I FOUND HIM OUTSIDE THE RESTROOMS at the Woodstock museum in Bethel, NY. There, in a corridor designed for trivia buffs, I faced photos of all the performers in order of their appearance at what was understatedly promoted as "three days of peace and music." Given the juggling of logistics for actually starting the concert, (weather, wiring and where are they? — performers were often stuck in traffic), it's surprising that anyone kept track of set lists and times on stage. I examined the musicians, some totally obscure to all but niche fans today. Quill? The Keef Hartley Band? AND THERE WAS BERT SOMMER.

Hmmmm. My sixteen-year-old self would have seriously crushed on this cute, fresh-faced guy with a mile-wide Afro and full, cherubic lips. Bert, I would learn, was literally a poster boy for HAIR: The American Tribal Love-rock Musical. And Woodstock was his first live gig— in front of 300,000 people spread out as far as the eye could see. He would receive a standing ovation for a cover of Paul Simon's America. The rest of his ten-song set list, written by Bert himself, were all well received as the sun set on that first day. He was golden: just twenty years old, with a major record label contract and Artie Kornfeld, one of Woodstock's key organizers, as his producer and manager. Kornfeld had been too nervous to even watch Bert perform, so personal were the stakes. Sommer certainly didn't choke. Far from it. So... what happened?

A 1985 interview with Sommer by a local Albany TV host cites Bert's self-diagnosed affliction— "the Woodstock Curse" as at least part of what took effect. In a heavy Long Island, wise guy accent, at total odds with his nuanced, haunting vocal delivery, Bert offers no whining excuse, but more of a self-deprecating "That's life" acceptance of his fate. In full goofy Goodfellas character, Sommer holds a bottle of beer as he sits, relaxed yet fidgety. On cue, he pulls out albums and posters from his illustrious past. He is charming and probably drunk as he commentates on his life, sincere and sober as he strums his guitar and eases with obvious joy into a song. Anyone who has a heart can see the hurt that he tries to joke away when trotting out his best Marlon Brando: "I coulda been a contender."

Instead, Bert was screwed by the musical political powers-that-be in the Age of Aquarius's waning days. And maybe even a little— by himself?

Two days before the financial disaster that Woodstock was fast becoming, Artie Kornfeld had managed to sell the festival's film rights to Warner Brothers, also deep in the red in 1969. Certain acts didn't make the movie's final cut, including that of his own protégé. Bert's footage was scissored onto the proverbial cutting room floor by none other than Martin Scorcese, who was editing under director Michael Wadleigh's supervision. The film would go on to win an Oscar for Best Documentary of 1971. Warner Brothers would reap a fortune. Acts featured in the film and on the subsequent soundtrack would become world-famous. And Bert fell through the cracks.

To add insult to injury, he was cropped out of a Woodstock Special Edition Life magazine photo that zoomed in on his backup musician Ira Stone's wife, Maxine. The long-married couple, who still write and perform, recently took a break to share fond Bert-memories as filtered through the wisdom of flower children all grown up. Maxine explained, "It was my dress!" Not able to bear the idea of being part of the Woodstock Curse, she is convinced the photographer was simply drawn to her iconic hippie-princess garb. She has kept it all these years, and carefully brought it out to show me, along with Ira's tapestry jacket. When Bert needed a lead guitarist for the concert, just a few weeks away, he placed an an in The Village Voice. Ira answered it. Synchronisticallytuning their guitars to an open D, they knew they fit together like a dovetail joint.

Decades later, when the Woodstock Memorial Plaque was unveiled, Bert's name, along with those of some other performers, was left off. Even before the debacle, he was quoted as saying, "I was involved in the two most famous counterculture events of the 60s— Hair and Woodstock. That and a token will get you on the New York subway!"

Bert had his demons. Angel or devil, depending on how emotionally he wanted, (or was able), to get in a relationship with a young woman drawn to his aura. He eagerly "partook" of all the mood- and mind-altering substances so readily available then. Janis, Jimi and Jim Morrison reached the stratosphere before crashing, all at age twenty-seven. Bert could have soared in the same orbit. He was talented and charismatic and connected. After hovering a year or so post-Woodstock, he began a slow descent— but not without a struggle to maintain altitude.

So what really triggered my interest in this person nearly fifty years later? It's a little complicated. Let's start with Jennifer. The first Google search I did, simply out of curiosity, revealed a video of the opening song he performed on that first day. He sits cross-legged and barefoot on stage, with a green headband lassoing that billow of hair. His eyes close as the song opens:

Jennifer's heaven, for Jenny I'd stay
Skin shining white as a dove
Lying beside her I melted away
Into her river of love

Nice, I thought. A sweet floating tune from an adorable hippie right out of central casting. He evoked a bit of Donovan, (Jennifer, Juniper), even in the subject muse's name. What came next vocally, however, was a full throttle grip and release:

Whoa, I'm lost in a maze
Counting the ways that she smiles
Time is slipping away
Lost in the arms of her love
So gentle and wild

The tuning fork of his essence pierced me right then and there. I needed to know more.

Nowadays, I tend to look back to see who and where I was (or was not), at certain times and places in my life. Then, maybe, figure out the "whys." In August 1969 I was sixteen, but not a counterculture hippie chick. Wanting to revisit the era and see where I fit in, the only way was to listen to the music, watch the documentaries and read the accounts that followed. Down the white rabbit hole I went, keeping an eye peeled for the trace of a formidably gifted ghost who shoulda been a contender.

Bert's Woodstock afterglow resulted in We're all Playing in the Same Band, his optimistic takeaway that reached #48 on Billboard's Top 100. I can't recall ever hearing it on my car radio, so by then the Woodstock Curse was perhaps starting to take effect. The three albums that appeared between 1968 and 1970 were all chock-full of golden nuggets, but went nowhere. Sommer was hard to pigeonhole, with a delivery ranging from Bert Bacharach-esque to hard-driving folk to Itchycoo Park-type ear worm. He shifted musical gears often, like a sports car driver knowing he could take the sharp curves—offering the best views of both the rainbow and the abyss. His lyrics were often laced with emotional complexity and delicate introspection, traits that would soon be co-opted and marketed to a fault as the 70s evolved into the "Me Decade."

During a dip in his fortunes, Bert was spotted by his friend and album cover designer Frank Yandolino selling leather goods in the Village, ostensibly to support a drug habit. I was going to art school and lived on Bleecker Street, perhaps at that very time. Did I pass him on my way to class? Did he try to sell me a hand-tooled belt? (How could I have resisted?) I briefly had my own lost, barefoot hippie to try to coax away from the ledge. Kent was just eighteen, and my tenement's tar roof was such a long way from the beaches of his native San Diego— but just a short LSD trip to the littered sidewalks below. After two whirlwind weeks in that hot July of 1972, my surfer-hippie and his harmonica were gone, and I was, like the Gilbert O'Sullivan song, alone again- naturally.

By 1976, the godawful hump year of the decade, Bert had found work on a bizarre kid's TV show (The Krofft Supershow) playing a character called Flatbush, a member of Kaptain Kool and the Kongs, making his entrances dressed in dopey attire and prat falling flat on his face. This, just a few years after penning the lyrics in A Note That Read:

You could hear him screaming
As he looked beyond the door
His only son was lying in a heap upon the floor
And from his wrists that opened wide
His life had flown from deep inside

Bert made what would be his final grasp at the brass ring for a music career at Capitol in 1977, this time with Ron Dante producing. A flashback to what this unlikely pair was doing in 1969: Dante had a #1 hit with Sugar, Sugar, as the lead singer for The Archies, while Bert was exiting the Woodstock stage with the announcer's tag, "The rather magnificent Mr. Bert Sommers [sic]." In 1977 Dante was lucratively handling Barry Manilow, and added Bert under his other wing. While Manilow was racking up Tonys, Grammys and Emmys, Sommer's career sputtered and stalled. Beneath the gauzy cheesiness of the last album cover, Bert is smiling with the appeal of a puppy at the pound who hasn't quite given up hope.

I mentioned Bert to friends whose paths might have crossed his in the upstate New York college town he settled in for a spell in the mid-70s. One recalled teary phone calls from an ex of Bert's. His relationships with women were mostly messy and doomed to disaster from classic self-sabotaging struggles. What he could not express in real life was distilled in his music.

And when it's over
And as you light your cigarette
Feeling much older
Knowing there was no regret
Touching your shoulder
Felling the joy in what we've done

As we sailed into the sun
with our hearts and souls as one
Feeling free as the sea

And when one of those relationships was over, he would have a son, Jesse.

And when the recording years were over, he joined a local band, the Fabulous Newports, playing Albany clubs and street festivals. The crowd size may have changed in the twenty years since Bert first sat cross-legged on that brand new stage at Bethel Woods and implored people to:

Smile 'cause we all need one another
It only takes a song to understand

but he continued on the road he needed to travel, all the way to his final gig at a bar in Troy, NY. Six weeks later, Bert Sommer died at the age of forty-one. The cause was respiratory failure with probable complications from his relationships with drugs and alcohol. Another cause may have been complications from the Woodstock Curse.

Twenty-five years after Woodstock new film footage of the concert emerged in D.A Pennebaker’s documentary Woodstock Diary. The biggest revelation? Bert, pouring his song-filled heart into that golden moment when we found the best in what we'd all gone to look for— America.

And now, nearly fifty years later, Bert Sommer is still "rather magnificent."








Sharon Watts is working simultaneously on an extended article on Bert Sommer, as well as an illustrated memoir: By the Time I Got to Woodstock. She lives in the Hudson River Valley, not far from where Woodstock occurred. Her first visit to the site was in 2017. To learn more about what she's up to visit her blog and writing home page.