Reply
Thu 24 Oct, 2013 02:25 pm
The Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival that unintentionally became an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture. It was held at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in the town of Bethel (just outside of White Lake, New York) from 15th to 18th August in 1969.
The organizers of the Woodstock Festival were four young men: John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Mike Lang. The oldest of the four was only 27 years old at the time of the Woodstock Festival.
Roberts, an heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, and his friend Rosenman were looking for a way to invest Roberts' money in a project that would make a profit. After placing an ad in The New York Times that stated: "Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions," they met Kornfeld and Lang.
Kornfeld and Lang's original proposal was to build a recording studio and a retreat for rock musicians up in Woodstock, New York. The idea morphed into creating a two-day rock concert for 50,000 people, with the hope that the concert would raise enough money to pay for the studio.
Then, they got to work on organizing a large music festival. They found a location for the event up in an industrial park in nearby Wallkill, New York.
They printed tickets ($7 for one day, $13 for two days and $18 for three days) along with working on organizing food, signing musicians, and hiring security.
The first of many things to go wrong with the Woodstock Festival was the location. No matter how the four investors and their lawyers spun it, the citizens of Wallkill did not want a bunch strangers and hippies descending on their town.
Luckily, just before too many people began demanding refunds for their pre-purchased tickets, Max Yasgur offered up his 240ha dairy farm in Bethel, New York to be the location for the Woodstock Festival.
As the date got closer, more problems sprung up. It soon appeared that their 50,000 people estimate was way too low and the new estimate jumped to upwards of 200,000 people. The young men then tried to bring in more toilets, more water, and more food.
Two days before the Festival was to begin, there were already approximately 50,000 people camping near the stage. These early arrivals had walked right through the huge gaps in the fence where the gates had not yet been placed. Since there was no way to get the 50,000 people to leave the area in order to pay for tickets and there was no time to put the numerous gates to prevent even more people from just walking in, the organizers were forced to make the event a free concert.
Despite all the organizers' troubles, the Woodstock Festival got started nearly on time. On Friday evening (15th of August), Richie Havens got up on stage and officially started the Festival. Sweetwater, Joan Baez and some other folk artists also played on the Friday night.
The day of psychedelic bands continued with such musicians as Santana, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead and The Who.
It was obvious to everyone that on Sunday, the Woodstock Festival was winding down. Most of the crowd left throughout the day, leaving about 150,000 people on Sunday night. When Jimi Hendrix, the last musician to play at Woodstock, finished his set early on Monday morning, the crowd was down to only 25,000.
Despite the 30-minute lines for water and at least hour-long wait to use a toilet, the Woodstock Festival was a huge success. There were a lot of drugs, nudity and mud (created by the rain).
The organizers of Woodstock were dazed at the end of the Festival. They didn't have time to focus on the fact that they had created the most popular music event in history, first they had to deal with incredible debt of over $1 million and the 70 lawsuits that had been filed against them.
To their great relief, the film of the Woodstock Festival turned into a hit movie and the profits from the movie covered a large chunk of the debt from the Festival. By the time that everything was paid off, they were still $100,000 in debt.
@redhouse,
It reads interesting and fine to me. nothing too glaringly off at all.
Furthermore, I don't know if this could help you with further reference material, but here are quotes from the owner of the farm Max Yasgur himself (in or around 1970-1972) that might help shed more light on the Woodstook actual and the after-the-event experiences:
@Ragman,
Thank you very much for your positive comment and time you took to find these quotes. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to use quotes, this "essay" should be as short as possible.
Thank you anyway, have a nice day.
@redhouse,
Red you write pretty good but I'd work on organizing paras. It isn't easy, you have to know certain principles; but eg, those first two should probably be combined into one
Then insert carriage return
Quote:Max Yasgur offered up his 240ha dairy farm
In formal prose* we would probably write the word for the area units in full after a space thus: "Max Yasgur offered up his 240 hectare dairy farm", and depending on the intended audience an editor might insert the Imperial equivalent** after the metric area (600 acres in round figures). Since the farm is located in the USA where acres are still used, an editor preparing such a text for that readership might simply substitute the Imperial measurement.
*Maybe you wouldn't care in a real estate advertisement.
**A hectare is 10,000 square metres or 2.471 acres.
I wouldn't keep using a capital F for "Festival".
@redhouse,
I thought Woodstock was a small yellow bird who hung out with Snoopy.