40th anniversary of Woodstock
http://www.kentucky.com/964/story/889773.html
Milestone for a landmark
By Walter Tunis - Contributing music columnist
Aug. 09, 2009
In his 2005 memoir Searching for the Sound, Phil Lesh of the Grateful
Dead outlined his observations on the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art
Fair not as one of its participants but as an outsider.
"As I watched TV the next night, the main thrust of the reporting
focused on the impact of the festival on the local area: a tremendous
influx of people, clogged roads and garbage," Lesh wrote about
reporting on the festival, which celebrates its 40th anniversary Aug.
15 to 18. "I've rarely seen Walter Cronkite so indignant as when he
described the 'tons and tons' left behind, while the screen showed
the trash-filled mud slopes of the main amphitheater.
"Crosby, Stills and Nash, on the other hand, were ecstatic,
celebrating the festival as the most loving, peaceful and significant
gathering yet of a new generation."
Last weekend, just before David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham
Nash began a concert at Cincinnati's PNC Pavilion with one of their
Woodstock folk anthems, Helplessly Hoping, the generational shift was
considerable. In a sea of gray-hairs and no-hairs and the occasional
well-worn tie-dyed shirt, a pair of 20-somethings took their seats
beside me. Both introduced themselves as students of the University
of Cincinnati College- Conservatory of Music and admitted being taken
with the group harmonies they heard on their parents' CSN albums.
After a patron behind us jokingly asked the students whether they had
to be carded upon entry to the venue, I asked my neighbors if they
had heard of Woodstock.
"You mean the movie with all the hippies?" one replied.
Yeah. That one.
Ask anyone an elder, a contemporary, a curious youth, even and
it's very likely they have at last heard of Woodstock. The passions
rise a bit with the age brackets, though.
To some, it was indeed a generational summit, a mammoth chapter in
pop and social history during the final months of the '60s. To
others, maybe the late Cronkite and most certainly my poor father,
who viewed such massively attended rock 'n' roll events as a sure
sign of the apocalypse, Woodstock was very much a garbage dump.
But with the arrival of Woodstock's 40th anniversary, there is no
question that the 31/2-day festival, documented as it has been on
recordings and films, remains one of the most compelling and complete
time capsules of late-'60s pop culture, the music that gave it life,
the drugs that helped bring about its inevitable demise, and the
social backdrops of war and generational unrest.
"Three days of peace and music." Being 10 at the time, I wasn't
there. But that advertised billing for the festival certainly seems a
simplification in retrospect. This was an age when sound systems were
almost prehistoric, when there were no video screens to provide at
least a glimpse of stage activity to those sitting in the farthest
recesses of Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y. And when it
rained, which it did in torrents, attendees had no choice but to
become creatures of the mud. The vibe, though, seemed to prevail.
Pop festivals were common in the late '60s and early '70s. But the
size of Woodstock's crowd widely thought to be almost 500,000 was
a staggering generational statement unto itself.
"I've just got to say that you people have got to be the strongest
bunch of people I ever saw," Stephen Stills said during CSN's
Woodstock set, which was only the group's second public performance.
"Three days, man. Three days."
From the acoustic percussive urgency of Richie Havens, who kicked
off Woodstock about 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15, 1969, to the final
electric strains of Jimi Hendrix just before noon Monday, Aug. 18,
Woodstock made national headlines for the music, the garbage and the
staggering numbers that turned out to witness it all.
From the Woodstock film, which became an Oscar-winning documentary
in 1970, all kinds of highlights remain arresting 40 years on. Among them:
The split-screen images of The Who's Pete Towns hend in midair
pounding out the Tommy finale of We're Not Gonna Take It.
Havens making up on the spot a chant-style variation on Motherless
Child called Freedom.
A young band called Santana introducing itself to the world with the
Latin rock manifesto Soul Sacrifice.
Stage announcements warning that "the brown acid is not specifically too good."
Sly and the Family Stone turning the festival into a psychedelic funk
party with Dance to the Music.
Hendrix retooling The Star-Spangled Banner into elegant guitar noise
for a new generation. Oh, did my dad despise that one.
Now with anniversary CDs and DVDs out this summer that dig further
into the 120 hours of Woodstock performances, there are new delights
to behold by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Incredible String Band
and, for the first time, the Grateful Dead.
For some, though, the lasting importance of Woodstock clearly went
beyond what transpired onstage.
"I sat there onstage and thought, 'You know what? This is the freedom
my generation has been dreaming about since the '50s,'" Havens said
while in Lexington last year for a performance on WoodSongs Old-Time
Radio Hour.
"All along we were trying to get a voice. And as I started singing
during that long intro, that word came out: freedom. So I just kept
singing it. And all of a sudden that song came out. I just went, 'Wow.'"
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Woodstock: the day the hippies took over
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=Nzk3MzY0MjQ0
August 10, 2009
Michele Dean was "a nice straight girl" on arrival at the 1969
Woodstock rock festival. Not for long, though. First to greet the
17-year-old high school graduate were "two guys and a girl coming out
of a lake with no clothes." "Goodness," says Dean, an IBM technician
now 57, "in those days we didn't expect that." Then came the crowd,
almost half a million strong, the tearing down of the perimeter
fence, three days of wild rock music, drugs, and, yes, lots more
nudity. "I spent the entire time with my mouth wide open," Dean says.
Even now, 40 years later this August 15, she speaks with awe. To
those who attended, Woodstock was near magical-a moment when rules
were suspended, hippies took over, rock greats like Jimi Hendrix were
at their best, and the world was really, really groovy. In practical
terms, Woodstock really was a miracle, says Mel Lawrence, director of
operations at the event in rural upstate New York. The concert almost
fell through when locals at the planned site in Wallkill, near the
little town of Woodstock, suddenly withdrew permission.
A new site was found at a farm in Bethel, but less than a month
remained to install the stage, sound system, infrastructure for tens
of thousands of people, and even basics like electricity. "We had
only 28 days to build the site and in that time we experienced rain
on about 20 days. We also had money problems. But we managed to make
it happen," Lawrence said. And the challenges were just beginning.
Organizers had planned for about 100,000 people. More than four times
the number showed up. Once the fence came down, the concert became a
free-for-all and roads were so jammed that many abandoned their
vehicles. There was little sanitation or shelter.
Then somewhere on the second day, we ran out of food," Lawrence said.
Yet with chaos looming, the rather shambolic organizers,
counterculture leaders, conservatively minded locals, and crowds of
rock fans rose to the occasion. Local people produced supplies,
organizers negotiated to acquire truckloads of paper plates, and
hundreds of thousands of people were treated to the famous "breakfast
in bed for 400,000"-or, rather, breakfast in a rain-soaked field.
Dean remembers concert goers showing true hippie spirit, sharing
everything and steering clear of bad vibes. When two youths started
fighting, others simply encircled them, Dean said: "People surrounded
them, holding hands and the two guys ended up hugging each other.
Some of that peace and love might have had something to do with the
clouds of marijuana smoke. "I'd say about half the people were on
drugs," former policeman Robert Fink said. "It was everywhere. You
didn't have to smoke to get high." Fink, now a massively built man of
73, had deployed expecting to perform his normal duties. He got a
quick reality check. "I was supposed to be there in a trailer," he
said, "and by the time I arrived on Friday it was too late. You
couldn't get in. Cars couldn't even park.
If he had reached his post, how could he have arrested the equivalent
of a small city? "You didn't," he answered. "It was a wild time.
Lawrence himself is not sure how he and his friends managed to
overcome such odds. "You can't plan for something like that. It has
to be a series of circumstances that come together in some mysterious
way," he said. "I think it was karma myself. We treated that site,
Bethel, with great, great respect."
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BACK TO WOODSTOCK
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08092009/entertainment/back_to_woodstock_183660.htm
FESTIVAL CREATER REVISITS HIS EPIC CONCERT 40 YEARS LATER
By MICHAEL RIEDEL
August 10, 2009
If the 500,000 hippies, Yippies, peaceniks and pimply teenagers who
attended the Woodstock Music & Art Fair 40 years ago this week,
Michael Lang may have been the only one not stoned out of his mind.
Not that Lang, then 24, was a teetotaler. He spent a good chunk of
the '60s smoking pot in Greenwich Village clubs like Café Wha? and
the Bitter End. He had even owned a head shop in Miami.
But as the driving creative force behind Woodstock -- the man who, in
fact, came up with the idea of producing "a concert for peace" in the
first place -- he had a lot on his plate the weekend of Aug. 15, 1969.
Some of his partners "went a little south on me," he says, laughing.
"But I kept a clear head. I didn't even have a shot. There was, you
could say, a lot going on."
In his new memoir, "The Road to Woodstock," Lang offers a vivid and
lively account of those hectic and historic three days that
encapsulated -- and have become shorthand for -- the counterculture
of the era. The shelf of books about Woodstock is groaning, but
Lang's is the best fly-on-the-wall account, tantamount to having had
a backstage pass to an iconic event.
"I've read most of the books about Woodstock, and they tell you why
things happened and how things happened -- and they're founded in no
real fact," says Lang, now 64, sitting in the shade of a large tree
on his estate just outside the village of Woodstock.
"Nobody knows what went through my head, though I've read that, too
-- 'Michael Lang was thinking . . . ,' he adds. "The truth is,
Woodstock was a fantastic trip for me, and I thought other people
might like to take the ride."
The road to Woodstock begins in Brooklyn, where Lang was born and
raised. His father, an engineer, owned a stake in a Latin nightclub
on the Upper West Side, and that's where Lang got hooked on music.
(Years later, his love of Latin music would lead him to book an
obscure band called Santana for Woodstock.)
After kicking around the Greenwich Village music scene, Lang moved to
Miami, where he produced the Miami Pop Festival, a trial run for
Woodstock, although he did not know it then. It was a financial
disaster that, says Lang, "literally drove me out of Florida."
Broke, he moved to Woodstock ("a cheap place to live") in 1968. The
artsy little village had already begun attracting musicians of note,
including Bob Dylan (escaping fans who were prowling the Village
looking for him), Van Morrison and Jimi Hendrix.
"On the weekends, there were these little concerts called
sound-outs," says Lang. "You were in this beautiful countryside,
smoking dope, camping out and listening to local talent. The local
talent just happened to be Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.
So I started thinking about doing a bigger version of the sound-outs."
Woodstock has come to symbolize peace, love and communal bathing, but
it was designed to make a buck. Lang teamed with Artie Kornfeld, a
hotshot record producer, and a rich kid named John Roberts, who
backed the festival with his inheritance.
Woodstock Ventures was created with an initial budget of $500,000.
The plan was to produce a three-day concert for about 100,000 people
paying $5 a head. Lang rounded up the talent and reports their fees
in his book: Arlo Guthrie ($5,000), Richie Havens ($6,000), Joan Baez
($10,000), Janis Joplin ($15,000).
He went after Dylan, but in vain.
"I had lunch with him and I told him we wouldn't use his name, that
he could just show up and play," says Lang. "It would be a
'surprise.' But he declined. He hated this sort of weight that was on
his shoulders in terms of being the guru of [his] generation.
"The other act I wanted was Roy Rogers," says Lang. "We'd all grown
up with him -- every Saturday morning, 'Happy Trails.' I thought the
perfect way to end the festival would be with 'Happy Trails.' I
thought it was a great idea. I called his manager, who didn't think
it was such a great idea."
Finding a site for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was fraught with
drama. Sullivan County was a conservative part of the state, and many
of the locals were terrified that a bunch of hippies were going to
run amok through their pastures.
Lang finally struck a deal for an industrial site in Wallkill, NY.
The town board thought he was producing a small jazz festival. But
when "this crew of guys with long hair showed up, the town found a
way of getting rid of us," says Lang.
It was July 14, a month from the start date. Lang had no place to
stage his festival. And then what he calls "the miracle" happened.
Touring some potential sites in Bethel, he drove up over a hill and
saw an alfalfa field shaped like an amphitheater. The perfect site
belonged to Max Yasgur, an old dairy farmer and right-wing Republican
who supported the war in Vietnam. But Yasgur had followed the
situation with the town board in Wallkill, and thought Lang had been
railroaded.
"He was an amazingly fair-minded man," says Lang. "He believed what
he believed, and he was all for you believing what you believed."
Yasgur and Lang took a walk through the field and shook hands on a
deal. "Without Max Yasgur, there would have been no Woodstock," says Lang.
As opening day approached, chaos reigned. The fence around the site
was never finished, the ticket booths never constructed. And that
weekend, 500,000 people -- five times as many as expected -- flocked
to the concert grounds. The local police and National Guard
surrounded the town, prepared to restore order if the hippies got out
of control.
Despite the crowds, the drugs, the lack of facilities and the rain
(Yasgur's field became a giant bowl of mud), Woodstock was pretty
much violence-free. That is until Pete Townshend of The Who famously
whacked Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman on the head with his guitar.
"That was a dramatic moment," recalls Lang, laughing.
Hoffman was higher than a kite, and while The Who played their set,
Hoffman started mumbling about John Sinclair, a White Panther
activist who'd been sentenced to 10 years in jail for marijuana possession.
"Abbie was mumbling that he couldn't sit here while all these kids
were having a good time and John Sinclair was rotting in jail," says
Lang. "I told him to chill, you can make a speech about John Sinclair
after The Who's finished. And then Pete turned to his amplifier and
Abbie couldn't resist the open mike.
"So he jumped up and started berating the crowd about John Sinclair.
Pete was pissed. He whacked him a good one. You could hear the clunk.
Abbie went down and, half-dazed, into the crowd. That was the last
time I saw him all weekend."
Lang says that, of all the performers, Townshend was the only pain in the neck.
"He wasn't part of the peace movement at all," says Lang. "He was
pissed-off when he arrived, he was pissed-off all day long, he was
pissed-off onstage and he was pissed-off when he left. He
acknowledges now that Woodstock was a breakthrough moment for The
Who. But he was not a pleasure to have around, I can tell you."
Woodstock proved to be a career-making moment for other performers as
well -- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Country Joe McDonald; Santana;
Sly and the Family Stone. For Lang, though, the biggest surprise was
Joe Cocker, singing "A Little Help From My Friends."
"We thought he was some black blues singer from the South, and then
this skinny white guy shows up and does this St. Vitus' Dance. It was
passionate and powerful, and it blew everybody away."
While Woodstock was a rousing success artistically and politically,
it was a disaster financially. It wound up costing $2.7 million
(about $16 million today). The aftermath was acrimonious, with
threats of lawsuits and financial ruin.
"We really weren't mature enough to handle it," says Lang, who
eventually sold out his interest for $31,750. Warner Brothers swooped
in and snapped up the rights to the documentary movie and the
soundtrack, two properties that have generated more than $100 million
in profits, not a penny of which ever went to Lang.
But Lang did all right, becoming a successful record producer,
concert promoter and talent manager.
"I didn't have a career before Woodstock. I just sort of followed my
nose," he says. "We put on a historic event and we created a huge
amount of good will. For me, it was life-affirming. What I got out of
Woodstock, you can't buy for money."
--
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Woodstock: All-time high, or hype?
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-08-09-woodstock-alltime-high-or-hype
SEBASTIAN SMITH
Aug 09 2009
Woodstock's hippies turned on, tuned in, dropped out, tried changing
the world -- then got haircuts and jobs.
To those who were there on August 15-18, 1969, the rock festival in
Bethel, upstate New York, seemed at first to promise a beautiful new
era. "Woodstock Nation," they called themselves.
But the big high led to a big hangover and today, 40 years on, it's
unclear whether Woodstock changed anything at all.
Quinnipiac University journalism professor Rich Hanley says the
festival was the last gasp, not some fresh dawn, for the '60s
counter-culture revolution.
"By 1971, it was all done. The protests were down tremendously. The
Woodstock generation had to go out and get jobs and jobs put an end
to the fun."
Only half joking, Hanley added: "Now hippies have all become
Republicans and instead of taking LSD, they're taking Viagra and
losing their hair."
At Bethel's Woodstock museum, director Wade Lawrence says the flower
children didn't have to wait long before reality bit.
Less than four months after Woodstock, in December 1969, a similar
rock concert at Altamont Speedway in California ended in bloody,
drug-fuelled mayhem.
The wider world wasn't looking much happier either.
Despite anti-war protests, US troops kept fighting in Vietnam until
1973 and a year later the Watergate scandal toppled president Richard Nixon.
"I think people got disillusioned," Lawrence said. "The peace and
love thing, it seemed a bit quaint."
Much of the Woodstock legend -- gentle marijuana highs, naturist-type
nudity and dewy-eyed vows of peace -- seems quaint in today's less
innocent society.
Some former hippies, like photographer Michael Murphree, now 56, are
unapologetic about their youth. "Peace, love, happiness: we strived
for that," he said with a smile, while taking a nostalgic trip
through the museum.
Yet Woodstock left few tangible legacies beyond music and the look,
including the once-again fashionable bell bottom jeans.
Ironically, the most direct result was probably the corporate
takeover of rock music, transforming concerts from folk gatherings
into mega-money spinners.
"Woodstock changed the music industry," said Stan Goldstein, one of
the original organisers. "For the first time you could see the power
of artists to attract not just crowds, but crowds of people with money."
Meanwhile, the seemingly most powerful element -- a mix of hedonism,
pacifism and political activism, or what Goldstein termed "hippy
consciousness" -- has evaporated almost entirely.
Twenty-year-old Sarah Duncan, visiting the museum in a hippy-style
tie-dye shirt, said her contemporaries would never catch the Woodstock vibe.
"Then, it was enough to be free and open," said Duncan, who was
working at a nearby summer camp. "I don't see my friends doing that,
though. They'd get drunk and be crazy, not just love and peace."
And although US troops are again fighting unpopular wars, she doesn't
see her generation taking to the streets, or penning songs in protest.
"Now it's not as big a deal. People say what they think, but they
don't want to demonstrate or put it art form," Duncan said.
"They might send a mass email."
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Peace, love, musicand memories
By Melissa Ruggieri
August 9, 2009
The images of Woodstock -- the mud, the traffic, Jimi Hendrix, farm
land packed with half a million people -- are iconic.
And memories of Woodstock, whether through photos, the film that
chronicled the festival or stories passed down from attendees whose
brain cells might not have been at their sharpest that August weekend
in 1969, are unavoidable.
But why settle for second-hand information when Michael Lang, the
then-20-something from Brooklyn, N.Y., who masterminded those
legendary three days of peace, love and music is finally giving fans
the inside scoop?
There are plenty of juicy tidbits in "The Road to Woodstock,"
starting with the compelling opening of Lang sharing his backstage
view of Hendrix's sizzling performance at the rain-soaked end of the festival.
And those with even a casual interest in the creation and promotion
of concerts will chuckle at Lang's disclosure that Canned Heat was
contracted to receive $12,500 for its Woodstock appearance while
Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Crosby Stills
and Nash, making their tour debut, settled for a $10,000 paycheck.
Lang calls Santana "the best bargain of the festival and one of its
highlights," and who can argue with either point knowing the band
signed on for $1,500?
But the bands needed a place to play and Lang and his business
partners were meticulous in their preparation. They counted bathroom
stalls at Yankee Stadium to estimate the number of people using the
restroom at a certain time; they hired staffs for advertising,
ticketing and security; and they scouted the perfect location for the
event -- a 300-acre industrial park in Wallkill, N.Y.
The area residents, however, weren't enthralled at the idea of
thousands of longhairs invading their domain; on July 15, 1969,
exactly four weeks before Woodstock was scheduled to take place, the
town's zoning board refused Lang and his partners the necessary
permit to stage the show.
Through a series of fortuitous meetings, Lang was introduced to Max
Yasgur, who owned a 2,000-acre dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y.
"It was not lost on me that we had left Wallkill to arrive in Bethel
-- 'the House of God,' " Lang recalls with noted irony.
The buildup to Woodstock, oddly, is the most pedestrian segment of
the book, with facts merely stated rather than illustrated.
Chunks of interviews with many Woodstock voices -- John Roberts and
Joel Rosenman, who handled the finances; Abbie Hoffman, the political
activist famous for disrupting The Who's set; Chip Monck, the
memorable stage announcer -- add insight into the internal unraveling
and panic that accompanied the walkup to the start of the festival.
But it isn't until the peaceful pandemonium that became Woodstock
arrives with its miles of traffic buildups, hundreds of thousands of
fans vaulting over the unfinished fence to enjoy the festival for
free and, of course, the rain, that Lang's book truly distinguishes
itself from the dozens of others written about the history-making event.
Stories about the managers for the Grateful Dead and The Who
threatening to pull their acts unless they received payment up front
-- an impossibility given that the festival was bleeding money before
it even began -- contrast perfectly with examples of the attendees
sharing food with each other and embracing the "peace" portion of Woodstock.
And then comes the post-show reality. The $1.4 million lost by
Woodstock Ventures, Lang's company with his business partners. The
80-plus lawsuits filed against them, with at least one $25,000
settlement paid to the New York attorney general's office to appease
ticket buyers who were not able to penetrate the masses to get into
the festival. And the inevitable friendships destroyed when the
Roberts family faced bankruptcy, leaving Lang and partner Artie
Kornfeld no choice but to relinquish their rights to the Woodstock name.
More than 40 years later, Lang, whose career includes stints managing
Billy Joel and Joe Cocker, and, later, producing the Woodstock'94 and
Woodstock'99 anniversary concerts, knows his connection to the 1969
event is eternal -- and he embraces it.
"May of Woodstock's artists look back to the festival as a turning
point for all of us," Lang writes, and then quotes Carlos Santana:
"Woodstock is still every day."
--
Contact Melissa Ruggieri at (804) 649-6120 or mruggieri@timesdispatch.com
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Where you 40 years ago on Aug. 15, 1969?
http://hometownsource.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10201&Itemid=1
07 August 2009
by Howard Lestrud
The date, Aug. 15, 1969, is a major date in my life as it was the
day, 40 years ago, our first child was born. Troy Lestrud came into
the world on that date at Naeve Hospital in Albert Lea, MN. It was
also the day that The Woodstock Festival began on a 600-acre dairy
farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York. Bethel is 40 miles
southwest of Woodstock, New York.
If you are part of the Boomer Generation, like me, you will no doubt
remember Woodstock, a three-day weekend event that is widely regarded
as one of the greatest moments in popular music history. Nearly a
half million concert goers attended the concert featuring 33
musicians. To reconnect your memory with the actual events, bookmark
the Wikipedia site at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_Festival
The images we often remember are of young people enjoying a free
concert amidst a behavior and attitude of peace and love. Much of the
music played on those three days will be played and replayed for years to come.
Find a somewhat crudely done Web site on the 1969 Woodstock Festival
and Concert at http://www.woodstock69.com/index.htm This site will
take you page by page through different phases of the weekend. The
index page features a recorded greeting given to the concert goers on
the first morning after the first day of the festival: "Good morning,
what we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000."
At the Woodstock Festival homepage, find these links:
• Begin Your Journey Here
• Photos
• Music
• Stories
• Reunions
• News
• Links
Let's go back to 1969 and remember some of the history of Woodstock.
The best way to remember is to share some of the writings on the
Wikipedia site about the Woodstock Festival.
The first day of music officially began at 5:07 p.m. with Richie
Havens and other folk artists Havens' songs included: High Flyin'
Bird, I Can't Make It Any More, With a Little Help from My Friends,
Strawberry Fields Forever, Hey Jude, I Had A Woman, Handsome Johnny
and Freedom/Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.
Other artists performing in this order were: Swami Satchidananda,
Sweetwater, The Incredible String Band, Bert Sommer, Tim Hardin, Ravi
Shankar, Melanie, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Quill, Keef Hartley Band,
Country Joe McDonald, John Sebastian, Santana, Canned Heat, Mountain,
Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin with the
Kozmic Blues Band, Sly & the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson
Airplane, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and the Fish, Ten Years After, The
Band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Johnny Winter, Crosby, Stills, Nash &
Young, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sha-Na-Na and Jimi Hendrix.
Many of these recording groups and individuals are still performing.
Others have long retired to the music hall of fame in the sky. The
music has been popularized by documentaries and musical albums that
have been presented in the latest electronic media.
What's the history of Woodstock?
Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of Michael Lang, John
Roberts, Joel Rosenman, and Artie Kornfeld. It was Roberts and
Rosenman who had the finances. They placed the following
advertisement in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal under the
name of Challenge International, Ltd.: "Young men with unlimited
capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities
and business propositions."
Lang and Kornfeld noticed the ad, and the four men got together
originally to discuss a retreat-like recording studio in Woodstock,
but the idea evolved into an outdoor music and arts festival. There
were differences in approach among the four: Roberts was disciplined,
and knew what was needed in order for the venture to succeed, while
the laid-back Lang saw Woodstock as a new, relaxed way of bringing
business people together.There were further doubts over the venture,
as Roberts wondered whether to consolidate his losses and pull the
plug, or to continue pumping his own finances into the project.
Woodstock was designed as a profit-making venture, aptly titled
"Woodstock Ventures." It famously became a "free concert" only after
it became obvious that the event was drawing hundreds of thousands
more people than the organizers had prepared for. Around 186,000
tickets were sold beforehand and organizers anticipated approximately
200,000 festival-goers would turn up. The fence was purposely cut by
the UAW/MF Family in order to create a totally free event, prompting
many more to show up. Tickets for the event cost US$18 in advance
(approximately US$75 today adjusted for inflation) and $24 at the
gate for all three days. Ticket sales were limited to record stores
in the greater New York City area, or by mail via a Post Office Box
at the Radio City Station Post Office located in Midtown Manhattan.
Woodstock Ventures made Warner Brothers an offer to make a movie
about Woodstock. All Artie Kornfeld required was $100,000, on the
basis that "it could have either sold millions or, if there were
riots, be one of the best documentaries ever made," according to Kornfeld.
The influx of attendees to the rural concert site in Bethel created a
massive traffic jam and was said to have closed the New York State
Thruway, though that claim has been disputed.The facilities were not
equipped to provide sanitation or first aid for the number of people
attending; hundreds of thousands found themselves in a struggle
against bad weather, food shortages, and poor sanitation.
The festival was held during a time of military conflict abroad and
racial discord at home, and participants quickly became aware that
the event had taken on a meaning beyond its original intent. The site
of Woodstock became, for four days, a countercultural mini-nation.
Minds were "open," drugs were used, and "love" was "free." Yippie
activist Abbie Hoffman crystallized this view of the event in his
book, Woodstock Nation, written shortly afterward.Although the
festival was remarkably peaceful given the number of people and the
conditions involved, there were two recorded fatalities: one from
what was believed to be a heroin overdose and another caused by an
occupied sleeping bag accidentally being run over by a tractor in a
nearby hay field. There also were two births recorded at the
event and four miscarriages.
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