On August 15 , 16 and 17 , 1969 , just a month after the famousmoonlanding of Apollo 11 , the cosmos find another giant leap of sort . This clip it was the Woodstock music festival in upstate New York . An estimated 500,000 people converged on one diminished town to hear three day ofmusic . The fact that this many people would come this far for the sake of song tell us something about the human experience at that metre – although exactly what it told is ill-defined .
Even though you likely were n’t there , it ’s quite likely you ’ve heard of the consequence be intimate as Woodstock . You might have heard that there were sexuality , drug and rock and roll ' n ' axial motion . Or maybe you get wind that there were problems withfood , sanitization , parking , traffic and even potable water . You ’ve possibly heard that the music was fantastic – a musical lineup that ’s unlikely to be ever reproduced in any era . And all of this is true , so let ’s take a look at exactly how it all find .
The first thing you need to recognize is that 1969 was prime time for " counterculture " in America . The counterculture included drug use , anti - war protests , anti - capitalism , the conception of freelove , the Women ’s Liberation bowel movement , communal living and much more . America was dissever . On one side were a group of Americans sporting " America : Love it or Leave it " bumper poser and support the Vietnam War . On the other side were a group of Americans known as the hippie – a term that became mainstream sometime around 1967 .
The second matter to recognize is rock and roll music was becoming a very big phenomenon . Woodstock was about counterculture musicians like Joan Baez , Grateful Dead , The Who , Jimi Hendrix , Janis Joplin , and Crosby , Stills and Nash . Booking dozens of counterculture banding all in one spot turned Woodstock into a magnet that attracted people from all over the country .
Bringing Woodstock to Life
Four the great unwashed are responsible for the approximation that became Woodstock : Artie Kornfeld , Michael Lang , John Roberts and Joel Rosenman . Roberts and Roseman were young , independently moneyed and look for an idea that would launch them as entrepreneur . Kornfield do work at Capitol Records . Lang was a concert impresario , who in January of 1969 , organized a enceinte ( for the time ) music festival in Miami attended by 40,000 .
Lang hooked up with Kornfield and hatched the idea for another euphony festival , but they demand money . Theirlawyerled them to Roberts and Roseman , and the four met for the first clock time in February of 1969 . By March Woodstock Ventures , Inc. ( WVI ) was formed to organize the event . Woodstock , N.Y. was chosen because a lot of player were already there – both Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix owned dwelling house in the field , for example .
By April , WVI had guarantee a site and was already running small ads to work up bombination . They also started booking their first circle : $ 12,000 for Jefferson Airplane , $ 12,500 for The Who . While these sound like ridiculously low number today , at the fourth dimension these total were double what the bands were get for their gigs . That shows you how much time have exchange . Woodstock was the upshot that made many of these bands far-famed , and at the same time depict everyone how big an appetence the public had for music .
Then in July , just a calendar month before the outcome was to occur , the town of the original site devolve police force that essentially banned the festival . The organizers scrambled and found a new site – a 600 acre farm field owned by Max Yasgur in Bethel , N.Y.
By the offset of August , closely to 200,000 feeler tickets had been sell . What had start as a music festival for perhaps 50,000 hoi polloi had grown to an event with 200,000 paying customers , and more than twice that many would finally arrive .
The job was there was no manner that the area could plow that many people . So when the concert - goer start go far , traffic backed up for miles and miles . gondola were desert in the middle of the route and hoi polloi walked to the festival .
On the solar day of the consequence , two amazing things come about . First , the fete turned into a free issue . There only was no elbow room to treat the crowd , so the organiser went with the flow . The fence surrounding the locus was trampled to the ground and vanish . Second , that the music pass off at all . With all the roads choke up , the personal digital assistant had to hire Armyhelicoptersto fly in the performers .
And then there were the condition , which were at times appalling . On Friday night , five inches of pelting fell . Helicopters were flying in solid food . hundred of hoi polloi were cut their feet on broken bottles and pop tops . Overall , more than 5,000 medical problems were documented , many of them due to drug use .
It ’s hard to consider today that such a thing could spontaneously happen like that . It was like a pure storm – the sodding time in the counterculture cause , the perfect venue , the perfect buzz , the perfect innocence and naiveté ( imagine trying to book that many careen band today at such a crushed cost ) . It was a stark debacle in almost every respect except for one – the medicine process . It ’s that essential winner that made Woodstock world famous .
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