Woodstock Festival: Information from Answers.com

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place in Bethel in upstate New York from 15 to 17 August 1969. Attended by 450,000 people, it is remembered as the high point of the "peace and love" ethos of the period, largely because the disaster that the over-crowding, bad weather, food shortages, supposed "bad acid" ( ), and poor facilities presaged was somehow avoided. Woodstock was originally conceived as a moneymaking venture by producers John Roberts, Joel Rosenman,
Artie Kornfield, and Michael Lang.

However, poor planning and happenstance forced them to admit most attendees for free. They were left with a debt of $1.3 million and a site that cost $100,000 to restore.

Credit for the festival's success should go to the endurance of the attendees and to the likes of Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farmers, the "hippies" who organized food and medical support for the crowd.
Many rock and folk luminaries—including Joan Baez, the , Ten Years After, Joe Cocker, The Band, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and , Stills, and Nash—graced the hastily constructed stage. Cameras and recording equipment captured most performances, the best of which were subsequently released on a number of successful Woodstock albums and featured in an Academy Award– winning three-hour movie, Woodstock—Three Days of Peace and Music (1970).

To avert the feared crowd difficulties, the music continued virtually around the clock, stopping only for the recurrent rainfall. Jimi Hendrix, Sunday's headliner, eventually played at 8.30 A.

M. on to a thinning audience. Musicologists subsequently described his blistering rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" as a defining moment in rock history.

Less often stated is the fact that the high fees that many of the artists demanded and the star treatment that they received significantly altered the ethos and the economics of the rock music industry. Attempting to cash in on Woodstock nostalgia, the producers subsequently staged two more "Woodstock" festivals. The 1994 twenty-fifth anniversary concert in Saugerties, New York, attracted a crowd of more than 300,000 and featured some of the original acts, along with more contemporary artists.

Sponsored by the likes of Pepsi and and with tickets costing $135 apiece, the event is remembered mostly for its obviously commercial intentions. Woodstock 1999, featuring six-dollar bottles of water, three days of ninety-degree heat, and artists such as Kid Rock, Insane Clown Posse, and Limp Bizkit, ended in violence, rioting, and arson, with numerous reports of sexual assaults.
Curry, Jack.

Woodstock: The Summer of Our Lives. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.
Makower, Joel.

Woodstock: The Oral History. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
Spitz, John.

Barefoot in Babylon: The Creation of the Woodstock Music Festival, 1969. New York: Viking, 1989.
Original festival ("the" Woodstock in a widely-used, purist sense) held in 1969; namesake events held in 1979, 1989, 1994, and 1999.

Original festival booked for August 15–17, 1969 (for three days), although it actually ran from August 15–18 (thus, for four days), due to the late start of the August 17th performances. Later namesake festivals were held at various dates.

's 600 acre (2.4 km²) dairy farm in the rural town of from to , .

For many, it exemplified the of the 1960s and the " era". Many of the best-known musicians of the time appeared during the rainy weekend, captured in a successful 1970 movie, . 's song " ", which memorialized the event, became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash Young.

Though attempts have been made over the years to recreate the festival, the original Woodstock festival of 1969 has proven to be unique and legendary.
the town of , in ; however, the town offered no appropriate site to host such a large event due to their belief that over a million people would attend. A site was found in the town of .

When local opposition arose, the event was almost cancelled, but persuaded his father Max to allow the concert to be held on the family's alfalfa field, located in , about 40 miles southwest of Woodstock.
Although the show had been planned for a maximum of 200,000 attendees, over 500,000 eventually attended, most of whom did not pay admission. The highways leading to the concert were jammed with traffic.

People 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 nearby ), gave blankets and food to some concertgoers.
The festival did not initially make money for the promoters, although through sales and proceeds from the highly regarded film of the event it did eventually become profitable.

Three people died at Woodstock: one from a overdose, one from being run over by a tractor while sleeping in a nearby hayfield, and one from falling off a scaffold. Two unconfirmed births reportedly occurred at Among the stars of Woodstock were and . Due to arguments with the promoters about their pay, The Who did not take stage until about 4:00 in the morning.

One highlight of The Who's performance was "See Me, Feel Me", when the sun rose just as lead singer began to sing the chorus. At one point during The Who's set, political activist interrupted the show and attempted to rally the crowd with slogans, but was knocked off the stage by the swinging guitar of the band's leader, , to the delight of the audience. At the conclusion of The Who's set, Townshend slammed his guitar into the stage and threw it into the crowd.

This moment helped establish The Who as superstars and Jimi Hendrix had a big impact with his performance, including an alternative version of " ". The song was somewhat controversial, as the was underway and the sound effects that Hendrix generated with his guitar paralleled the sounds of the violence of the conflict. These two performances are held by fans as some of the greatest in rock history, though both The Who and Hendrix regarded their performances as sub-par.

Woodstock's promoters were , , John Roberts and Joel Rosenman. Roberts was the financer, backed by a bankroll; his friend Rosenman, a graduate of , was an amateur guitarist. Their associates were Kornfeld, a vice-president at , and Michael Lang.

An unlikely businessman, Lang was a light-hearted hippie who had owned a and hoped to build a in the Woodstock area to serve homes nearby. When Lang and Kornfeld presented the idea to Rosenman and Roberts, Rosenman hatched the idea of a rock concert with the same performing artists. After toying with an theme, they settled sentiment.

They hired commercial artist Arnold Skolnick to design the artwork, which incorporated a design.
Lang would go on to produce successor concerts in 1994 and 1999, but he did not participate in the Woodstock-named concerts of 1979 and 1989.
Drugs were commonly used and available at Woodstock.

and use were prominent throughout the festival.
) showed up in the crowd as a fan.
In 1997, the site of the concert and 1,400 surrounding acres was purchased by Alan Gerry for the purpose of creating the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.

It opened on July 1st, 2006 with a performance of the New York Philharmonic. On August 13, 2006, Crosby Stills Nash Young wowed 16,000 fans at the new Center -- exactly 37 years after their historic performance at Woodstock.

Myths, realities, and the legacy of Woodstock

Woodstock has been romanticized and idealized in American popular culture as the culmination of the 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 and other misbehavior, as well as a fatality from a overdose, an accidental death caused by an occupied sleeping bag being run over by a , and one participant died from falling off a scaffold. There were also 3 miscarriages and 2 births recorded at the festival as well, and logistical headaches.

Furthermore, because Woodstock was not intended for such a large crowd, there were not enough facilities such as and tents. There was in the sale of "electric " laced with random hallucinogens, which made many people ill.
drawing hundreds of thousands more people than the organizers had prepared for, and that the entry gates erected had been torn down by eager arrivals.

Tickets for the event (sold in 1969) cost US$18 to buy a ticket in advance (which would be US$95.58 in Ticket sales were limited to record stores in the greater area, or by mail Yet, in tune with the idealistic hopes of the 1960s, Woodstock satisfied many attendees. Especially memorable were the sense of social harmony, the quality of music, and the overwhelming mass of people, many sporting dress, behavior, and attitudes.

the . He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit! While John Sinclair rots in prison .

..".

The Who's guitarist, , unhappy with the interruption, cut Hoffman off mid-sentence, snarling, "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" He then struck Hoffman with his guitar, sending him tumbling offstage.

Townshend later said he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, though he made the point that he would have knocked him offstage regardless of his message.
According to Hoffman, in his autobiography, the incident played out like this: "If you ever heard about me in connection with the festival it was not for playing Florence Nightingale to the flower children. What you heard was the following: 'Oh, him, yeah, didn't he grab the microphone, try to make a speech when Peter Townshend cracked him over the head with his guitar?

' I've seen countless references to the incident, even a mammoth mural of the scene. What I've failed to find was a single photo of the incident. Why?

Because it didn't really happen.
I grabbed the microphone all right and made a little speech about John Sinclair, who had just been sentenced to ten years in the Michigan State Penitentiary for giving two joints of grass to two undercover cops, and how we should take the strength we had at Woodstock home to free our brothers and sisters in jail. Something like that.

Townshend, who had been tuning up, turned around and bumped into me. A nonincident really. Hundreds of photos and miles of film exist depicting the events on that stage, but none of this much-talked about scene.

source: Arthur Levy, annotator of the expanded editions of the 12 Joan Baez CDs on Vanguard
Jay Underwood got most of the bands to perform and was also on stage for many of the songs.
The day opened at 12:15 pm, and featured some of the event's biggest and guitar rock headliners.

Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18

the day's booked acts at 2 PM.

The day's events ultimately drove the schedule nine hours late. By dawn, the concert was continuing in spite of attendees' having left, returning to the workweek and their other weekday obligations.
scheduled to perform at midnight.

Due to various delays, he did not take the stage until 9 A.M. on Monday morning.

The crowd, estimated at over 500,000 at its peak, is reported to have been no larger than 80,000 when his performance began. His set lasted two hours -- the longest of his career -- and featured sixteen songs, concluding with "Hey Joe"; ironically, it was one of the most photogenic and talented performances, but it played to a relatively empty field. The full list of Hendrix's Woodstock

The was scheduled to perform at Woodstock, but failed to make an appearance due to the band's break-up the week before.

, The band was stuck at an airport, and their manager demanded helicopters and special arrangements just for them. They were wired back and told, as impolitely as would allow, "to get lost", but in other 'words'.

joined , 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 month after the festival at the important that she appear on " " on Monday, with its national audience, rather than sit around in a field with 500 people singing. She wrote and recorded the song " " that was also a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and was recorded by on his 2004 album Grace of the Sun.

Ethan Brown was a solo guitarist highly admired by the 'hippie' youth, but he was arrested three days before the festival on LSD related charges.

Known best for his earlier childhood friendship with piano

Canadian group was originally scheduled to play at Woodstock, but in the end they decided not to, fearing that it would be a bad scene. Later, several members of the group would say that they regretted the decision.

The promoters contacted , requesting for to perform.

Lennon said that he couldn't get the Beatles, but offered to play with his . The promoters turned this down.

were considered as a potential performing band, but cancelled at the last moment.

Contrary to popular belief that this was related in some fashion to lead singer 's arrest for indecent exposure while performing earlier that year, the cancellation was most likely due to Morrison's known and vocal distaste for performing in large outdoor venues. Drummer attended and can be seen on the side of the stage during Joe Cocker's set.

were asked to perform, but refused after they were offered a gig with higher pay.

The band later deeply regretted in not performing, a possible reason why they accepted an offering at the

refused to perform, claiming that it wouldn't be a big deal.

for unknown reasons declined to perform. They later regretted not performing.

They were however promoted as being a performer on the third day on early posters that stated the site being just kicked ourselves. We were in , and my secretary called and said, 'Yeah, listen, there's this pig farmer in that wants you to play in his field.' That's how it was put to me.

So we passed, and we realized what we'd missed a couple of days later."

opportunity to play, but refused to do so after a melee during their performance at the Atlanta Pop

was in negotiations to play, however he had to pull out as his son was taken ill. He also was unhappy about the number of the hippies piling up outside his house near the originally planned site.

He would go on to perform at the several weeks later.

and Quote: "A lot of at Woodstock. We were invited to play there, we turned it down" - FZ.

Citation: "Class of the 20th Century", U.S. network television special in serial format, circa 1995.

A documentary film, Woodstock, was released in 1970. It received the , was directed by , and edited by . The film has Today a plaque stands commemorating the festival.

The field and the stage area remains preserved and well kept in its rural setting. A concert hall has been erected up the hill, and the field at the old Yasgur farm is still visited by people of all generations.
Two of the concert have been released.

The first was officially titled . It sold millions of copies and was based on the documentary film. Due to that album's success, a second album, , was released about a year later.