Four Business Men
Make History
Max Yasgur probably never imagined that he would host at least 400,000 people on his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York. But for three straight days in August 1969, his bucolic pastures became a hub for sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll during Woodstock — the music festival that changed the world.
The Woodstock music festival is not only an icon of American musical history but of American history itself. In the last month of the last summer of the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of hopeful, optimistic young people came together and define their
generation and their era as a whole.
But as iconic as this festival remains 50 years later, its story is widely misunderstood to this day. For starters, even though it’s known as the Woodstock festival, Yasgur’s dairy farm wasn’t even walking distance from the town of Woodstock — it was 43 miles away.
So how did the most famous music festival in history get misnomered? Who organized it, and what myths about that weekend were mere legend — and which were true?
The Woodstock music festival was the brainchild of four men in their 20s looking for a viable business opportunity. Since musical innovation blossomed in the 1960s, they wanted to harness its popularity on a grand scale.
John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and Michael Lang had an admirable collective résumé to make their attempt viable. Lang had already organized the Miami Music Festival in 1968, and successfully so. Kornfeld was Capitol Records’ youngest vice president ever, while Roberts and Rosenman were young entrepreneurs out of New York City.
The four young friends had a genuine appreciation for music; their music festival was more than a cynical attempt to cash in on popular music. To make the mission official, they formed Woodstock Ventures, Inc. The next step was finding talent to sign on.
When Creedence Clearwater Revival became the first act to agree to perform in April 1969, Woodstock Ventures landed all the credibility required to curate a respectable roster of contemporary artists.
Woodstock Ventures pre-sold more than 100,000 tickets, and by August 13, at least 50,000 people were already camped out on the Yasgur property. The final, official numbers of attendees vary greatly and range somewhere between 400,000 and one million people.
Though some had to be evacuated, floods ravaged the campgrounds, and two people lost their lives, the sheer pandemonium possible with such a mass of free-spirited people ultimately turned out to be far less
anarchic than skeptics would've guessed.
The lack of sanitation, food, and water was certainly an issue, but Woodstock was a famously peaceful affair. Though political assassinations and the Vietnam War were in the news, the young counterculture generation present at Woodstock was eager to bond, surround itself with music, and unite in peace.
"These people are really beautiful," said the festival's chief medical officer, Dr. William Abruzzi. "There has been no violence whatsoever, which is really remarkable for a crowd of this size."
Many attribute this impressive serenity to the ubiquitous use of psychedelics and the "make love, not war" mantra of the 1960s counterculture. It's no surprise that many attendees birthed children some nine months later.
Thirty-two acts performed at Woodstock, many of them iconic, with an open mic on the Free Stage available to attendees ready to show their talent off to each other. The first day began on Friday, August 15 around 5 p.m. when Richie Havens took the stage.
"I was supposed to sing for 40 minutes, which I did, and I walked off the stage and the people were great, and then (the organizers) said, 'Richie, four more songs?' 'OK.' I went back on and they were still clapping, so I sang four other songs, went off again, then I hear, 'Richie, four more songs?' They did that to me six times. Two hours and 45 minutes later I'd sung every song I know."
— Richie Havens, 2009.
This world-renowned, historically significant, massive, three-day pinnacle of 1960s counterculture momentum would never have happened if it weren't for Max Yasgur and his supportive wife, Miriam. For him, it was all worth it — and instilled in him a sense of optimism about the young generation he'd welcomed onto his farm. Today, after a half-century, you can go up on a hill at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts and stand on the hallowed ground where the 1969 Woodstock festival took place. The center opened in 2006 with an outdoor concert venue and a 1960s museum. Some of the acts who performed at the Woodstock 1969 have returned to play shows in the decades since. Some died before they got the chance. Generations have come and gone since that one magnificent weekend in the summer of 1969. For most of us, it's always been mere legend — one we couldn't see, touch, or be a part of. But for a few hundred thousand lucky people, it was the greatest moment of their lives — a moment that left a mark on history that remains as indelible as ever 50 years later.