About Woodstock

The  is a collection of facts concerning the Woodstock Festival (Woodstock Music and Art Festival) of 1969. The initial idea was to set up a Wiki to write down all knowledge that was gathered at the [http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/woodstockproject Yahoo! Woodstock Project Mailinglist]. If you have some knowledge about Woodstock you would like to share please join the Wiki or our mailinglist!

General Information
The Woodstock festival was originally a commercial business idea by Michael Lang, Artie Kornfield and two investors, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman. The execution of the event itself was chaotic and led to a lot of unplanned events, mainly due unexpected flood of festival-goers.


 * 200,000 visitors were expected but between 400,000 to 500,000 showed up
 * A lot more people were stuck in the massive traffic jam around the festival and didn't reach it at all
 * Artists were flown in by helicopters, the military helped out, too
 * The festival was scheduled to last three days but performances were delayed so it finally ended Monday midday with the headliner Jimi Hendrix

Location
The festival had to move once and in the end it wasn't held in Woodstock at all but on a farm. Originally it was scheduled to take place in an industrial park in Wallkill, Orange County, New York. The town of Woodstock is 31 miles (50 km) north of Wallkill and it served just for the name of the festival. But a local law, enforced by the Town Board and the town's residents, permit the gathering of more than 5,000 people.

The organizers found a place on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York. They rented 600 acres (243 hectare) from Yasgur plus nearby land from his neighbours - which wasn't enough as it turned out. Nearby to the farm was also a pond which came in handy for bathing.

See also the picture to the right.

Date and Time
The festival started on Friday, August 15th afternoon and finally ended Monday, August 18th midday. Originally it should have ended on Sunday night but rain, immense traffic jam and financial shortcuts delayed the performances. Some bands played in the middle of the night, some performed even in the morning, for instance Jefferson Airplane on Sunday 8 am.

For further information see the Time Schedule.

Promotion and Tickets
186,000 tickets were sold in advance, each one for US$18. Tickets at the gates cost $24. They were valid for all three days. However, most people came in for free and tickets were never controlled. Soon the fences were torn down and the festival was declared to be free. Below is a gallery of available posters from the festival.

Woodstock Media
Warner Brothers acquired the rights to film the festival. The movie was a huge success in 1970 and was exdented in 1994 for the festival's 25th anniversary.

Atlantic Records issued the soundtrack to the movie: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, also known as Woodstock I. Originally issued in 1970 this was a 3 LP set. One year later it was followed by Woodstock II, a two LP set. Nowadays Atlantic Records belongs to Warner Brothers so they also hold the rights for the music. In 1994 a 4 CD box set was issued with the content of Woodstock I and II and previously unreleased material with the name Woodstock - Three Days of Peace and Music.

Additionally a lot of bootlegs of the festival have appeared. Some of them are recorded by the audience, some of them are directly from the soundboard which are preserved in a nice quality. The advantage of the bootlegs is that they aren't cut or edited so crowd noise and interesting as well as amusing comments from the artists can be heard. The official releases also contain overdubs later done in the studio which are missing from the bootlegs, too.

One of the major goals of [http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/woodstockproject Yahoo! Woodstock Project Mailinglist] is to restore the festival in it's entirety. That means collecting all existing recordings (audio and video), combine and arrange the sources and enjoy the Woodstock festival as it was. This is done in project called Woodstock Complete.