Woodstock Festival

Woodstock
Arnold Skolnick who designed the logo says that the dove on the guitar was actually designed to resemble a catbird (and it was originally perched on a flute).[1]
Location(s) United States
  • Bethel, New York (site of original festival)
Years active Original festival held in 1969; namesake events held in 1979, 1989, 1994, and 1999.
Founded by Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld
Date(s) scheduled: August 15 – August 17, 1969, but ran over to August 18
Genre(s) Rock and folk, including blues-rock, folk rock, jazz fusion, latin rock, and psychedelic rock styles.
Website

Woodstock was a music festival, billed as An Aquarian Exposition, held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²; 240 ha) dairy farm in the rural town of Bethel, New York from August 15 to August 18 1969. Bethel (Sullivan County) is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the village of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.

The festival exemplified the counterculture of the late 1960s – early 1970s and the "hippie era". Thirty-two of the best-known musicians of the day appeared during the sometimes rainy weekend in front of nearly half a million concertgoers. Although attempts have been made over the years to emulate the festival, the original event has proven to be unique and legendary. 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.[2]

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.

Contents

Introduction

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, and who 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.”[3]

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 morphed 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.[3] 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.[3] His decision to continue with the project resulted in one of the most successful events in music history.

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. Around 186,000 tickets were sold beforehand and organizers anticipated approximately 200,000 festival-goers would turn up.[4] The fence was purposely cut by the UAW/MF in order to create a totally free event, prompting many more to show up. Tickets for the event cost US$18 in advance (approximately US$75 today adjusted for inflation)[5] 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.

Woodstock Ventures made Warner Brothers 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.[6]

The influx of young people to the rural concert site in Bethel created a massive traffic jam and closed the New York State Thruway.[4] 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.[7]

The festival was held during a time of military conflict abroad and racial discord at home, and participants quickly became aware that the event had taken on a meaning beyond its original intent. The site of Woodstock became, for four days, a countercultural mini-nation. Minds were open, drugs were available and "love" was "free". Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman crystallized this view of the event in his book, Woodstock Nation, written shortly afterwards.

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 by an occupied sleeping bag accidentally being run over by a tractor in a nearby hayfield. There were also two births recorded at the event (one in a car caught in traffic and another in a helicopter) and four miscarriages.[8] 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. 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.[9]

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...”[3]

Logistics

Selection of the venue

The concert was originally scheduled to take place in the 300-acre Mills Industrial Park () in northeast Middletown, Orange County, New York in Wallkill, Orange County, New York which Woodstock Ventures had leased for $10,000 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.[10]

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, 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.[11] Yasgur's land formed a natural bowl sloping down to Filippini Pond on its 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.

The organizers once again told Bethel authorities they expected no more than 50,000.

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 formally issue them. Clark was ordered to post Stop Work Orders but the promoters tore them down.

Fearing chaos as thousands began descending on the community, Bethel did not enforce its codes.[12]

Sound

Sound for the concert was engineered by Bill Hanley, whose innovations in the sound industry have earned him the prestigious Parnelli Award.[13] "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 [21 meter] 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 & 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.[14] For many years this system was collectively referred to as the Woodstock Bins.

Performing artists and sequence of events

Friday, August 15

The first day officially began at 5:07 p.m. with Richie Havens, and featured folk artists.

Baez Source: Arthur Levy, annotator of the expanded editions of the 12 Joan Baez CDs on Vanguard

The Original Woodstock Poster with the Wallkill, New York location

Saturday, August 16

The day opened at 12:15 pm, and featured some of the event's biggest psychedelic and guitar rock headliners.

Grateful Dead's performance was plagued by technical problems, including a faulty electrical ground. Members Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir reported getting shocked every time they touched their guitars.

Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18

Joe Cocker was the first act on the last officially booked day (Sunday); he opened up the day's events at 2 PM. His set was preceded by at least two instrumentals by The Grease Band.

Cancelled appearances

Refused invitations

Media coverage and the New York Times

As the only reporter at Woodstock for the first 36 hours or so, Barnard Collier of the New York Times was almost continually pressed by his editors in New York to make the story about the immense traffic jams, the less-than-sanitary conditions, the rampant drug use, the lack of "proper policing", and the presumed dangerousness of so many young people congregating. Collier recalls: "Every major Times editor up to and including executive editor James Reston insisted that the tenor of the story must be a social catastrophe in the making. It was difficult to persuade them that the relative lack of serious mischief and the fascinating cooperation, caring and politeness among so many people was the significant point. I had to resort to refusing to write the story unless it reflected to a great extent my on-the-scene conviction that 'peace' and 'love' was the actual emphasis, not the preconceived opinions of Manhattan-bound editors. After many acrimonious telephone exchanges, the editors agreed to publish the story as I saw it, and although the nuts-and-bolts matters of gridlock and minor lawbreaking were put close to the lead of the stories, the real flavor of the gathering was permitted to get across. After the first day's Times story appeared on page 1, the event was widely recognized for the amazing and beautiful accident it was."

After the festival was finished, Collier wrote another article about the exodus of fans away from the festival for the New York Times. He speaks of such a peaceful event considering the size of the crowd and listens to Dr. William Abruzzi’s (chief medical officer during the event) opinions that these were beautiful people. The weekend had become an incredible unification of youth. This opinion had seemingly rubbed off on several locals. Bus driver Richard Biccum described them as "good kids in disguise."[8][22]

The Abbie Hoffman incident

Prior to the festival, poet/activist John Sinclair, the leader of the White Panther Party and manager of the Detroit-based group MC5, had been convicted and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment in Michigan for marijuana possession, after giving two joints to an undercover police officer.[3] The sentencing caused considerable controversy, given the trivial amount of marijuana at issue, and it led to various luminaries of the day taking up Sinclair's cause. Among these were John Lennon, who wrote and performed the song "John Sinclair", and who, along with his wife Yoko Ono, later headlined the Free John Now Rally rally at the Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor.

For his part, Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman decided on a somewhat more spontaneous course of action. In the seconds immediately after The Who concluded "Pinball Wizard", from Tommy, Hoffman, who had ingested LSD after working the past few hours at the medical tent,[3] abruptly walked onto the stage and began addressing the crowd from Pete Townshend's microphone. He shouted, "I think this is a pile of shit! ... While John Sinclair rots in prison ..."[23] Alerted to the disturbance, Townshend (who apparently had been too distracted to notice Hoffman ambling onto the platform), snarled at Hoffman, "Fuck off! [Get the] fuck off my fucking stage!" He then struck Hoffman with his guitar, sending the interloper tumbling. As the crowd let out an approving roar, Townshend returned to his microphone to add a sarcastic "I can dig it!" Following the conclusion of the next song, the short "Do You Think It's Alright?", Townshend issued a stern warning to those in attendance: "The next fucking person that walks across this stage is gonna get fucking killed, all right? You can laugh, [but] I mean it!"

Townshend later said he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, though he insisted he would have knocked Hoffman off stage regardless of his message. The incident can be heard in its entirety on unedited Woodstock tapes and bootleg CDs of The Who's performance. Additionally, an edited fifteen-second sound bite of the incident can be heard on The Who compilation set Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2). The Woodstock documentary also depicts this event.

In his autobiography, Hoffman, apparently unaware that the confrontation had been captured on audio, attempted to deny that Townshend had been riled into hitting him: "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 non-incident 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

Main article: Woodstock (film)

The documentary film, Woodstock, was directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese, was released in 1970. Warner Brothers agreed to pay $100,000 for the film. So Wadleigh proceeded to round up a crew of about 100 from the New York scene. With no money to pay the crew he agreed a double or nothing scheme in which double pay was received if it went well whereas they received nothing if it bombed. The plot was simple, like a modern day Canterbury Tale, he strived to make the film as much about the hippies as the music, listening to their feelings about the times, the Vietnam War for example, as well as the views of the townspeople. To him this is what would make the film, not just the music.[6]

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. Artie had been turned down everywhere, but Fred Weintraub became his hero and against the wishes of other Warner executives, Weintraub put his job on the line and gave the money. Warner Brothers was about to go out of business and Woodstock saved the company. This is all documented in the book, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls".

It 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, 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.

The DVD

New DVD and Blu-ray versions of Woodstock: The Director's Cut are scheduled for release by Warner Home Video on July 28, 2009. The "Ultimate Collector’s Edition" reportedly includes an hour of performances not seen in the film, or not seen in full. Director Michael Wadleigh is overseeing the release, Warner said. Robert Klein's documentary "The '60s and the Woodstock Generation" will be among the extra features. "Woodstock" is being restored and remastered for the release. The previous DVD dates back to 1997, with reviewers on Amazon complaining of its VHS-like quality.[24]

Woodstock today

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 on the bottom, Janis Joplin in the middle, and Jerry Garcia on top. 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 surrounding acres 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.

In August 2007, the 103-acre parcel that contains Max Yasgur's former homestead was placed on the market for $8 million by its current owners, Roy Howard and Jeryl Abramson. The home, barn, fieldhouse, and acreage, which are listed by Joshpe Real Estate of New York City, have been the site of frequent Woodstock reunions.[25]

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.

Gallery

Taking Woodstock

Main article: Taking Woodstock

Scheduled for 2009, Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock follows the life of Elliot Tiber, who in 1969, held the only musical festival permit in Bethel, NY and enabled the festival to occur. It also takes place before the Woodstock Festival, in which Tiber was involved with the Stonewall Riots in New York City.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.woodstock69.com/wsrprnt1.htm
  2. ↑ "Woodstock in 1969". Rolling Stone (2004-06-24). Retrieved on 2008-04-17.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Robert Stephen Spitz. Barefoot in Babylon. The Viking Press, New York. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "BBC ON THIS DAY - 1969: Woodstock music festival ends". Retrieved on 2008-04-17.
  5. ↑ http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/faculty-research/sahr/cv1996.pdf
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "How Woodstock Came To Be...(continued)". Retrieved on 2008-04-17.
  7. ↑ "Statement on the Historical and Cultural Significance of the 1969 Woodstock Festival Site". Retrieved on 2008-04-17.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus". New York Times (1969-08-18). Retrieved on 2008-04-17.
  9. ↑ Andy Bennett; Simon Warner (May 2004). Remembering Woodstock. Ashgate Publishing. 
  10. ↑ http://www.woodstock69.com/wsrprnt3.htm
  11. ↑ http://www.woodstock69.com/wsrprnt3.htm
  12. ↑ http://www.woodstock69.com/wsrprnt3.htm
  13. ↑ http://www.billhanley.org/
  14. ↑ Jerry Hopkins. Festival! The Book of American Music Celebrations. Macmillan Publishing 1970. New York. ISBN 0025801708
  15. ↑ "Janis Joplin entry". Encyclopedia Britannica (2006-09-24). Retrieved on 2008-10-03.
  16. ↑ "The Doors decline Woodstock". Digital Dream Door (2007-01-26). Retrieved on 2007-02-01.
  17. ↑ Lewis, Dave (1997). Led Zeppelin: The Concert File. Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0711953079. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Classic Rock Magazine. Future Media. August 2007. pp. 94. 
  19. ↑ Liner notes to Tommy James and the Shondells: Anthology (album #R2 70920); compilation produced by Bill Inglot and Gary Peterson; Rhino Records Inc.; pp8&12.
  20. ↑ Bob Dylan. Chronicles Volume One. p. 116. 
  21. ↑ "Mind Garage Declines Woodstock". Digital Dream Door. Retrieved on 2008-06-15.
  22. ↑ "Reporting Woodstock: Some contemporary press reflections on the festival" by Simon Warner in Remembering Woodstock, edited by Andy Bennett (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004).
  23. ↑ http://www.geocities.com/Beatlefreak1/Abbie.wav
  24. ↑ DVD Spin Doctor report
  25. ↑ Joshpe Real Estate

See also

External links