History of the Woodstock Festival

_Elsa_

It’s time to get back on track so Elsa wipes the tears away as she begins to look for articles on Woodstock.

“Wow it was over 50 years ago,” Elsa says. “The years sure went by fast! Here is a good article about the Woodstock festival.”

‘Half a million hippies, beatniks, and long-hairs descended upon upstate New York for the Woodstock music festival. The world would never be the same.

Max Yasgur probably never imagined that he would host at least 400,000 people on his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York. But for three straight days in August 1969, his bucolic pastures became a hub for sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll during Woodstock — the music festival that changed the world.

The Woodstock music festival is not only an icon of American musical history but of American history itself. In the last month of the last summer of the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of hopeful, optimistic young people came together and define their generation and their era as a whole.

But as iconic as this festival remains 50 years later, its story is widely misunderstood to this day. For starters, even though it’s known as the Woodstock festival, Yasgur’s dairy farm wasn’t even walking distance from the town of Woodstock — it was 43 miles away.

So how did the most famous music festival in history get misnomered? Who organized it, and what myths about that weekend were mere legend — and which were true?

This is the complete, true story of what unfolded in upstate New York during that historic weekend in August 1969.

Organizing Woodstock Music Festival - The Woodstock music festival was the brainchild of four men in their 20s looking for a viable business opportunity. Since musical innovation blossomed in the 1960s, they wanted to harness its popularity on a grand scale.

John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Michael Lang had an admirable collective résumé to make their attempt viable. Lang had already organized the Miami Music Festival in 1968, and successfully so. Kornfeld was Capitol Records’ youngest vice president ever, while Roberts and Rosenman were young entrepreneurs out of New York City.

The four young friends had a genuine appreciation for music; their music festival was more than a cynical attempt to cash in on popular music. To make the mission official, they formed Woodstock Ventures, Inc. The next step was finding talent to sign on.

Creedence Clearwater Revival was the very first act to sign on, lending, well, credence to the Woodstock music festival.

When Creedence Clearwater Revival became the first act to agree to perform in April 1969, Woodstock Ventures landed all the credibility required to curate a respectable roster of contemporary artists. Though the line-up was growing into an impressively curated batch, securing the venue itself was becoming a problem.

The original plan was to hold the Woodstock festival at Howard Mills Industrial Park in Wallkill, New York, which the organizers leased for $10,000.

“The vibes weren’t right there. It was an industrial park,” Roberts later recounted. “I just said, ‘We gotta have a site now.'”

The prospect of having thousands of hippies at the height of the counterculture movement invade their little town, however, was too troubling for Wallkill officials. The town officially backed out on July 15 and even protected themselves legally by passing laws — including a portable toilet ban — that made it virtually unfeasible to host a festival there.

With the original venue off the table, Woodstock Ventures scrambled for an alternative — but none were compatible with their vision.

One month before the historic, three-day concert, the four young entrepreneurs found salvation in the form of a 49-year-old dairy farmer. Max Yasgur graciously allowed them to rent part of his property. The White Lake area in Bethel, surrounded by the Catskill Mountains, turned out to be exactly what they needed. ’ (Source)

Since Elsa was living in Canada at this time she never really heard much about it. They continued googling.

Let’s continue – Problems arise

Start at the beginning – Tiffi and Yeti learn about Woodstock