The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was a rock festival held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²) dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18, 1969. For many, it exemplified the counterculture of the 1960s and the "hippie era". Many of the best-known musicians of the time appeared during the rainy weekend, captured in a successful 1970 movie, Woodstock. Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", 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.

Woodstock poster

The festival

The festival bears the name "Woodstock", because it was 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 (including those at nearby Camp Ma-Ho-Ge), gave blankets and food to some concertgoers.

The festival did not initially make money for the promoters, although through record sales and proceeds from the highly regarded film of the event it did eventually become profitable.

Three people died at Woodstock: one from a heroin 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 as well.

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 set, Townshend slammed his guitar into the stage and threw it into the crowd. This moment helped establish the band as superstars and boosted their album Tommy to multi-platinum sales.

Jimi Hendrix had a big impact with his performance, including an alternative 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 considered them 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 did not participate in the Woodstock-named concerts of 1979 and 1989.

Drugs were commonly used and available at Woodstock. LSD and marijuana use was common throughout the festival.

A young twenty-year old named Stephen Victor Tallarico (aka Steven Tyler of Aerosmith) 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.

Woodstock festival

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 a fatality from a drug overdose, an accidental death caused by an occupied sleeping bag being run over by a tractor, 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 toilets and first-aid tents. There was some profiteering in the sale of "electric Kool-Aid".

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 to buy a ticket in advance (which would be US$95.58 in 2005 with inflation factored in) and $24 to buy a ticket 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.

Yet, in tune with the idealistic hopes of the 1960s, Woodstock satisfied most 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.

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."

A fifteen-second soundbyte of the incident can be heard on The Who compilation set entitled Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2).

Stamp commemorating the original concert

Performing artists and sequence of events

Friday, August 15

The day, which officially began at 5:08 p.m. with Richie Havens, featured folk artists.

• Richie Havens (opened the festival - performed 7 encores)

  1. High Flyin' Bird

  2. I Can't Make It Anymore

  3. With A Little Help

  4. Strawberry Fields Forever

  5. Hey Jude

  6. I Had A Woman

  7. Handsome Johnny

  8. Freedom

• Swami Satchidananda

• Country Joe McDonald, played separate set from his band, The Fish

  1. I Find Myself Missing You

  2. Rockin' All Around The World

  3. Flyin' High All Over the World

  4. Seen A Rocket

  5. Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die Rag

• John Sebastian

  1. How Have You Been

  2. Rainbows All Over Your Blues

  3. I Had A Dream

  4. Darlin' Be Home Soon

  5. Younger Generation

• Sweetwater

  1. What's Wrong

  2. Motherless Child

  3. Look Out

  4. For Pete's Sake

  5. Day Song

  6. Crystal Spider

  7. Two Worlds

  8. Why Oh Why

• Incredible String Band

  1. Invocation

  2. The Letter

  3. This Moment

  4. When You Find Out Who You Are

• Bert Sommer

  1. Jennifer

  2. The Road To Travel

  3. I Wondered Where You Be

  4. She's Gone

  5. Things Are Going my Way

  6. And When It's Over

  7. Jeanette

  8. America

  9. A Note That Read

  10. Smile

• Tim Hardin, an hour long set

  1. If I Were A Carpenter

  2. Misty Roses

• Ravi Shankar, with a 5-song set, played through the rain

  1. Raga Puriya-Dhanashri/Gat In Sawarital

  2. Tabla Solo In Jhaptal

  3. Raga Manj Kmahaj

  4. Iap Jor

  5. Dhun In Kaharwa Tal

• Melanie

  1. Beautiful People

  2. Birthday of The Sun

• Arlo Guthrie

  1. Coming Into Los Angeles

  2. Walking Down the Line

  3. Amazing Grace

• Joan Baez

  1. Oh Happy Day

  2. The Last Thing On My Mind

  3. I Shall Be Released

  4. Joe Hill

  5. Sweet Sir Galahad

  6. Hickory Wind

  7. Drug Store Truck Driving Man

  8. I Live One Day At A Time

  9. Sweet Sunny South

  10. Warm and Tender Love

  11. Swing Low Sweet Chariot

  12. We Shall Overcome

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.

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

  1. They Live the Life

  2. BBY

  3. Waitin' For You

  4. Jam

• Keef Hartley Band

  1. Spanish Fly

  2. Believe In You

  3. Rock Me Baby

  4. Medley

  5. Leavin' Trunk

  6. Halfbreed

  7. Just To Cry

  8. Sinnin' For You

• Santana

  1. Waiting

  2. You Just Don't Care

  3. Savior

  4. Jingo

  5. Persuasion

  6. Soul Sacrifice

  7. Fried Neckbones

• Canned Heat

  1. A Change Is Gonna Come/Leaving This Town

  2. Going Up The Country

  3. Let's Work Together

  4. Woodstock Boogie

• Mountain, hour-long set including Jack Bruce's "Theme For An Imaginary Western"

  1. Blood of the Sun

  2. Stormy Monday

  3. Long Red

  4. Who Am I But You And The Sun

  5. Beside The Sea

  6. For Yasgur's Farm (then untitled)

  7. You and Me

  8. Theme For An Imaginary Western

  9. Waiting To Take You Away

  10. Dreams of Milk and Honey

  11. Blind Man

  12. Blue Suede Shoes

  13. Southbound Train

• Janis Joplin (Performed 2 encores; Piece of My Heart and Ball and Chain).

  1. Raise Your Hand

  2. As Good As You've Been To This World

  3. To Love Somebody

  4. Summertime

  5. Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)

  6. Kosmic Blues

  7. Can't Turn you Loose

  8. Work Me Lord

  9. Piece of My Heart

  10. Ball and Chain

• Sly & the Family Stone started at 1:30 am

  1. Chip Monck Intro/M’Lady

  2. Sing A Simple Song

  3. You Can Make It If You Try

  4. Everyday People

  5. Dance To The Music

  6. I Want To Take You Higher

  7. Love City

  8. Stand!

• Grateful Dead

  1. St. Stephen

  2. Mama Tried

  3. Dark Star/High Time

  4. Turn On Your Love Light

• Creedence Clearwater Revival

  1. Born on the Bayou

  2. Green River

  3. Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)

  4. Commotion

  5. Bootleg

  6. Bad Moon Rising

  7. Proud Mary

  8. I Put A Spell On You

  9. Night Time is the Right Time

  10. Keep On Choogin'

  11. Suzy Q

• The Who began at 3 a.m., kicking off a long, 24-song set including Tommy

  1. Heaven and Hell

  2. I Can't Explain

  3. It's a Boy

  4. 1921

  5. Amazing Journey

  6. Sparks

  7. Eyesight to the Blind

  8. Christmas

  9. Tommy Can You Hear Me?

  10. Acid Queen

  11. Pinball Wizard

  12. Abbie Hoffman Incident (see above section)

  13. Fiddle About

  14. There's a Doctor

  15. Go to the Mirror

  16. Smash the Mirror

  17. I'm Free

  18. Tommy's Holiday Camp

  19. We're Not Gonna Take It

  20. See Me, Feel Me

  21. Summertime Blues

  22. Shakin' All Over

  23. My Generation

  24. Naked Eye

• Jefferson Airplane began at 8 a.m. with an eight-song set, capping off the overnight marathon.

  1. Volunteers

  2. Somebody To Love

  3. The Other Side of This Life

  4. Plastic Fantastic Lover

  5. Saturday Afternoon/Won't You Try

  6. Eskimo Blue Day

  7. Uncle Sam's Blues

  8. White Rabbit

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 the workweek and their other weekday obligations.

• Joe Cocker

  1. Delta Lady

  2. Some Things Goin' On

  3. Let's Go Get Stoned

  4. I Shall Be Released

  5. With A Little Help From My Friends

• 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.

  1. Rock and Soul Music

  2. Thing Called Love

  3. Love Machine

  4. Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag

• Ten Years After

  1. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl

  2. I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes

  3. I May Be Wrong, But I Won't Be Wrong Always

  4. Hear Me Calling

  5. I'm Going Home

• The Band - Set list confirmed via Levon Helm's book "This Wheel's On Fire"

  1. Chest Fever

  2. Tears of Rage

  3. We Can Talk

  4. Don't You Tell Henry

  5. Don't Do It

  6. Ain't No More Cane

  7. Long Black Veil

  8. This Wheels On Fire

  9. I Shall Be Released

  10. The Weight

  11. Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever

• Blood, Sweat & Tears ushered in the midnight hour with five songs.

  1. More and More

  2. I Love You Baby More Than You Ever Know

  3. Spinning Wheel

  4. I Stand Accused

  5. Something Coming On

• Johnny Winter featuring Edgar Winter, his brother, on two songs.

  1. Mama, Talk to Your Daughter

  2. To Tell the Truth

  3. Johnny B. Goode

  4. Six Feet In the Ground

  5. Leland Mississippi Blues/Rock Me Baby

  6. Mean Mistreater

  7. I Can't Stand It (With Edgar Winter)

  8. Tobacco Road (With Edgar Winter)

  9. Mean Town Blues

• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young began around 3 a.m. with separate acoustic and electric sets.

  • Acoustic Set

  1. Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

  2. Blackbird

  3. Helplessly Hoping

  4. Guinnevere

  5. Marrakesh Express

  6. 4 + 20

  7. Mr. Soul

  8. Wonderin'

  9. You Don't Have To Cry

  • Electric Set

  1. Pre-Road Downs

  2. Long Time Gone

  3. Bluebird

  4. Sea of Madness

  5. Wooden Ships

  6. Find the Cost of Freedom

  7. 49 Bye-Byes

• Paul Butterfield Blues Band

  1. Everything's Gonna Be Alright

  2. Driftin'

  3. Born Under A Bad Sign

  4. Morning Sunrise

  5. Love March

• Sha-Na-Na

  1. Na Na Theme

  2. Jakety Jak

  3. Teen Angel

  4. Jailhouse Rock

  5. Wipe Out

  6. Who Wrote the Book of Love

  7. Duke of Earl

  8. At the Hop

  9. Na Na Theme

• Jimi Hendrix had insisted on being the final performer of the festival and was 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 seventeen songs, concluding with "Hey Joe"; 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 performance repertoire follows:

   

  1. Message to Love

  2. Hear My Train A Comin'

  3. Spanish Castle Magic

  4. Red House

  5. Mastermind

  6. Lover Man

  7. Foxy Lady

  8. Jam Back At The House

  9. Izabella

  10. Gypsy Woman

  11. Fire

  12. Voodoo Child (Slight Return)/Stepping Stone

  13. Star Spangled Banner

  14. Purple Haze

  15. Woodstock Improvisation

  16. Villanova Junction

  17. Hey Joe

Refused invitations

• The promoters contacted John Lennon, requesting for The Beatles to perform. Lennon said that he couldn't get the Beatles, but offered to play with his Plastic Ono Band. The promoters turned this down.

• 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. There also was a widely spread legend that Morrison, in a fit of paranoia, was fearful that someone would take a shot at him while he was onstage. Drummer John Densmore attended and can be seen on the side of the stage during Joe Cocker's set.

• Led Zeppelin were asked to perform, but refused after they were offered a gig with higher pay. The band later deeply regretted not performing, a possible reason why they accepted an offering at the Texas Pop Festival, held a short time after.

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

• The Moody Blues 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 Wallkill.

• 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 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 Isle of Wight Festival several weeks later.

• Frank Zappa and 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.

The film

A documentary film, Woodstock, directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Martin Scorsese, was released in 1970. It received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The film has been deemed culturally significant by the United States Library of Congress. In 1994, the "director's cut" was released; it included performances by Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, who were not in the original version of the film.

Woodstock today

Today a plaque stands commemorating the festival. The field and the stage area remains preserved and well kept in its rural Upstate New York 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. A new Bethel Woods Center for the Performing Arts opened on the site in July 2006. A new interpretive center dedicated to the Woodstock Festival and its meaning is targeted to open by mid-2008

Trivia

John Sebastian wasn't originally scheduled to perform. He was enlisted to perform when several of the acts were late in arriving due to the traffic going to the festival.

Richie Haven's song "Freedom" was totally improvised. He was called for so many encores that he ran out of songs to sing, so he just picked up his guitar and started singing "Freedom".

Country Joe McDonald wasn't scheduled to perform the first day. He was forced into it because many of the acts that were scheduled to perform that day hadn't arrived yet. He also performs on day three with the rest of The Fish.

Then New York governor Nelson Rockefeller threatened to send the national guard troops to break up the festival when he saw how huge the crowd was.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young almost didn't perform at the festival. The helicopter that Graham Nash and the group's drummer Dallas Taylor were on was less than 25 feet off the ground when the tail rotor failed and it began to spin. The helicopter almost crashed and Nash and Taylor were almost killed.

Michael Lang once said that his original idea was to have Roy Rogers close the festival by singing "Happy Trails".

The albums

Three albums of the concert have been released. The first was officially titled Woodstock: Music From the Original Soundtrack and More. 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. In 1995 a four CD box set titled Woodstock Three Days of Peace and Music was released. It contained all the music from the previous two albums and more, although most of the stage announcements from these albums have been omitted.

Woodstock Plaque

LINKS and REFERENCE

• Simon Warner's chapter "Reporting Woodstock" in the book Remembering Woodstock, Ashgate Publishing, Andy Bennett, editor, May, 2004.

• The Doors decline Woodstock. Digital Dream Door (2007-01-26)

• 1969 Woodstock Festival & Concert

• WWW-VL: 1960s History

• CJFishlegacy.com

• Woodstock Project

• "Woodstock: A New Nation", Book excerpt from "Aquarius Rising" by Robert Santelli

• Blood, Sweat & Beers: The Woodstock Legacy 1969-1999