Woodstock
The ‘Woodstock Music & Art Fair’ was opened in Bethel, New York by American folk singer Richie Havens.
Woodstock was originally the brainchild of four men: Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, and Artie Kornfeld. They first came together after Roberts and Rosenman placed an ad in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal which read: ‘Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions.’ The ad was answered by Lang and Kornfeld and when the four men first met they initially discussed plans for a new recording studio in Woodstock, an idea which would evolve into plans for a large scale music and arts festival. Originally intended as a profit-making event, the festival became a free event after unprecedented demand for tickets for the event – over 200,000 people were expected to show up.
As well being famous for the large gathering of a generation which did so much to change society, Woodstock is also famous for many legendary performances, surely the most significant of which was Jimi Hendrix’s closing performance in the early hours of Monday, 18th August. After bad weather and logistical problems had delayed the start of his performance, Hendrix eventually took to the stage in front of a crowd which had diminished from around 500,000 to roughly 180,000. Hendrix introduced his band as the Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, before beginning the longest set of his career. Hendrix would play at a ferocious pace which his band would struggle to keep up with and the stunning performance was rounded of with his now seminal rendition of the ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. Woodstock is seen as the culmination of the radical changes in society and culture in the 1960s and Hendrix’s performance of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is said to be a symbol to represent the passing of the radical 1960s era.
The festival gained further notoriety when a documentary film chronicling the event was released in 1970. Simply called ‘Woodstock’, it was directed by Michael Wadleigh, while one of the editors was soon-to-be legendary director Martin Scorsese. Shot by a crew of about 100 on site, the film went on to win the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. and was deemed ‘culturally significant’ by the United States Library of Congress.
Today, the site has become a place of special interest for music fans. A plaque has been placed at the original site commemorating the event, and the stage area has been preserved in it’s original setting. A famous totem pole featuring wood carvings of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia still stands in the middle of the field area.
In June 2008, a new museum was opened in Bethel Woods, containing archive film and photography.
Full Woodstock line-up (in order of appearence):
Friday, August 15th
Richie Havens
Swami Satchidananda
Sweetwater
The Incredible String Band
Bert Sommer
Tim Hardin
Ravi Shankar
Melanie
Arlo Guthrie
Joan Baez
Saturday, August 16th
Quill
Keef Hartley Band
Country Joe McDonald
John Sebastian
Santana
Canned Heat
Mountain
Grateful Dead
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Janis Joplin w/ The Kozmic Blues Band
Sly & the Family Stone
The Who
Jefferson Airplane
Sunday, August 17th/Monday, August 18th
The Grease Band
Joe Cocker
Country Joe and the Fish
Ten Years After
The Band
Blood, Sweat & Tears
Johnny Winter
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Neil Young
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Sha-Na-Na
Jimi Hendrix