The crowd at Woodstock was 200,000 at it's peak.
I have a picture an aerial picture of Woodstock at its peak, and an aerial picture of Michigan Stadium taken from a similar height.
And I've spent a good bit of time comparing the crowds.
You could make an argument for Woodstock being 200,000, but it's pretty absurd to suggest it was more than that.
4
In the annals of cancelled rock festivals, let us not forget Powder Ridge scheduled for the summer of 1970 at the ski area in Middlefield, CT. Major acts were to include many Woodstock alums plus Allman Brothers, Van Morrisoin, Grand Funk Railroad and Ten Wheel Drive. My friends and I purchased our $20 tickets and were ready to travel in the family car when my parents wisely put their collective feet on the brakes because the concert had been cancelled by authorities fearing the worst. Which occurred when 30,000 kids showed up anyway -- It rained of course andtales of drug-spiked water barrels were the highlight of the weekend according to the stories that were published. We reluctantly, but luckily, relented in our wish to have our own Woodstock experience. We settled for a camping weekend at Pound Ridge Reservation in NY, met some cool ex-pats from Queens Blvd (Jackie Suzenberger where are you?), smoked some decent grass and lived to talk about it for many years. Not the memories we intended, but worthwhile nonetheless. Kept my ticket for many years. Don't expect there will be similar nostalgia next year. To my buddies John and Mark, still remember it with great fondness.
2
No one showed up at Woodstock with an automatic weapon to spray the crowd with military-grade bullets. No one worried that such madness might happen. No one spoke about hunting down people from "other" ethic or racial or linguistic groups who might be there without documentation and who could be separated from their children so as to intimidate others from coming. No one worried about retaliation from "terrorists" who hate us because we invaded and occupied their countries for years. No one chanted "lock em up" or "send them back." No one bought their pot with credit cards in state-licensed corporate-owned pot stores. No one claimed that the stories on the TV about Woodstock were fake news.
But America was just like it is today in some respects: the President was a crook who eventually flirted with impeachment. Amerca dropped bombs on third-world countries with regularity.
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My oh my 52 responses? Where have all the flowers gone? The ones that ROCKED the ones that didn’t the ones that rolled in the mud the ones who escaped (:))) the ones that lived to tell about it the ones that started on the journey and got sidetracked the ones who ran out of gas... ( and the one who snuck through as ‘the French doctor’ on a helicopter who now sits under his Buddha Tree outside of Paris, France and surely forgot his mantra...RUTHFROM GREENWICH VILLAGE VILLAGE 2019
2
52 comments? That’s it? Where indeed have all the flowers gone???
2
Really? Pairing Woodstock and Altamont? A cheap trick. The organizers probably could plan a child’s birthday party ( witness Michael Lang’s attempt at Woodstock 50), but the result was a wonderful cultural milestone and great music. Presently on the site is a beautiful first rate performing arts center ( Bethel Woods Performing Arts Center), a great museum which chronicles and contextualizes the Woodstock festival, and the original site of the stage and bowl- shaped field left untouched. You NYers should come on up and visit. Just not this weekend - Ringo, Santana and John Fogerty will be performing and we don’t want the roads clogged. The festival in the long run put Bethel on he map and breathed some new life into Sullivan County.
5
Perhaps this piece is reflection of 21century people and their business orientation.Profit over people. Many folks today are envious of the Woodstock Generation and its message: peace,love,and the best rock music that ever came out of a loud speaker!
Can anyone imagine a Trump style rally but with black and brown and red and yellow and white instead of a sea of MAGA hats, all dancing and singing and loving together with no mean spirited chants and no guns and no ICE waiting in the wings to "lock them up"? Wouldn't that be a scene to look back on 50 years later?
3
once the crowd exceeds 15,000 or so,
the music gets lost in the shuffle.
3
I would argue that Lollapalooza beat Coachella to the punch by about 8 years....
8
Max Yasgur, on whose farm the Woodstock festival was held, was sued in 1970 by several neighbors who claimed that their property was damaged as a result of the festival. Even before the festival was held, when word got out that Yasgur’s farm was going to host a “hippie” music festival, some local residents were upset and attempted to launch a boycott of the farm’s locally-sold dairy products. The town of Bethel New York even wanted to revise its zoning laws to prevent the festival, but as Yasgur said in response, “….tens of thousands of Americans in uniform gave their lives in war after war just so those kids would have the freedom to do exactly what they are doing. That's what this country is all about and I am not going to let you throw them out of our town just because you don't like their dress or their hair or the way they live or what they believe.”
Max Yasgur became the true hero of Woodstock. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in 1973, at the age of 53.
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Having attended the "Celebration of Life" in McCrea, LA in 1971 I can attest to the heat, mosquitoes and mud. But it wasn't all bad -- I volunteered in the medical and "trip" tents and remember that most of us managed to have a good time despite the turmoil surrounding us. It wasn't until we ventured to New Orleans afterward that things went south when my male friends got tossed into jail for having long hair. I didn't get to go to Woodstock and even though McCrea was no contender for great rock festivals I'm not sorry I went.
6
Way to go, kid, u did good!
Quote "Driving around in Porsches"
MYTH!
Artie Kornfeld and Richie Havens met me at the Colonial Diner in May of that year, to discuss plans for the event that was planned for the Wallkill /Middletown NY area. They were in some run-of-the-mill sedan. Al Larson (News Director of WALL) and I wrote some stories than ran on the News. Over the next two months I covered public meetings where the local government representatives listened to local residents who were worried about "Naked HIPPIES running through our yard", and the NOISE. As a broadcast Engineer I tried to help people there to understand two things: (1) The Noise level would be less than the every Saturday Night stock car races at the Orange County Speedway, and (2) It was physically impossible for ANY event, even a child's birthday party, to be "Inaudible at the edge of the property that the event used". So, of course, fear prevailed, and even though the stage had been built in Scotchtown, and a "Woodstock:" mailbox installed (quickly stolen) Artie and company were kicked out of Wallkill and journeyed up to Max Yasgur's farm in White Lake and rented it for "The Woodstock Music and Art Fair". Max had a smile on his face every time I saw him, and the kids loved him.
You Can't Go Home Again...
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wallKill? Honestly? soooo glad it all moved onto Yagur’s farmland, as it was a mystical fest from the future where more festivals and happenings are likely to... so hey GLAD for the follow up, we were amongst those who couldn’t get road that fateful day, but reading BAEZ’s interview caught me( personally) up on what went down and who rocked and who didn’t... As the decade of 69’-79׳ encroached upon us. May we all be lucky to celebrate every day with WOODSTOCK’s Music, and make those memories hymns to America which is slowly fadin in the wind...
2
The town of Bethel didn’t complain and refer to the festival as a disaster, in fact they helped by contributing food from their own cupboards when the commercial stands ran out. Max Yasgur, whose property the concert was held on was very pleased with the show and wasn’t quiet about how proud he was of the concert goers. I assume his property was the most damaged. The concert promoters didn’t complain either and they absorbed the bulk of the financial loss. There was no violence or intentional destruction of property. You can’t group Woodstock with Altamont. Compare the security apparatus of the two. The toothless hog farmer dude and his hippie brothers and sisters and the Hells Angels. I was too young to attend but watching the recent PBS documentary on the festival made me feel nostalgic for that weekend 50 years ago.
7
Really??? That's your take on the most iconic event of the counter-culture? It was bad for business?
Dude, I think you got some of the bad acid.
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This article strikes me as an attempt at revisionist history.
10
The image says it all. Study the faces. Every moment of being “hippie” - or more to the point - desperately looking for life is represented. Look carefully. Yes, the majority are well fed middle-class white kids, but look closer. More than a few are “darker.” Count the girls. I get nine. As has always been true, the young bucks have gone off to war - they waged joy. I wasn’t there. Other side of the world waging “peace” ducking bullets, staying alive.
I wasn’t there, but I heard, and if the stories told over the years were true, must have been a couple of million kids at Yasgur’s Farm.
The author is clueless. Woodstock hurt festivals? Promoters couldn’t make the $$? How sad. While there’s always someone out to make a buck - I have no problem with that - the explosion of “festival” shook the foundations of Empire. Eventually a war was stopped. A president deposed.
Out on that stinking river, we heard via grapevine letter. We looked at us. “Maybe, just maybe we’ll get out of here - said the joker to the thief.”
8
This article is so "out of tune with the times" in the late 1960's & in the context of a completely criminal US war in Vietnam - which, btw, is still killing & maiming innocent people today in Laos because of the thousands of unexploded US cluster bombs in their farmers' fields.
Apparently this writer has never heard of Jimi Hendrix or Santana or Baez or Country Joe & the Fish or even imagined the amazing, extraordinary incidence of 450,000 people spending 3 days together in harmony & peace under the umbrella of a shared love of the best music of the era & a shared thought that peace was better than war & love was the solution for humanity.
I can only forgive this writer (& the NY Times for publishing such nonsense) because such an event is unimaginable in current day in the civil war happening under the Trump regime. Just picture a Trump rally juxtaposed with the Woodstock crowd. Impossible.
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@Perspective If this is the response by the NY Times to this weekend's PBS documentary of Woodstock, I really should be cancelling my subscription!
As an elder today who was in her late 20's when Woodstock happened, (ie a late blooming" hippy" who grew up with Elvis, the Beatles, etc), I would have loved to be at Woodstock, except for the fact that I lived & worked in Vancouver & by then had 2 babies as my first priorities.
However, I had already experienced cross Canada Vietnam protests & welcomed many US Vietnam protesters into our country. More importantly, these kinds of music festivals had become de rigeur & I attended many of these mini-woodstocks, in our province (B.C.) with joy & enthusiasm This is the context in which my generation - post World War 2 (ie war babies) - & our children's generation were raised. Music, respect, love for the earth & anti-Vietnam war youngsters. We are called "Boomers", but my Dad was an early Nova Scotian Canadian Air Force Pilot who flew Rescue planes from England to Europe at the beginning of the 2nd World War.
If I had had the privilege of being at Woodstock, my Dad would have been glad.
3
Perry Farrell helped resuscitate Coachella after they lost money in 1999. Why did they ask him to get involved? Because of his experience with a little festival you may have heard of called LOLLAPALOOZA. Yes, Lollapalooza, a festival that predated Coachella by almost a decade. Do you people actually do any real research before writing these articles?
11
The late Warren Hellman's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park lives on. Free to the public and featuring a variety of top musical acts from the 60s to contemporary faves.
4
Woodstock was sui generis. Others tried, but....
2
We (wife friends) bought tickets ( nobody there to collect tickets so we just drove in) went up Thursday and found a camp site near the Hog Farmers . Tents, grass(real grass),walked over to music venue, got back stage sometimes because I knew some security workers, totally enjoyed everything. Gave (I held onto all the tickets because I picked them them up) Woodstocktickets out as birthday presents. Had 12 tickets. Good music, good time. Most everyone smoked, some of us had other things, we also had beer,some food,and comfort. We came prepared.Bronxites.
5
Thanks God corporations saved us from all that! Now we can pay hundreds of dollars for events that are, to paraphrase Frank Zappa, safe as milk.
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@Mike McGuire
FYI Captain Beefheart's first album "Safe as Milk"
2
I've never heard Woodstock called a disaster, certainly not by anyone who was there. I much prefer to read the comments here from folks who were actually at the festival rather than some negative revisionist history. The author conveniently forgets the 2 US Festivals. Nearly half a million people attended the first in 1982. The next year the second one attracted a crowd 670,000. There's no doubt in my mind that we would not have festivals today such as Burning Man were it not for the granddaddy of them all.
6
There's a lot of posts pointing out, correctly, that the actual experience of Woodstock was a massively successful communal moment during which the capitalist mindset was pushed aside. But it's historically incorrect to say that that was the intent of the organizers, who actually meant for the festival to be a profitable business venture. Kudos to them for recognizing the moment, allowing everyone in for free, and organizing free food and medical care on the fly, but ultimately the early rock festival movement was just as much about the beginnings of a vaguely progressive-feeling lifestyle consumerism as it was peace and love.
9
@Jeff P It's true - the original intent was to make money to start a recording studio. I also think it is incorrect to say that that was they only reason that they wanted to do a festival.
5
Michael Shrieve was one of the youngest musicians to perform at Woodstock in 1969, being aged 20. His drum solo during Santana's "Soul Sacrifice" in the Woodstock film has been described as "electrifying".
Yea, it may be, however, WHAT was the cameraman thinking? He's cropped the guy from the shoulders to mid-forehead while he's playing his heart out. This "musician close up" continues throughout the entire film, even to Hendrix's performance, cropped from shoulders up. Was the film crew all nearsighted?
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@Moehoward
Maybe you should ask Martin Scorsese? He was part of the film crew.
3
Why no mention of Lollapalooza, which started in 1991 and arguably led to the creation of Coachella and all that followed?
32
I'm surprised you could put on a public event for 600,000 people - Summer Jam, 1973, Watkins Glen - with only 1,000 toilets. That's one toilet per 600 people. I know the standard where I'm at these days for a public festival is one toilet per 100 people. Or 6,000 toilets, not 1,000, for the festival cited in the article.
People are horrible slobs if you let them be that way.
Elevated permit requirements are not a terrible thing. It helps ensure everyone's safety.
9
@Bobby Clobber
This is why I prefer to sit at home and watch performance videos. The bathroom ratio here is usually 1(me):4. No waiting.
It's kind of amazing what kids will put up with.
9
@Bobby Clobber They were not expecting 600,000 people. I think they were only permitted for 100,000 people or something like that.
1
The author and many influencers out there need to look up the definition of a Hippie! Even looking at the photographs in this article would tell an educated and objective observer, that in total, those aren’t Hippies! As someone who was actually at Woodstock, I can attest that the overwhelming majority of concert goers weren’t hippies, but rather a gathering of working and lower to middle class folks, roughly between fifteen and thirty five years of age, who were there for the music! The only people who think The Woodstock festival was a gathering of Hippies, must be hallucinating!!!
37
Woodstock. I was 17....hated crowds then. Hate them now.
11
The Woodstock organizers had no idea how to run a concert. They were driving around in a fleet of new Porsche s.
2
The police who tried to help the people that attended Woodstock navigate thru the crowds said the people were polite and all of them said "please and thank you." Not one cop complained about their behavior.
22
@Susan Helpful, friendly, polite law enforcers might have been the most amazing folks at Woodstock. Imagine!
1
@susan
Back when a cop was your friend.
Lollapalooza ushered in the renaissance of festival culture, not Coachella. It paved the way for Lilith Fair, the Warped Tar, etc.
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@A. Camilleri
thank you
1
Lilith Fair? 1997's All-Women Festival started by Sarah McLachlan?
I guess that doesn't count.
20
You neglected to mention Bonaroo - it's been around since 2002. Maybe 80,000 people in attendance doesn't fit your narrative.
13
@misterarthur Sorry for the typo. Should be Bonnaroo.
This is the WORST, most sickening writing I have ever see in the NY Times, and I read and love this newspaper every day.
I WAS AT WOODSTOCK. To evaluate thisin terms of profit or sanitation is insane. I wasn't a hippie, I was a working musician in NY and somehow at the last minute me and a buddy went up there. It probably was the most amazing experience of my life. It wasn't the music. It was there here were a bunch of New Yorkers getting along increadibly well, no fights, no problems, just love for one another. This wasn't well run by a bunch of greedy promoters. To our amazement, even the cops were happy and smiling and as we approached the site 70 year old people were standing watching giving us water! Woodstock was an organic experience. You have never seen ANYTHING like looking up at the surrounding mountains covered with happy loving wonderful people. NEVER., I slept in a sleeping bag in the mud with a girl I met and woke up to Grace Slick saying "Good Morning People."
Woodstock had nothing to do with profit, greedy promoters and adaquate porta potties. The music was amazing because it was an organic experience.
Woodstock wasn't about adaquate portapotties. It was about love.
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@antonio scoot People who write these silly articles just do not understand the 60s for a good reason.
Those years were a time and a place and a culture and a feeling that can't be explained or understood unless you lived it. I wish people would stop writing this nonsense. Write about your own time, not mine.
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@antonio scoot
This was my first reaction when I saw the headline too. Obviously the world has sadly changed Antonio; that summer I was living on a farm in Pennsylvania with other like-minded hippies of all ages.
There was no such thing as a Rock Festival then. And Woodstock was never intended to "cash in". Free rock concerts were common. In the park. At colleges. On the back of flat top trucks. Even on city streets.
What many people don't understand is that rock concerts then were never just about the music (although the era spawned an art/music renaissance that have never since been equaled). It was about realizing that we, the common people, have the ability to come together in love, peace and joy to express ourselves and build a community on our own terms - at least for an ephemeral time. The primordial impetus for Burning Man.
I get sad when I read articles like this.
7
@antonio scoot You are right Antonio.
Now it's about getting the organization paid, promoted and worrying if some of those semi-auto guns, with extended clips in America, are going to find their way into the concert.
The wrong things have changed.
4
Sure, in business terms, Woodstock was a disaster ... if you forget the three-record album and the 1970 movie, which made zillions for the festival's producers and are still raking in money today.
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@Margarets Dad
That this film won an academy award is an insult.
Every time I watch it I cringe. The cinematography and direction are HORRIBLE: "Yea, get a shot of that guy playing drums but zoom in on his face only, yea, cut off the forehead and go in further. And that guy playing guitar, get him from the shoulders up, even though he's playing guitar, just his face, we don't need to see what else he's doing." Cameras have zoom, don't they? You don't have to be standing next to someone, right?
Guess the entire film crew was on drugs too, because the Woodstock Film was a disaster regardless of how much money it raked in.
5
@Moehoward
I (and Roger Ebert, who named "Woodstock" one of his all-time Great Films), disagree with you. It is one of my all-time favorites.
Remember that the film crew was working under the same difficult conditions that everyone else was experiencing.
9
@Moehoward
You should ask Martin Scorsese. He was part of the film crew.
4
Your history seems rather selective:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_International_Pop_Festival_(1970)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Midtown
4
Hey Ben Sisario,
Stop looking at Woodstock through a business lens - and ruining what Woodstock stood for. It wasn’t about business or commerce or capitalism. If you’re looking at this milestone event through a revisionist mindset, you’ve missed the point. It was about musicians who were counter culture heroes, who stood up to authority in their music, coming together to play for their fans in an atmosphere of peace and love. That’s it. You needn’t dissect it to pieces.
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@Debra
Ben Sisario, the author of the piece, was not born when Woodstock happened. Let’s cut him a break. He can write about the money, listen to recordings of the music, watch some video, but one thing was certin, he wasn’t there. Sometimes being there, the ethereal experiance transends the nuts and bolts history of the event. That was clearly the Woodstock experience that people brought back and remember. Ben, you missed it. You are a good writer and your piece was informative. But the music, all those boomers the same age, Vietnam, the draft, dealing with parents and leaders from a different generation, were there at one place, at one time.
2
"Yet the momentum was lost, and it was not until 1999, with the arrival of Coachella, that the American rock festival truly began to take root again."
I'm not sure how you're defining rock festival but I remember going to Lollapalooza in the early 90's for several years, that's well before 1999.
26
Look, we spent scores of lives and billions of dollars fighting
an unnecessary and ultimately failed war. So what if one of the greatest music - and no doubt social - events in contemporary
history didn't show a profit. Big deal! Moreover, the amazing
thing about Woodstock is that with all the crowds and bad weather it was a peaceful - especially given what's presently going on in our ailing nation - in the deepest sense light-filled event. In this way it remains an inspiring memory to all who
participated as well as to all who have come after.
34
I recall interviews with some of the performers where they said they hated Woodstock.
3
Perhaps the establishment was fearful (those in power always are) of the potential in such large crowds. So they made it hard to accomplish. You mention Rockefeller. Let's not forget his Draconian drug laws passed around the same time. There was a man full of fear.
But perhaps the real reason is that Woodstock signaled the end of counter-culture revolution and not the beginning. The festivals that appeared afterwards were not a continuation of something but merely imitative an derivative.
10
@DaveInNewYork Woodstock was a bunch of upper middle and middle class spoiled brats. They did not care at all about peace and love, unless it was free sex and drugs. I know back in the day as a young kid, I ran into a several that went there, coming into our hood looking for drugs (why because we were a racial mixed neighborhood and poor - so figure it out).
1
@DaveInNewYork
Yes, Dave, I have always thought that too. The establishment found a way defuse the counter-culture by adopting the trappings of the counter-culture (TV ads featuring longhairs) while at the same time ridiculing the really dangerous part - the creation of an intentionally separate multiracial, multi sexual culture-within-a-culture. This article and some of the comments here are the residual artifacts of this.
3
@California Native
Woodstock Nation became the Pepsi Generation.
2
Stuck in the huge traffic jam on the NYS thruway on the way to the Woodstock music festival ,in the back seat of our car 2 young newlywed friends that came all the way up from Atlanta GA for this extravaganza ,their tickets were our wedding present for them, not moving at all ,my wife flagged down a NYS Trooper stating that our friends celebrating their wedding and honeymooning in our apartment in Manhattan ,should not be denied their "once in a lifetime music event".
The trooper looked in our cars and saw the cute couple both who have never been in NYC before and said "when I get in my car follow me. We u turned and rode behind the cop car for awhile and then was directed to a road that would get us near the stage .He told us where we could park in a town several miles from the event ,we did and when arriving just witnessed the opening of the
gates to let the massive crowd in w/o paying.
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@Carlyle T.
What a great gift to your friends!
1