WOOD STOCK 1969

Wood Stock 1969



Wood Stock 1969



Introduction

In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair drew more than 450,000 people to a pasture in Sullivan County, New York. For four days, this site became a, "Counter cultural mini nation", in which drugs were all but legal, music was plenty, and love was free. The music began Friday afternoon at 5:07 p.m. August 15, and continued until mid- morning Monday August 18, 1969. The festival closed the New York State Thruway and created one of the Nation's worst traffic jams. It also inspired a bunch of local and state laws to ensure that nothing like it would ever happen again.

Discussion

Woodstock was the idea of four young men: John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang.

The oldest of the four was Twenty-six. John Roberts was the man who supplied the money. He worked at a drug store and toothpaste manufacturing fortune. He got his money from a multimillion-dollar University of Pennsylvania degree and a lieutenant's commission in the army. He had seen only one rock concert in his life, the Beach Boys. John Roberts's called Joel Rosenman his “Far Out Friend”. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1967. Joel Rosenman enjoyed playing his guitar in lounges and motels from Long Island to Las Vegas. John and Joel met at a gulf course in the fall of 1966. By winter 1967 they shared an apartment.

[Michael Lang, creator of Woodstock Fest'69.]

They both didn't know what they were going to do for the rest of their lives. But they had an ideal to create a screwball situation comedy for television, kind of like a male version of “I Love Lucy”. March 1968 Joel and John put an ad in the classifieds in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

It read “Young Men With Unlimited Capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions.” They got thousands of replies. After John and Joel researched more of what they did they decided to abandon it. The two went from would-be-television writers to wanna-be venture capitalists. “Somehow, we became the characters in our own show,” Joel said.

Artie Kornfeld was 25 years old. He liked to wear suits but lapels were a little wide and his hair was brushed up on the top of his ears. He was the Vice President at Capitol Records. He was the company's connection with the rockers who were starting to sell million of records and he enjoyed smoking hash in his office. He wrote about Thirty hit singles, one was “Dead Man's Curve,” it was recorded by Jan and Dean. “Cowsills” was another band he wrote songs and produced for.

Michael Lang didn't wear shoes very often. A cosmic pixie with a head full of curly black hair that bounced to his shoulders, this is how his friends described him. When Michael was Twenty-three he owned the first head shop in the state of Florida. In 1968, Michael produced one of the biggest rock shows ever, ...