Woodstock Festival
| Woodstock | |
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| Location(s) | United States |
| Years active | 1969, 1979, 1989, 1994, 1999 |
| Date(s) | various |
| Genre(s) | Rock, Folk, Alternative Rock |
- Woodstock redirects here. For other uses, see Woodstock (disambiguation)
The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was the most famous rock festival of its era. It was held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²) dairy farm in Bethel, New York on August 15-17, 1969. The Woodstock Festival represented the culmination of the counterculture of the 1960s and the ultimate climax of the "hippie era". Many of the best-known musicians of the times appeared during the rain-plagued weekend, much of which was captured in a successful 1970 movie, Woodstock. Joni Mitchell's song Woodstock encapsulated the event and became a major hit.
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The festival
The festival bears the name "Woodstock" because it was originally scheduled to take place in the town of Woodstock, in Ulster County, but the town offered no appropriate site to host such a large event. A site was found in the town of Wallkill; local opposition arose, however, and the event was almost cancelled altogether. But Sam Yasgur persuaded his father Max to allow the concert to be held on the family's property, located in Sullivan County, which lies about 40 miles southwest of Woodstock itself.
Although the show had been planned for a maximum 50,000 attendees, over 500,000 eventually attended, most of whom did not pay admission. The highways leading to the concert were jammed with traffic and people as they abandoned their cars and walked for miles to the concert area. The weekend was rainy, facilities were overcrowded, and attendees shared food, alcoholic beverages, and drugs. Local residents of this modest tourist-oriented area gave blankets and food to some concertgoers. However, no violence was reported and the fact that attendees were remarkably well behaved was particularly noted.
The festival did not initially make money for the promoters, although, thanks to record sales and proceeds from the highly regarded film of the event, it did eventually become profitable.
There were three deaths at Woodstock: one from a heroin overdose, one from a ruptured appendix, and one from being run over by a tractor. Two unconfirmed births reportedly occurred at Woodstock.
Arguably the stars of Woodstock were The Who and Jimi Hendrix. Due to arguments with the promoters about their pay, The Who didn't take stage until about 4:00 in the morning. The highlight of The Who's peformance was "See Me, Feel Me", when the sun rose just as lead singer Roger Daltrey began to sing the chorus. After their set, the band's leader, Pete Townshend, began smashing his guitar and ultimately threw it into the crowd. This moment helped establish The Who as superstars and helped their album Tommy sell multi-platinum. Along with The Who, Jimi Hendrix also had a big impact with his performance, including a distorted version of "The Star Spangled Banner" . The song was somewhat controversial, as the Vietnam War was underway. These two peformances are held by fans as some of the greatest in rock history. Ironically, both The Who and Hendrix regard their performances as sub-par.
The promoters of the original Woodstock were Michael Lang, Artie Kornfield, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman. Roberts was the money man, with a trust fund bankroll; his friend Rosenman, a graduate of Yale Law, was a lounge guitarist. Their associates were Kornfield, a vice-president at Capitol Records, fond of drugs and well-connected, and Michael Lang. An unlikely businessman, Lang was a light-hearted hippie who had owned a head shop, and hoped to eventually build a recording studio in the Woodstock area to serve artists such as Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, who had homes nearby. When Lang and Kornfield presented the idea to Rosenman and Roberts, Rosenman hatched the idea of a rock concert instead of a studio with the same performing artists. After toying with an Age of Aquarius theme, they settled on the slogan "Three Days of Peace and Music", partly as a way to placate suspicious local officials, and partly to appeal to anti-war sentiment. They hired commercial artist Arnold Skolnick to design the artwork, which incorporated a catbird design Skolnick had in his notebooks.
Lang would go on to produce successor concerts in 1994 and 1999, although he had nothing to do with the Woodstock-named concerts of 1979 and 1989.
In 1997, the site of the concert and 1,400 surrounding acres was purchased by Alan Gerry for future developement as Performing Arts Center under the Gerry Foundation. In 2000 the Gerry Foundation annouced that the original 38 acres of the Woodstock site was to be preserved, though in 2002, there may be development plans on the original site [1].
Performing artists and sequence of events
Friday, August 15
The day officially began just after 5 p.m. with Richie Havens, and featured many mellow sets showcasing most of the event's folk artists.
- Richie Havens, opening with his twelve-string guitar and "High Flyin' Bird"
- Country Joe McDonald, five-song set including "I Find Myself Missing You" and "Fish Cheer"
- John Sebastian, not originally scheduled but found wandering around the massive crowd and agreed to play a set.
- Incredible String Band: "Catty Come", "This Moment Is Different", and "When You Find Out Who You Are"
- Sweetwater, including "Motherless Child", "What's Wrong", and "Why Oh Why"
- Bert Sommer, including "Jennifer", "She's Gone", "Things Are Going My Way", and "Smile"
- Tim Hardin, "If I Were A Carpenter"
- Ravi Shankar, with a 5-song set, but he had to quit due to rain
- Melanie, "Beautiful People" and "Birthday of the Sun"
- Arlo Guthrie, "Coming Into Los Angeles", "Walking Down The Line", and "Amazing Grace"
- Joan Baez, ending a 5-song set with "We Shall Overcome"
Saturday, August 16
The day opened at 12:15 pm, and featured some of the event's biggest psychedelic and guitar rock headliners.
- Quill, with one song, "Waitin' For You"
- Santana: "Persuasion" and "Soul Sacrifice"
- Canned Heat, including "A Change Is Gonna Come" and "Going Up The Country"
- Mountain, hour-long set
- Janis Joplin, ten-song set including "Piece of My Heart"
- Sly & the Family Stone started at 1:30 am, playing songs such as "Everyday People", "Dance To The Music", "Music Lover", and "Higher"
- Grateful Dead: "St Stephen", "Mama Tried", "Dark Star/High Time", and "Turn On Your Lovelight"
- Creedence Clearwater Revival, featuring "Born On The Bayou", "Bad Moon Rising", and "Suzy Q"
- The Who began at 3 a.m., kicking off a long, 24-song set including "Pinball Wizard" and "My Generation"
- Jefferson Airplane began at 8 a.m. with an eight-song set, capping off the overnight marathon with "White Rabbit"
Sunday, August 17
The day opened at 2 p.m. with Joe Cocker. The day's events ultimately drove the schedule 9 hours late, and by dawn the concert was continuing in spite of attendees having left, returning to their weekday obligations.
- Joe Cocker, started the day with "Delta Lady", "With A Little Help From My Friends", and other songs
- After Joe Cocker's set, a storm disrupted the events for several hours
- Country Joe and the Fish resumed the concert around 6 p.m.
- Ten Years After performed four songs including "I'm Going Home"
- The Band played a ten-song set
- Blood, Sweat & Tears ushered in the midnight hour with five songs including "Spinning Wheel"
- Johnny Winter featuring "Tobacco Road" and Edgar Winter
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young began around 3 a.m. with separate acoustic and electric sets
- Paul Butterfield Blues Band, five songs, including "Everything's Gonna Be Alright"
- Sha-Na-Na, including "Who Wrote The Book of Love", "Duke of Earl"
- Jimi Hendrix, who was supposed to end the concert at midnight, started at 9 a.m. with sixteen songs, ending the event with "Hey Joe"; ironically it was one of the most photogenic and talented performances but it played to a relatively empty house
Cancelled appearances
- The Jeff Beck Group was scheduled to perform at Woodstock but failed to make an appearance.
- Iron Butterfly were also expected to perform, but were stuck at an airport.
- Neil Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash but refused to be filmed; by his own report Young felt the filming was distracting both performers and audience from the music. Young's "Sea Of Madness," heard on the album, was actually recorded a few days before the festival, at the Fillmore East dance hall.
- Joni Mitchell was slated to perform, but she was unable to get there due to the closure of the New York State Thruway. She wrote and recorded the song "Woodstock" that was a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
- Led Zeppelin was asked to perform, but refused after they were offered a gig with higher pay.
- The Doors were considered, but it was feared that Jim Morrison would take off his pants. In the end it wouldn't have mattered because of some nudity among the audience.
Myths of Woodstock
Woodstock has been romanticized and idealized in American popular culture as the culmination of the hippie movement - a free festival where nearly 500,000 people came together to celebrate peace and love. Although the festival was remarkably trouble-free given the number of people and conditions involved, the reality was less than perfect: Woodstock did have some amount of crime and other misbehavior, as well as a drug overdose, an accidental tractor death and logistical headaches; as stated before, Woodstock was not intended for such a large crowd and thus, many needed facilities were not present, such as a sufficient number of toilets and first-aid tents. Some who attended the festival felt that it was chaotic and did not report having a positive experience.
Also sometimes forgotten is that Woodstock began as a profit-making venture (unlike the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, whose profits were earmarked for charity) and that it only became a free festival after it became obvious that the concert was drawing hundreds of thousands more people than the organizers had expected or prepared for, and that the entry gates erected had been torn down by eager arrivals. Tickets for the event cost $18, and had to be ordered by mail from a Radio City Station NY Post Office Box.
On the other hand, many, perhaps most, who attended the festival found the atmosphere and music there to contain an unprecedentedly high degree of excellence; a beatifically eye-opening experience, and an epochal event confirming the power of the post-WWII generation's cultural influence. Those who attended often still find their experiences worthy of a lifetime's reflection. For an article that gathers detailed contemporaneous newspaper and magazine reports of the event - including extracts from the New York Times and Rolling Stone - see Simon Warner's chapter "Reporting Woodstock" in the book Remembering Woodstock (edited by Andy Bennett, 2004).
The film
- Main article: Woodstock (film)
The albums
Two albums of the concert have been released. The first was officially titled Woodstock: Music From the Original Soundtrack and More sold millions copies and was based on the movie. Based on the original's success a second album Woodstock 2 was released about a year later.
See also
- Woodstock '79 (1979), Woodstock '89 (1989), Woodstock '94 (1994), Woodstock '99 (1999)
- Monterey Pop Festival
- The Woodstock Stop
- Przystanek Woodstock
