Woodstock, 1969: The Freedom Festival
By: Ben Broyd
Tags: Counterculture, Music Festivals, Culture, Woodstock, Social

Woodstock was a music festival held between the 15th and 18th August, 1969, originally billed as ‘An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music’, and was arguably the greatest festival the music world had ever seen. The Woodstock Music Festival occurred due to a culmination of events in American history and was a pivotal moment for counterculture worldwide. This is the story of how Woodstock came to fruition, the events that transpired throughout, and the unifying power that the festival gave to the people.

Woodstock, 1969.

The Woodstock Music Festival was inspired through the brainpower of four men, consisting of John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Michael Lang. These men were not new to the music industry, and all had a genuine appreciation for music. Lang had previously organised the successful Miami Music Festival in 1968, whereas Kornfeld had recently become the youngest vice president at Capitol Records. As for Roberts and Rosenmen, they were New York entrepreneurs involved in building a Manhattan recording studio. The four guys had a dream, but did they know that they were about to create the most historic event in music, possibly ever? Absolutely not.

The initial plan for Woodstock called for the event to be held at Howard Mills Industrial Park in Wallkill, New York, however, they pulled out at the last minute. The prospect of having thousands of hippies at the height of the counterculture movement invading their little town was too much to deal with for the residents of Wallkill.

The four guys were in trouble. There was little over a month until the event, but without a venue, there would be no event. Woodstock Ventures explored a variety of other venues, but none panned out. Nothing seemed to be going their way, whatsoever.

Finally, with a month to go before the concert, 49-year-old dairy farmer Max Yasgur offered to rent them a part of his land in the White Lake area of Bethel, New York, surrounded by the verdant Catskill Mountains. Woodstock Ventures had found their venue. But there was an underlying concern that the four had taken on far more than they could have ever imagined.

Planning any festival is hard, but planning one last-minute … proved almost impossible. It was a few days before the festival was scheduled to begin, the people were arriving, but nothing was set up. People were flocking in their thousands, yet there was no fencing, no gates, no ticket booths, nothing. In an interview with The Telegraph, Lang said:

“You do everything you can to get the gates and the fences finished — but you have your priorities. People are coming, and you need to be able to feed them, and take care of them, and give them a show. So you have to prioritise.”

And so they did. With no other option available to them, Lang and his partners decided to make Woodstock a free event, unbeknownst to them, they were about to unleash the most free-living, euphoric three days America had ever seen. Originally only 50,000 people were expected to attend over the weekend, but by August 13, an estimated one million people had descended on Woodstock. It was totaly chaos, the organizers were frantically scrambling to add more facilities, meanwhile the highways and local roads were at a complete standstill with many concert-goers abandoning their cars and trekking the rest of the way on foot.

Festival-goers from all across America.

Woodstock Festival became widely regarded as one of the most pivotal moments in popular music history, and it was easy to see why. Woodstock helped bring counterculture into the forefront of society because it showed people a side to music they had never seen before. The music released throughout the 1960s and the meaning behind it was used to promote the Civil Rights Movement in America, and criticise America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, whilst the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and Martin Luther King Jr in 1968 allowed music and social movements to fuse together and embark on a journey that would change the course of American culture forever.

America was at boiling point, but Woodstock provided an opportunity for people to escape into the music and spread a message of unity and peace.

One Love.

A little after 5 pm on August 15, 1969, Woodstock finally began. It would become the most celebrated music festival in history. Thirty-two acts performed at Woodstock, many of them iconic through the way in which they used the platform to voice their political concerns. Stu Cook of Creedence Clearwater Revival, the opening band at the festival, explained:

“It only dawned on us when we finished what we’d just been at, that we’d probably never see anything like that or experience an event like that again.”

Jimi Hendrix. Performed at 3 AM Sunday morning to a crowd of around 5,000 people due to the rain.

However, the most memorable performance had to be Jimi Hendrix’s with his rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, which remains still to this day one of the most iconic performances of all time.

In many ways, Woodstock was the perfect storm. It was born out of a country that felt it could collapse at any moment, a country that desperately needed an escape. The unique series of events leading up to the festival throughout the 60s led to one of the greatest displays of music the world had ever seen. There was a magic that surrounded the festival. In an era filled with so much hate, those that attended fully immersed themselves in the festival, and all of the negativity simply disappeared. People were there for the music, to love one another, and forget about the evils of war and inequality.