WOODSTOCK

WOODSTOCK. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place in Bethel in upstate New York from 15 to 17 August 1969. Attended by 450,000 people, it is remembered as the high point of the "peace and love" ethos of the period, largely because the disaster that the over-crowding, bad weather, food shortages, supposed "bad acid" (LSD), and poor facilities presaged was somehow avoided. Woodstock was originally conceived as a moneymaking venture by producers John Roberts, Joel Rosenman,

Artie Kornfield, and Michael Lang. However, poor planning and happenstance forced them to admit most attendees for free. They were left with a debt of $1.3 million and a site that cost $100,000 to restore. Credit for the festival's success should go to the endurance of the attendees and to the likes of Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farmers, the West Coast "hippies" who organized food and medical support for the crowd.

Many rock and folk luminaries—including Joan Baez, the Grateful Dead, Ten Years After, Joe Cocker, The Band, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash—graced the hastily constructed stage. Cameras and recording equipment captured most performances, the best of which were subsequently released on a number of successful Woodstock albums and featured in an Academy Award– winning three-hour movie, Woodstock—Three Days of Peace and Music (1970).

To avert the feared crowd difficulties, the music continued virtually around the clock, stopping only for the recurrent rainfall. Jimi Hendrix, Sunday's headliner, eventually played at 8.30 a.m. on Monday to a thinning audience. Musicologists subsequently described his blistering rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" as a defining moment in rock history. Less often stated is the fact that the high fees that many of the artists demanded and the star treatment that they received significantly altered the ethos and the economics of the rock music industry. Attempting to cash in on Woodstock nostalgia, the producers subsequently staged two more "Woodstock" festivals. The 1994 twenty-fifth anniversary concert in Saugerties, New York, attracted a crowd of more than 300,000 and featured some of the original acts, along with more contemporary artists. Sponsored by the likes of Pepsi and MCI and with tickets costing $135 apiece, the event is remembered mostly for its obviously commercial intentions. Woodstock 1999, featuring six-dollar bottles of water, three days of ninety-degree heat, and artists such as Kid Rock, Insane Clown Posse, and Limp Bizkit, ended in violence, rioting, and arson, with numerous reports of sexual assaults.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Curry, Jack. Woodstock: The Summer of Our Lives. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989.

Makower, Joel. Woodstock: The Oral History. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

Spitz, John. Barefoot in Babylon: The Creation of the Woodstock Music Festival, 1969. New York: Viking, 1989.

RickDodgson

See alsoCounterculture ; Music Festivals ; Music Industry ; Rock and Roll .