If the stories that have made the rounds about Jimi Hendrix’s journey to Woodstock are true, we came pretty close to being robbed of his legendary performance at the 1969 music festival. Neil Young, who took the stage a few hours before Hendrix on August 18, has talked about driving to the show with Hendrix on a number of occasions. In his 2012 memoir Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream, Young simply mentions that they rode together in a pickup truck along with Melvin Belli, a famous lawyer known for representing everyone from Muhammad Ali to the Rolling Stones. However, some significant pieces of information were left out of that version of events.

As early as 1979, Young was sharing a much wilder account of how he and Hendrix got to Woodstock. “As it turns out, the charter plane I was on with Jimi Hendrix flew into the wrong airport. We were supposed to be picked up by a helicopter,” Young explained during a radio interview with Mary Turner. “The roads were jammed, and there was nobody at the airport, so we had no way to get to the concert,” he continued. “So we’re standing at the airport with Melvin Belli trying to figure out what to do.”

Neil Young Says He and Jimi Hendrix Took a Stolen Pickup Truck to Woodstock

That’s when Young says Belli decided to steal a pickup truck that he found in the parking lot. “So it’s the three of us in this stolen pickup truck trying to get to the Woodstock concert to play—Jimi, Melvin, and me,” Young recalled, adding, “That’s what I really remember about Woodstock.” Young touched on the subject again in a 1991 interview with MuchMusic, verifying most of the details from his previous breakdown of the story.

But according to Young’s manager, Elliot Roberts, the situation was somehow even crazier than that. In Dave Zimmer’s 1984 book Crosby, Stills & Nash: The Authorized Biography, Roberts claimed that it was Young, not Belli, who hot-wired the pickup truck that day. Furthermore, Roberts revealed that Young actually drove the stolen vehicle while Hendrix rode on the hood. “Jimi Hendrix was the hood ornament,” said Roberts, “And we were all tripping on mescaline or something. It was just insane!”