"Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)"
— by Melanie [Safka]
Melanie's most dramatic performance was at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in 1969. "I was there for the whole day," she remembers. "Being a lower echelon performer, I didn't even have a backstage pass. I could only go so far before they stopped me. I had a tiny tent that I could go into if I wanted. It was mortifying to think about singing in front of all these people. The biggest thing I had done was five hundred or a thousand people. I mostly sat in my tent. If you're introverted like that and you're terrified at the same time, you can make yourself sick, which is what happened. Somebody would come back and say `Melanie, you're next' then, they'd come back and say `Sorry, someone else in next.' All day long, this went on. I developed this nervous cough that, I think, you could've heard me on the other side of the hill. Joan Baez was in a much bigger tent, but, still within hearing range. She felt sorry for this poor, hacking, person and sent over some tea. I felt like it was the sweetest thing that anybody had ever done for me."
Melanie's nervousness peaked right before her set. "Ravi Shankar had just gone on, and it had started to rain. They said, `OK, give the girl from Astoria a break.' I had to cross a plank. I felt like I was going into a dark abyss. I was going to be dead when I got on the stage. It was all going to be over. I was going to the electric chair. The terror that I felt was so real, that I had an out-of-body experience. I watched myself get on stage, sit down and start to play. Only when I felt it was safe did I come back."
What inspired her multi-million-selling 1970 hit, "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain), was a candle-lighting ceremony, during her performance. "Right before I went on," Melanie says, "the announcer had made an announcement that it was raining and that people from the Hog Farm (commune) were going to pass out candles. While I was on stage, this ceremony was going on. All I knew was that the entire universe was lighting up. I saw a mountain of light. By the time that I finished, the whole hillside was alight. I got the idea, the next day, to write about it." The ceremony became an on-going feature of Melanie's concerts. "Until I put out the song," she says, "people who had been at Woodstock would come (to my concerts) with a candle to show me that they were one of the people that had been there. Then, it began that people were bringing candles that hadn't been there. Then, when I had `Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),' I would start to sing it and the whole audience would light up."
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
We were so close there was no room
We bled inside each others' wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
So raise the candles high
'Cause if you don't we could stay
Black against the night
So raise them higher again
And if you do we could stay dry against the rain
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
We were so close there was no room
We bled inside each others' wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace
Some came to sing
Some came to pray
Some came to keep the dark away
So raise the candles high
'Cause if you don't we could stay
Black against the night
So raise them higher again
And if you do we could stay dry against the rain
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
Lay down lay down
Lay it all down
Let your white birds smile up
At the ones who stand and frown
