Abbie Hoffman and The Who (plus John Sinclair)--Interesting Random Facts

I'm currently rereading Woodstock Nation by Abbie Hoffman, which I first read back in 1996.

One of the differences between reading this book in 1996 and reading it now is that now you can look everything up on Wikipedia.

The book is packed with all sorts of references to the culture, people and events of 1969, but if you were born after 1969, it can sometimes be a bit confusing trying to figure out what Abbie Hoffman is talking about.

The best example of this is Abbie Hoffman's relationship with the rockband The Who.  All throughout Woodstock Nation, it is very apparent that Abbie Hoffman has some sort of grudge against The Who.  And it's also apparent that there was some sort of incident that happened with Abbie Hoffman and The Who at Woodstock, but it's a bit hard to work out what exactly happened (especially since Abbie Hoffman is deliberately writing Woodstock Nation in a satirically over-the-top tone, so it's often unclear what is real and what is satire.)

But now it's the year 2025, and you can just look that stuff up on Wikipedia.  And because this is an interesting little bit of random trivia, I thought it would make for a perfect entry in my Interesting Random Facts series.

To quote from Wikipedia: 

At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman interrupted the Who's performance to attempt to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit while John Sinclair rots in prison ..." Pete Townshend was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his left shoulder. Townshend shouted "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!"^[25][26][27] and reportedly ran at Hoffman with his guitar and hit Hoffman in the back, although Townshend later denied attacking Hoffman.^[28] Townshend later said that while he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, he would have knocked him offstage regardless of the content of his message, given that Hoffman had violated the "sanctity of the stage," i.e., the right of the band to perform uninterrupted by distractions not relevant to the show. The incident took place during a camera change and was not captured on film. The audio of this incident, however, can be heard on The Who's box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2, Track 20, "Abbie Hoffman Incident").

...a couple of observations about this:

1) The incident took place during a camera change? Ah man, what are the odds of that?  Too bad it wasn't captured on film, it would have been a great edition to the Woodstock movie.  

2) Back in the Calvin days, my friend Brian Bork actually had a copy of the box set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B, and I remember listening to that audio when I borrowed the album from him.  (This was about 3 years after I had read Woodstock Nation.)  So at the time that did at least help me to put the pieces together on what this incident actually was.

If you don't happen to have a copy of The Who's Thirty Years of Maximum R&B handy, you can, of course, find the audio of the incident easily available on Youtube.  
Here's one Youtube video which apparently has some of the visuals as well:

Pete Townshend vs. Abbie Hoffman (video)

So, there you go.  An interesting little detour through pop culture history: Abbie Hoffman, The Who, and John Sinclair.

But for anyone who's not a 1960s nut, I guess the next question is: Who the heck is John Sinclair?

John Sinclair is interesting in that he's not really well remembered today, but during 1969, he was a huge cause celebre among the counter-culture movement.  Abbie Hoffman talked about him a lot.  And John Lennon even wrote a song about him.

John Sinclair was the leader of The White Panthers and he became a cause celebre when:

Arrested for distribution of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison. The sentence was criticized by many as unduly harsh, and it galvanized a noisy protest movement led by prominent figures of the 1960s counterculture. 

And his case certainly attracted a lot of high profile celebrities.  See also from Wikipedia:

The severity of his sentence sparked high-profile protests, including an infamous incident at the 1969 Woodstock Festival wherein Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman jumped on the stage and seized a microphone during a performance by The Who. Hoffman managed to shout only a few words about Sinclair's plight before he was forcibly ejected from the stage by guitarist Pete Townshend.^[39][40]

With a more successful protest, attended by Stevie Wonder and Bob Seger, John Lennon performed his new song "John Sinclair" on television^[41] and recorded it for his next album, Some Time in New York City (1972),^[42] though by that time Sinclair had been released.^[43] With "directness and simplicity", said one critic,^[41] the lyrics lament Sinclair's intended harsh punishment: "They gave him ten for two—what else can the bastards do?"^[41] The event drew 15,000 sympathizers. Sinclair drew a 9+1⁄2-to-10-year prison sentence in 1969 from Detroit Recorder's Court Judge Robert Colombo for giving two joints to undercover officers. He served 29 months but was released a few days after Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger and others performed in front of 15,000 attendees at the University of Michigan's Crisler Arena.

Various public and private protests culminated in the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally" at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena in December 1971. The event brought together celebrities including Lennon and Yoko Ono; musicians David Peel, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and Bob Seger, Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd; poets Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders; and countercultural speakers including Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale.^{[6][44][45][46][47]} Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's marijuana statutes were unconstitutional.^[1][37] These events inspired the creation of Ann Arbor's annual pro-legalization Hash Bash rally.^[48]

Back in the 1990s, when I was first learning about all this history, I remember thinking to myself: Okay, it was unfair that he got 10 years for 2 joints.  But lots of people get unduly harsh sentences for drug possession all the time.  What made this case so special?  And given all the other things that were going on at this time, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Cambodia, the My Lai massacre, the civil rights movement, Fred Hampton's assassination, etc, given all that, why did John Sinclair in particular get so much attention from all these movement celebrities at the time?

And I still wonder this, actually.  I don't know, maybe you just had to be living through those years to understand.