About Woodstock

Woodstock Festival 1969
Full name	Woodstock Music and Art Festival
Location	Bethel, New York, USA (site of original festival)
Date	Friday afternoon, August 15 - Monday morning, August 18, 1969
Founded by	Michael Lang (producer), John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld
Genres	Rock and Folk music, including Blues Rock, Folk Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Jazz Rock and Latin Rock as well as traditional Indian music.
Visitors	500,000 (approx.)

The Woodstock Wiki is a collection of facts concerning the Woodstock Festival (Woodstock Music and Art Fair) of 1969. The initial idea was to set up a Wiki to write down all knowledge that was gathered at the Yahoo! Woodstock Project mailing list. If you have some knowledge about Woodstock you would like to share please join the Wiki or our mailing list!

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.

• 50,000 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 Woodstock triangle: The eponymous town of Woodstock, the original festival site at Wallkill and the final place at Bethel

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 left.

Date and Time

The festival started on Friday, August 15^th afternoon and finally ended Monday, August 18^th 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.

Tickets and Promotion

186,000 tickets were sold in advance making a total of US$ 1,800,000. A one day pass cost $7, two day $13 and three day $18. Tickets at the gates cost $24 (for all three days). They differed in color but the validity was never controlled. Soon the fences were torn down and the festival was declared to be free.

The festival was promoted by radio and newspaper ads, posters, shops in New York City (who also sold tickets) and simply by word of mouth. Below is a gallery of available posters from the festival.

Woodstock Posters

Original poster which shows that the festival takes place in Wallkill, New York

A rare, early version of the poster with bands on it who didn't attend and a different setlist

The well known final poster with the guitar and the white pigeon

Original poster for the movie

Another poster of the movie

Woodstock Media

Warner Brothers acquired the rights to film the festival. The movie was a huge success in 1971 and was extended in 1994 for the festival's 25^th anniversary. 2009 saw the release of the Ultimate Collector's Edition due it's 40^th anniversary on two DVDs and in Blu-Ray.

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. This was topped in 2009 by | Rhino Records who issued a comprehensive 6-CD box set which features songs by every artist who performed at Woodstock.

Additionally a lot of Template:Wikipedia Link 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 Template:Wikipedia Link later done in the studio which are missing from the bootlegs, too.

One of the major goals of Yahoo! Woodstock Project mailing list is to restore the festival in its 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.

Links

External Links

1. Template:Wikipedia Link Note that the setlist of performances is not correct
2. Woodstock69.com An oldie but goldie
3. The Woodstock '69 Page Another quite old site but has some nice information and the correct setlist
4. Woodstock Project Home of the Woodstock Complete project as well as other major rock festivals
5. Woodstock.com