I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.

I started out by myself, but it eventually turned into a trio by the mid-'60s - a conga drum and another guitarist. And that's been mostly what I've worked with most of the time.

Nothing has really changed. We had bootleg albums in the '60s and today we have Internet file sharing. They just found a better way to do it -- get music for free. What's great about today is an artist has an opportunity to go direct to their audience without dealing with a middleman. People can go directly to the web for CDs, DVDs and downloads. I think that's the best thing that's happened, that people's music is being flashed around the world.

Though it's frequently portrayed as this crazy, unbridled festival of rain-soaked, stoned hippies dancing in the mud, Woodstock was obviously much more than that - or we wouldn't still be talking about it in 2009. People of all ages and colors came together in the fields of Max Yasgur's farm.

The direction for my music is heaven, of course. We gear all things to the realm of heaven - which is the mind, the organized mind.

Live Aid was a baby Woodstock, a child of Woodstock, which I call Globalstock.

I'm not in show business; I'm in the communications business. That's what it's about for me.