After much negotiation, an abandoned industrial park in Wallkill was settled on as the festival site, at a cost of $10,000 (about $100,000 at today’s prices) for three days’ use. A poster was printed and groundworks began. But the town withdrew Woodstock’s permits on the grounds the proposed portable lavatories would not meet regulatory requirements.
By early July the organisers were in deep trouble: they had performers booked, but no venue. So when Max Yasgur, a dairy farmer from nearby Bethel, offered them the use of his land, with no other option available they paid $50,000 ($500,000 in today’s terms) for a three-day use of the farm, putting another $75,000 in escrow to restore the property afterwards.
But there was a little over a month to go – not enough time to put all the groundwork in place – and by the time fans started to pour in no secure fences had been built and no ticket booths erected. Woodstock was now a free concert.
Some 450,000 people turned up, and police estimated 1.5 million people were trying to get to the festival before they closed the roads and Sullivan County declared a state of emergency. As a result, the organisers had to spend tens of thousands of dollars more for helicopters to transport food, supplies and musical acts to and from the site.
“By the time we got to Woodstock/ We were half a million strong/ And everywhere there was song and celebration,” sang Joni Mitchell – and indeed, for most of those in the audience, despite dodgy acoustics, storms, mud, a shortage of food, medical incidents (some related to contaminated drugs) and raw sewage (there was one lavatory for every 833 people), it was an enthralling experience.
A sound guy stands on scaffolding with his equipment in front of the crowd at the Woodstock music festival, August 1969.Credit:Getty
For the organisers things were more fraught, though Lang tried to remain philosophical: “I was running around organising everything, but I was also going all over the site so I saw what was going on. I’d say it was expressions of freedom right? That’s really what the overall message was of the festival, it was about freedom … When things get weird I just get calmer, I’ve never panicked.”
Woodstock had begun as a money-making venture, but by the time it ended it looked set to be a financial disaster, a fact of which Lang became aware while reviewing the devastation that would take three weeks (and strong stomachs) to clear up, from a helicopter.
“I got a call … saying, ‘You gotta get down here’,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Where’s here?’ He said, ‘Wall Street. The bank.’ So I got a lift to Wall Street from one of the helicopter pilots … What a shock that was …”
As the scale of the losses – estimated at $1.4 million – became clear, the organisers and their backers faced an army of angry bankers and creditors. But they refused to declare bankruptcy and eventually found a solution in a partnership with Warner Bros in the production of Michael Wadleigh’s film. They eventually paid off their debts, though it took 11 years.
English singer Joe Cocker performing at the Woodstock Music Festival in Bethel, New York.Credit:Getty
Long after the event, Lang tended to take a rose-tinted view of proceedings. “We always wanted to have it as a counter-culture event,” he told The Sunday Telegraph in 2009. “It was important to me to have it about politics, interests in ecology and human rights. The Vietnam War was a huge issue at the time. Woodstock was a picture of what life would be like if we were in charge. Fun in the sun with a lot of mud.”
He went on to organise the follow-ups Woodstock ’94 (which also lost money), and the ill-fated Woodstock ’99, which ended in a riot after an aggressive mob – angered at high ticket prices, costly bottles of water and a poorly curated lineup – set the festival site ablaze.
Much to the relief of many, Lang’s plans for a Woodstock 50 festival in 2019 came to nothing after a series of permit and production issues, financial disputes, venue relocations and artist cancellations.
Michael Lang was born on December 11, 1944 to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, where his father ran a construction and heating company. Dropping out of New York University, where he was studying business and psychology, he moved to Coconut Grove in Florida to open a head shop and began promoting rock concerts.
In 1968 he organised a first pop festival in Miami, at which 25,000 people turned up to see Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, though torrential rain brought a premature end to the event, after which Lang returned north and settled at Woodstock.
He met Artie Kornfeld while hustling for a record contract for Train, a band he was managing. Kornfeld rejected the band but was inspired by Lang’s ideas for a rock festival.
A couple hugs during Woodstock. Credit:AP
Four months after Woodstock, Lang helped to organise the Altamont Festival in California, a free concert headlined by the Rolling Stones, an occasion now remembered for considerable violence, including the beating and stabbing to death of an 18-year-old black man by Hells Angels employed as security guards.
Despite such setbacks Lang, who subsequently established the label Just Sunshine Records and managed artists including Joe Cocker and Rickie Lee Jones, remained committed to the Woodstock myth.
“Almost all of the big movements that have emerged over the years are elements of Woodstock that have survived,” he told The Sunday Telegraph
“The green movement, the less-is-more mentality, and even the sexual revolution. Before Woodstock, the idea in America was that sex should only happen between married men and women at home with the lights out. But at Woodstock, there were naked couples kissing in the lake and couples making love in the grass.”
Lang is survived by his second wife, Tamara, and their three daughters and two sons.
The Telegraph, London
‘Fun in the sun with a lot of mud’: Co-founder of Woodstock festival dies
Source: Philippines Alive
