Woodstock Music Festival

The Woodstock music festival, which is technically known as the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, was one of the most significant events of the 1960s, and it remains one of the most important moments in the history of music. Many festivals have tried to recreate the magic of the Woodstock music festival since, but there remains only one Woodstock.

Woodstock festival poster

The Woodstock music festival was held the weekend of August 15 – 18, 1969, though initially it was slated to end on the 17th. The scene of the event was a 600 acre dairy farm in upstate New York, owned by Max Yusgar. Although common Woodstock lore holds that this farm is in the town of Woodstock, New York, it is actually located in Bethel, NY, which is around 40 miles south of Woodstock.

The counterculture, or so called hippie, movement of the 1960s, is thought by many to have to have both peaked and ended at music festivals in 1969. The Altamont music festival is seen by many as the event that put the breaks on hippie culture (thanks to its ugly incidents with Hell’s Angels "security guards"), but Woodstock is viewed as the most triumphant event in the history of the hippie culture. At the time, it was the largest music festival, with 500,000 music fans attending the event over the three days, and while its attendance figures have been surpassed, its importance has not. Woodstock also made popular the notion of outdoor concerts that span several days, with the attendees living in tents on site for the duration of the show (Woodstock was not the first music festival of this sort, but it did popularize the format).

It is difficult to overstate the cultural significance of Woodstock not only to the U.S. but to the world. Many of the most lauded music performances in history took place on the Woodstock stage, and innumerable books, movies, and documentaries have been penned about the event. Even the U.S. Post Office has gotten in on the act, issuing Woodstock commemoration stamps (oh, the irony).

Woodstock continues to be enough of a cultural force that people have tried to recreate it again and again. “New” Woodstocks were held in:

• 1979
• 1989
• 1994
• 1999

No subsequent incarnation of Woodstock captured the magic of the first event, and the last even in 1999 received a considerable amount of bad press, thanks to numerous allegations of brutal fighting between concert goers and several reported sexual assaults.

Rumors have it that there may be a 2009 Woodstock in the works, but no plans have been announced formally as of late 2007.

The Woodstock music festival was all about the bands, of course, and the roster reads like a who's who of music. It goes as follows:

August 15:

• Richie Havens
• Country Joe McDonald (solo, without his Fish)
• John Sebastian
• Sweetwater
• Incredible String Band
• Bert Sommer
• Tim Hardin
• Ravi Shankar
• Melanie
• Arlo Guthrie
• Joan Baez

August 16:

• Quill
• Keef Hartley Band
• Santana
• Canned Heat
• Mountain
• Janis Joplin
• Sly and the Family Stone
• Grateful Dead
• Creedance Clearwater Revival

August 17 (note here that the music did not stop at the this point – the first band took the stage around 3am on August 17, right after CCR)

• The Who
• Jefferson Airplane (there was a break after Jefferson Airplane, until around 2pm)
• Joe Cocker
• Country Joe and The Fish
• Ten Years After
• The Band
• Blood, Sweat, and Tears
• Johnny Winter (with Edgar Winter)

August 18 (again, there was no break, and the music continued after the midnight hour)

• Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
• Paul Butterfield Blues Band
• Sha Na Na
• Jimi Hendrix

A full set list of the Woodstock music festival can be found here.

• Led Zeppelin were invited to play Woodstock, but their manager turned it down, fearing they would get lost in the shuffle of all of the bands on the bill.
• Joni Mitchell wanted to play, but her agent insisted she appear on The Dick Cavett Show on August 18 rather than “sitting in a field with 500 people.” Two other bands that did play Woodstock (Jefferson Airplane and CSN&Y) appeared on the same episode of The Dick Cavett Show with her.
• The Beatles were invited, but refused. John Lennon suggested he come and play with The Plastic Ono Band, but the organizers declined.
• Iron Butterfly missed their performance because they were stranded in an airport.
• Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman interrupted The Who’s set to make an appeal for fellow activist John Sinclair to be released from prison. He was whacked in the head with a guitar by Pete Townshend for his efforts. Although the incident is caught on tape and film, Hoffman took to denying it ever happened.

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