Woodstock Music Festival
Hannah Munro U.S. History Per. 3 Mrs. Saunders
Why I chose this topic:
The Woodstock music festival really grabbed my attention because music festivals have always interested me and music in general is very inspiring to many people. The Woodstock music festival has been a huge part of American History and what America is highly known for, musically.
History of Woodstock
The Woodstock music festival, or also known as Three Days of Peace and Music, was a three-day concert that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll – and a lot of mud. The original Woodstock festival was held in 1969 and the namesake events were held in 1979, 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2009.
The original plan was to build a recording studio for rock musicians up in Woodstock, New York, where Bob Dylan and other musicians had currently lived. The idea grew 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 recording studio in New York.
"Mudstock"
Woodstock was also given the name "Mudstock" after the famous 1994 mud fight between the audience and band members.
Hippies of all nationalities and races came together
The Woodstock music festival of 1969 had become a huge icon of the 1960's hippie counter culture movement.
Woodstock: America's biggest music event in history!
Nearly a million people headed to Bethal, New York but 500,000 actually made it to the concert. Police had to turn away hundreds of thousands of cars.
Problems with Woodstock
The first of many things to go wrong with the Woodstock Festival was the location. The citizens of Wallkill (the original location of the festival) did not want a bunch of hippies in their town. Everyone involved in the planning of the Woodstock Festival panicked. Only a month-and-a half before the Woodstock Festival was to begin, a new location had to be found, and fast.
Before too many people began demanding refunds for their pre-purchased tickets, Max Yasgur offered his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York to be the location for the Woodstock Festival. 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 erect the numerous gates to prevent even more people from just walking in, the organizers were forced to make the event a free concert.
The Performers:
The traffic was so bad that the organziers had to hire helicopters to shuttle the perfomers from their hotel to the stage.
No one had planned for half a million people to show up to the event
The highways in the area literally became parking lots as people abandoned their cars in the middle of the streets and walked the rest of the way.
Woodstock finally begins:
Despite all the organizers' troubles, the festival got started nearly on time. On Friday evening, August 15, Richie Havens was the first to take the stage that night. Sweetwater, Joan Beaz, and other folk artists also played that first night. The music started up again shortly after noon on Saturday with Quill and continued non-stop until Sunday morning around 9 am. The day of psychedelic bands continued with such musicians as Santana, Janis Joplin, The Who, and The Grateful Dead, to name just a few.
Movies and Books
After Woodstock:
Woodstock has influenced so many other music organizers and producers to create so many other music festivals in the United States. To name a few, Lollapalooza in Chicago Illinois and the nationwide traveling music festival, The Vans Warped Tour. Not only has it influenced many festivals in the United States, but around the world. The annual Tea in the Park music festival in Glasgow, Scotland has also been heavily influenced by Woodstock. One thing I didn’t realize about Woodstock is how many people actually showed up to the event and that the organizers of the festival had to change their venue in such a short time period, resulting in them making it a free concert. I never realized it was a free concert.