Mention Richie Havens by name and an image locked in by time — the late ‘60s — and celluloid — the “Woodstock” film — most likely emerges. List his ideals, accomplishments and methodology and he sounds like a role model for the current generation: He has played at every significant musical festival in the world; founded his own label and generated hit records; protested and improper war; and made the environment a cause long before his peers.
He’s a fan of the written word, a believer in connecting the dots between generations who tips his hat repeatedly to everyone from Allen Ginsberg and Fred Neil, who encouraged him to learn guitar, up through Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne, whose music he admires. After chatting with him for an hour, and getting a keen sense that he is tapped into the communicative powers of music within a community and not just the ones he came of age in, Havens beams with an undeterred and enchanting spirit. He likes to raise questions to make a listener think and laugh simultaneously: "How is it," he queries in a riff on Superman, "truth and justice and the American way are two different things?"
Havens’ 27th album, “Nobody Left To Crown,” was released in Europe in February and a summer release date in the U.S., Canada and Japan is expected to be announced soon by Verve Records. At 67, he still performs most weekends and has dates booked for the next 12 months. His shows are improvised affairs: “I know the first song and the last song. It’s what I’m feeling and no matter what comes up, (the band) can mosey into where I’m going to go. The cellist may sit out the first verse and then brings a burst of energy into the room.”
Havens made a solo appearance at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival to perform “Freedom” for Sean Penn, head of the Cannes jury, a fan of Havens and the song he became associated with after the release of the “Woodstock” movie. (The performance can be seen here).
“I have had to sing it at every single show since the movie came out,” Havens said in a midday interview in his hotel room on the French Riviera. “Forty years is coming up. The interesting thing is how it is a building block — every year a new group of high school and college students discover the movie and a whole generation discovers this things. They get the story watching this movie and attach themselves to something they missed that interests them.”
The enduring appeal of Havens’ shining moments — “Freedom” at Woodstock and his interpretations of George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” and Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” — have evolved into history lessons, documents of inspired interpretation and performance. Havens, and this holds true for Nina Simone, fused practically every musical style they came in contact with to create their own unique sound. Haven, a Brooklyn native, sang gospel and doo-wop until he moved to Greenwich Village where he drew portraits and recited poetry until singer-songwriters Fred Neil and Dino Valenti encouraged to learn the guitar and joining the growing “folk scare” of the early 1960s.
“We were the ones who went to every major festival — and got asked to come back,” he notes.
Those fests included a string of landmark events: the 1966 Newport Folk Festival, ‘67 Monterey Jazz Festival, Miami Pop in ‘68, Isle of Wight Festival and, in 1970, the first Glastonbury Festival.
The festivals, he says, “were a very interesting exchange — people from the West and people from the East discovering each others’ performers.”
He offered thoughts on a host of subjects — the intricacies of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” making albums, his earliest inspirations and the one song he won’t play.
(Olivia Hemaratanatorn took the great photos)