Fifty-three years ago – Aug. 18, 1969 – close to 400,000 young people walked, staggered, hitchhiked their way off Max Yasgur’s farm, from the great-grandmother of all outdoor rock concerts, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair — better known simply as Woodstock..Woodstock was created by New Yorkers Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman and John P. Roberts. Only Lang had any experience promoting concerts..He and Kornfeld wanted to build a recording studio in Woodstock, but Roberts and Rosenman suggested instead a concert, featuring artists known to frequent the area, including Bob Dylan and The Band..Kornfeld and Lang said yes, and Woodstock Ventures was formed in January 1969..From there, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, scheduled for Aug. 15 to Aug. 18, was always only two or three steps away from being a total disaster..A group of locals from the village of Woodstock tried everything to prevent the concert..Many of its ‘older generation’ residents considered ‘hippies’ to be slackers and dangerous. (Full disclosure, some of them were.).The village had ordinances against shirtlessness, public consumption of alcohol and loitering, and when word about Woodstock arrived, the village’s board introduced more rules halting the festival in the town.. Woodstock crowdWoodstock crowd .Nonplussed, the organizers moved to Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in nearby Bethel, New York..The first act signed to appear was Creedance Clearwater Revival..The band’s drummer, Doug Clifford said later, "Once Creedence signed, everyone else jumped in line and all the other big acts came on.".The whole idea behind Woodstock was — goodness, gracious — to make money..Tickets were US$18 in advance, available at record stores in the greater New York City area, or by mail and $24 at the gate. The hope was to sell 50,000 tickets but advance sales hit 186,000..No tickets were sold at "the gate.".Woodstock became a free concert because there was no time to complete fences and ticket booths on site as more than 400,000 people, some with tickets, some without, started arriving at Yasgur’s farm, several days ahead of Aug. 15..The events between Aug. 15 and 18, 1969 are legendary, not just as a concert, but as defining a generation..On the bill were knowns and unknowns: Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, Santana, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Band, The Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and more..Invited to play, but declined, were AAA-listers The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and others.. Woodstock HendrixWoodstock Hendrix .Even Roy Rogers, yep the Singing Cowboy, was asked to wind things up with his signature song, Happy Trails. But no, Roy couldn't be "Triggered" to sing..Instead, Jimi Hendrix, the final performer, unleashed his psychedelic version of The Star-Spangled Banner..There’s an old saying: “If you remember being at Woodstock, you weren’t really there.”.It’s a shot at the three or four million people who said they attended, but really didn’t..Of course, those who attended remembered it well..The festival opened under blue skies, but a brutal thunderstorm rolled in and few were prepared.."We didn’t bring any rain gear or ponchos," says then 22-year-old Nancy Eisenstein. "And back then people didn’t have bottled water. We figured, ‘I’ll get there and there will be water. I’ll get there and there will be food.’”.Carl Porter saw the skies open up. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he remembers. “Waves and waves of torrential water hitting hundreds of thousands of people who had nowhere to go. It was pathetic.”.The scene on the stage was chaotic..Many bands missed their scheduled times because they couldn't get through the crowds..Claiming there was no food backstage that wasn’t laced with LSD, The Who’s Roger Daltry accidently overdosed and said Woodstock was miserable..“Looking out unto the predawn gloom of Woodstock, making out the vague shape of half a million mud-caked people as the lights swept over them, I felt in my sleep-deprived, hallucinating state that this was my nightmare come true,” wrote Daltry in his memoir..Woodstock was one of the first concerts Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young played. At one point in their performance, Stills looked over the crowd, announcing “This is the second time we've ever played in front of people, man. We're scared sh**less.”.The New York Times, still a bastion of mental masturbation, said this about Woodstock: "The dreams of marijuana and rock music that drew 300,000 fans and hippies to the Catskills had little more sanity than the impulses that drive the lemmings to march to their deaths in the sea. They ended in a nightmare of mud and stagnation. What kind of culture is it that can produce so colossal a mess?".There have been attempts to restage Woodstock over the years, most have failed, as it should be..Nothing will ever match the original.. Woodstock left to right: Stephen Stills/David CrosbyWoodstock left to right: Stephen Stills/David Crosby
