All videos recorded live at Woodstock ...........................
Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.
Thirty-two acts performed during the sometimes rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest moments in popular music history and was listed on Rolling Stone's 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll. However, the three top acts of the 1960s, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, all declined to appear at the festival.
The event was captured in a successful 1970 documentary movie, Woodstock; an accompanying soundtrack album; and Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", which commemorated the event and became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
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. 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. Around 186,000 tickets were sold beforehand and organizers anticipated approximately 200,000 festival-goers would turn up.
Woodstock Ventures made Warner Bros. 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 concert was originally scheduled to take place in the 300-acre Mills Industrial Park (Mills Industrial Park)) in northeast Middletown, Orange County, New York in Wallkill, Orange County, New York which Woodstock Ventures had leased for $100,000 in the Spring of 1969. Town officials were assured that no more than 50,000 would attend. Town residents immediately opposed the project. In early July the Town Board passed a law requiring a permit for any gathering over 5,000 people. On July 15, 1969 the Wallkill Zoning Board of Appeals officially banned the concert on the basis that the planned portable toilets would not meet town code.
Following the ban, Elliot Tiber, who owned the 80-room El Monaco Motel on White Lake in Bethel, New York offered to host the event on his 15 acres. He already had a permit for a White Lake Music and Arts Festival from the Town of Bethel, which was to be a chamber music concert. When it was clear the site was too small, Tiber introduced the promoters to dairy farmer, Max Yasgur, initially on the premise that Yasgur's land would rent for $50 for a festival attracting 5,000. On July 20, 1969, Yasgur, meeting with the organizers at a White Lake restaurant called The Lighthouse, agreed to rent 600 acres for $75,000. News of the event was leaked to local radio station WVOS (AM) even before Yasgur and the organizers left the restaurant, reportedly by restaurant employees. The organizers paid another $25,000 to nearby residents to rent their land. Yasgur's land formed a natural bowl sloping down to Filippini Pond on the land's north side. The stage would be set at the bottom of the hill with Filippini Pond forming a backdrop. The pond would become a popular skinny dipping destination. The event organizers would stay at Tiber's El Monaco Motel along with Canned Heat and Arlo Guthrie. Tiber was further rewarded for saving the event by being awarded the sole concession for ticket buyers.
The organizers once again told Bethel authorities they expected no more than 50,000 people.
Despite resident opposition and signs proclaiming, "Buy No Milk. Stop Max's Hippy Music Festival," Bethel Town Attorney Frederick W. V. Schadt and building inspector Donald Clark approved the permits, but the Bethel Town Board refused to issue them formally. Clark was ordered to post Stop Work orders, but the promoters tore them down.
The late change in venue did not give the festival organizers enough time to prepare. At a meeting three days before the event organizers felt they had two choices. One choice was to improve the fencing and security which might have resulted in violence, the other choice involved putting all their resources into completing the stage which would cause Woodstock Ventures to take a financial hit. The crowd which was arriving in greater number and earlier than anticipated made the decision for them. The fence was eventually cut in part by UAW/MF Family prompting many more to show up.
The influx of attendees to the rural concert site in Bethel created a massive traffic jam. Fearing chaos as thousands began descending on the community, Bethel did not enforce its codes. Eventually, people were discouraged from setting off to the festival on radio stations as far away as WNEW-FM in Manhattan and the traffic jams were described on television news programs. Arlo Guthrie made an announcement that was included in the film that the New York State Thruway was closed. The director of the Woodstock museum discussed below said this never occurred. To add to the problems and difficulty in dealing with the large crowds, recent rains had caused muddy roads and fields. 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.
On the morning of August 17th (Sunday) New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller called festival organizer John Roberts and told him he was thinking of ordering 10,000 New York State National Guard troops to the festival. Roberts was successful in persuading Governor Rockefeller not to do it. Sullivan County declared a state of emergency.
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 in an accident when a tractor ran over an attendee sleeping in a nearby hayfield. There also were two births recorded at the event (one in a car caught in traffic and another in a helicopter) and four miscarriages. Oral testimony in the film supports the overdose and run-over deaths and at least one birth, along with many colossal logistical headaches.
Yet, in tune with the idealistic hopes of the 1960s, Woodstock satisfied most attendees. There was a sense of social harmony, the quality of music, and the overwhelming mass of people, many sporting bohemian dress, behavior, and attitudes.
After the concert Max Yasgur, who owned the site of the event, saw it as a victory of peace and love. He spoke of how nearly half a million people filled with possibilities of disaster, riot, looting, and catastrophe spent the three days with music and peace on their minds. He states that "if we join them, we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future..."
Sound for the concert was engineered by Bill Hanley, whose innovations in the sound industry have earned him the prestigious Parnelli Award. "It worked very well", he says of the event. "I built special speaker columns on the hills and had 16 loudspeaker arrays in a square platform going up to the hill on 70-foot towers. We set it up for 150,000 to 200,000 people. Of course, 500,000 showed up. ALTEC designed 4 - 15 marine ply cabinets that weighed in at half a ton a piece, stood 6 feet straight up, almost 4 feet deep, and 3 feet wide. Each of these woofers carried four 15-inch JBL LANSING D140 loudspeakers. The tweeters consisted of 4x2-Cell & 2x10-Cell Altec Horns. Behind the stage were three transformers providing 2,000 amperes of current to power the amplification setup. For many years this system was collectively referred to as the Woodstock Bins.
Thirty-two acts performed over the course of the four days:
Friday, August 15
Richie Havens
Swami Satchidananda - gave the invocation for the festival
Sweetwater
The Incredible String Band
Bert Sommer
Tim Hardin
Ravi Shankar
Melanie
Arlo Guthrie
Joan Baez
Saturday, August 16
Quill, forty minute set of four songs
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 began at 4 AM, kicking off a 25-song set including Tommy
Jefferson Airplane
Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18
The Grease Band
Joe Cocker
Country Joe and the Fish
Ten Years After
The Band
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Johnny Winter featuring his brother, Edgar Winter
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Neil Young
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Sha-Na-Na
Jimi Hendrix
Declined invitations
The Doors were considered as a potential performing band, but canceled at the last moment; the cancellation was most likely due to Jim Morrison's known and vocal distaste for performing in large outdoor venues. Doors drummer John Densmore attended, however, and in the film, he can be seen on the side of the stage during Joe Cocker's set.
Led Zeppelin was asked to perform, their manager Peter Grant stating: "We were asked to do Woodstock and Atlantic were very keen, and so was our US promoter, Frank Barsalona. I said no because at Woodstock we'd have just been another band on the bill". Instead the group went on with their hugely successful summer tour, playing that weekend south of the festival at the Asbury Park Convention Hall in New Jersey. Their only time out taken was to attend Elvis Presley's show at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, on August 12.
Jethro Tull declined to perform. Ian Anderson is reported to have later said he "didn't want to spend [his] weekend in a field of unwashed hippies". Another theory proposes that the band felt the event would be "too big a deal" and might kill their career before it started.. However, other artists from the time have expressed the view that, before the festival, there was little indication of the importance the event would eventually come to assume. Although Jethro Tull did not perform, their music was played over the public address system. In the film, during the interview with the promoters (where they are discussing how much money they will be losing on the venture), the songs "Beggar's Farm" and "Serenade to a Cuckoo", from the album This Was, can be heard in the background. Jethro Tull did perform at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.
The Byrds were invited, but chose not to participate, not figuring Woodstock to be any different from all the other music festivals that summer. In addition, there were concerns about money. As bassist John York remembers: "We were flying to a gig and Roger [McGuinn] came up to us and said that a guy was putting on a festival in upstate New York. But at that point they weren't paying all of the bands. He asked us if we wanted to do it and we said, 'No'. We had no idea what it was going to be. We were burned out and tired of the festival scene. So all of us said, 'No, we want a rest' and missed the best festival of all.'"
Tommy James and the Shondells declined an invitation. 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."
Bob Dylan was in negotiations to play, but pulled out when his son became ill. He also was unhappy about the number of hippies piling up outside his house near the originally planned site. He would go on to perform at the Isle of Wight Festival two weeks later.
Mind Garage declined because they thought it would not be a big deal and had a higher paying gig elsewhere.
The Moody Blues were included on the original Wallkill poster as performers, but decided to back out after being booked in Paris the same weekend.
Spirit also declined an invitation to play, as they already had shows planned and wanted to play those instead, not knowing how big Woodstock would be.
Joni Mitchell was originally slated to perform, but canceled at the urging of her manager to avoid missing a scheduled appearance on The Dick Cavett Show.
The documentary film, Woodstock, directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese, was released in 1970. Artie Kornfeld (one of the promoters of the festival) came to Fred Weintraub, an executive at Warner Bros., and asked for money to film the festival. Previously, Artie had been turned down everywhere else, but Fred Weintraub became his hero and, against the express wishes of other Warner Bros. executives, Weintraub put his job on the line and gave Kornfeld $100,000 to make the film. Woodstock helped to save Warner Bros at a time when the company was on the verge of going out of business. The book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls details the making of the film.
Wadleigh rounded up a crew of about 100 from the New York film scene. With no money to pay the crew, he agreed to a double-or-nothing scheme, in which the crew would receive double pay if the film succeeded and nothing if it bombed. Wadleigh strived to make the film as much about the hippies as the music, listening to their feelings about compelling events contemporaneous with the festival (such as the Vietnam War), as well as the views of the townspeople.
Woodstock received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The film has been deemed culturally significant by the United States Library of Congress. In 1994, Woodstock: The Director's Cut was released and expanded to include Janis Joplin as well as additional performances by Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and Canned Heat not seen in the original version of the film. In 2009, the 40th Anniversary of the festival, it has been again released on DVD. This release marks first time it has been available in high definition on Blu-ray disc.
Bethel voters tossed out their supervisor in an election held in November 1969 because of his role in bringing the festival to the town. New York State and the town of Bethel passed mass gathering laws designed to prevent any more festivals from occurring. Attempts were made to prevent people from visiting the site, its owners spread chicken manure, and during one anniversary tractors and state police cars formed roadblocks. 20,000 people gathered at the site in 1989 during an impromptu 20th anniversary celebration. A local man put up a monument at the site, and in 1997 a community group put up a welcoming sign for visitors. Unlike in Bethel, the Town of Woodstock made several efforts to cash in on its notoriety.
Approximately 80 lawsuits were filed against Woodstock Ventures. The movie financed the settlements and paid off Woodstock Ventures $1.4 million dollars of debt it had incurred from the festival.
A plaque has been placed at the original site commemorating the festival. The field and the stage area remain preserved in their rural setting. On the field are the remnants of a neon flower and bass from the original concert. In the middle of the field, there is a totem pole with wood carvings of Jimi Hendrix in the middle, Janis Joplin on top, and Jerry Garcia on the bottom. A concert hall has been erected up the hill, and the fields of the old Yasgur farm are still visited by people of all generations.
In 1997, the site of the concert and 1,400 acres surrounding was purchased by Alan Gerry for the purpose of creating the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. The Center opened on July 1, 2006 with a performance of the New York Philharmonic. On August 13, 2006, Crosby Stills Nash & Young performed to 16,000 fans at the new Center — 37 years after their historic performance at Woodstock.
The Museum at Bethel Woods opened in June 2008. The Museum contains film and interactive displays, text panels, and artifacts which explore the unique experience of the Woodstock festival, its significance as the culminating event of a decade of radical cultural transformation, and the legacy of the Sixties and Woodstock today.
The year 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. There has been extensive worldwide media interest in the anniversary. A number of activities to commemorate this historic festival will be taking place around the world. One such will be in Hawkhurst, Kent (UK), at a Summer of Love party, with acts including two of the participants at the original Woodstock - Barry Melton of Country Joe and the Fish and Robin Williamson of the The Incredible String Band, plus cover bands for Santana and the Grateful Dead.
Woodstock Ventures and Sony Music announced a partnership in April on Woodstock.com, which is both the official site for Woodstock and a social network.
Arlo Guthrie - Coming Into Los Angeles
Santana - Soul Sacrifice
Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
The Who my generation
Joe Cocker - With a Little Help From my Friends
Richie Havens - Freedom
Jimi Hendrix - Foxy Lady
Sly & the Family Stone -I want to take you higher
Ten Years After - I am going home
Bert Sommer - "Jennifer
Creedence Clearwater Revival -Born on the Bayou
Mountain - Woodstock - Southbound Train (Longer Version) (External Embedding Disabled)
Mountain - Southbound Train
Incredible String Band - When you find out who you are
Joan Baez- We Shall Overcome (Woodstock 1969) (Embedding disabled, limit reached)
Joan Baez- We Shall Overcome
Country Joe and the Fish - Love (Woodstock 69) (Embedding disabled, limit reached)
Country Joe and the Fish - Love
The Band - Tears of Rage - Woodstock 69 (Embedding disabled, limit reached)
The Band - Tears of Rage
Grateful Dead - Mama Tried - Woodstock 1969 (Embedding disabled, limit reached)
Grateful Dead - Mama Tried
Crosby Stills Nash & Young - rare Woodstock footage (Embedding disabled, limit reached)
Crosby Stills Nash & Young - Helplessly hoping and Long time gone
