The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", it attracted an audience of more than 460,000. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite overcast skies and sporadic rain. It was one of the largest music festivals in history and would become the peak musical event to reflect the counterculture of the 1960s.
The festival has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history, as well as a defining event for the silent and early baby boomer generations. The event's significance was reinforced by a 1970 documentary film, an accompanying soundtrack album, and a song written by Joni Mitchell that became a major hit for both Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Matthews Southern Comfort. Musical events bearing the Woodstock name were planned for anniversaries, including the 10th, 20th, 25th, 30th, 40th, and 50th. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed it as number 19 of the 50 moments that changed the history of rock and roll. In 2017, the festival site became listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Planning and preparation Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman, and John P. Roberts. Roberts and Rosenman financed the project. Lang had some experience as a promoter, having co-organized the Miami Pop Festival on the East Coast the previous year, where an estimated 25,000 people attended the two-day event.
Early in 1969, Roberts and Rosenman were New York City entrepreneurs who were in the process of building Mediasound, a recording studio complex in Manhattan. Lang and Kornfeld's lawyer, Miles Lourie, who had done legal work on the Mediasound project, suggested that they contact Roberts and Rosenman about financing a similar but much smaller studio, Kornfeld, that Lang hoped to build in Woodstock, New York. Unpersuaded by this Studio-in-the-Woods proposal, Roberts and Rosenman counter-proposed a concert featuring the kind of artists known to frequent the Woodstock area, such as Bob Dylan and the Band. Kornfeld and Lang agreed to the new plan, and Woodstock Ventures was formed in January 1969. The company offices were located in an oddly decorated floor of 47 West 57th Street in Manhattan. Burt Cohen and his design group, Curtain Call Productions, oversaw the psychedelic transformation of the office.
From the start there were differences in approach among the four. Roberts was disciplined and knew what was needed for the venture to succeed, while the laid-back Lang saw Woodstock as a new, "relaxed" way of bringing entrepreneurs together. When Lang was unable to find a site for the concert, Roberts and Rosenman, growing increasingly concerned, took to the road and found a venue. Similar differences about financial discipline made Roberts and Rosenman wonder whether to pull the plug or to continue pumping money into the project.
In April 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival became the first act to sign a contract for the event, agreeing to play for $10,000 (equivalent to $ in ). The promoters had experienced difficulty in landing big-name groups until Creedence committed to play. Creedence drummer Doug Clifford later commented: "Once Creedence signed, everyone else jumped in line and all the other big acts came on." Given their 12:30 am start time and omission from the Woodstock film (at frontman John Fogerty's insistence), members have expressed bitterness over their experiences regarding the festival.
Woodstock was conceived as a profit-making venture. It became a "free concert" when circumstances prevented the organizers from installing fences and ticket booths before opening day. Tickets for the three-day event cost US$18 in advance and $24 at the gate (equivalent to about $ and $ today). 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 advance tickets were sold. The organizers had anticipated that approximately 50,000 festival-goers would turn up.
Selection of venue The original plan was for the festival to take place in the town of Woodstock on a site owned by Alexander Tapooz. After local residents rejected that idea, Lang and Kornfeld thought they had found another possible location at the Winston Farm in Saugerties, New York. But they were mistaken, as the landowner's attorney made clear in a brief meeting with Roberts and Rosenman. Growing alarmed at the lack of progress, Roberts and Rosenman took over the search for a venue, and discovered the Mills Industrial Park () in the town of Wallkill, Orange County, New York, which Woodstock Ventures leased for US$10,000 (equivalent to $ today) 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 of over 5,000 people. The conditions upon which a permit would be issued made it impossible for the promoters to continue construction at the Wallkill site. Reports of the ban, however, turned out to be a publicity bonanza for the festival.
In his 2007 book Taking Woodstock, Elliot Tiber relates that he offered to host the event on his motel grounds, and had a permit for such an event. He claims to have introduced the promoters to dairy farmer Max Yasgur. Lang, however, disputes Tiber's account and says that Tiber introduced him to a realtor, who drove him to Yasgur's farm without Tiber. Sam Yasgur, Max's son, agrees with Lang's account. Yasgur's land formed a natural bowl sloping down to Filippini Pond on the land's north side. The stage would be set up at the bottom of the hill with Filippini Pond forming a backdrop. The pond became a popular skinny dipping destination. Filippini was the only landowner who refused to sign a lease for the use of his property. The organizers again told Bethel authorities that they expected no more than 50,000 people.
Despite opposition from the residents and signs proclaiming, "Buy No Milk. Stop Max's Hippy Music Festival", Bethel Town Attorney Frederick W. V. Schadt, building inspector Donald Clark and Town Supervisor Daniel Amatucci approved the festival permits, although the Bethel Town Board refused to issue the permits formally. Clark was ordered to post stop-work orders. Rosenman recalls meeting Don Clark and discussing with him how unethical it was for him to withhold permits which had already been authorized, and which he had in his pocket. At the end of the meeting, Inspector Clark gave him the permits. The stop work order was lifted, allowing the festival to proceed pending backing by the Department of Health and Agriculture, and removal of all structures by September 1, 1969.
The late change in venue did not give the festival organizers enough time to prepare. At a meeting three days before the event, Rosenman was asked by the construction foremen to choose between (a) completing the fencing and ticket booths, without which Roberts and Rosenman would be facing almost certain bankruptcy after the festival, or (b) trying to complete the stage, without which it would be a weekend of half a million concert-goers with no concerts. The next morning, on Wednesday, it became clear that option (a) had disappeared. Overnight, 50,000 "early birds" had arrived and had planted themselves in front of the half-finished stage. For the rest of the weekend, concert-goers simply walked on to the site with or without tickets. The festival left Roberts and Rosenman close to financial ruin, but their ownership of the film and recording rights turned their finances around when the Academy Award-winning documentary film Woodstock was released in March 1970.
Festival
The influx of people to the rural concert site in Bethel created a huge traffic jam. The town of Bethel did not enforce its codes, fearing chaos as crowds flowed to the site. Radio and television descriptions of the traffic jams eventually discouraged people from setting off to the festival. Arlo Guthrie made an announcement that was included in the film saying that the New York State Thruway was closed, although the director of the Woodstock museum said that this did not happen. To add to the problems and difficulty in dealing with the large crowds, recent rain had created muddy roads and fields. The facilities were not adequate to provide sanitation or first aid for the number of people attending, and hundreds of thousands found themselves in a struggle against bad weather, food shortages and poor sanitation.
The event's security was to be handled by a group of 346 off-duty New York City police officers, but the officers were forced to withdraw when they were warned that they were violating regulations against moonlighting. On the morning of Sunday, August 17, New York governor and future vice president Nelson Rockefeller called festival organizer John P. Roberts and told him that he was thinking of ordering 10,000 National Guard troops to the festival site, but Roberts persuaded him not to. Sullivan County declared a state of emergency. During the festival, personnel from nearby Stewart Air Force Base helped to ensure order and air-lifted performers in and out of the site.
Jimi Hendrix was the last to perform at the festival, taking the stage at 8:30 Monday morning after delays caused by the rain. By that point the audience numbers had fallen to about 30,000 from an estimated peak of 450,000. Many left during Hendrix's performance, having waited to catch a glimpse of him. Hendrix and his new band Gypsy Sun and Rainbows were introduced as the Experience, but he corrected this and added: "You could call us a Band of Gypsies". They performed a two-hour set, including his psychedelic rendition of the national anthem, which became "part of the sixties Zeitgeist" after it was captured in the Woodstock film.
The festival was remarkably peaceful given the number of people and the conditions involved, although there were three recorded fatalities: two drug overdoses and another caused when a tractor ran over a 17-year-old sleeping in a nearby hayfield. Births were claimed to have occurred, one in a car caught in traffic and another in hospital after an airlift by helicopter, but extensive research by a book author could not confirm any births. Several miscarriages were reported (sources range from four to eight) and over the course of the three days there were 742 drug overdoses.
Max Yasgur, who owned the site, spoke of how nearly half a million people had spent the three days with music and peace on their minds. He stated, "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
Sound for the concert was engineered by sound engineer Bill Hanley. "It worked very well", he said 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 towers. We set it up for 150,000 to 200,000 people. Of course, 500,000 showed up." ALTEC designed marine plywood cabinets that weighed half a ton apiece and stood tall, almost deep, and wide. Each of these enclosures carried four JBL D140 loudspeakers. The tweeters consisted of 4×2-Cell & 2×10-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. The live performances were captured on two 8-track Scully recorders in a tractor trailer backstage by Eddie Kramer and Lee Osbourne on 1-inch Scotch recording tape at 15ips (0.38 m/s), then mixed at the Record Plant studio in New York.
Lighting