Remembering Woodstock On Its 55 Year Anniversary

55 years ago today The Woodstock Festival took place in White Lake, NY.  It was an event that transformed the youth culture and established the Music Festival template that continues to this very day. 

Woodstock: The Event

Original poster design for The Woodstock Festival

From Wikipedia: "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 a festival on the East Coast the prior year, the Miami Pop Festival, where an estimated 25,000 people attended the two-day event.  Early in 1969, Roberts and Rosenman were New York City entrepreneurs, in the process of building Media Sound, a large audio recording studio complex in Manhattan. Lang and Kornfeld's lawyer, Miles Lourie, who had done legal work on the Media Sound project, suggested that they contact Roberts and Rosenman about financing a similar, but much smaller, studio Kornfeld and 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 eventually came up with 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."

 

The dove perched on a guitar neck in the famous poster announcing 'Three Days of Peace and Music' is really a catbird, an American perching bird known for its catlike calls.  Woodstock Ventures commissioned the house artist at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East, to design the poster for the Woodstock Festival. His highly stylized, floral, intricate poster featured a fully nude woman surrounded by cherubs, hearts, and arrows — and no space for the names of the bands. Local shop owners refused to display the poster, and the promoters wanted something different, so they commissioned a new design from Madison Avenue ad guy Arnold Skolnick. Skolnick’s poster, a simplified design featuring a white dove perched on a guitar neck, against a bright red background. Skolnick’s tag line, “Three Days of Peace and Music,” became the rallying cry for the festival, and his “dove and guitar” became instantly, internationally recognizable.

 

Max Yasgur

 

Festival Organizer Michael Lang  & Max Yasgur

After the Festival organizers plans for the original site of the festival fell through they managed to find a local dairy farmer named Maz Yasgur who agreed to stage the Woodstock Festival on his farmland.  Yasgur appeared on stage during the festival and gave a sincere speech  which instantly turned him into a counterculture hero.  After Woodstock, Yasgur was sued by his neighbors for property damage caused by the fans. His property also sustained extensive damages, and less than a year after the festival, he received a $50,000 settlement.

 

 

The Festival organizers told the authorities they expected 50,000, while selling 186,000 tickets in advance (costing six dollars for each day) and planning for 200,000. In the end 500,000 attended. Another million had to turn back because of traffic. It was originally advertised as A Weekend in the Country.  About two dozen ticket booths should have been in place to charge $24 admission, but they were never installed because of the crush of festival-goers. Attempts to get people to pay were abandoned on day one, the fences were torn down and Woodstock was declared a free event. 

 

Actor and country singer Roy Rogers  -  billed as King of the Cowboys for his western movies  -  was asked to close the show, singing his trademark song, Happy Trails To You. But Rogers' manager vetoed it, and years later Rogers admitted: 'I would have been booed off stage by all those goddam hippies.'

 

Woodstock: The Tech Staff

Chip Monck - Stage Announcer - Lighting Designer

The revolving stage was designed to minimize wait-times, turning when one act finished with the equipment in place for the next one. But it could not support the weight of so many people on the side of the stage watching the performances, and the wheels fell off.

From the chron.com blog: "Monck went to work assembling four towers — 40 feet by 8 feet by 16 feet — for the spotlights. The scaffolding was to stand on planks embedded in the ground. His crew started trenching between the stage area and all of the individual towers for intercom and power. “It was about a food below grade, which meant we were completely safe,” he said. The electrical wiring was strung inside mining cable. Despite safety concerns, Monck said the cable was bullet-proof. “It was absolutely impossible to break into in order to cause electrical damage to either persons or things.”

From monsterchildren.com: "The thing that you’re most famous for is MCing Woodstock. How did that come about? Your company was lighting the gig?  Yes, lighting and half-production management with Chris Langhart. All the lines of the demarcation were discarded because anyone that said they could do this or do that–didn’t. Anyone that promised you something didn’t come through because they’d rather go off behind a bush and get high. So, the festival was chaotic from the get-go?  Oh, by all means. We’re moving site, and we have ten to 12 days to build. Impossible....Michael Lang tapped me on the shoulder Friday morning and said, ‘We need a little help. We’ve forgotten to hire an MC, so… you’re it. And the first thing we want you to do is to get them (the audience) to move back a bit; they’re too close to the front of the stage.’ So, you jumped on the microphone?  Right. And I said, ‘Okay, folks, I’m terribly sorry, but you need to move back, otherwise when the rest of the audience arrive, you will be pushed right up against the front of the stage and you will spend three days with your nose against the plywood. So, pick yourselves up and we’re going to take ten giant steps backwards.’ And everyone started to do what I asked.

 

 

 

Bill Hanley (Woodstock Soundman)

From fohonline.com: "Early on, Hanley and most of the promoters were expecting between 150,000 to 200,000 people. For the event, he and his crew prepared and built specially designed speaker columns powered by over 10,000 watts of McIntosh tube power amplifiers located below the stage. According to Hanley, We built two speaker towers each of which had two levels containing its own speaker cluster. The highest one was 70 feet high to accommodate the audience in the middle of the field and high up on the hill. The lowest one, at 20 feet, was for the audience nearest to the stage. There were four cabinets arrayed on both towers on each level, which had about 32 woofers each. This unique and logical design pushed the music into the ears of the audience without much slapback...Hanley and his crew custom designed the HSI 410 (Hanley Sound Inc.) speaker cabinets out of marine grade plywood. For the upper stacks, two bass bins were strategically positioned with high frequency horns on top. This was no easy task, especially as each pair measured 6x4x7 feet, and weighed close to 1,000 pounds. These four upper bins came loaded with four 15-inch JBL D-130 drivers. The four lower bins contained four 15-inch JBL D140 drivers for additional bass. Hanley recalls, “The high frequencies were handled by model 1003B 5×2 Altec multi-cell horns (300 Hz min frequency) and my custom-built 2×2 horns, all with Altec 290 compression drivers.  Perched above the audience, approximately 75 ft. stage left into the field, Hanley (and a rotation of engineers) mixed the event on a modest platform constructed of plywood and scaffolding. Known in the industry for their performance and quality, the engineer’s microphone (and mixers) of choice for the event were Shure, We used about 20 Shure Unidyne SM545 microphones which were modified. I also used four modified Shure M67’s with input pads, two Shure Audio Masters for EQ, an Altec 1567A tube mixer and four Teletronix LA2A tube limiters between the mixers and the power amplifiers. Below the stage, we had over 20 McIntosh MC3500 series 350-watt RMS high-fidelity tube amplifiers. From this location, a sound crew of around 12 were able to execute the applied science of sound reinforcement with very few hiccups.  Live concert recording was also in a phase of infancy. It was Hanley, and engineers Lee Osborne and Eddie Kramer, who were responsible for recording the event in a trailer backstage. According to Woodstock head of production and emcee John Morris, Hanley’s involvement was significant, covering not just sound but other essential production elements like crowd control, miking, amplification, power distribution and large speaker system deployment. “Bill put everything together; this is why he always had a soldering iron — during Woodstock and after. He literally made the pieces and put the pieces together to make the sound work, and it got bigger and bigger at Woodstock. Bill made it possible for people miles away to hear.”

 

Woodstock: The Performers & Their Performance Fees

1. Jimi Hendrix – $18,000  

SET LIST

Message To Love 
Getting My Heart Back Together Again 
Spanish Castle Magic 
Red House 
Master Mind 
Here Comes Your Lover Man 
Foxy Lady 
Beginning 
Izabella 
Gypsy Woman 
Fire 
Voodoo Child (Slight Return) / Stepping Stone 
Star Spangled Banner 
Purple Haze 
Woodstock Improvisation / Villanova Junction 
Hey Joe

 

 

 

2. Blood, Sweat and Tears – $15,000  

SET LIST

More And More

Just One Smile 
 Somethin' Comin' On 
I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know 
Spinning Wheel 
Sometimes In Winter 
Smiling Phases 
God Bless The Child 
And When I Die 
You've Made Me So Very Happy

3. Joan Baez – $10,000 

Oh Happy Day 
The Last Thing On My Mind 
I Shall Be Released 
 Joe Hill 
Sweet Sir Galahad 
Hickory Wind 
Drug Store Truck Driving Man 
One Day At A Time 
Take Me Back To The Sweet Sunny South 
Warm and Tender Love 
Swing Low Sweet Chariot 
We Shall Overcome

4. Creedence Clearwater Revival – $10,000  

 Born On The Bayou 
Green River 
Ninety-Nine And A Half 
Commotion 
Bootleg 
Bad Moon Rising 
Proud Mary 
I Put A Spell On You 
Night Time Is The Right Time 
Keep On Choogin’ 
Suzy Q

 

 

5. The Band – $7,500  

Chest Fever 
Don't Do It 
Tears Of Rage 
We Can Talk 
Long Black Veil 
Don't Ya Tell Henry 
Ain't No More Cane 
This Wheels On Fire 
I Shall Be Released 
The Weight 
Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever

 

 

 

  6. Janis Joplin - $7,500

Raise Your Hand 
As Good As You’ve Been To This World 
To Love Somebody 
Summertime 
Try (Just A Little Bit Harder) 
Kosmic Blues 
Can’t Turn You Loose 
Work Me Lord 
Piece Of My Heart 
Ball and Chain

 

7.  Jefferson Airplane – $7,500  

The Other Side of This Life 
Somebody to Love 
3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds 
Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon 
Plastic Fantastic Lover 

Eskimo Blue Day
Wooden Ships 
Uncle Sam Blues 
Volunteers 
The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil 
Come Back Baby 
White Rabbit 
The House at Pooneil Corners

 

8. Sly and the Family Stone – $7,000  

M’Lady 
Sing A Simple Song 
You Can Make It If You Try 
Stand! 
Love City 
Dance To The Music 
Music Lover 
I Want To Take You Higher

 

 

 

9. Canned Heat – $6,500  

I’m Her Man 
Going Up the Country 
A Change Is Gonna Come 
Leaving This Town 
The Bear Talks 
Let’s Work Together 
Too Many Drivers at the Wheel 
I Know My Baby 
Woodstock Boogie 
On the Road Again

 

 

10. The Who – $6,250  

Heaven And Hell 
I Can’t Explain 
It’s A Boy 

1921 
Amazing Journey 
Sparks 
Eyesight To The Blind 
Christmas 
Tommy Can You Hear Me 
Acid Queen 
Pinball Wizard 
Abbie Hoffmann Incident 
Fiddle About 
There’s A Doctor I’ve Found 
Go To The Mirror Boy 
Smash The Mirror 
I’m Free 
Tommy’s Holiday Camp 
We’re Not Gonna Take It 
See Me Feel Me 
Summertime Blues 
Shaking All Over 
My Generation 
Naked Eye

 

 

11. Richie Havens – $6,000  

Minstrel From Gault 
High Flyin’ Bird 
I Can’t Make It Anymore 
With A Little Help 
Strawberry Fields For Ever 
Hey Jude 
I Had A Woman 
Handsome Johnny 
Freedom

 

12. Arlo Guthrie – $5,000 

Coming into Los Angeles 
Wheel of Fortune 
Walking Down the Line 
The Story Of Moses 

Oh Mary, Don't You Weep 
Every Hand in the Land 
Amazing Grace

 

 13. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – $5,000  

 (Set One - Acoustic) 
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes 
Blackbird 
Helplessly Hoping 
Guinnevere 
Marrakesh Express 
6. 4 + 20 
  (Set Two - Electric / with Neil Young) 
Mr Soul 
I'm Wonderin' 
You Don't Have To Cry 
Pre-road Downs 
Long Time Gone 
Bluebird Revisited 
Sea Of Madness 
Wooden Ships 
  (Encore) 
Find The Cost Of Freedom 
49 bye-byes

 

14. Ravi Shankar – $4,500  

Raga Puriya-Dhanashri / Gat In Sawarital 
Tabla Solo In Jhaptal 
Raga Manj Kmahaj / Alap Jor / Dhun In Kaharwa Tal / 

Medium & Fast Gat In Teental

 

15. Johnny Winter – $3,750  

Mama, Talk To Your Daughter 
Leland Mississippi Blues 
Mean Town Blues 
You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now 
I Can't Stand It (with Edgar Winter) 
Tobacco Road (with Edgar Winter) 
Tell The Truth (with Edgar Winter) 
Johnny B. Goode

 

 

16. Ten Years After – $3,250  

Good Morning Little Schoolgirl 
I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes 
I May Be Wrong, But I Won’t Be Wrong Always 
I’m Going Home

 

 

17. Country Joe and the Fish – $2,500  

I Find Myself Missing You 
Rockin’ All Around The World 
Flyin’ High All Over The World 
Seen A Rocket 
Fish Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-To-Die-Rag

 

18. Grateful Dead – $2,500  

St. Stephen 
Mama Tried 
Dark Star / High Time 
Turn On Your Lovelight

 

19. The Incredible String Band – $2,250  

Invocation 
The Letter 
Gather 'Round 
This Moment 
Come With Me 
When You Find Out Who You Are

 

20. Mountain – $2,000  

Blood Of The Sun 
Stormy Monday 
Theme From An Imaginary Western 
Long Red 
For Yasgur’s Farm 
You And Me 
Waiting To Take You Away 
Dreams Of Milk And Honey 
Blind Man 
Blue Suede Shoes 
Southbound Train

 

21. Tim Hardin – $2,000  

(How Can We) Hang on to a Dream 
Once-Touched By Flame 
If I Were a Carpenter 
Reason to Believe 
You Upset the Grace of Living When You Lie 
Speak Like a Child 
Snow White Lady 
Blues on My Ceiling 
Simple Song of Freedom 
Misty Roses

 

22. Joe Cocker – $1,375  

Rockhouse 
Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring 
Dear Landlord 
Something's Coming On 
Do I Still Figure In Your Life 
Feelin' Alright 
Just Like A Woman 
Let's Go Get Stoned 
I Don't Need No Doctor 
I Shall Be Released 
Hitchcock Railway 
Something To Say 
With A Little Help From My Friends

 

 

 

23. Sweetwater – $1,250  

Motherless Child 
Look Out 
For Pete’s Sake 
Day Song 
What’s Wrong 
Crystal Spider 
Two Worlds 
Why Oh Why

 

24. John B. Sebastian – $1,000  

How Have You Been 
Rainbows All Over Your Blues 
I Had A Dream 
Darlin’ Be Home Soon 
Younger Generation

 

 

 

25. Melanie – $750  

1. Close to It All 
2. Momma Momma 
3. Beautiful People 
4. Animal Crackers 
5. Mr. Tambourine Man 
6. Tuning My Guitar 
7. Birthday of the Sun

 

26. Santana – $750  

1.  Persuasion 
2.  Savor 
3.  Soul Sacrifice 
4.  Fried Neckbones

 

 

 

27. Sha Na Na – $700  

1. Get A Job 
2. Come Go With Me 
3. Silhouettes 
4. Teen Angel 
5. (Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame 
6. Wipe Out 
7. Book Of Love 
8. Teenager in Love 
9. Little Darlin' 
10. At The Hop 
11. Duke Of Earl 
12. Get A Job (Reprise)

 

28. Keef Hartley Band – $500  

1. Spanish Fly 
2. She's Gone 
3. Too Much Thinking 
4. Believe In You 
5. Halfbreed Medley: Sinnin' For You, Leaving Trunk, Just To Cry, Sinnin' For You

 

29. Quill – $375  

1. They Live the Life 
2.  That’s How I Eat 
3.  Driftin’ 
4.  Waitin’ For You

 

30. Paul Butterfield Blues Band - ?  

1. Born Under A Bad Sign 
2. No Amount Of Loving 
3. Driftin' And Driftin' 
4. Morning Sunrise 
5. All In A Day 
6. Love March 
7. Everything's Gonna Be Alright

 

31. Bert Sommer - ? 

1.  Jennifer 
2.  The Road To Travel 
3.  I wondered where you’d be 
4.  She’s Gone 
5.  Things Are Going My Way 
6.  And When It’s Over 
7.  Jeanette 
8.  America (first standing ovation at Woodstock) 
9.  A Note That Read 
10.  Smile

 

 

WOODSTOCK OUTTAKES

 

Woodstock -1969- Outtakes -

CCR, Crosby Stills Nash & Young , Mountain, Johnny Winter, Janis Joplin

 

Woodstock: The Film

Michael Wadleigh (Director)

From Wikipedia: "n 1969, Wadleigh undertook the monumental task of documenting the Woodstock Music Festival. Seven editors are credited, including Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese, and Wadleigh. He arrived on the site in Bethel, New York on August 15, with over a thousand reels of film and a crew of several camera operators. The finished product was said to have consisted of about 120 miles of footage which, over the next months, was edited down to 184 minutes. Warner Bros., the film's primary financial backer, released it on March 26, 1970. The film, which reportedly cost $600,000 to produce, earned over $50 million in the United States and more millions from foreign rentals, but due to a complicated arrangement with Warner Bros., Wadleigh received only a small percentage of the profits. Woodstock stands as a milestone in the documentary film field, receiving an Academy Award for Documentary Feature at the 1971 ceremony."

 

 

From the IMDB site: "The four-hour film Woodstock won the Best Documentary Oscar in 1970. Since then, it has been re-released several times with added concert footage and extras. 

The film was directed by Michael Wadleigh, who tapped young filmmaker Martin Scorsese to be an assistant director and film editor Thelma Schoonmaker to be supervising editor. Scorsese and Schoonmaker have remained a director/editor team to this day, and Woodstock was their first film together.  

The two= and three-panel screen presentations seen throughout much of the movie were innovations born of necessity on the part of its creators and a film editor named Martin Scorsese. With so much footage shot, and the studio's unwillingness to expand the length of the released film's running time, it was decided that a way must be found to maximize the amount of footage that could be used. Because of the wide-screen aspect of the release, it was realized that the multi-panel format could be used most effectively to not only include as much film footage as possible, but to also have concert footage and crowd reaction shots together on the same screen. 

The filmmakers believed it was important to show the viewing public just what a monumental event the Woodstock festival had unintentionally become. This method also allowed them to show many behind-the-scene activities that showed all the hard work put in by the production staff and crew, another important detail that the concert's producers thought was very important for the public to see as they had always contended that without the efforts of the entire production staff, this event could have easily degenerated into a disaster.  

Warner Bros. did not want to release the film theatrically at first, because several other concert documentaries had failed badly in releases before that time, but did a release anyway; there was so little money involved that one executive said they could have cut up the film and sold it for bookmarks if they needed to.  The filmmakers and distributor were sued by the man who was interviewed while cleaning the Port-O-San portable latrines, on the grounds of mental anguish, embarrassment, public ridicule, and invasion of privacy."

 

 

 

Woodstock: The Legacy

A Woodstock Moment - 40 Years Later

Photographer Burk Uzzle: From Woodstock To Wilson

 

There have been four attempts to recreate the festival on different sites: in 1979, 1989, 1994, and the disastrous 1999 festival, which was shut down amid riots and violence.

 

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts opened in 2006 at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The historic hill on which the festival audience sat and enjoyed three days of music has been preserved, and Bethel Woods beautiful outdoor concert pavilion and museum campus is situated on the hill overlooking the festival field. The Pavilion hosts outdoor concerts in the summer months, and the Museum is open from April through December.

The Original Woodstock Field Is Under Restricted Access

for the Festival’s 50th Anniversary

 

Woodstock 50

THE CANCELLATION OF WOODSTOCK 50

This Time magazine article sums up the haphazard efforts of a group of promoters which included Michael Lang, one of the promoters of the original Woodstock event) to try and stage a 50th Anniversary Woodstock event. It's a different world now and it was much harder to "get back to the garden"

Woodstock 50: Inside The Final Days

 

 

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Michael Lang: Woodstock Co-Creator, Dies @ 77

Unseen Woodstock Photographs 

Archaeologists Discover Woodstock Really Did Take On A Life Of Its Own

1969 Articles About The Woodstock Festival

Surviving Woodstock

Rediscovered: The Original Stage From The 1969 Woodstock Festival

Woodstock Performers: Where Are They Now?

 


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