Woodstock festival
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| Woodstock | |
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| Location(s) | United States
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| Years active | Original festival ("the" Woodstock in a widely-used, purist sense) held in 1969; namesake events held in 1979, 1989, 1994, and 1999. |
| Date(s) | 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. |
| Genre(s) | Rock and Folk, including Blues-Rock, Folk-Rock, Jazz-Rock, Latin rock and Psychedelic rock styles. Alternative Rock and Rap were played at post-1969 Woodstock festivals. |
- Woodstock redirects here. For other uses, see Woodstock (disambiguation).
The festival
The festival bears the name "Woodstock", because it was originally scheduled to take place in the town of Woodstock, in Ulster County; 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 Wallkill. When local opposition arose, the event was almost cancelled, but Sam Yasgur persuaded his father Max to allow the concert to be held on the family's alfalfa field, located in Sullivan County, 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 drugs. Local residents of this modest tourist-oriented area gave blankets and food to some concertgoers. Overall, attendees were remarkably well-behaved.
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.
Two people died at Woodstock: one from a heroin overdose and one from being run over by a tractor while sleeping in a nearby hayfield. Two unconfirmed births reportedly occurred at Woodstock.
Among the stars of Woodstock were The Who and Jimi Hendrix. 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 Roger Daltrey began to sing the chorus. At one point during The Who's set, political activist Abbie Hoffman interrupted the show and attempted to rally the crowd with yippie slogans, but was knocked off the stage by the swinging guitar of the band's leader, Pete Townshend, to the delight of the audience. At the conclusion of The Who's set, Townshend smashed his guitar and threw it into the crowd. This moment helped establish The Who as superstars and boosted their album Tommy to sell multi-platinum.
Jimi Hendrix 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 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 Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman. Roberts was the financer, backed by a trust fund bankroll; his friend Rosenman, a graduate of Yale Law, was an amateur guitarist. Their associates were Kornfeld, a vice-president at Capitol Records, and Michael Lang. An unlikely businessman, Lang was a light-hearted hippie who had owned a head shop and hoped to 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 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 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.
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. LSD and marijuana use were prominent throughtout the festival.
In 1997, the site of the concert and 1,400 surrounding acres were purchased by Alan Gerry and have become the Bethel Center for the Arts. It opened on July 1st, 2006 with the New York Philharmonic playing.
Performing artists and sequence of events
Friday, August 15
The day, which officially began after 5 p.m. with Richie Havens, featured folk artists.- High Flyin' Bird
- I Can't Make It Anymore
- With A Little Help
- Strawberry Fields Forever
- Hey Jude
- I Had A Woman
- Handsome Johnny
- Freedom
Saturday, August 16
The day opened at 12:15 pm, and featured some of the event's biggest psychedelic and guitar rock headliners.- Quill, forty minute set of four songs
- That's How I Eat
- They Live the Life
- Waitin' For You
- Driftin'
Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18
Joe Cocker was the first act on the last officially-booked day (Sunday); he opened up for 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 their weekday obligations.- Delta Lady
- Some Things Goin' On
- Let's Go Get Stoned
- I Shall Be Released
- With A Little Help From My Friends
Cancelled appearances
- The Jeff Beck Group was scheduled to perform at Woodstock, but failed to make an appearance due to the band's break-up the week before.
- Iron Butterfly were also expected to perform, but the band was 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 arrive due to the closure of the New York State Thruway. She wrote and recorded the song "Woodstock" that was also a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
- Ethan Brown was a solo guitarist highly admired by the 'hippie' youth, but he was arrested three days before the festival on acid-related charges. Known best for his earlier childhood friendship with The Doors piano player, Ray Manzarek.
- Canadian group Lighthouse 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.
Refused invitations
- The Doors 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 Jim Morrison'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 John Densmore attended and can be seen on the side of the stage during Joe Cocker's set.
- Led Zeppelin was asked to perform, but refused after they were offered a gig with higher pay.
- Tommy James and the Shondells declined an invitation to perform at Woodstock, which they later regretted. Lead singer Tommy James stated later, "We could have just kicked ourselves. We were in Hawaii, and my secretary called and said, 'Yeah, listen, there's this pig farmer in upstate New York 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."
- The Clarence White-era Byrds were given an opportunity to play, but refused to do so after a melee during their performance at the Atlanta Pop Festival earlier that summer.
- Bob Dylan refused with no known reason apart from his disgust of the hippies piling up outside his house near the originally planned site. He would go on to perform at the more orderly and contained Isle of Wight Festival several weeks later.
- Frank Zappa and the The Mothers of Invention Quote: "A lot of mud 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.
Myths, realities, and the legacy 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 two fatalities from drug overdoses, an accidental death caused by an occupied sleeping bag being run over by a tractor, and logistical headaches. Furthermore, because Woodstock was not intended for such a large crowd, there were not enough facilites such as toilets and first-aid tents. There was profiteering in the sale of "electric Kool-Aid" laced with random hallucinogens, which made many people ill.Woodstock began as a profit-making venture; it only became a free festival after it became obvious that the concert was 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 (which would be US$95.58 in 2005 with inflation factored in) 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.
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 bohemian dress, behavior, and attitudes. Simon Warner's chapter "Reporting Woodstock" in the book Remembering Woodstock, Ashgate Publishing, Andy Bennett, editor, May, 2004.
The Abbie Hoffman Incident
Abbie Hoffman interrupted The Who's performance during Woodstock 1969 to attempt a protest speech against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shit! While John Sinclair rots in prison ...". The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, 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."
The film
A documentary film, Woodstock, was released in 1970. It received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, was directed by Michael Wadleigh, and edited by Martin Scorsese. The film has been deemed culturally significant by the United States Library of Congress.
The albums
Two albums 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, Woodstock 2, was released about a year later.References
See also
- Woodstock '79 (1979); Woodstock '89 (1989); Woodstock '94 (1994); Woodstock '99 (1999)
- Monterey Pop Festival (1967)
- Isle of Wight Festival 1970
- Nambassa — New Zealand's legendary countercultural/hippie festivals (1976-1981)
- Przystanek Woodstock (The Woodstock Stop) — Europe's biggest open-air rock festivals, held in Poland (1995-present)
External links
- [1969 Woodstock Festival & Concert]
- [WWW-VL: 1960s History]
- [CJFishlegacy.com]
- [woodstockpreservation.org]
- [Woodstock Project]
- ["Woodstock: A New Nation", Book excerpt from "Aquarius Rising" by Robert Santelli]
- [DigitalDreamDoor for the band lineups and sets]
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