozniak deal.

- I did not approach anyone at Apple about these ideas.

It was just all independent, on my own.

It was like, here we had Apple,

and I'd had a divorce,

and I had an awful lot of money

that I really didn't need or ever want.

This is a big risk, it's totally unknown.

A huge sacrifice, a personal sacrifice,

and there's no way to predict.

Does it fall flat on its face and bring back zero

or does it make a good profit?

- Then there was absolutely no discussion of Steve Jobs.

- I did this totally on my own,

I never called people at Apple,

I never called Steve Jobs.

- I met Jobs twice

when I was with Wozniak.

And he was pretty angry at him

for doing this US Festival.

♪ I need fuel

♪ Because I'm getting so low

♪ The kind you give me

♪ Makes me feel so bad

♪ Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye ♪

♪ Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

Take it, Sluggo.

(drum solo)

- We got people started, all over the state,

looking for a place to have this.

- One of my first tasks was to secure a land site

for the US Festival.

- The Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino County,

sat pretty close to the intersection

of the 10 and the 15 out there,

so it had the possibility to bring a lot of people there.

- Everybody had still on their mind the Altamont

from the fiasco that happened here in Northern California,

so every county we went into

to start talking to them about a rock festival

for a million people, they freaked out.

- I'm prepared to listen to your concerns

and respond to them where I can.

- You've got nothing but punk rockers,

who are probably the most dangerous group of people

in this country.

- A county in California, San Bernardino county,

that was sort of in bad troubles,

and they wanted the money and they were positive-minded,

and we had somebody in the highway patrol,

Arnie Zink, that was willing to help the highway patrol

to make this work, the sheriffs were behind us.

Once we had that consortium of local public officials

that were actually behind this thing,

everything was accomplished.

- With the work that UNUSON is doing,

we will have, probably, the premier, major concert area

in the entire United States.

- Up until then, it was something that was like,

well, maybe we're gonna do this, maybe we're not.

Because if we can't find a venue,

we're gonna pull the plug.

- We managed to get it through the Board of Supervisors.

And they approved it.

- Once we signed, we thought, oh yikes, man,

we're in for it.

This is gonna be difficult.

(punk rock music)

- That was the most exciting thing, actually, of all,

going in on the helicopter and looking down on the desert,

and just seeing all these people,

and it was amazing.

The stage and the people, it was a quite exciting event.

Bigger than we had ever done.

- We'll just try to make it

like we're playing for 800 people

instead of 80 thousand or a hundred thousand.

Just try to make it like you're playing for

whatever, size, a small hall or something.

We try to put on an intimate show, anyway,

even if it isn't that intimate,

but just try to keep the same feel to it.

- I remember, we just went out of the gate

and we went a hundred percent, a hundred and ten percent,

fast songs, one after the other,

and it was pretty intense.

And the heat only added to the intensity, I think.

And we did Mesopotamia and songs from the first two albums,

and Mesopotamia, which David Byrne had produced,

Mesopotamia so...

♪ It's swooping from the branch ♪

♪ It's swooping from the sky

♪ Spreadin' its feathers

♪ Cuttin' out flying

♪ There's a big gray bird flying over my house ♪

♪ What do you think I am?

♪ I'm not a louse!

♪ There's a big bird over my house ♪

♪ There's a big, big, big bird

♪ Over my house

- Yeah, I remember doing Big Bird from our album

that was about to come out.

We were working on the Whammy! album,

so we did some new material.

That was kind of a radical, jazzy, kind of fun,

you know, jazz-meets-new-wave kind of a song.

We had a very unselfconscious development

as far as our look.

It was just thrift stores, kind of Fellini inspired,

very Fellini inspired.

And I had this wig,

I called it Bubbles, because it had two...

I think it had three tiers of bubbles

and it kind of went up like that.

And, of course, the music was also influenced

by a little surf guitar, early rock,

all sorts of influences.

I don't really have any sense that we were on fire that day.

- They burned down the...

That was their day.

It has to be said,

the B-52's owned that day of the US Festival.

- I heard later that we really just rocked the house.

Our set was just super charged.

We never stopped and the beats were really fast

and, I think, for that time,

that kind of new wave punk music that was relentless.

(guitar intro music)

♪ Where's my telephone?

♪ Is that you, baby?

♪ Yeah

♪ Got something to tell you

♪ Oh, what?

♪ I want to see you tonight

♪ I want you to walk in the door ♪

♪ I want you to lay on the floor ♪

♪ 'Cause tonight's the night

♪ We make love

♪ Under a strobe light

♪ Underneath the strobe light

♪ Wanna make love to you under the strobe light ♪

♪ Wanna make love to you under the strobe light ♪

♪ Strobe light

♪ Whoa

♪ Strobe light

♪ Whoa

♪ Yeah!

(saxophone solo)

♪ Pulsing light goes to my head ♪

♪ Everything I see is red

♪ Baby, when I kiss your hair

♪ I feel electricity in the air ♪

♪ I'm gonna kiss your forehead

♪ Then I'm gonna kiss your nose ♪

♪ Then I'm gonna kiss your lulu ♪

♪ Then I'm gonna kiss your royal ah! ♪

♪ Tonight's the night

♪ For love under the light

♪ Strobe light, strobe light

♪ Underneath the strobe light

♪ I wanna make love to you under the strobe light ♪

♪ Wanna make love to you under the strobe light ♪

♪ Strobe light

♪ Whoa

♪ Strobe light

♪ Whoa

♪ Yeah!

♪ I just wanna make love to you ♪

♪ I just want to make love to you ♪

♪ Underneath the strobe light

♪ Come on

♪ Strobe light

♪ Come on

♪ Strobe light

♪ Come on

♪ Strobe, strobe, strobe, strobe, strobe light ♪

- Thank you very much, good night, everybody!

(audience cheers)

- So I remember it being a very special performance.

We were probably nervous, too,

and it added to the intensity.

This was like a really special event.

So it was amazing.

♪ This ain't no party

♪ This ain't no disco

♪ This ain't no foolin' around

♪ This ain't the Mudd Club

♪ Or C.B.G.B.

♪ I ain't got time for that now ♪

♪ (Keyboard solo)

- Thank you!

(audience cheering)

(drum and bass guitar solo)

- I thought here, oh my gosh,

we've got all this planning that's on track to a festival,

on a certain date, we need some groups.

Bill Graham is the most notable one

and I've always admired him.

- So Bill came on, maybe six months before,

with starting to help book the bands.

- So I wanted to hire Bill Graham,

we made the phone calls and it got arranged.

- A lot of the musicians really liked him a lot

and, I think he was the guy to go to.

- The fact that Bill Graham was brought in

made a lot of sense, in terms of the vision of Steven,

to have something that was eclectic and ground-breaking.

- So we got this phone call,

and another fellow and I started negotiating

with the people at UNUSON

to do this thing called the US Festival,

which didn't exist, there is no US Festival.

- The amount of work that had to be done

was just absolutely phenomenal.

- Several of us flew down to the site.

We show up at the site, and I went,

where are people gonna go?

He goes, look it's just this natural amphitheater,

it's perfect.

- We weren't in a facility that had been built,

with walls and ceilings,

we were just out in an open and huge park.

- Well, this natural amphitheater had boulders,

there was no grass, and I went,

you're crazy.

Where are people gonna sit, where are people gonna be?

And they said, what do you need to have happen?

And I'm thinking these guys are really out of their minds.

You need to really develop a bowl.

So I go away, thinking I don't even know

if this show's gonna happen.

- The county wanted us to move, I don't know,

360 thousand cubic yards of dirt.

- Four weeks later, they said why don't you come down again.

And I come down, and there is more earth-moving,

heavy equipment than you have ever seen in your whole life.

- [Collins] We moved hundreds of thousands

of cubic yards of dirt to form an amphitheater.

- We spent about $10 million just grooming land

into an amphitheater that would have decent viewability

and usability for the event.

- This thing is a massive operation, they've actually moved,

they tore out half of that hill so this will look this way

and smooth this over.

They've been here for months

and I was only here once, months ago.

- And they built this beautiful, beautiful

giant amphitheater against the hills.

And that's why it looks the way it does today.

And that was sort of the beginning of me realizing

these guys are gonna do what it takes to do it right.

(drum music)

- We got there in helicopters.

Because we were just coming out of Los Angeles.

And so we fly in, and we can see, and it's early afternoon,

hadn't even really filled up yet,

but it was pretty huge, the audience already,

and so as we circled around and came around,

and landed backstage...

I've actually got the shot on my Super 8

of that crowd there.

We land, and it was, I think,

just the end of Oingo Boingo's set.

And I ran up to the stage,

and shot their crew breaking them down.

And although it was a really long day,

longer than usual for us, of waiting for the other bands

and seeing the parties break out in their dressing rooms,

we played a pretty good show that night, I think.

Like all the bands on that show,

we were mid-tour, we were already touring,

we were already whip cracking hot.

When you're on tour, your act is very solid.

And when we hit that show,

we were really in our stride.

- It was certainly the biggest crowd

that I think the Police had played to.

- One of the biggest show ever, I think.

You know, the audience was a really big audience.

You know they're there.

You can feel them.

- At the end of the show, I went onstage,

when they were doing the last number,

and the crowd was going mad, and the full impact

of what it was to be involved with the Police

really hit me hard that night.

- We had a feeling when we came off that

that was a particularly big show,

and that was a particularly big event,

we had particularly scorched Southern California

after that show.

(guitar and horn intro)

♪ I called you so many times today ♪

♪ I guess it's all true what your girlfriends say ♪

♪ That you don't ever want to see me again ♪

♪ And your brother's gonna kill me and he's six feet ten ♪

♪ I guess you'd call it cowardice ♪

♪ But I'm not prepared to go on like this ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing, ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing, ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing you ♪

♪ Can't stand losing you

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ Can't stand losing you

♪ I see you've sent my letters back ♪

♪ And my L.P. records and they're all scratched ♪

♪ I can't see the point in another day ♪

♪ When nobody listens to a word I say ♪

♪ You can call it lack of confidence ♪

♪ But to carry on living doesn't make no sense ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing, ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing, ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing, ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing, ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing, ♪

♪ I can't, I can't stand losing you ♪

♪ You, yeah

♪ Losing you

♪ Losing you, oh

(musical interlude)

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Sha!

♪ Ee-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ee-Ay-Oh

♪ Ya, ya, ya, ya

♪ Ya, ya, ya, ya

♪ Yeah

(musical interlude)

♪ Oh, oh

I think I can speak for all of the groups here tonight.

For you are the biggest audience we've ever played to

at one time.

(audience cheers)

Now that in itself doesn't mean much.

Unless

you act as one.

Unless you

have cohesion.

140 thousand people doing

something joyful.

No, not that.

I mean singing.

♪ Ya-Oh

♪ Ya-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ya-Oh

♪ Ya-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ya-Oh

♪ Ya-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ya-Oh, ya-oh, ya-oh, ya-oh

♪ Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ee-Ah-Oh

♪ Ooh

♪ I guess this is our last goodbye ♪

♪ You don't care, so I won't cry ♪

♪ And you'll be sorry when I'm dead ♪

♪ When all this guilt will be on your head ♪

♪ I guess you'd call it suicide ♪

♪ But I'm too full to swallow my pride ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ Yay-Oh

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't ♪

♪ I can't, I can't, I can't stand losing ♪

♪ I can't, I can't stand losing you ♪

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ I can't stand losing

Here we go.

♪ I can't stand losing you

♪ You

♪ You

♪ You

♪ You

♪ You

♪ You

(audience cheers)

Thank you!

- As the last act, you don't get to party.

When you come off, as the last act, you get backstage,

okay, and now the Police dressing room is empty.

Everybody's gone, everybody beat the traffic.

Backstage, you could hear the sagebrush

rolling across the empty fields.

The abandoned caravans,

where once there had been laughter and song,

were now silent.

Empty.

- [Graham] We're gonna ask you for a favor on the way out,

if you could help us clean this joint up,

if you could help us with that,

it'll be much more pleasant in the morning.

- So the cool thing to do in a big festival like that,

is have some other sucker close the show.

(drum solo)

(country guitar music)

- Actually, he managed me from the time I got signed in 1976

until his untimely death in that helicopter crash,

but he was like a second dad to me.

- Of course, you know he was chased out of Europe

by the Nazis and he escaped all of that horror.

- And he walked out of Russia or Poland with 200 kids

and half of them didn't make it to Paris.

- So Bill was, he was a knock around kind of guy

and he didn't, he brought that into his work

and he offended a lot of people.

He had his flaws, but that's what also made him singular.

- I was a big fan of Bill Graham's

because I grew up in the Fillmore.

- And I've always admired him.

Going to his concerts, hearing him speak, even,

to the concert goers, you know where his mind is at.

- You knew that he was rooting for a great show,

which meant he was rooting, basically, for you.

- And so he comes back from taking great pride

in bringing people into an environment,

making them feel really great,

and then sending them home safe.

- And more than anything else, safe, efficient shows.

They ran on time.

They were machine-like.

- He was like the ultimate godfather of rock and roll,

and it's his way or that's it.

- He ran a tight ship, but he was a real pussy cat,

he had a heart of gold, he really did.

- No one could do it like Bill.

He had class.

- You want the best show, I'll give you the best show.

- He really cared, he would sit up at night

and dream this stuff.

It wasn't like he just went to work and punched the clock.

Bill was driven.

- He was the ringmaster.

The only thing he didn't wear was a top hat.

(electric guitar music)

- I wouldn't really say that UNUSON or the US Festival

had that much of Apple's culture or spirit.

But I would say that it had this spirit...

The common element is the spirit of Steve Wozniak.

- You know, here we had this wonderful guy

in Steve Wozniak, who was a visionary, who was a sweet man.

He is a sweet man.

- He was such a beautiful, kind fellow.

Real happy.

- All that spirit is a big part of the spirit of Apple,

and it's also the inspiration and the starting point

for the US Festival.

- And then you had Bill, Bill Graham.

Maniacal, passion, tough.

- If you weren't a close friend of his,

you wouldn't really like him.

He was one of those kind of guys.

Bill Graham was a very tough cookie.

He liked to do things his way.

- So you got Bill on one hand,

you got Steve on the other,

and realize, no one's thinking about this right now.

- Two people who are highly successful,

from very different worlds.

- It was really a culture clash,

on the festival, between the UNUSON Group and Bill.

- Yeah, I decided, well, I was putting on the show

and so I would have some special access,

backstage access, for friends of mine.

Especially any Apple employees that were coming.

- If someone says to him, you can only have 100 passes,

the first thing he's gonna do

is go and mass produce a whole lot more

and have fun out of the situation.

So he thinks it's a game.

- And then I just used my own home printer

and I did a little format and I could type in their name

and then it would print out a golden pass for them.

A golden backstage pass and that was a Woz pass.

- What essentially would be a ticket to get us into

all three days of the US Festival,

but it also had this special quality

of getting us backstage.

So that was pretty exciting.

- He didn't understand this concept of

the artists need their space.

- [Sherry] He was paying for this festival,

and as far as he was concerned,

I can go anywhere with my hundreds of friends.

It's my party, I paid for it.

Well, that's not what happens in rock and roll.

- They were all around Woz like bees around honey.

And there was hundreds of them.

- He became extremely aware of the pecking order backstage,

of Bill Graham and the rock stars versus the roadies

and it was very status conscious.

And in particular, we, the people with the gold passes,

were considered by the crew to be the lowest status of all.

- And they were a particular irritant to Bill.

Because they felt like they owned the festival.

- They didn't want us there.

Woz, that rich guy, is letting his friends get in our way.

- And Bill's all ugh.

- I realize they have to control it,

they can't have everybody running around,

a million people backstage,

but he created a lot of hard feelings

between our staff and his staff.

- The UNUSON people and us,

we were banging heads all the time.

It was a cultural clash.

- Wozniak probably didn't realize all of those dynamics,

but it was too far done for him to back out.

- Well, backstage, obviously,

Steve was treated like the king.

It was his festival, Bill Graham realized that.

- But what was true,

was that Woz had a sofa on the stage,

that he had these poser platforms,

that's where you could look down on the stage,

it was an enormous stage.

- As I remember it, he was on a sofa or something.

He sat there on the side of the stage with his family

and all his friends.

And that was totally cool.

- Actually, I'm very thankful to Bill Graham

for providing this spot.

It's great.

- I remember, at one point, it got so bad

he's telling his people

don't recognize the UNUSON all area passes.

- What they would do to get access to the stage

or something, you'd have to have a colored dot

that was right for that day.

It might be a blue dot or a pink dot.

- But as soon as security would change the pass,

it would be counterfeited.

I mean, within seconds, it was unbelievable.

- Well, one of out guys snatched up one of their passes

and of course, we had the technology

to have these things duplicated within an hour.

- And so he kept up with us changing the passes.

- And somebody in our group

ran down to a local stationery store

and bought all the colors of dots they had.

So we would cover up our little golden passes

with the dots sometimes.

- It was a counterfeit operation of Wozniak's.

It was a whole set-up and they were making them

as quick as we were changing them.

It was hilarious.

- We got where we needed to go,

and they finally stopped fighting it.

- So we were coming from almost the mainstream direction,

with Bill Graham coming from the heavy-duty music direction.

So, looking back, I'm not surprised at the conflict.

(acoustic guitar music)

- Woz and I met because I got a call from an agent saying

there's somebody that wants your band to play

at a huge wedding and it's Steve Wozniak,

one of the owners of Apple computer.

- So I heard Joe Sharino perform, I saw how popular he was,

asked him if he would play at my wedding and he agreed.

- So we became friends because of that.

About four days before the festival, I'm sitting at home,

I get this phone call from Woz,

"What are you doing Saturday?"

So I thought he meant do you want free tickets,

I said, nothing.

and he goes, "Why don't you come down here and play?"

We thought we're gonna go down there

and there's gonna be the big stage where the headliners are,

the famous people, and we're gonna be on some side stage

where the guy's demonstrating some new technology thing,

with 80 people and a clown after that, for the kids.

- Oh, yes, but probably on some little side stage

or something.

- And then as the week went by,

and we were rehearsing every day,

he said you're gonna be on the main stage.

- I had never pushed to have Joe on the big stage,

I assumed he'd be with the jugglers and the clowns

in some little tent.

- It didn't even occur to me,

how much should I charge him?

Charge him?

I should be paying him.

Could we play kind of thing.

I was happy to do it for free.

- And somehow Bill let Joe Sharino go on stage

and open up one of the days.

And Joe remembers it as the highlight of his life.

- So we get to the gate,

the crew with our truck of equipment,

and all the band members.

And for two hours,

Bill Graham's people held us up at the gate,

they wouldn't let us in,

they didn't believe we were playing.

So we were a little late getting to the stage,

because of that.

Finally they let us in, we start setting up.

I'm on stage, kind od supervising everything,

overwhelmed with the size of the crowd

and the whole stage, everything.

And here comes Bill Graham.

And he comes right up to me and just starts screaming at me.

Because he's mad that we're late.

So I just let him talk

and finally one of his associates comes up and says,

you know, it's not this guy's fault,

We held them up at the gate,

we didn't know they were legit, blah, blah, blah.

So then he becomes a nice guy and talks to me

and he's real friendly and everything,

but it was pretty scary having Bill Graham yell at you.

But we were scared out of our minds.

And just the size of everything.

I remember we called it an ocean of people,

because it was like, as far as you could see,

even to the left and the right, just incredible, everywhere.

So I remember going (mimics guitar chord) with my guitar

and the (mimics guitar chord) was like a rocket went off

through the main speakers out there.

And I thought, oh my gosh.

It's very, very scary, and to make it worse,

it was 96 degrees at 12:30 when we started.

So you're unbelievably hot, almost to the point of,

I wonder if we're gonna get booed off stage,

because nobody knows us.

I wonder if we're gonna faint on stage

and everybody's gonna just keel over.

Sing it for Wozniak this time, come on.

♪ Come on, people now

♪ Smile on your brother

♪ Everybody get together

♪ Try to love one another right now ♪

- One more time!

And then we stuck around for about half of the acts,

but we had to get home,

because we had to play a gig the next day.

So we went from 250 thousand people

to the gig the next day was for 120 people.

(laughs)

(crowd cheering)

♪ Don't come any closer

♪ Don't come any nearer

♪ My vision of you

♪ Can't come any clearer

♪ Oh now

♪ Girl talk

♪ They want to know how

♪ Girls talk

♪ And they say it's not allowed ♪

♪ Girls talk

♪ Girls talk

♪ Girls talk

(crowd cheering)

(funky guitar music)

- We had made all kinds of plans,

but what do they say?

No plan survives contact with the enemy,

or with 300 thousand rock and roll fans on site.

- That's a lot of people.

Seas of them,

as far as the eye could see.

- There were metal heads, punk heads, rock heads,

blues heads, folk heads, there were nerds, geeks.

- [Eddie Money] Black people, Spanish people,

it was really a wonderful event.

- No violence, a lot of fun, good time.

People are fantastic.

- One way you can help control the crowds

and get a fun atmosphere going

is to get a bunch of entertainers

that are roaming around everywhere.

Jugglers and pole sitters and all kinds of folks.

So that they keep that light atmosphere of fun.

- We're providing all kinds of entertainment

and fun highlights.

(saxophone playing)

(crowd cheering)

- That first year, we had 115 degrees in the sun.

You have 250 thousand people out there

and so we had to have lots of water for folks.

- And it was so, so hot, and I took the water cooler

and just poured it over me.

I just got naked and poured this thing over me.

- I think we actually, in one of the beer gardens,

ran out of beer, I think, on the second day.

It was just so blistering hot.

So the beer gardens were an oasis, really,

to get a nice, cold drink

and they were just packed day and night.

- There are cooling areas where up to 10 thousand people

can stand in the sprayers.

- Thank god, though, I don't know who was responsible

for setting up this line of showers

that people could just run through in the hot, hot weather.

Those saved so many people.

- Probably 6,000 square feet of showers in two places,

where you could just go under there and get wet

and cool off.

- And Bill was thinking about things like

spraying the audience in front of the stage with hoses

because it was so hot.

And the crowd going wild.

- Every once in a while, we got a bunch of

water faucets and water hoses around here.

We'll hose you down, make it a little more comfortable.

- We're gonna hydrate the audience.

All these new techniques

so it would be the opposite of Woodstock.

- We gave out over 150 thousand squirt bottles

that people would fill up and squirt each other

and keep them cool.

- It was lucky we had those, I can't tell you

how many people had those spray guns

and it was ungodly hot.

- The first year, those first days were just amazing.

Can you imagine a campground with 100 thousand people?

With all their stuff out there, just laying out there.

And they all go over the hill and party

and you can come back and forth freely.

And we've had two reported burglaries.

That answer says it all.

We didn't have a single arrest in the campground,

we didn't have anybody claiming anybody stole anything.

- It's going really great, the crowd is really mellow.

We've had no major problems.

- There wasn't that many arrests or anything else like that.

Everybody got along great that day.

- All the people are cool.

All the people seem happy.

- There weren't any bad vibes.

Everybody respected each other's space, which was great.

- Drug use was more rampant than we had thought.

Drugs have consistently been linked

with rock and roll concerts and so forth.

But at the same time, we didn't have anybody who OD'ed.

I don't believe there were any significant arrests made.

- Whoa, it's gonna be hot.

It's gonna be great.

And we're gonna party down,

it's gonna be oh, too much.

- [Collins] The things that happened were things

that could have happened in any city

of 300 thousand, would have those same things

in any given week.

- So it was a super success.

- No arguments, no fights, nothing, just real life.

I like it like that.

- I think it's great,

one of the best concerts I've ever been to in my life.

- I just met these people and whenever you need something,

people gave it to you.

It they didn't have it, they gave it to somebody else.

They gave it to somebody else.

It's like everybody's brothers and sisters.

I'll remember it the rest of my life,

how could you not?

(funky guitar music)

- Well, yeah, there was definitely

a hippie vibe to the whole thing.

It was 1982, so there was a lot of things still happening

and it a lot of peace and love feeling to it,

a lot like a Woodstock event.

Everybody was hugging and kissing,

everybody got along really great, and I just thought

the people were really up for the concert, you know?

This is kind of like the Cadillac of rock festivals.

I'm kind of like a Chevy Chevette man,

I'm still trying to get used to it.

I mean, it's outrageous.

Well, I'll tell you,

I run into people all over the country.

To this day they'll say they saw me at the US Festival.

And that doesn't really surprise me,

since I've never seen so many people in my life.

When I first hit that stage

and actually saw how many people there were out there,

I'd have to say it was probably

the most exciting moment of my life.

I remember being in the car

and I think I stopped for a hotdog someplace

and I was holding up about six or seven cars

and I think Sting was in one of the last cars,

going, what the hell's going on up there?

And they said, Eddie Money's going up to get a hotdog.

Who?

(laughs) That was a funny story.

You a little thirsty out there?

♪ Mama never understood what it's like for a losing man ♪

♪ When her number one son goes bad ♪

♪ playing cards with the Devil's Hand ♪

♪ Daddy got real sick so quick - four walls never understand ♪

♪ I was the one who got good with the gun ♪

♪ Took the money from the rich man's land ♪

♪ Give me some water

♪ 'Cause I shot a man on the Mexican border ♪

♪ Cool, cool water

♪ See that long white rope

♪ Hangin' from the hangman tree ♪

♪ Take the restless horse, tie may hands, of course ♪

♪ Tell Mama I'm finally free

♪ Let me die like a man, no one understands ♪

♪ let me pray, let a poor man pray ♪

♪ Smack that horse

I said smack that horse in the ass.

(crowd cheering)

and with my last dying gasp

Bill, give 'em some water.

♪ Gimme some water

♪ I shot a man on the Mexican border ♪

♪ Cool, cool water

♪ Give 'em some water

♪ Gimme some water

♪ Shot a man on the Mexican border ♪

♪ Cool, cool water

♪ Gimme some water

♪ Gimme some water

- [Eddie Money] Get all the water out there.

Turn it up.

♪ Water

♪ Shot a man on the Mexican border ♪

♪ Cool, cool water

Turn the water on.

♪ Gimme some water

(guitar solo)

(crowd cheering)

Thank you!

(crowd cheering)

Thank you so much.

Hey!

(rock guitar music)

- In effect, we were constructing a small, temporary town

to hold 200 to 300 thousand people

over a short period of time in a safe way.

And feed them and house them.

And so the challenges were gigantic.

- We've been on this site for about three months,

preparing it, because there's a lot of work

that goes into getting it ready.

In a style that we're doing something

that's never been done before, which is going out

and preparing a site perfectly for a rock concert.

- Putting on this show was so much work.

This wasn't just like we were going to a new venue.

We built the thing.

- And we planned for everything.

We planned for Santa Ana fires,

we planned for worst case stuff.

- You gotta plan everything, like the security

and the health considerations.

- Fencing and sanitation and medical.

Water.

They're tremendous logistical things to overcome.

- The state of California is building an off ramp.

That's a pretty big deal.

- If they hadn't opened this off ram here,

we would have had traffic backed up for miles.

- They let us put a temporary off ramp here

so we could get people without clogging all the freeways.

We paid for it.

- This is the first ever, an historic example

of the Federal Government saying you can have the first ever

temporary off ramp off a federal interstate

for the US Festival.

(crowd cheering)

- No dollars were spared in order to make people comfortable

and safe.

- I think the reason it's gone over so well

is we got more porta-potties per person

than in any other event of its type, ever.

- We have over 18 hundred porta-johns.

- I always insisted from day one that we have more,

twice as many porta-potties as any other event.

- At the last minute, the company that had promised

to produce the porta-potties tried to double the prices.

- Didn't say anything to them, just looked at them,

and then just

sent somebody out to start getting port-potties

delivered from Nebraska and Kansas.

Anywhere that he could get them.

- [Collins] We had them trucked in, and in some cases,

paid a little extra, but we beat that guy,

who tried the hold up on the porta-potties.

- All I can say is, I'm glad there's a lot of bathrooms.

- I even tested the port-potties myself.

- At the same time, you had to make plans

for these bands to be there.

They all had to be brought in and brought out

and have transportation and have places to dress.

Tremendous amounts of arrangements.

- Most of them had to be helicoptered in,

because there was really no way to get them in.

From the roads.

- Make sure they were on time

and they were coming from other places, so yeah,

there was a tremendous amount of--

- Logistics.

- It was

a great deal of work.

(rock guitar music)

- Wozniak likes music and his big dream is...

One of his big dreams is to have a lot of groups play,

of a high quality level in a nice setting.

Over a three day period.

- I have a memory of Bill Graham

being the pioneer of such shows

at the Fillmore.

- Instead of mixing up al the bands,

they've kind of got it in certain sequences,

which is an interesting way to do it.

- They try to fit the right type of groups together

on the right days.

- And he had a good sensibility

about splitting the days up into a modern rock day,

which I loved very much,

the very new people who aren't that well known yet,

that are lesser groups, but they have unusual styles

and I like creativity.

- Like a kid in a toy shop.

Wozniak was, I can do this, we can do that.

And was so beautifully childlike.

- To me it was just grounded in this rock festival,

other bands, the excitement of playing with

other bands that I really admired.

I loved Talking Heads and the Police

and it was just a great event.

- I knew we needed the Police.

Because they were the one band that had broken through

that was really a modern band.

- All these people in the same place, in the same three days

it's too hard to comprehend, it's unbelievable.

- I did stay and see...

Especially I remember seeing the Ramones and Talking Heads.

So it was amazing.

- I mean, come on.

Grateful Dead to Oingo Boingo to Fleetwood Mac

to Jackson Brown to--

- [Interviewer] No, it's a great line-up.

- Pat Benatar, Tom Petty, it's pretty amazing, actually.

- You had Tom Petty headlining one day,

you had Fleetwood Mac, a giant band, headlining.

The third line act that day was Jimmy Buffet.

Can you imagine?

- And this incredible music,

I mean, I listened to Eddie Money,

and then Santana comes on,

I couldn't believe it, that was so incredible.

And then I think ahead, look what's coming.

Even tonight, Pat Benatar and Tom Petty,

and then tomorrow's unbelievable.

- And this was a particularly big festival,

with a particularly good roster of bands.

- For the time, the line-up of bands that played there

was absolutely the biggest and the best.

- [Announcer] Would you welcome, please, the Cars.

(crowd cheering)

("Bye Bye Love" intro music)

♪ I can't feel this way much longer ♪

♪ Expecting to survive

♪ With all these hidden innuendoes ♪

♪ Just waiting to arrive

♪ It's such a wavy midnight

♪ And you slip into insane

♪ Electric angel rock and roller ♪

♪ I hear what you're playin'

♪ It's an orangy sky

♪ Always it's some other guy

♪ It's just a broken lullaby

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Substitution mass confusion

♪ Clouds inside your head

♪ Involving all my energies

♪ Until you visited

♪ With your eyes of porcelain and of blue ♪

♪ They shock me into sense

♪ You think you're so illustrious ♪

♪ You call yourself intense

♪ It's an orangy sky

♪ Always it's some other guy

♪ It's just a broken lullaby

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

(keyboard solo)

♪ Substitution mass confusion

♪ Clouds inside your head

♪ Involving all my energies

♪ Until you visited

♪ With your eyes of porcelain and of blue ♪

♪ They shock me into sense

♪ You think you're so illustrious ♪

♪ You call yourself intense

♪ It's an orangy sky

♪ Always it's some other guy

♪ It's just a broken lullaby

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

♪ Bye bye love

(instrumental jam)

(crowd cheering)

(upbeat music)

- My thinking about the US Festival

was not as a businessman,

thinking here is a money opportunity.

I just wanted to make it as excellent as possible.

Every little detail, everything you could think of,

make it a good festival,

and let's judge the profits afterwards.

- I think the same mentality that Steve had in running Apple

carried over into The festival.

It has to be right.

- He was trying to do something great,

much like the Apple 2.2.

The same motivations, really.

- Money wasn't an issue.

It was something he just wanted to do and do right.

- This was more about vision and what he wanted to do.

- And his intentions were honorable then

and they seem to be that way now.

- The original budget, I believe,

was approximately, I'm gonna say, 10 million dollars.

- We've been on schedule for everything

and we're only a little over budget.

- The largest thing was talent.

- He was throwing all this money at us to book these acts.

To sell a concert.

- Right now we're about 13 million.

- [Interviewer] And how much of that is for the acts,

about 10? - Music

about three, three point three million dollars only.

- Everybody got the biggest payday of their life

up until that point.

- That particular gig was the highest paying gig

that we had ever partaken in.

- Every show we played,

we got three times the fee we got the show before.

- I don't think we were one of those bands

that got a million dollars.

Um, I don't know what our payday was,

I have no memory of that.

- It was just money flying around like confetti.

- It was set up to be profitable.

Assuming maybe I'd break even,

but I didn't think I'd lose a huge amount of money,

which I did.

- I think Woz has always felt it was a great success.

Because it made people happy.

And that's what he cares the most about.

- Man, I'm happy.

I say we should count the success in terms of

number of smiles.

- I can't really understand why Steve would spend

12.5 or whatever millions of dollars he did for this,

but he sure is enjoying himself.

Gonna provide a lot of people with a lot of enjoyment.

- [Woman] He's gonna make a lot of people happy.

- I'm very grateful that I'm part and parcel of this,

to whatever degree, it doesn't matter, but I am part of it.

But I'd like to put emphasis on it's music or musician

or an individual is that we go back

to showing all the variety that we have in the arts.

Because it's a little bit too lopsided nowadays.

And I think most people agree,

who wants to see three bands that sound the same?

("Black Magic Woman" intro)

♪ Got a black magic woman

♪ Got a black magic woman

♪ I've got a black magic woman

♪ Got me so blind I can't see

♪ She's a black magic woman

♪ She's trying to make a devil out of me ♪

♪ Don't turn your back on me, baby ♪

♪ Don't turn your back on me, baby ♪

♪ Don't turn your back on me, baby ♪

♪ Stop messing 'round with your tricks ♪

♪ Don't turn your back on me, baby ♪

♪ You might just pick up my magic sticks ♪

(guitar solo)

♪ You put your spell on me, baby ♪

♪ You put your spell on me, baby ♪

♪ You put your spell on me, girl ♪

♪ You turned my heart into stone, yeah ♪

♪ I need you so bad

♪ Magic woman, cannot leave you alone, no ♪

(music jam)

(crowd cheering)

- [Carlos Santana] God bless you, all gratitude to you.

- We were very close to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

and they were an enormous band.

He is the consummate professional.

He just had hit after hit after hit.

I think Tom Petty is gonna be one of those artists

who we will appreciate even more 20 years from now.

I think he's written very lasting music.

And they just absolutely delivered.

("Refugee" intro)

♪ We got somethin', we both know it ♪

♪ We don't talk too much about it ♪

♪ Ain't no real big secret all the same, ♪

♪ Somehow we get around it

♪ Listen, it don't really matter to me, baby ♪

♪ You believe what you want to believe ♪

♪ You see you don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Somewhere, somehow

♪ Somebody must have kicked you around some ♪

♪ Who knows why you lay there, revel in your abandon ♪

♪ Baby, it don't make no difference to me, ♪

♪ Everybody's had to fight to be free ♪

♪ See you don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ No, you don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ No

♪ Baby, we ain't the first

♪ I'm sure a lot of other lover's been burned ♪

♪ Right now this seems real to you ♪

♪ But it's one of those things you gotta feel to be true ♪

(keyboard solo)

(guitar solo)

Let me hear it for Stan Lynch back here on the drums.

(crowd cheering)

♪ Somewhere, somehow

♪ Somebody must have kicked you around some ♪

♪ Who knows, maybe you were kidnapped, tied up, taken away ♪

♪ And held for ransom

♪ Listen, it don't really matter to me, baby, ♪

♪ Everybody's had to fight to be free ♪

♪ You see you don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ No, you don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ No you don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Don't have to live like a refugee ♪

♪ Oh oh oh

(music jam)

(crowd cheering)

- [Tom Petty] I don't know what to say to all of you

but thanks, man, this has been a lot of fun.

(crowd cheering)

(mellow rock music)

- What Woodstock did is it told the world

how big rock and roll had gotten.

Woodstock became much more famous, because of the movie.

- We'd all seen the Woodstock movie,

which, loved the movie, glad I wasn't there.

- There's people bathing in mud.

Waddling around in mud and lakes.

- And to me, the movie didn't show

a lot of the real bad sides.

It was a real, kind of awful, experience.

- But it seemed to be more fun when it was in chaos.

- I read this book called "Barefoot in Babylon" about...

By one of the two founders of Woodstock.

It was what they did, how the whole thing was put together

and structured, every page was a disaster.

It was horror.

If I had read that book first, I wouldn't have done it.

I couldn't believe how everything went wrong.

They did everything wrong, they didn't plan it.

They kind of just put it on in a farm in just a day.

So there were a lot of problems at Woodstock.

- Woodstock was a qualitative success

in the imagination of those who weren't there.

I was there.

It wasn't that pleasant.

- Woodstock wasn't really thought out.

This one was.

And you could see, everything was kind of in place.

- The best part about this event, that should outclass

a Woodstock, certainly, is that this site has been planned

for a quarter of a million people, 300 thousand people.

- One of the common mantras

among the people who were involved in it,

was to avoid those problems.

To have a concert that worked,

where people, if they had a medical problem,

would get treated, and people would have food and water

and not be collapsing.

And have a great experience.

- We were all celebrating backstage

that this was not Woodstock.

And we were sold on the idea of coming to this festival

on this would be the opposite of Woodstock.

- Woz and Graham set up everything real nice.

It's just a well done thing.

- It was very well organized, I remember,

it wasn't really Woodstocky with mud or anything.

- We've got every conceivable type of luxury

for an outdoor concert.

It's terrific.

- It's even bigger and better and more well put together

than Woodstock.

- Sort of like Coachella is today.

It's absolutely comfortable, the grass is clean,

the sound system is pristine.

It's a really great experience,

and the US Festival was really the precursor to that.

The idea that a festival isn't misery.

- So it really laid the groundwork

for the high mark of festivals.

- And all of the Bonaroos and Outside Lands

and all these festivals

that have now come on to the U.S. circuit of festivals big

are really just taking his idea and growing on it.

That's all they're doing.

- It was really the advent of the first safe and sane,

organized festival.

- It's the biggest happening since Woodstock.

I was too young for that,

so I'm definitely gonna catch this one.

- The 80's are the 60's, 20 years later.

Old feathers in a brand new bird.

These are the good old days.

- The festival itself never quite got the respect

that, I think, we all hoped for, for it.

- I think that this is the Woodstock of the 80's

and I think it's a lot of fun.

- There's not as many people as at Woodstock,

the chemistry is not the same,

the cause is not the same,

but nevertheless, this is very special.

It's turning out to be very, very special.

- And in that sense, the US Festival definitely achieved

being the Woodstock of the 80's.

- The Woodstock of the 80's.

It's love and peace all the way.

- But you know what?

They got their shit together this time.

(crowd cheering)

- You know, the Grateful Dead, at breakfast,

some of us stayed up all night.

Rather than trying to get up at eight o'clock in the morning

and play Grateful Dead music.

Sounds ridiculous.

- You can't bottle or can what the Dead do live.

And I've always felt that they were an amazingly

wonderful experience live.

And I think that they should be here.

'Cause they're the only ones who do what they do.

- We're playing at nine o'clock in the morning.

For all of you early morning

Grateful Dead Experience freaks.

We've never played at nine o'clock in the morning.

Except when we stayed up all night, of course.

Playing, so...

This will be an experience that we won't forget

and I hope you won't, either.

♪ Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street ♪

- Yeah, the Breakfast with the Dead

was such a wonderful feeling and they were so on

and they were having such a good time, as they always did.

- I just know that it was a big show

and it was about Woz, and that's why we did it.

- Supporting Woz was, for me, and the idea,

was worth the effort.

Because here was somebody going out on the edge.

I like that.

The whole thing is about playing great

and playing out of your heads

and creating something from nothing

and, you know, making magic.

I really can't comment,

except I didn't think we kissed the sky

That morning after breakfast.

No, I don't think so.

- Having the Grateful Dead for breakfast,

what other person could, from years from now,

go and tell their children

that I once had breakfast on a hill somewhere

and you know who played live for breakfast?

The Grateful Dead.

(crowd cheering)

♪ And it's up against the wall, redneck mother ♪

♪ Mother who has raised her son so well ♪

♪ So well, so well, so well

♪ He's thirty-four, drinkin' in a honky tonk ♪

♪ Kickin' hippies' asses and raisin' hell ♪

♪ He thought he's probably dancin' in the sunshine ♪

♪ At the US Festival in Southern California USA ♪

(crowd cheering)

Thank all of you.

(techno guitar music)

- Everyone's here for one goal,

to make this concert, and this tech fair,

and the whole US Festival a success.

- The quality of the presentation

and how it sounded everywhere was extremely important to me.

- The call was to do it right.

- The stage itself

will be the largest stage structure ever assembled.

The entire length of it will be a little over 325 feet long

or the length of a football field.

There'll be about a 500 instrument lighting system.

- And the stage is huge, the stage is amazing.

- All the equipment is on a platform, which just slides on.

It's a real maze up there, the stage is like a city.

- It was the biggest stage I ever saw.

It was just unbelievable.

- This will be the largest sound system ever put together

for one single event.

A little over 300 thousand watts.

- In fact, we're gonna have the Guinness Book of Records

out here to verify that, and when you buy your next edition,

we hope we'll be in it.

- This event had so many people, it deserved decent sound.

- The sound was great, unbelievable sound.

- They had the whole sound thing figured out

so that there was this delay towers along the way.

- There was talk of the delayed speaker system.

- It's a digital delay system,

so that the sound that reaches the back half of the audience

gives the impression that it's the same sound

coming from the stage.

- And the sound is good

all the way back to the beer gardens.

I'm so glad we didn't make sacrifices in sound quality.

- And then there was the big screen behind us on the stage.

Which was kind of new.

I mean it was unusual to see at that time.

- The first time ever a huge Diamond Vision video screen

was at a concert in the United States.

- The Diamond Vision screen on,

which is a daytime television screen,

which will allow all of the audience to get a very good view

and a close up view of the artists during the daytime.

- No one even thought to do screens.

Why would you want a screen

when the performer's right there?

- [Tom Mendenhall] This will be supplemented at night

by the 50 foot Eidophor screen,

so that no matter where you are in this bowl,

you will have a close-up of the stage

and see the concert like the people

who are standing right down here, up front.

- So the video became a real big deal,

even though no one was really sure

how to take advantage of it.

- I guess it was really the birth

of a new rock and roll era.

- Essentially, it's all grown out of

the great, technological race

that's happened over the last five or six years.

- This is really cutting edge stuff.

- Definitely, it's an event not to be missed.

For anyone out there.

♪ Cheeseburger in paradise

♪ Heaven on earth with an onion slice ♪

♪ Not too particular, not too precise ♪

♪ I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise ♪

(crowd cheering)

- [Jimmy Buffet] Thank you, cheeseburger!

(acoustic guitar music)

- I do recall they made a pretty big deal

of the video link to Russia.

- We did the first ever live hook-up by satellite

with the Soviet Union.

- We're gonna broadcast into Russia

and Russia's gonna broadcast back to us.

During the US Festival on Labor Day,

Russians and Americans are gonna dance and party together.

Via satellite.

And the whole world's gonna hear about it.

I think it's just fabulous,

I think it's gonna be one of the great statements

toward peace that we've ever done.

- People were putting together this idea

of having a rock music...

A festival over there and a festival here

and let's link up, video-wise.

I loved the idea, from the time I heard it,

because it was a little bit revolutionary,

a little bit anti-government propaganda.

- And it was in the peak of the Cold War.

- [Wozniak] Let's talk to the enemy and cooperate,

which is the whole idea of UNUSON, Unite Us In Song,

we're one people, we've gotta unite.

- Do we have a connection with the operator in Moscow?

- I guess the idea was the people in Russia

were supposed to be able to see the concert here

and vice versa.

- And we didn't know

if we could even pull it off technically.

They didn't have the satellite equipment,

except that the U.S. had pulled out of an Olympics

and NBC left there equipment in a warehouse in Moscow.

- (speaking foreign language) UNUSON Corporation.

- Could we pull this off?

It would be a technology coup nobody had ever done.

I love to do things first,

especially when they're in technology.

- They're confirming a transmission at 8:45, Moscow time.

- And about a week ago, we got a phone call

and they said we can do it if we want.

And our mode of thinking isn't how much does it cost?

It's instantly, this is right for this festival, do it.

- In a few minutes, on the screens to your left and right,

they're gonna attempt to connect with

a rock and roll group far, far away.

Behind the Iron Curtain.

If it works, it'll probably be a first.

- Okay now.

Is this being sent?

This is...

It's being sent to Los Angeles, one way, right now.

It's going, we should go now, it's being taped.

- We had things scripted, that when it went onto the screen,

Bill Graham's job was to go up to the microphone

and introduce to the crowd what was going on.

- We have arrived here in Moscow two and a half days ago

and in that short amount of time--

- He didn't go up to the mike.

So that was when I was getting my chills,

so I ran across the stage and there's Bill Graham.

I say, well, why aren't you introducing it?

And he's looking at these monitors.

- The signal originates in Moscow,

is being broadcast to a satellite.

- He said this is coming from a studio

in Southern California, Steve.

And I didn't believe that,

I trusted my people to set everything up,

we worked for so long with these people.

I talked to the technicians

that were gonna do the Russian side of things, you know?

- [Interviewer] How do you feel about this Russia hook-up?

Have you heard about that?

- It's probably bullshit.

- [Interviewer] You don't think it's gonna work?

- The instant the Russian video came onto our screen,

I was backstage, I couldn't believe it,

I didn't expect we'd actually accomplish it.

- Many people said this would never happen.

- Live from Moscow!

- It's Saturday night!

(crowd cheering)

- So Bill flipped out a little bit

and he pulled the plug on it

and all of a sudden, he took it off the Diamond Vision

and pulled the plug on the broadcast.

- [Man] Hello, what the fuck's the problem?

- [Man] They're waiting for the video truck.

- We spent all this effort and time to get this to happen,

and in some ways the US Festival is a bigger event

in the Soviet Union than it is in America.

It legitimized rock and roll in the Soviet Union.

It was illegal before.

- I was much well known for this in Russia,

but not in the United States.

- [Peter Ellis] It was a really interesting phenomena

that nobody covered that.

- Our press wouldn't report a single thing.

Like peace isn't a topic anyone cares about in the U.S.

It was a highlight of my life to fight the people

who said you can't find peace.

- Our thanks to Mr. Wozniak,

who's life has been a life leading

toward this sort of cooperation.

Thanks to everyone.

(acoustic guitar music)

- We had had helicopter drop-ins before.

It's always awe-inspiring

to see hundreds of thousands of people.

Oh my god, that's a lot of people.

Because when you turn up in a truck

or a limo, or whatever, you have no real concept

of the size of some of these things.

For a moment you feel they're there to see you,

therefore this huge wave of pressure,

as you're choppering in, it does occur to you that

that's a lot of people.

Seas of them, just as far as the eye could see.

Oh my god, we're being dropped into a field

with 300 thousand people.

It's a big deal.

(drum beating)

("The Chain" intro)

♪ Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise ♪

♪ Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies ♪

♪ And if you don't love me now

♪ You will never love me again

♪ I can still hear you saying

♪ You would never break

♪ the chain ♪ Never break the chain

♪ And if you don't love me now

♪ You will never love me again

♪ I can still hear you saying

♪ You would never break

♪ Never break the chain ♪ Never break the chain

♪ Ah

♪ Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night ♪

♪ Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies ♪

♪ Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light ♪

♪ And if you don't love me now

♪ You will never love me again

♪ I can still hear you saying

♪ You would never break

♪ the chain ♪ Never break the chain

♪ And if you don't love me now

♪ You will never love me again

♪ I can still hear you saying

♪ You would never break

♪ the chain ♪ Never break the chain

♪ And if you don't love me now

♪ You will never, never love me again ♪

♪ I can still hear you saying

♪ You would never break ♪ Never break

♪ Never break the chain

♪ Ah

(drum beating)

(bass guitar and drum solo)

(crowd cheering)

(drum solo)

(bass guitar and drum solo)

(instrumental jam)

♪ Chain keep us together

♪ Chain keep us together ♪ Keep us together

♪ Yes, I'm runnin' in the shadows ♪

♪ Chain keep us together

♪ Yes, I'm running, yes, I'm running ♪

♪ Chain keep us together

(Instrumental jam)

(crowd cheering)

- At that point in time, in 1982,

a very few young people had their own computers.

- He still had a vision of music and uniting people,

and building a sense of community using the computers.

We had a big, big huge tent

with all the latest technology stuff there.

- I saw that this was going to be very important,

these personal computers, in music creation in the future,

so we had a technology fair at the same time.

- It was something else, especially what was going on,

besides the music, there was technology.

- There were games that people could play, computer games.

- Give them a chance to see things firsthand,

try things out and get inspired,

especially where technology and music crossed over.

- The sound is actually fed into the computer.

The computer then takes and basically codifies the sound

into its own language, or something that is understands.

- I thought the tech booths were really happening,

I thought that was really ahead of its time.

To bring tech, you know, the now,

into rock and roll.

- And it was nice, because the traditional view was

that we're gonna lose our heart and soul,

as humanity, if we get too into technology.

It's just cold and calculating and it's all numbers

and there's no heart to technology.

And I think Woz understood that.

- Music's always so important to me.

I've always gotta have music nearby.

- In a large sense it's about just his...

The perfectionist, the creativity, everything,

and the love for music is at the center of it.

- All the time as I taught myself to design computers,

when I was young, music was in the background.

- It makes a lot of sense, in that the music itself

is marrying technology with all ways of playing.

- Marrying all of these lovely things

that can be in themselves austere, linear, and sort of cold.

- Today, 30 years later, music is in the realm of computers.

Whoever would have thought that computers and music,

of all things, this mystical, beautiful thing,

that is so undefinable is so computerable.

- Looking back, I can see now

that is was prophetic that music and technology

would come together.

- And Woz saw a real connection,

and I think we all did, between the technology and music.

- Because look what Apple ended up being, iTunes, iPads.

There's all kinds of ways the music business and technology

joined hands in a way that nobody could foresee.

- Well, computers are definitely part of the future.

So there's no reason to shun them

and try to stay away from it.

It is the future.

- I think that he would sit back now,

with a little smile on his face,

and a little chuckle.

With a little knowing smile.

He might...

For sure, he played an important role

in the bringing together of those two rhythm worlds.

For sure.

- Thanks Woz.

- Thanks Woz.

- We are proud as a group to be a part of this,

but this whole thing could not have happened

without these two gentlemen here,

Steve Wozniak and, of course, Bill Graham.

Come on, give 'em a hand.

(crowd cheering)

- [Wozniak] And I was just thinking the whole time,

I am so thankful that I have all this money from Apple,

that I could do it, because nobody else would.

- He had a dream

and he had the wherewithal to have his vision come true,

which it did.

- He did what he wanted to do.

It was done, he had the means to do it.

And he said nobody else would.

- It was really one of the great,

wonderful experiences of my life.

To do it with Wozniak, and it was something

I'll remember all my life.

- I have fond memories of some of the fun we had

and the people that were there.

- There's much more significance now,

this many years later.

- It really laid the groundwork

for the high mark of festivals.

- Sort of like Coachella is today.

It's absolutely comfortable.

The grass is clean, the sound system is pristine.

- And all of the Bonaroos and Outside Lands

and all these festivals that have now come on

to the U.S. circuit of festivals big,

are really just taking his idea and growing on it.

That's all they're doing.

- It was a perfect mating of music and technology.

Both came together at the US Festival,

which kind of had its fulfillment with iTunes and iPods

and the way the whole music business has changed.

- This was a really special event.

So it was amazing.

- We were very grateful

to have been asked to play that show.

- Really something I'll never forget.

Probably the highlight of my career.

- The festival still resonates.

This was not Woodstock.

It should have been.

Considering the talent.

- [Marky Ramone] For the time,

the lineup of bands that played there

was absolutely the biggest and the best.

It was definitely the event.

- It really distilled creme de la creme de la creme.

It should be up there with Woodstock.

- There's a feeling of accomplishment

when you do something like that.

- I think Woz has always felt it was a great success.

Because it made people happy.

And that's what he cared the most about.

- I am so glad to hear from people,

that it meant that much to them,

and that's what it was all about.

- It just seemed to me that everybody had a great time.

Will that ever happen again, who knows?

- And it should be heralded

as a really important moment in time.

The US Festival.

- You've all been a part of history tonight.

We want to thank you for making this

a great, great, great evening.

(crowd cheering)

(upbeat music)