There Were No Suitable Venues to Hold the Event in the Town of Woodstock and Everyone Feared

Woodstock
August 15th, 16th, 17th, 1969

In August 1969, the Woodstock Music Festival took place on a dairy farm in Bethel, NY.
Many well-known musicians, such as Bob Dylan, The Band and Van Morrison were already living in the Woodstock area, creating a Bohemian (relaxed and freethinking) atmosphere that would be perfect for a large-scale counterculture event.

There were no suitable venues to hold the event in the town of Woodstock and everyone feared the flood of visitors. The Woodstock promoters, Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman and Artie Kornfeld, found a local farmer named Max Yasgur and used his farm, which was 70 miles away from Woodstock. As a potential music venue, Yasgur's clover field did offer some acoustical advantages (natural sound). At last, the Woodstock promoters had a place to hold their festival, which was promoted as 'Three Days of Peace and Music'.

Over 500,000 people came to a 600-acre farm to hear 32 singers and bands (leading and developing performers of the time) play over the course of three days (August 15th-17th, 1969). Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were among the line-up. Performances ran from dusk till dawn, with some singers playing for multiple hours, while waiting for other acts to arrive. Woodstock is known as one of the greatest events of all-time and perhaps the most important moment in music history.

60’s Folk Singer Joni Mitchell heard about the experience from her boyfriend and said, "Woodstock was a spark of beauty" where half-a-million kids "saw that they were part of a greater system." According to Michael Lang, one of four young men who formed Woodstock Ventures to produce the festival, "That's what means the most to me—the connection to one another felt by all of us who worked on the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions who couldn't be there but were touched by it."

Two days before it began, masses of people arrived and set up camp. By Friday, the roads were so clogged with cars that some performers had to arrive by helicopter. Though over 100,000 tickets were sold prior to the festival weekend, they became unnecessary as swarms of people descended on the concert grounds. Though food, sanitation (cleanliness) and medical supplies would be in desperately short supply, the spirit of community, generated by the music, would be remembered for years after. Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix was the final performer, infamously playing his interpretation of the Star Spangled Banner as the sun rose over the exhausted crowd on Monday morning.

60’s WRITING HW in Binder:

Using your article and what you saw in the video clips, would you have gone to Woodstock?
Why or why not?
Describe your reasons in a half page of writing.

Sentence starters:
-I would have gone to Woodstock because…
-I wouldn’t have gone to Woodstock because…
-I wanted to go at Woodstock, but I wouldn’t have…
-Woodstock was unique and I wanted to be a part of it because…