How enduring is the impact of Woodstock, the legendary 1969 music festival that took place in upstate New York 55 years ago next week and drew nearly half a million attendees to hear such rock legends as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who, Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills Nash & Young?

Artists as stylistically disparate as Carlos Santana, Chris Stapleton and cutting-edge vocal wizard Diamanda Galás all sing the festival’s praises. This holds true even though Galás didn’t attend Woodstock and Stapleton wasn’t born until nine years after it took place.

“Woodstock changed my life,” said former Tijuana guitarist Carlos Santana, whose band soared to stardom after playing the festival. “Because of Woodstock, I was able to witness firsthand that a mass number of humans can coexist in harmony,”

“I was 18 when I saw Hendrix on film in ‘Woodstock,’ Galás said. “And — bam! — it changed my life.”

“I don’t think anybody that’s a musician is not affected by Woodstock and the musicians who performed there,” Stapleton said.

Over the years, the Union-Tribune has interviewed a number of artists who performed at Woodstock — some of whom have since died — as well as musicians and fans who cite the festival as a key inspiration. Here’s what they told us.

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards: “I think it had an enormous impact upon people who were there. In a way, it was actually ‘creating your own little nation’ for a few days, which at that time seemed very important, and a lot of connections were made between people.”

Pete Townshend of the Who: “The dream and ideology of rock ‘n’ roll was rooted in the idea that this generation, the ‘Woodstock generation,’ were super-luminaries, but I’ve never agreed with that. I always thought that was the biggest crock of s— America has ever come up with.”

Melissa Etheridge: “Woodstock was huge. It was not just symbolic to the rock ‘n’ roll community, but symbolic of the rock ‘n’ roll community making a difference to society as a whole. It was music that made a difference.”

Former Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick: “I’m amazed I was able to be on the side of the stage for 12 hours before we played — without having to take a pee. There were no bathrooms.”

Billy Joel: “I went to Woodstock and I hated it. I think a lot of that ‘community spirit’ was based on the fact that everybody was so wasted. Because everybody was stoned — everybody was passing around pot and acid — and I wasn’t into it. There’d been a lot of rain, it was all muddy, and you couldn’t go to the bathroom unless you stood up and went right where you were. I was there for a night and a day, and then I left just before the Who went on. I really wanted to see them, but it was very hard to because everybody was hopping up and down and banging into you. So I walked out and hitched a ride home.”

Saxophonist David Sanborn: “It was overwhelming. We (the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) were on the road and had done a lot of gigs. Obviously, no one had any notion that we’d be playing at what turned out to be a historic event. After the fact, everyone started writing about it as a watershed event. And it was like, ‘Gee, how about that?’ When in fact, to us, it was a congregation of a half a million people in a muddy field in New York.”

Surfing legend Rob Machado: “Woodstock had an amazing impact on me, just watching the movie. I was a huge Hendrix fan and watching Hendrix play at Woodstock (on film) is unbelievable. It was dazzling to see all these people (in the audience), out in this big field for days and days, out of their minds, was pretty wild. The fact they pulled that off, and got all the bands they got to play, was crazy. I think Woodstock was a huge kicker for everything that came after it.”

Rod Stewart: “Woodstock was a wonderful, historic event, but I think it dates you a bit to have played it.”

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart: “You don’t see festivals that draw half a million people any more. I recall the people who played really well at Woodstock — Carlos Santana, Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix — were over-the-top great. But we just didn’t play well. It was a missed opportunity.”

Joan Baez: “It was a rare, historic moment, but it’s been overglorified. People say to me: ‘Oh, man, you played at Woodstock and you had everything — the music, the political scene, the community.’ And I tell them: ‘Yeah, we had the rain and the mud!’.”

English synth-pop pioneer Howard Jones: “Seeing Hendrix playing in the morning mist was just magic. I saw Hendrix, the Who, Joni Mitchell and the Doors at England’s Isle of Wight festival in 1970, and the reason I went to it was because I’d seen the ‘Woodstock’ film. And that made me decide that that’s what I wanted to do in my life. It was mind-blowing!”

Florence & the Machine singer Florence Welch: “I’m a child of festivals and the artists who played at Woodstock are still affecting the way I play music.”

Dee Dee Bridgewater: “I was 19 in 1969. I knew about Woodstock. But it was something I didn’t think anything about, because it was more of a blues and rock festival and I was not into blues and rock, which was music supported more by white kids. I was fascinated by Woodstock (after the fact); I thought it was cool, but from a peripheral view. Most of the artists at Woodstock were artists I didn’t really know about; I felt it was more ‘white music.’ That was the way I was thinking about everything back then as Black and white. Now, I don’t think in terms of Black and white anymore.”

Jason Mraz: “Woodstock showed that we have the potential to do great things. It showed that we’re not all oblivious consumers — even though we are forced to be in this capitalistic world. It showed that our spirits are not meant to be that way. Woodstock was a great example of the alternative to capitalism. I think that story and message lives on today …”

Former Sly and the Family Stone bassist/singer Larry Graham: “When we arrived at Woodstock, it was dark and you couldn’t really see all the people that were there. We later found out it was half a million. Onstage, you could only see the first few thousand. But when we stopped playing, we could hear them. It was the loudest roar we’d ever heard in our lives! That response made us better. It made us realize we could tap into a higher musical zone than we had ever done before.”

Lyle Lovett: “Woodstock changed the face of popular music and culture. It really underscored that playing music was a cool thing. But it was more than that. From my point of view, being 11 or 12 at the time, it seemed like: ‘This is what’s going on. This is real. This is what music is.’ Woodstock made it seem larger than life ….”

Woodstock announcer Wavy Gravy: “Woodstock was created for promoters to put money in their wallets. They didn’t put up the turnstiles, and the universe walked in and had a party. I do remember when the turnstiles were almost put up. The promoters asked me to clear the area. And I said: ‘Do you want a good movie or a bad movie?’ And, to their credit, they said: ‘You’re right’,”

Bill Frisell: “Oh, man! Woodstock’s impact on me was huge. I didn’t go, but I always regret not going. That was the first summer I spent in New York. I was with my friend and we debated: ‘Should we go or not? It’s raining and there are too many people there.’ So I went to see Lou Rawls instead! But that summer of 1969 was a magic time for me. And, whether it’s real or not, in my mind, the whole idea of Woodstock is incredible.”

Little Steven: “The ‘Woodstock’ movie had more of an impact, culturally, than the event itself. Obviously, the 500,000 people who went to the festival had the experience. But the 40 (million) or 50 million who watched the movie realized for the first time, what a big group of people this whole hippie and rock culture was. That impressed everybody when they saw the movie.”

Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis: “Did Woodstock have an impact on me? Not at all. That whole lifestyle and what it represented wasn’t part of my life — and I don’t recall anybody in New Orleans at the time even saying the word ‘Woodstock.’ But I can’t remember any of my friends then ever saying the name ‘Duke Ellington,’ either, so that doesn’t mean Woodstock isn’t relevant.”

Julio Iglesias: “I was growing up at that time (in Spain) and I was not very much involved in that music, but now I understand what happened at Woodstock. Music today is the result of an attitude of everyone (who was) there.”

Ten Years After singer/guitarist Alvin Lee: “Woodstock was just another festival at the time. But when the ‘Woodstock’ movie came out, it crossed over to a bigger audience and we started playing ice hockey arenas and baseball stadiums. And that turned out to be quite horrible, because it was (for) younger audiences who were screaming and shouting. It was the beginning of the end … it made business very aware of the potential bucks in rock ‘n’ roll, and turned music into an industry and touring into marketing.”

Blues Traveler guitarist Chan Kinchla: “That’s what Madison Avenue will do, but ‘Woodstock’ is still a great album and movie. And the film’s wide exposure inspired a lot of bands like ours to carry on the tradition. Alvin Lee was my guitar hero. I was a punk-rock/new wave kid when in the 1980s learning to play guitar and I remember watching the ‘Woodstock’ movie on PBS. Ten Years After played ‘I’m Going Home’ and I realized how much more I could do on guitar, while continuing to play aggressively. Alvin Lee’s performance moved me.”

Former Santana keyboardist Gregg Rolie: “Getting into Woodstock and getting featured in the middle of that movie, which was the only (live music) video available back then, everything just took off. If you had a gig at Woodstock, you had a career.”

Carlos Santana: “The festival took place at the end of a strong, volatile decade in American culture, with the assassinations of Dr. Matin Luther King and John and Robert Kennedy, the mass protests against the war in Vietnam, the police violence in Chicago (outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention), the women’s liberation movement. That was when ‘Woodstock Nation’ was born.”

Chris Stapleton: “There were a lot of great musical and cultural shifts in that moment and we’re all a part of that legacy, just by default. You can’t be playing music and not have been influenced by somebody that was there and performed at Woodstock; it just doesn’t happen.”

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