Remembering Woodstock: A Profile of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair

By most measures, Woodstock was a minor disaster. The poster promoting the Woodstock Music & Art Fair promised three days of peace and music. It was billed as “An Aquarian Exposition,” with many of the world’s best rock ‘n roll performers providing the soundtrack. Nobody said anything about rain and ankle-deep mud, total gridlock on the roads leading to the site, or mile-long lines for the portable toilets. The music was delayed by power failures, and performers were threatened by severe shocks as they stood on the wet stage gripping electrified instruments and microphones. And in the end, the organizers lost money.

Yet Woodstock quickly became a powerful symbol of the generation and the cultural changes that defined the Sixties—it transcended both the problems and the music to stand as a celebration of personal freedom and a dream of global community—and it remains so to this day.

The Woodstock Music & Art Fair officially took place August 15-17, 1969, on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm near the town of Bethel in upstate New York, but the music continued until mid-morning on Monday, August 18, due to long delays that put everything several hours behind schedule. Virtuoso guitarist Jimi Hendrix closed the show with his stunning rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

The Woodstock festival was organized by four young men: Arthur Kornfeld, John Roberts, Mike Lang and Joel Rosenman. Kornfeld, 25, was a successful songwriter, music producer and a vice president at Capitol Records. Lang, 24, owned a head shop in Florida and managed a rock band. Rosenman was a lounge musician and a graduate of Yale Law School. And Roberts, who put up most of the money for Woodstock, was the heir to a drugstore and toothpaste manufacturing fortune. Before Woodstock, Roberts had seen only one rock concert—by the Beach Boys.

The Woodstock organizers originally estimated 60,000 people would come to Woodstock. In fact, music fans purchased 186,000 tickets to Woodstock, but more than 450,000 people showed up—many walking as far as 20 miles after abandoning their vehicles on the traffic-clogged roads leading to the festival site. Many of the concertgoers didn’t pay the entrance fee. An estimated 250,000 other would-be Woodstock attendees never made it to the festival site.

Staging the Woodstock festival cost the organizers about $500,000. Advance ticket sales brought in $1.3 million, plenty to recover the initial investment and pocket a tidy profit. Except for one thing: by the time Woodstock was over, festival costs had ballooned to $2.6 million due to unplanned expenses for things like helicopter rentals, extra food and emergency medical supplies. The organizers eventually did make money from the festival due to their share of record sales and receipts from the documentary film Woodstock: Three Days of Peace & Music, which by 1979 had grossed more than $50 million worldwide.

Two babies were born at Woodstock and three people died: one from a heroin overdose, one from a ruptured appendix, and one person died after being run over by a tractor. In addition, four miscarriages were reported. There were several other non-fatal health issues at Woodstock; during the three days of the festival, 68 doctors and 36 nurses treated approximately 6,000 patients. There was one case of pneumonia, one diabetic coma, and 400-some bad acid trips; three tracheotomies were performed.

Joni Mitchell wrote a song about Woodstock that captured the essence of the experience—but she wasn’t there. While Woodstock was taking place upstate, Mitchell was in New York City for an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. She wrote the song while watching reports of the festival on television in her hotel room. A month later, Mitchell performed the song for the first time at the Big Sur Folk Festival. She recorded it for her 1970 album, Ladies of the Canyon, and added it to two later collections. The song also became a big hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and another group called Matthews Southern Comfort.

Filmmakers shot 120 hours of film at the three-day festival, which they edited into a crowd-pleasing film, Woodstock: Three Days of Peace & Music, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. The film was directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by several people, including legendary director Martin Scorsese, and Thelma Schoonmaker, who went on to win multiple Oscars for film editing. In 2009, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, director Ang Lee released Taking Woodstock, a film based on the memoir by Elliot Tiber, who played a pivotal role in making the festival happen.