Woodstock
WoodstockWoodstock was a rock music festival that took place near Woodstock, New York in a town called Bethel. The festival took place over three days, August 15, 16, and 17, 1969. The original plan for Woodstock was an outdoor rock festival, "three days of peace and music" in the Catskill village of Woodstock. The festival was expected to attract 50,000 to 100,000 people. It was estimated that an unexpected 400,000 or more people attended.
If it weren't for Woodstock, rock and roll wouldn't be where it is today. Woodstock became a symbol of the 1960s American counterculture and a milestone in the history of rock music.
The original plan for Woodstock had been to build a recording studio in the town of Woodstock (Sandow, 1). Woodstock had become a rock center when musician Bob Dylan and a rock group called The Band settled there. To promote the idea of the studio the four partners of the music festival (Michael Lang; Artie Kornfield; John Roberts; and Joel Rosenman) decided to stage a concert, which they officially called the Woodstock Festival and Art Fair. The Monterey Pop Festival held in Monterey, California, in 1967 inspired the Woodstock festival (Sandow, 1). The Woodstock partners eventually rented a field from a prominent local dairy farmer, Max Yasgur, who owned land about 48 miles from Woodstock.
Early in the week before the festival, it became clear that the event was going to
draw a much larger audience than expected. People from as far away as Michigan and
California came to listen to the 24 rock groups ("Age, 1"). Thousands more people
would have come if police had not blocked off access roads. By the day before the
official opening, traffic jams miles long blocked most roads leading to the area. The
intense traffic on Route 17B towards Bethel, New York that afternoon didn't seem to
bother anyone as people all exchanged friendly waves. They knew that they were all on
our way to the same place to enjoy "three days of peace and music." Had the festival
lasted much longer, as many as one million youths might have made the trip to Bethel.
What started off as a promotion for a music studio, ended up as one of the most
significant political and sociological events of the age.
The main attraction of the festival was an all-star cast of top rock artists. Some of the greatest musicians of the 1960s performed, including singers Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, and Joan Baez as well as the bands The Stone; and Creedence Clearwater Revival (Sandow, 1). Singer Joe Cocker and guitar player Carlos Santana, up to then unknown, became overnight stars. Some performers who were...
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