Woodstock Festival

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Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents
An Aquarian Exposition
3 Days of Peace & Music
Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents An Aquarian Exposition 3 Days of Peace & Music
General information
place White Lake, Bethel , NY United States
United StatesUnited States 
organizer Woodstock Ventures Inc.
Period August 15-18, 1969
Website Woodstock.com
Visitor numbers
400,000 (estimated)

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents An Aquarian Exposition - 3 Days of Peace & Music , shortly Woodstock , was an open-air - music festival . It is considered the climax and at the same time the end point of the hippie movement in the USA , which has arrived in the mainstream .

The festival took place as scheduled from August 15 to 17, 1969, but did not end until the morning of August 18. Pasture fields of a dairy farmer in White Lake near the small town of Bethel in the US state of New York , about 70 kilometers southwest of the eponymous and originally planned event location in Woodstock , served as the venue .

In front of an estimated 400,000 visitors, 32 bands and solo artists from the music genres folk , rock , psychedelic rock , blues and country performed , including stars such as Jimi Hendrix , Janis Joplin and The Who . The expected number of viewers was more than doubled. Countless potential spectators also got stuck in traffic jams around the festival site. During the event, conditions were sometimes catastrophic due to bad weather and organizational grievances. Despite these adverse circumstances, Woodstock has become known for its peaceful mood. Numerous musicians, employees and visitors spent the festival days under the influence of drugs such as LSD , mescaline , hashish and marijuana .

Although guided by the commercial interests of the promoters, band managers and many musicians, Woodstock embodies the myth of a peace-loving, artistic and "different" America. In contrast, a divided America was in the Vietnam War , was shocked by the political murders of John F. Kennedy , Malcolm X , Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and was impressed by the social conflicts addressed by the counterculture .

The Oscar-winning film Woodstock , made at the festival, is considered one of the most successful documentaries and was partly responsible for transporting the myth of Woodstock into the world.

history

prehistory

Contrary to popular myth, the Woodstock Festival was an entirely commercial event. The young New York rock managers, festival promoters and music producers Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang , along with venture capital investors Joel Rosenman and John P. Roberts, were the initiators, organizers and driving forces behind the Woodstock Festival.

Originally, the 24 and 26 year old duo Lang / Kornfeld only wanted to organize a concert to promote the opening of their planned sound and recording studio, which they wanted to build together at Michael Lang's home in Woodstock . Lang and Kornfeld promised themselves a good deal of business by delivering the recording studio infrastructure virtually free of charge and on site for the numerous popular and high-turnover artists of the folk and rock music scene who had also settled in and around Woodstock at the time. Bob Dylan retired to the small town around 160 kilometers north of New York City in 1966 after his motorcycle accident. He was followed by stars of the time such as Janis Joplin , Jimi Hendrix , Blood, Sweat & Tears and The Band .

To finance the recording studio, the hippie duo Lang / Kornfeld met the same age financial entrepreneurs Joel Rosenman and John P. Roberts. Rosenman and Roberts, who come from the New York upper class, had previously placed an ad in the Wall Street Journal in which they advertised themselves as “young men with unlimited capital” in search of investment opportunities.

At the mediation of attorney Miles Lourie, the four met for the first time on February 6, 1969 in the shared apartment of Rosenman and Roberts on 85th Street east of New York's Central Park to discuss the financing of the Woodstock recording studio. According to Lang and Kornfeld's plans, a concert should be given at the opening of the studio so that the invited media representatives could promote the project. However, Roberts and Rosenman were no longer interested in financing another recording studio, as they had just invested themselves in the construction of the Media Sound recording studio complex set up in a former church on 57th Street .

Instead, they suggested to Lang and Kornfeld that the concert be extended to include a two-day music and art festival. Lang and Kornfeld could then use the resulting profit to finance the recording studio. The budget was initially set at 250,000 US dollars (2020: approx. 1.7 million US dollars) - to cover the cost of performance fees for the musicians, for the organization and the stage infrastructure. With 100,000 visitors expected on both days, with average ticket prices of US $ 5, a net profit of between US $ 250,000 and US $ 300,000 was calculated. However, the festival was extended for another day and from then on it was calculated with 200,000 visitors. The date of August 15-17, 1969 was set.

Pre-planning

Advertisement, May 22, 1969

Woodstock Ventures Inc. was founded on February 28, 1969 with offices on 57th Street, in which the four protagonists each had a 25% stake. According to his skills, Michael Lang took over all the work necessary for the production, such as the engagement of the artists, the stage set-up, the sound system and the lighting. Lang, who had hosted the Miami Pop Festival a few months earlier and left behind a financial disaster, hired chief coordinator Stanley Goldstein to help.

Kornfeld took over public relations and brought PR professionals Jane Friedman, Danny Goldberg, Mike Forman and Bert Cohen to Woodstock Ventures. Kornfeld's advertising strategists ensured that the festival was advertised on every radio station, in large and small newspapers not only across the USA, but also in Canada and Europe - and was thus largely responsible for the influx of visitors.

Joel Rosenman and John Roberts were responsible for financing, administration, insurance, ticket and program production, advance sales and box office. Several lawyers were called in to assist with any legal and legal issues.

The event was originally supposed to take place on the 300-acre Winston Farm in the small town of Saugerties, about 15 kilometers east of Woodstock , in the US state of New York . However, the town's residents successfully opposed the expected hippie rush, and so the organizers received the unexpected cancellation of the proposed festival venue. The same thing happened to the organizers with an industrial site in the small town of Wallkill, which has meanwhile been chosen as the venue. On July 2, 1969, a citizens' initiative obtained that the hosting of the festival in Wallkill was banned by local law.

Venue

Woodstock, originally named venue Wallkill, meanwhile planned venue White Lake / Bethel, actual venue

Only on July 15, with the support of Elliot Teichberg , was the village of White Lake, 70 kilometers southwest of Woodstock in the Catskill Mountains , near the small town of Bethel in the US state of New York found as a venue. Teichberg was the only one in the community to have a license to host musical events, which he himself had issued as chairman of the local chamber of commerce . He rented out his parents' El Monaco Motel to Lang and Kornfeld, which was converted into a production and event office. During the festival, the motel also served as an "emergency room for bad LSD trips". Director Ang Lee later filmed the story of Teichberg's involvement under the title Taking Woodstock .

According to Teichberg, he also helped the organizers find a spacious 240- hectare area on which the festival could be hosted for the anticipated crowds. Through the intermediary Morris Abraham, Teichberg established contact between Michael Lang, the chief coordinator Stanley Goldstein and the Bethel-based dairy farmer Max Yasgur, who owned the appropriate land. Lang and Goldstein were enthusiastic about a slightly rising 150,000 m² pasture, which was embedded in the landscape like an amphitheater and was therefore perfect for a concert event. In addition, this pasture surrounded further fields for use as camping and parking spaces. Yasgur received US $ 50,000 (approx. US $ 350,000 in 2020) for the cow pastures he provided. For possible claims for damages, Yasgur was secured by the organizers with an additional US $ 75,000 deposit. Yasgur was later faced with $ 35,000 in damages lawsuits. In addition, the poultry farmer William Fillipini leased his Fillipini Pond lake facility for US $ 5,000 , which was directly adjacent to the festival site and served as a drinking water reservoir and bathing facility for crew and visitors during the course of the festival.

Max Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, New York, USA

The event was very welcome to the local restaurateurs and the President of the Bethel Business Association. 800 citizens of the small town, however, signed a petition against the hosting of the festival and the expected mass rush. They could only be reassured with undisclosed checks from Joel Rosenman. Another banishment from the festival location by means of a renewed civil uprising would have meant the sure end for the event.

With the help of 400 craftsmen, engineer Chris Langhart, who was engaged as technical director, had to build a festival-compatible infrastructure including new roads, power lines, telephone lines, wells, water pipes and the festival stage with light and loudspeaker towers within three remaining weeks. Musicians had to be won over to the new venue, which sometimes resulted in costly contract renegotiations. In addition, a traffic and safety concept had to be developed. Ticket holders and potential festival-goers had to be informed that the venue had moved from Wallkill to White Lake / Bethel, as the festival had long been advertised as Wallkill in promotional advertisements. In addition, Artie Kornfeld placed advertisements in 250 underground newspapers for the Festival for Peace and Music now being held in White Lake / Bethel .

Tickets and the way to the Free Concert

Three-day ticket (box office on site)
Woodstock visitors on an access road

The ticket sale for the festival was advertised under the motto Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents An Aquarian Exposition - 3 Days of Peace & Music (German: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair Presents An Aquarius Exhibition - 3 Days Full of Peace and Music ). This central theme addressed the dawn of the Age of Aquarius - a widespread assumption among hippies based on astrology that a new age full of love and peace had begun.

The pre-sale cost of the three-day ticket was US $ 18 (2020: US $ 130). A day ticket had to be paid for 7 US $ (2020: 48 US $). In advance sales, 186,000 tickets have already been sold, generating revenues of US $ 1.8 million (2020: US $ 12.5 million). The organizers should request US $ 8 / day ticket or US $ 24 / three-day ticket on site.

Two weeks before the start of the festival, the first visitors came to the site and settled in tents and caravans. This happened at a time when no fence or access controls had yet been set up. The influx of visitors never stopped and swelled daily. Two days before the start of the festival, 30,000 people camped next to the access road 17B, which was blocked due to the lack of police forces until the exit from Highway 17 in Monticello, 15 kilometers away. Shortly afterwards, all five access roads were blocked and traffic jammed up to 27 kilometers in length.

As the ticket booths had not been set up and the fences had to be trampled down, the head lighting technician Chip Monck, who also acted as the announcer, entered the main stage on Saturday morning and announced to thunderous applause: “From now on the concert is free of charge!” Organizer Michael Lang answered when asked why the decision was made to turn Woodstock into a free concert: “It wasn't a decision. We recognized the facts. It is always said that we have opened the gates to the festival site. But there were no goals. On Friday morning 150,000 people were sitting on the premises, the ticket booths had not even been set up. ”In view of the orphaned ticket booths, the powerful music and band manager Bill Graham threatened the organizers not to let his band Grateful Dead perform if the fees were not paid immediately . This requirement joined The Who on. They feared that the organizers could not meet their fee obligations. To prevent these cancellations, the local bank manager was brought in over the weekend to bring certified personal checks by helicopter.

Finances and balance sheets

The organization and implementation of the Woodstock Festival ultimately devoured US $ 2.7 million (2020: US $ 19 million), the majority of which was financed by Rosenman and Roberts. Rosenman and Roberts also financed and organized the mostly free supplies for the nearly 400,000 visitors. In addition, additional food and medical care for the visitors and the musicians themselves had to be flown in with helicopters because of the blocked access routes . The festival initially became a financial failure. According to the organizers, at the end of the festival there was a loss of 1.3 million US dollars. The bank was considering opening bankruptcy proceedings against Woodstock Ventures, which would have robbed many musicians of their fees and suppliers for most of their claims. To avert this from their son, the wealthy parents of John Roberts stepped in with a lightning loan, which he and Rosenman had to pay off over the years.

List of event costs
Costs (1969) Costs (2020) Output position
US $ 800,000 US $ 5,600,000 Production costs (including wages for 1000 workers)
US $ 600,000 US $ 4,200,000 unforeseen expenses for helicopters, medical care and food
US $ 500,000 US $ 3,500,000 Moving-related costs from Wallkill to Bethel
US $ 200,000 $ 1,400,000 Sound and stage lighting
US $ 200,000 $ 1,400,000 advertising
US $ 155,000 US $ 1,100,000 Artist fees
US $ 65,000 US $ 450,000 Liability insurance
US $ 50,000 US $ 350,000 Lease for the festival area to Max Yasgur
US $ 25,000 US $ 170,000 25 percent refund for 4062 holders of unused tickets
US $ 18,000 US $ 130,000 Telephone lines for the Wallkill site
US $ 18,000 US $ 130,000 Telephone lines for the premises in Bethel
US $ 16,000 US $ 110,000 Charter fee for a Boeing 727 to travel to the hippie community Hog Farm
US $ 10,000 US $ 70,000 Advance payments to the radical left ( yippies )
US $ 5,000 US $ 35,000 Further lease payments

Shortly after the festival, under pressure from the lending Roberts family, the duo Lang / Kornfeld was pushed out of Woodstock Ventures and each received US $ 31,750 (2020: US $ 220,000). After paying out their shares, Lang / Kornfeld were no longer involved in rights and license income. The royalties on the later Oscar-winning Woodstock film, which was considered one of the most successful documentaries of all time, was only 20% for the two remaining shareholders, Rosenman / Roberts. The remaining 80% went to Warner Bros. , producer Bob Maurice and director Michael Wadleigh . Rosenman / Roberts were only entitled to 0.5% for the exploitation of the film soundtrack , as the managing director of Atlantic Records , Ahmet Ertegun , had secured the rights for US $ 25,000 in advance.

In 1974, revenues from ticket sales and rights exploitation totaled US $ 3.3 million, while expenses totaled US $ 3.4 million. With the help of the license income from the film as well as the soundtrack and the Woodstock live album , the mountain of debt was finally cleared by 1980. Since then, Rosenman / Roberts and Michael Lang, who rejoined Woodstock Ventures for an anniversary concert with a minority stake, have made millions in profits from Woodstock through licensing for merchandising and image and sound rights . The world's largest fan article licensee Live Nation Merchandise alone generates between 50 and 100 million US dollars with Woodstock products in some years .

Festival course

Friday and Saturday night

Woodstock
Friday 15th August 1969
Band / artist   Performance time   Gage (1969) Value (2020)
(rounded)
annotation
Richie Havens 5:07 pm - 6:00 pm US $ 6,000 $ 42,000
Swami Satchidananda 6:10 pm - 6:20 pm - - Opening speech
Sweetwater 6:30 pm - 7:10 pm US $ 1,250 US $ 9,000
Bert Sommer 7: 8–8: 15 pm US $ 7,500 $ 52,000
Tim Hardin 9:20 pm - 9:45 pm US $ 2,000 $ 14,000
Ravi Shankar 10:00 pm - 10:35 pm US $ 4,500 $ 31,000 Appearance in the rain
Melanie 10:50 pm - 11:20 pm US $ 750 US $ 5,200
Arlo Guthrie 11: 55–00: 30 pm US $ 5,000 US $ 35,000
Joan Baez 12: 55–02: 00 am US $ 10,000 US $ 70,000 Baez was six months pregnant.
Richie Havens' appearance
Satchidananda opening speech
Festival goers
Woodstock visitor
Dancing crowd on Saturday
Campsite east of the stage

According to the plan of organizer Michael Lang, the first day of the festival was all about folk and country music. At 5:07 p.m., the previously unknown folk musician Richie Havens opened the festival. He stood in for Sweetwater who had not yet arrived. Havens received much applause and played a few encores until his song repertoire was exhausted. He then improvised a version of the Spiritual Motherless Child to which he added a verse with the repetitive cry Freedom . The song became an international hit. The representation in the Woodstock film that Havens played a total of three hours is incorrect. In fact, he played eleven songs in about 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, Sweetwater had been flown in by helicopter together with Swami Satchidananda . They thought Woodstock was another simple festival and were surprised by the crowd. Their instruments had already been set up before Haven's performance, but there was never a sound check . After Swami Satchidananda's opening speech, they played their 45-minute set and were very dissatisfied with their performance. Then it started to rain, and Bert Sommer had his performance with his studio guitarist Ira Stone. They played ten songs, including the song Jennifer, dedicated to Jennifer Warnes , and the Simon & Garfunkel Cover America . With the onset of dusk, the appearance of Tim Hardin followed , who at the time was living in Woodstock and whose career seemed to be drawing to a close. He and his band played songs like Misty Roses and If I Were a Carpenter. The latter broke his voice in several places, which was probably due to the strong drug influence.

Then came the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar , who had already performed at the Monterey Pop Festival before Woodstock . Woodstock was the last concert of George Harrison's mentor at festivals of this kind, as he highlighted the open drug use of the hippies and their attitudes towards India. B. in Kama Sutra parties with hashish , increasingly disapproved. At around 10:30 p.m. he felt compelled to cancel the performance because of the heavy rain that had set in.

According to Ravi Shankar, the Incredible String Band should have performed according to the schedule of stage manager John Morris . But this refused to perform in the rain and so the performance was postponed to the next day. She was replaced by the 22-year-old folk singer Melanie , who, according to her own statement, had the impression that she was apparently the only one who was not under the influence of drugs. She knew all the artists from the media, but had never seen any of them up close. That was not the only reason why she appeared with severe stage fright . Melanie played her two songs, Beautiful People and Birthday of the Sun, while the audience moved candles that had been distributed in the dark to the beat of the music. She later recorded this moment in the song Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) , which came to number four in the US charts the following year.

After that, the artist Arlo Guthrie , the son of Woody Guthrie , also from the folk area , appeared. He played Bob Dylan's Walking Down the Line , Amazing Grace and his song Coming into Los Angeles, during which he was briefly interrupted by an announcement by Jerry García . The appearance of the apparently drugged Arlo Guthrie contained, among other things, a monologue about something that had to do with a pharaoh, as one viewer remembers. He also coined one of the festival's most important sentences with his statement “New York State Thruway is Closed, Man”.

The highlight and headliner of the first evening was Joan Baez . The pregnant singer took the opportunity to tell the audience about her imprisoned husband, David Harris , and to present the song Joe Hill . She then put her guitar aside and sang swing low, sweet chariot. When she finished her performance with We Shall Overcome , a heat thunderstorm began, with over 120 mm of precipitation falling within about three hours.

Saturday to Sunday morning

Saturday August 16, 1969
Band / artist   Performance time   Gage (1969) Value (2020)
(rounded)
annotation
Quill 12:15 pm - 12:45 pm US $ 375 $ 2,600
Country Joe McDonald 1:00 pm - 1:30 pm US $ 2,500 $ 17,000 had another gig with The Fish
Santana 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm US $ 2,500 US $ 16,000
John Sebastian 3:30 pm - 3:55 pm US $ 1,000 US $ 7,000 unplanned appearance by Sebastian
Keef Hartley Band 4:45 pm-5:30pm US $ 500 US $ 3,500
The Incredible String Band 6:00 pm - 6:30 pm $ 2,250 US $ 16,000
Canned heat 7:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. US $ 6,500 $ 45,000
Mountain 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm US $ 2,000 $ 14,000
Grateful Dead 10:30 pm - 12:00 am $ 2,250 US $ 16,000
Creedence Clearwater Revival 00:30 am - 01:20 pm US $ 10,000 US $ 70,000
Janis Joplin & The Kozmic Blues Band 2:00 am - 3:00 am US $ 7,500 $ 52,000
Sly & the Family Stone 3:30 am - 4:20 pm US $ 7,000 $ 49,000
The Who 5:00 am - 6:05 am US $ 11,200 US $ 78,000 Gig was disturbed by Abbie Hoffman .
Jefferson Airplane 8:00 am to 9:40 am US $ 7,500 $ 52,000 accompanied by Nicky Hopkins

The following two festival days were dominated by rock music. The first concert on Saturday began at 12:15 pm with a 40-minute performance by the relatively unknown band Quill . The appearance did not appear in the Woodstock film because the recording of the soundtrack was not synchronized with the film.

This was followed by a spontaneous appearance by Country Joe McDonald, who had come as a spectator that day and was only to appear the following day with his band Country Joe and the Fish . He was quite surprised at the crowd. After telling the organizers that he didn't have a guitar with him, they got him a Yamaha FG 150 and sent him on stage with it. McDonald found during the first four songs that the crowd wasn't listening to him. He then responded with a public F- voice sample . To do this, he called out to the audience: "Gimme an F" (give me an "F"), whereupon all conversations fell silent and the crowd yelled a loud "F" at him. When he had finished with the remaining letters “U”, “C” and “K”, he asked several times: “What's that spell?” Then he played his hit I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to- The rag and so ended his performance successfully.

Santana , who was next to take the stage, had just recorded her first album. Although the crowd shouted “No Rain” in the choir and knocked on various objects to underpin this, the performance with the song Soul Sacrifice and the energetic drum solo of the only 20-year-old drummer Michael Shrieve was one of them Highlights of the festival. The stage team had also distributed leftover slats, which the fans beat against each other in time for this song. The band's debut album, which was released soon after the festival, made it into the top 5 of the album charts in the USA mainly because of its 45-minute festival appearance.

The following appearance by John Sebastian was improvised. Sebastian was previously spotted backstage by Wavy Gravy , even though he wasn't booked for the festival at all. Sebastian wore wild bandage batik clothing and, according to his own statement, was so under the influence of drugs that he was unable to refuse the request. When he entered the stage with only an acoustic guitar, he asked the audience: "Just love everyone next to you and take some rubbish with you on the way back." His short performance with a kind of rap , which due to its psychedelic state is almost a parody a hippie conversation was enthusiastically received by the crowd. When he suddenly had text skips, he stopped playing the guitar and shouted "Help me!" To the huge crowd. The audience complied with his wish so that he could finish his piece correctly.

It was followed by the Keef Hartley Band , which was just changing to jazz-rock . Apart from their drummer Keef Hartley , who, as always, appears in Indian clothing , it was the first appearance in the USA for the entire British band . Since the band can neither be heard in the film nor on the record, Keef Hartley only managed to get a recording of the concert through a fan in 2004.

Afterwards, the Incredible String Band performed the day before . She said she had canceled the performance on Friday because she used electrical amplifiers for all instruments , which was too dangerous in the rain. After Santana, the audience was set to “hard music” and instead got psychedelic folk in the scorching sun with the string band . The enthusiasm was limited, and the band became the only one at the festival from which no encore was required. As a result, the appearance cannot be found in either the first version of the film or that of the album. The band manager Joe Boyd therefore saw the postponement of the performance as a missed opportunity.

The subsequent headlining appearance of the blues formation Canned Heat was preceded by a dispute between guitarist Henry “Sunflower” Vestine and bassist Larry “The Mole” Taylor two days earlier on the stage of Fillmore West , as a result of which Vestine had left the band . This felt compelled to hire Harvey Mandel immediately in order to be able to continue the tour. Since they were not even able to rehearse together, the then drummer and later band leader Adolfo "Fito" de la Parra initially refused to perform at the festival, but was then persuaded. The band arrived at the same time as the roadies , who had managed to navigate the chaos in the truck with the equipment, taking them over 13 hours (usually two to three hours) to get between the Catskills and New York . The band played during sunset and was celebrated by the audience like no other during the festival. Her song Going Up the Country ( audio sample Midi ? / I ) reached the top of the American charts this week and later became the festival's unofficial anthem. Audio file / audio sample

The subsequent appearance of Leslie West's band Mountain was only the fourth joint live appearance of the band, which had just been founded. Jerry García was dissatisfied with the multi-hour performance of Grateful Dead , which began with St. Stephen and was soon interrupted by the band because of alleged monitor problems on stage. Due to the rain during the performance, the band is said to have suffered some electrical surges from their electrical instruments. In retrospect, many fans felt that the band had performed better before. Since the performance was deliberately neither included in the film nor in the album, many people did not know anything about it for a long time. The subsequent appearance of the co-headliners Creedence Clearwater Revival also appeared neither in the film nor in the original album, as John Fogerty and the record company Fantasy declined. Fogerty considered the gig too bad to be published. Only a small part of the audience was awake, and the band reportedly had technical difficulties.

Janis Joplin appeared afterwards, but her performance is also rated by fans as one of their worst. Many believed that the band lacked commitment, which meant that Joplin was unable to live out their usual explosiveness. Her voice broke frequently. However, she made a remark about the hippie movement that was often quoted later: "We used to be few, now there are masses and masses and masses of us." The performance was also not published. In the early hours of the morning, Sly & the Family Stone performed , which is considered one of the best of the festival and the highlight of Sly Stone's career, even though it took place in the rain.

At 5 a.m., the British band The Who followed . Their manager initially refused to let the band perform without prepayment . It was only when organizer Mike Lang threatened to spread the word about this to the crowd that he could be dissuaded from this project. Her appearance, made famous by the later film, contained some songs from her double album Tommy , which was released in June . Activist Abbie Hoffman interrupted the performance by trying to deliver a protest speech against the capture of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party . Pete Townshend shooed him off the stage; he later said that he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's capture. Townshend ended the performance with the ritual smashing of his guitar, which he then threw into the audience.

The festival ended on this day, which had become very long due to the waiting times due to the rain, by Jefferson Airplane . They started playing shortly after sunrise. Singer Grace Slick announced that the band would play a little “morning maniac music” (something like “music for the morning crazy”). Among other things, the song Volunteers was presented for the first time , which appeared six months later together with the album of the same name .

Sunday and Monday morning

Sunday 17th August 1969
Band / artist   Performance time   Gage (1969) Value (2020)
(rounded)
annotation
Joe Cocker and The Grease Band 2:00 pm - 3:25 pm US $ 1,375 US $ 10,000 After the performance, a thunderstorm led to a long interruption.
Country Joe and the Fish 6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. US $ 2,500 $ 17,000 Country Joe's second appearance
Ten Years After 8:15 pm - 9:15 pm $ 3,250 US $ 23,000
The band 10:00 pm - 10:50 pm US $ 7,500 $ 52,000
Johnny Winter 00:00 am - 01:05 am US $ 3,750 US $ 26,000
Blood, Sweat & Tears 01:30 am - 02:30 am US $ 15,000 $ 100,000
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 3:00 am - 4:00 am US $ 5,000 US $ 35,000
Paul Butterfield Blues Band 6:00 am - 6:45 am US $ 7,500 $ 52,000
Sha Na Na 7:30 am - 8:00 am US $ 700 US $ 4,900 Drummer Jocko Marcellino was the youngest musician at the festival
Jimi Hendrix + Gypsy Sun & Rainbows 9:00 am to 11:00 am US $ 18,000 US $ 130,000 At Hendrix's appearance there were still around 35,000 spectators.
Joe Cocker's appearance
After the downpour

The last day of Woodstock began with the appearance of Joe Cocker , who had his first major breakthrough in his career with his cover version of the Beatles classic With a Little Help from My Friends, which was released the previous year . After its appearance, a violent thunderstorm set in. When the storm stopped, the farmer Max Yasgur stepped onto the stage on whose fields the festival was taking place. He thanked the audience for helping him prove something to the world. In his opinion, the festival-goers together had proven that half a million people could come together and have nothing but fun and music. Yasgur claimed that this would be the largest gathering of people in one place.

This was followed by the appearance of Country Joe and the Fish, who had been booked at the last minute to replace Jethro Tull . Even though the band had performed at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 , Woodstock was the high point of their career. The I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag was played again. At around 8:15 p.m. there was another highlight with the 90-minute performance of Ten Years After . Since the rain had changed the humidity , the band had to pause after about a minute during their first song Good Morning Little School Girl to tune the guitars again. The regular set was followed by the encore I'm Going Home, with guitarist Alvin Lee playing an almost ten-minute solo . This was the only song from the performance that was recorded by the film crew. She had started filming with three cameras, one of which stopped halfway through the show. For the triple split-screen version of the film, the mirrored footage from the right camera was therefore used towards the end to fill the gap.

The band's performance at 10:00 p.m. was accompanied by severe episodes of stage fright among the band members. The band's musicians weren't used to crowds like this. The experiences of Woodstock and the appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival two weeks later , where the musicians played with Bob Dylan, were then processed in the song Stage Fright (" Stage Fright "). Blood, Sweat & Tears , who were considered one of the headliners, followed at 1:30 a.m. According to the band's manager, the performance shouldn't have appeared in the film, as the $ 7,500 the band received for the performance was allegedly too little to keep the performance going in the future. However, the film crew managed to record the opening piece, More and More , before being expelled from the stage.

Although the subsequent appearance of Johnny Winter was filmed, he did not appear in the documentary. His manager had fallen out with the film crew, who then prevented the appearance from being published on the grounds that it was "too strange". Around 3:00 a.m., Crosby, Stills and Nash followed . This gig, during which the new band member Neil Young came on stage, was the second live appearance of the formation in the new line-up. The band members were accordingly nervous and played two sets. It started with Suite: Judy Blue Eyes , an eight-minute suite about the end of the love affair between Stephen Stills and Judy Collins . They also played a song at 4 + 20 that only appeared on the 1970 album Déjà Vu .

After that, the Butterfield Blues Band appeared, which had re-formed shortly before after a studio break. When the band around Paul Butterfield performed , Buzzy Feiten was there. For him it was the first professional appearance. With her 40-minute performance, Sha Na Na became known to a wide audience. The band began to establish themselves in the American rock 'n' roll landscape. Sha-Na-Na were the only performers at the Woodstock Festival who were still without a record deal .

At 9:00 a.m., Jimi Hendrix, who was a festival highlight, and his accompanying band took the stage. Hendrix had put together a new band for the festival: Gypsy Sun & Rainbows with Mitch Mitchell (drums), his old Army friend Billy Cox (bass), Larry Lee (rhythm guitar) and two percussionists . Hendrix played, among other things, the title The Star-Spangled Banner , his interpretation of the US national anthem, as an appeal for peace against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, in which he tried to musically reproduce the sound of rockets falling and the death of soldiers. With Hendrix's performance of Purple Haze , Villanova Junction and Hey Joe , the festival ended on Monday morning at 11:10 a.m. in front of about 35,000 visitors.

Line up

Michael Lang and his booker John Morris were responsible for the line-up. Morris was a protégé of Bill Graham , one of the most influential music managers who had worked his way up to a very important man in the music business under Graham himself. John Morris was instrumental in bringing about the Woodstock Festival. He was accepted into the staff very early on and hired the artists, all of whom he knew personally, to perform.

Due to the lack of reputation and experience of the organizers, it was difficult even for Morris to get bands in advance. The artist agencies and band managers did not value cooperation with such inexperienced organizers and did not want to take any risks. This is certainly the main reason that the avant-garde of the rock and pop culture of the time - The Beatles , Bob Dylan , The Rolling Stones , Blind Faith , The Doors, as well as black musicians like James Brown or Aretha Franklin - shone through their absence. Except for The Who , Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix , no top acts could be booked. In order to offset the skepticism of the managers and agents, Woodstock Ventures in the person of Michael Lang sometimes paid double fees.

In the end, 38 bands were booked for the festival. In the run-up there were some cancellations - for example from the Jeff Beck Group , which had split up shortly before the festival. Some bands didn't manage to get to the festival site through the traffic jam. Iron Butterfly sat in a New York hotel, waiting to be picked up, but the helicopter did not come. The Moody Blues , which featured on early festival posters, was also planned . Since they had also been hired for the socialist rally in Paris, which was taking place at the same time , the band decided by tossing a coin. In retrospect, the band regretted the decision to perform in Paris. Joni Mitchell failed to attend the festival as planned, so she wrote an anthem to the festival with Woodstock at home in front of the television . This song became a world hit with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Ian Matthews' band Matthews Southern Comfort.

technology

stage

The main stage, made entirely of wood according to the design by Steve Cohen, was set up in an east-west direction so that the musicians had the rising sun behind them. The Filippini Pond lake facility served as an atmospheric backdrop. The stage was set up directly on West Shore Road in order to keep the access routes for the building materials required to erect the stage as short and uncomplicated as possible. The stage platform measured 20 meters × 15 meters × 5 meters and had a rotatable round stage in the middle, which was mounted on rollers. While the current band was supposed to play in the front half, the rear half was intended for assembly and dismantling. The plan was to reduce the breaks in renovation to a minimum and at the end of a concert the stage would only be rotated 180 degrees for the next band. Since the weight of the musical equipment had been underestimated, the roles broke on the first day and they returned to the conventional system with breaks in between changes. A backstage area was set up behind the stage as a place to stay for the musicians and the event team. A three meter high wooden wall was erected between the stage and the audience for the media representatives. The stage and the roofs of the other buildings were covered with large canvas . The construction of the stage and the installation of the lighting technology was directed by the lighting designer and technical director EH Beresford "Chip" Monck. Monck was already responsible for the stage and lighting technology of the Monterey Pop Festival and most of the major concert events in the USA and had a well-rehearsed team and numerous assistants under him.

In addition to the large main stage, there was also a smaller, open and free stage, the Alternative Stage . It had been built by the members of the Hog Farm and was available to the general public. Joan Baez played on this secondary stage for 40 minutes before making her appearance on the main stage.

Light and sound technology

The Woodstock stage with sound / light towers and the FoH at the appearance of Joe Cocker

The main stage was flanked on both sides by loudspeaker towers made of metal frames, each 21 meters high, in order to be able to cover areas further back. Next to the loudspeaker towers on the stage there was a lighting tower equipped with two 1300 watt high-performance carbon arcs - follower spotlights of the Super Trouper type . In addition, lighting designer “Chip” Monck fitted two further 21-meter-high light towers with four more Super Troupers each, around 40 meters away from the stage, in the middle of the audience . The unsecured lamps, each weighing 300 kg, were operated manually by followspot operators who were also located on the top platform of the light towers for this purpose.

The public address system, designed for an audience of 200,000, was developed, built and operated by Bill Hanley and his company Hanley Sound . Hanley is considered the pioneer and "father" of the festival sound. For Woodstock , Hanley designed and built head-high loudspeakers from marine plywood. Each of these boxes weighed 500 kg, was 180 cm high, 90 cm wide and 100 cm deep. Each loudspeaker consisted of two centrally placed bass boxes that were installed under a pair of high-frequency horn systems they had built themselves . Each of these high frequency horn systems consisted of an Altec-Lansing Model 1003B with 5 × 2 multi-cellular horns or 2 × 2 horns specially made by Hanley using Altec 290 compression drivers. In addition to this combination, four 15-inch JBL- D130 drivers with Loudness Maximizer were installed, below four further 15-inch JBL-D140 drivers to maximize bass and range. The entire sound system became known as Woodstock Bins .

About 20 meters away from the main stage, in the middle of the crowd, there was a makeshift platform that served as an improvised FoH with sound equipment , a mixer and a suitably skilled technician.

Behind the stage were audio recording devices that were housed in the trailer of a semitrailer . For the record, two were in the trailer behind the main stage eight-track - tape recorders available that ran each time delay. So it was possible to always have one tape machine record while the tape was changed on the other . For safety reasons, the coils had to be changed every 20 to 25 minutes, as they could record a maximum of 30 minutes of music. Since one audio track was used throughout to record a synchronization track of the cameras for the film , and a second recorded the applause of the audience, the sound engineer Eddie Kramer and his assistants only had six audio tracks to record the music. While the sound engineers were still able to adequately record solo artists who only worked with vocals and acoustic guitar on two separate tracks, similar-sounding instruments were combined on one track for bands with more than six sound sources. During Jimi Hendrix's performance, Kramer used one track for drums , one for additional percussion , one for Hendrix's electric guitar , one for Hendrix's voice, and another for electric bass .

During the performances, a new microphone system was sometimes used, which had been developed by the technicians of the band Grateful Dead for their Wall of Sound : a singer received two microphones per microphone stand, which were switched side by side in phase-shifted fashion. The purpose of this construction was to suppress feedback at high volumes. However, since this circuit also resulted in reduced sound quality, it was not used by all artists. At later concerts this technique was completely abandoned.

The cost of the sound and lighting system was US $ 200,000 (2020: US $ 1.4 million).

electricity

The complete power supply was provided by the Pantel Electric Company from South Fallsburg , after they had received the monopoly 14 days before the festival. Her work, which was still in full swing at the beginning of the festival, included connecting the 40 food stands, a kind of open-air cinema, outdoor sockets for the camping area and the path lighting throughout the site. Company boss Pantel moved his caravan right next to the stage in order to set up his command center there and be on site. It was worked in two shifts with 25 men each. Time and again there were bottlenecks in terms of material, which often had to be procured directly from New York City. Pantel received a 1200 amp three-phase alternating current distribution system for the main stage from a friend who had bought some of the New York World's Fair buildings from 1964 and 1965. The complete power supply cost Woodstock Ventures US $ 150,000.

care

The organizers had to struggle with grievances in every area of ​​supply. The on-site situation, which was sometimes catastrophic after the storms, prompted Nelson Rockefeller , then Governor of New York State, to talk to the organizer Michael Lang on Sunday morning . Rockefeller planned to send a 10,000-strong military division to the festival. Long spoke to the politician, although this measure, but could not prevent the County Sullivan County the state of emergency proclaimed. In the end, the US Army had to fly in emergency food supplies and ambulance doctors from nearby Stewart Air Force Base and fly those in need of treatment out of the area to transport them to hospitals.

Catering

Originally, the catering company was Food for Love (food for Love) was entrusted with the sole food output that should have taken place in connection with the tickets. However, since the majority of the people had no tickets, the streets were clogged for subsequent deliveries and the company's employees began, in the spirit of the festival, to give the goods to people without tickets, this was by far not enough. On the first day alone, 500,000 hamburgers and hot dogs were consumed.

The supply of food and fresh water had come to a standstill due to the traffic jams. The operators of the hot dog stands reacted with high prices, which in turn outraged the visitors. On Sunday morning the last stocks of hot dogs and hamburgers were also gone. Members of the hippie community Hog Farm and two other hippie communities had set up the open-air kitchens. In addition to the population of Bethel and the surrounding communities, who sometimes sold their agricultural products to the audience at horrendous prices or distributed huge amounts of chicken soup and sandwiches at very low prices , there was also the Hog Farm with its manager Wavy Gravy , who also prepared masses of food and sent them to them People distributed.

Medical supplies

The residents of the Hog Farm were also the ones who looked after the huge numbers of drug victims who came about through the open sale and consumption of mescaline and LSD. Even with minor injuries, such as the frequent cuts due to bottles lying around, the group supported the 50 or so doctors who were flown in afterwards and who sometimes worked without pay. There were also large numbers of sunburns and heat stroke to deal with. A total of 5162 medical interventions were performed, 797 of which became necessary after substance abuse. A young man died when he was run over by a tractor while lying in his sleeping bag.

Sanitary facilities

The 600 mobile toilet cubicles were quickly overcrowded and gave off an acrid stench. The concert-goers often had to queue for several hours to use them, which led many to use the surrounding bushes or simply the meadow to relieve themselves. Soon the people themselves put up signs indicating where it was forbidden to urinate because of the drinking water.

reception

In retrospect, the Woodstock Festival is often received critically, particularly because of the accompanying myth. The 1971 Oscar-winning documentary Woodstock plays a special role in the creation of myths and legends . Journalist Alan Posener considers the festival to be “a major media fraud. The incredible reverberation of Woodstock is the victory of myth, images, and marketing over reality. (…) Woodstock was far from embodying the ideals of hippy. ”Rather,“ the festival manifested the contradictions of the hippie ideology. In John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, Lang found two young venture capitalists who, according to an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of capitalism and conservatism, were looking for an investment opportunity: the birth of the hippie legend out of the spirit of profit. "

The photographer Elliot Landy, then the official festival photographer and author of the book Woodstock Vision - The Spirit of a Generation , also says: "Woodstock was food for the soul". The pop culture expert Michael Behrendt says: “The unforeseen that has been overcome in an almost magical way. Woodstock should actually have failed - it borders on a miracle that nobody was seriously harmed. "

The critic Frank Schäfer, author of the book Woodstock '69. The legend. and the journalist Christian Schachinger from the daily newspaper Der Standard write by mutual agreement that “Woodstock was the musical high point and at the same time the end point of the hippie movement.” Schäfer adds that political engagement was increasingly lost in escapism and drug use.

Fred Weintraub, then Vice President of Warner Bros. , who worked with promoter and PR specialist Artie Kornfeld to finance the documentary, said: “There were only 400,000 people at the festival. But whoever you ask about this time, they all say they were there. And they all think they were there because of the movie. Ultimately, Woodstock's worldwide peace and love culture only became important through the documentary. "

The film critic Roger Ebert writes: "It was only the film that gave a whole generation a voice - and made Woodstock part of the American myth." Tobias Rapp of the news magazine Der Spiegel considers the documentary to be a propaganda film.

Aftermath

Woodstock , global reporting and above all the documentary , which can also be seen worldwide, changed the image and perception of rock music and its protagonists explosively from subculture to pop culture.

While the soundtrack and the film were distributed millions of times, the idea of ​​organizing small Woodstocks established itself in many countries. Whether on the Isle of Wight, on Fehmarn, in Roskilde or elsewhere.

In Germany, some music festivals were and are called "German Woodstock" by journalists, including the Love and Peace Festival (1970) with around 25,000 visitors on the Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn and the Anti-WAAhnsinns Festival (1986) with over 100,000 visitors in support of the protests against the planned Wackersdorf reprocessing plant .

In Poland, the annual August Przystanek Woodstock (Woodstock stop) has been held since 1995 with up to 750,000 spectators.

In 1996, the American billionaire Alan Gerry bought the almost unchanged festival site with the help of his Gerry Foundation. With the aim of protecting the original venue, Gerry donated a total of 150 million US dollars and initially had the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts and amphitheater built , which opened in 2006 . In 2008, The Museum at Bethel Woods opened , which houses extensive exhibitions on the Woodstock Festival. The entire former festival site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an official cultural monument of the United States since February 28, 2017 .

Anniversaries

Memorial stone for the 15th anniversary
  • In 1979, a tenth anniversary concert was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City with Richie Havens , Taj Mahal , Country Joe and the Fish , Canned Heat , Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Elliott Randall (both former members of the band Steely Dan ) performed. This event was also released on VHS under the title The Celebration Continues - Woodstock '79 .
  • 1979 also toured the 10th anniversary of the "Woodstock Revival on Tour" through the Federal Republic. At the end of these four nationwide appearances, Joe Cocker , Richie Havens , Arlo Guthrie and Country Joe McDonald appeared in the Philipshalle in Düsseldorf on September 23, 1979 .
  • In 1984 a memorial stone was erected on the former festival site to commemorate the festival and its participants.
  • In 1989 there was an impromptu concert in August that began with a single folk guitarist who had come to the former festival site. The audience of the concert, which mainly played unknown bands like The Fugs , quickly grew to 30,000 people. Also present were Wavy Gravy and Al Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix's father .
  • In 1994, the concert was held for the 25th anniversary in Saugerties, New York Woodstock II took place at which, among many alternative -Interpreten such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers , Green Day and Nine Inch Nails artists like Joe Cocker and The Band appeared that already had performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. The headliner was Peter Gabriel . The highlight of Woodstock II is the appearance of Bob Dylan , who was announced to the approximately 350,000 spectators in allusion to his absence at the 1969 festival with the words "We have waited 25 years to hear this ...". In the same year, Woodstock Two, the CD version of the second album for the Woodstock Festival of 1969, was released.
  • In 1999, the Woodstock III festival took place on the 30th anniversary , but it was overshadowed by violent clashes.
  • 2009: An anniversary concert was planned in New York for the 40th anniversary of the festival.
  • In 2017 the 15 hectare site was declared a cultural monument.
  • For the 50th anniversary in 2019, the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts is announcing the creation of trails across the festival grounds that will retold the story of Woodstock. The site is "historically extremely important". With a view to the anniversary, contemporary archaeological excavations were carried out on the site by Binghamton University in 2017 and 2018 . The archaeologists uncovered former sales areas and want to determine the exact location of the stage based on the investigations.
  • Michael Lang, one of the original organizers, planned a new edition with Woodstock 50 from August 16 to 18, 2019 in Watkins Glen in upstate New York, about 200 kilometers from the original location. After a suitable space could not be found there or anywhere else and promises made both financially and by several artists had been withdrawn, the event was canceled two weeks before the planned date.

Publications

photography

The official Woodstock photographer was Elliott Landy, who was previously best known for his Bob Dylan photos. According to his own statements, he did not record all concerts. Because his girlfriend's shop in Woodstock burned down and he drove into town, he missed the appearances of The Who, Sly & The Family Stone and Crosby, Stills & Nash. He also did not photograph the appearance of the Grateful Dead.

Movies

  • Woodstock (1970), documentary, 186 min
  • Woodstock - The Lost Performances (1990), concert documentation, 69 min
  • Woodstock - The Directors Cut (1994), documentary, 225 min
  • Taking Woodstock (2009), feature film, 110 min
  • Woodstock - Three Days That Shaped a Generation (2019), documentary, D / F / USA

Sound carrier

literature

Web links

Commons : Woodstock  - album containing pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joel Makower: Woodstock: The Oral History , State University of New York Press, Albany, 2009, page 25, preview in Google Book Search
  2. a b c Peter Tschmuck: 40 years Woodstock - economic debacle and myth , Austrian Society for Music Economic Research, August 2009
  3. a b Ben Sisario: John P. Roberts, 56, a Producer Of Woodstock and Its Revivals , New York Times, November 2, 2001
  4. a b James E. Perone: Woodstock: An Encyclopedia of the Music and Art Fair , Greenwood Pub Group Inc., New York, page 23, preview in Google Book Search
  5. Michael Riedel: Back to Woodstock , New York Post, August 9, 2009
  6. ^ Sabine Nikolay: Woodstock: Myth and Historical Facts , Austrian Society for Music Research, September 29, 2009
  7. ^ Website of Artie Kornfeld
  8. Janine Weber: Woodstock 2012 - a realistic event concept or a pure illusion? Diplomica Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2012, page 22
  9. Jennifer Rosenberg: The Woodstock Festival of 1969 , About.com, October 30, 2015
  10. a b Carsten Heidböhmer: 40 Years of Woodstock: Ten Myths About Love & Peace , Der Stern, August 14, 2009
  11. Bethel Wood Center for the Arts: History of Bethel Wood Center for the Arts "... the Gerry Foundation acquired the 37-acre field that was once the site of the original Woodstock festival."
  12. ^ Michael Lang: The Road to Woodstock. Ecco / Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2009, Dutch preview in Google Book Search
  13. Marc Pitzke: Hippie-Sause 1969 The Man Who Made Woodstock Possible , Spiegel Online , August 14, 2008
  14. ^ Sylvia Kekulé: The Woodstock Story , Allitera Verlag, Munich, 2009, page 194
  15. ^ Sylvia Kekulé: The Woodstock Story , Allitera Verlag, Munich, 2009, page 195
  16. August 18, 1969: Woodstock Festival ends , BBC News, August 18, 2005
  17. a b Joel Rosenman, John Roberts, Robert Pilpel: Making Woodstock: A legendary festival and its story (told by those who paid for it) , orange-press, Freiburg, 2009 (new edition)
  18. ^ Homepage of Artie Kornfeld ; Original Woodstock tickets from advance sales
  19. Janine Weber: Woodstock 2012 - a realistic event concept or a pure illusion? , Diplomica Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2012, page 26
  20. ^ Sylvia Kekulé: The Woodstock Story , Allitera Verlag, Munich 2009, page 200.
  21. Nikolaus Pieper: Let's talk about money: Michael Lang 'Woodstock got me a million in debt' , Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 10, 2010
  22. ^ A b c d Michael Evans, Paul Kingsbury: Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the World. Sterling Publishing, New York, 2009, pp. 250/251
  23. Michael Lang: "The Road To Woodstock. From The Man Behind The Legendary Festival ” , Ecco / HarperCollins, New York, 2009, page 255
  24. ^ Billboard , August 19, 1995, Preview in Google Book Search
  25. Michael Evans, Paul Kingsbury: Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the World. Sterling Publishing, New York, 2009, p. 250
  26. ^ Ray Waddell: 40 years later, Woodstock a thriving business , Reuters, Aug. 15, 2009
  27. a b c Woodstock line-up
  28. Kai Wichelmann: Woodstock 1969: This is what the musicians deserved - Hendrix with only $ 18,000 up front , Rolling Stone Magazine, March 9, 2015
  29. Jump up ↑ Legend of Eternal Woodstock , Die Welt, April 23, 2013
  30. Woodstock schedule
  31. Jörg Gülden: Woodstock: Miracle or Waterloo? P. 144
  32. ^ The Music Festival Home Page: The Festival. Day Two ( archive version ( memento of October 23, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) from the Internet Archive , accessed on July 28, 2009)
  33. ^ Karen Burland, Stephanie Pitts: Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience , Routledge, New York 2016, 152.
  34. Alan Posener: Woodstock Was a Big Media Fraud , Die Welt, August 15, 2009
  35. ^ Sabine Nikolay: Woodstock: Myth and Historical Facts , Austrian Society for Music Research, September 29, 2009
  36. ^ Joel Makower: Woodstock: The Oral History , State University of New York Press, Albany, 2009, p. 278, preview in Google Book Search
  37. Data sheet Super Trouper High Intensity Carbon Arc Follow Spot , manufacturer Strong Electric Corporation, Toledo, Ohio
  38. Michael Wadleigh: Woodstock (1970) , at 05:38 minutes
  39. Janine Weber: Woodstock 2012 - a realistic event concept or a pure illusion? , Diplomica Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2012, page 25
  40. ^ Altec & JBL gear at Woodstock (1969) - Bill Hanley sound , Lansing Heritage, 2012
  41. Challenging Jobs: Woodstock Music & Art Fair in: Electric contractor , August 1976, pp. 29–31
  42. Michael Evans, Paul Kingsbury: Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the World. Sterling Publishing, New York, 2009, p. 225
  43. a b Alan Posener: Woodstock was a great media fraud , Die Welt, August 15, 2009
  44. Spencer Bright: Forty far-out facts you never knew about Woodstock (facts 35 and 36) , Daily Mail, August 8, 2009
  45. Book review: Schäfer, Frank: Woodstock '69 , Wiener Zeitung, April 28, 2009.
    Christian Schachinger: The last mud pack against the evil world , Der Standard, August 13, 2009
  46. Website of Fred Weintraub, Vice President of Warner Bros. (1969) ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Fred Weintraub talks about Woodstock @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fredweintraub.com
  47. Tobias Rapp : The Man with the Meadow , Der Spiegel, August 10, 2009
  48. Jordan Riefe: Bill Graham: 'He was the only one not on drugs' , The Guardian, May 7, 2015, accessed November 26, 2016
  49. Wolfgang Kraushaar: They had a dream , TAZ - Die Tageszeitung, August 17, 2002
  50. ^ Karl-Heinz Körner: Fehmarn Festival 1970: Mud bath with Jimi Hendrix. spiegel.de, October 25, 2008, accessed on March 12, 2016 .
  51. ^ Franziska Biederer: "The festival will be the German Woodstock". Mittelbayerische.de, March 10, 2012, accessed on March 12, 2016 .
  52. Woodstock in Wackersdorf , ( Musikexpress of January 2, 1987)
  53. ^ Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. Retrieved February 10, 2018 .
  54. ^ The Associated Press: Woodstock site gets national historic recognition. , USA Today, June 7, 2017
  55. ^ Woodstock 1994 concert review , ram.org, accessed August 29, 2009
  56. Michael Hill: Getting Back To the Garden in Bethel ( Memento of May 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) , February 1997, accessed on August 29, 2009
  57. ^ Bob Dylan Woodstock '94 , veoh.com, accessed August 29, 2009
  58. Katrin Schoelkopf: Woodstock at Tempelhofer Flugfeld , in: Berliner Morgenpost from February 10, 2009, accessed on February 19, 2009
  59. Archaeologists are looking for the Woodstock stage on ZDF today, June 27, 2018
  60. Archaeologists excavate the area of ​​the Woodstock Festival in the USA at Deutsche Welle on June 27, 2018.
  61. Woodstock new edition planned . ORF.at, January 10, 2019, accessed January 10, 2019.
  62. Too many rejections - Woodstock Revival is canceled. Spiegel Online, August 1, 2019, accessed on the same day.
  63. Dominik Petzold: Interview with Elliott Landy , Abendzeitung Munich, August 9, 2019, accessed on August 14, 2019
  64. Woodstock - Three Days That Changed a Generation , accessed August 2, 2019
  65. Holger True: 40 Years of Woodstock - Monuments of Music for the Next Generation , Abendblatt.de, August 8, 2009, accessed on September 22, 2013
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on May 26, 2006 in this version .

Coordinates: 41 ° 42 ′ 5 "  N , 74 ° 52 ′ 49"  W.