Nostalgic Photographs Reveal What Really Went Down At Woodstock
It’s the summer of 1969, and organizers are preparing a dairy farm in upstate New York for a music festival. Doubtless, they’re hoping for good music and good times, but they can’t have expected what is starting to happen. Hundreds of thousands of youngsters are descending on the farm for the Woodstock festival, and it’s going to be amazing.
Iconic Three Days
Over the course of the next three days, hugely popular stars will entertain as many as half a million people. Unseasonal rain will turn the field that the crowd flocked to into a sea of mud. And here, in Bethel, NY, history will be made as the music festival and art fair explodes into our cultural consciousness.
Ultimate Hippie Gathering
The festival will become a success – although as we’ll see, it would be some time before the organizers made their money back. But it’s not just remembered for the stellar music. No, the crowds of “hippies” that swarmed the festival grounds also became cultural icons: so much so that some call the youth of their day “the Woodstock generation.”
Cash Cow
To begin with, Woodstock was meant to make money for its young organizers. John Roberts and Joel Rosenman met with record company man Artie Kornfeld and businessman Michael Lang to propose the idea to them. The four saw a music festival as a cash cow, and they prepared to milk it.
Assembling The Team
Lang had already created a music festival the year before. The venture in Miami had been a success, and he was ready to do it all over again. Kornfeld had connections in the music business thanks to his high-level spot at Capitol Records. So Rosenman and Roberts enticed the other two to join them in Woodstock Ventures, Inc. and create music history.
