Woodstock Music Festival
The first Woodstock Music and Art Festival took place on a dairy farm in the town of Bethel in upstate New York in the summer of 1969 and featured performances from some of the most popular bands of the time. The event became an enduring symbol of the '60s "hippie" counterculture movement and is regarded as one of the most important events in contemporary music.
Fast Facts
- Estimated Attendance: 75,000 to 1,500,000
- 3 fatalities
- Tickets cost $18 in advance and $24 at the gate for all 3 days
- Subject of the 1970 documentary Woodstock
- Commemorated in the Joni Mitchell song "Woodstock"
- Billed as "3 Days of Peace and Music"
- John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band wanted to attend but was not invited
- Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull turned down invitations
- Founded by Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld
Lineup
Some of the bands performing at the 1969 Woodstock Festival included:
Key Moments
Several notorious incidents that have become a part of American pop culture occurred during the first Woodstock festival.
Radical activist Abbie Hoffman took to the stage during a performance by The Who and started to fight with guitarist Pete Townshend.
The Grateful Dead's performance was plagued by technical problems, and thus was not featured in the eventual documentary about the concert.
The fences were famously destroyed, making the event essentially open and free to all comers, despite the fact that 186,000 tickets had already been sold.
And of course, Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star Spangled Banner" has become perhaps the most iconic image in rock history.
Other Woodstock Events
A variety of commemorative events and concerts have been held dedicated to the memory of Woodstock. In 1979, a concert featuring several of the original attendees jamming together - including Richie Havens, Country Joe and the Fish and Canned Heat - was held at New York's Madison Square Garden.
In August 1989, a show was held on the site of the original concert in honor of the 20th anniversary. It featured mainly lesser-known bands, plus had an appearance by Jimi Hendrix's father, Al.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first show, a large-scale festival was held in nearby Saugerties, New York. In addition to Joe Cocker, Country Joe McDonald, Santana and Crosby, Stills & Nash from the original event, the new show featured Aerosmith, Green Day, Bob Dylan, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sheryl Crow, among others.
The most recent commemoration was held in 1999 in the city of Rome, New York, but was plagued by violent, unruly crowds and an outbreak of fires that eventually ended the show prematurely.
Related Pages on Mahalo
Jimi Hendrix | Sly and the Family Stone | Santana | The Grateful Dead | Arlo Guthrie | Creedence Clearwater Revival | Jefferson Airplane | Ravi Shankar | Janis Joplin | The Who | Steve Miller Band | Neil Young | Joan Baez | Crosby, Stills & Nash | Joe Cocker | Woodstock 1998 | Woodstock Museum
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