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The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was the most famous rock festival of its era, It was held at Max Yasgur's 600 acre (2.4 km²) dairy farm in Bethel, New York, on 15, 16, and 17 August, 1969. The festival bears the name "Woodstock" because it was originally scheduled to take place in the town of Woodstock, in Ulster County; local opposition arose, however, and the event was almost cancelled altogether. But Sam Yasgur persuaded his father Max to allow the concert to be held on the family's property, located in Sullivan County, which lies to the south and west of Ulster County.

Although 10,000 or 20,000 people were expected, over 400,000 attended, most of whom did not pay admission. The highways leading to the concert were jammed with traffic as people tried to make it to the concert. The weekend was rainy, the facilities were overcrowded, and attendees shared food, alcoholic beverages, and drugs. However, no violence was reported and the fact that attendees were remarkably well behaved was particularly noted. The Woodstock Festival represented the culmination of the counterculture of the 1960s and the high point of the "hippie era".

The festival did not initially make money for the promoters, although, thanks to record sales and proceeds from the highly regarded film of the event, it did eventually become profitable.

There were two deaths and two births at Woodstock.

Woodstock is also the name of the famous documentary film about the concert; the film, directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Martin Scorsese, was released in 1970 and won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The film has since been deemed "culturally significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Artists who performed at Woodstock

Myth of Woodstock

Woodstock has been mythologized in American popular culture as a festival where nearly 500,000 people came together to celebrate peace and love. However, Woodstock did indeed experience its share of crime and drug related misbehavior. As stated before, Woodstock was not intended for such a large crowd and thus, many needed facilities were not present, such as toilets and first-aid tents. Many who attended the festival felt that it was chaotic and did not report having a positive experience.

Eye-witness account:

I was twenty years old in 1969. I was a seminary student for the priesthood and on vacation in the summer of 1969. I was a loner, a peripheral man on the fringes of both the counterculture and society at large.

It was a turbulent time in America with wars raging on both the foreign and domestic fronts. With assassinations of our liberal leaders, civil unrest, discrimination and the questioning of all authority, The institutions of this country were being rocked to their foundations. In this environment the counterculture took on added appeal. My favorite group was The Doors. I had a record player that played single 45rpms. The only record I owned was "Riders on The Storm" which I played over and over. I also liked the later Beatles, Temptations, Dylan, Lovin Spoonful, Rascals, Kinks etc. Aside from the Temps and Four Tops, which were, feel good groups; the other music acknowledged underlying feelings of alienation and angst.

The Hippie movement was more than bell bottom pants and long hair. It was a state of mind. A world view. A philosophy and lifestyle. It was so pervasive that it crept into and finally overran the mainstream culture. We were all part of it to some degree. We shared common values such as basic human rights for all people, the sanctity of life, the search for truth and a better world, the power of change, a distrust of those in power.

Civil unrest was the first wave of change to sweep the country. Demonstrations quickly turned violent hatred and division ran rampant. Then women rights and the counterrevolution. The "hard hats" (Middle America) and government were terrified and struck back. Black people were beaten and hosed in the streets. Mayor Daley's police at the 68 Democratic Convention savagely beat student protesters. Our fellow young men were being brought home from Viet Nam in body bags by the thousands. Daily bombings of Vietnam and Cambodia. Assassinations of Presidents and Civil Rights leaders, all of the above brought to us in living color each night on the 6 o'clock news.

The Vietnam War was an evil war. Perpetrated on a foreign people by industrialists and government determined to advance their capitalistic and political agendas, with total disregard for human life.

The drug scene was a way out (not a real good one) of the day to day oblivion and despair many of us felt. I began riding motorcycles, studying philosophy, visiting a friend in the town of Woodstock regularly, riding the subways of Manhattan alone late at night and spending time in Greenwich Village.

I attended the Woodstock Festival in 1969. I was involved with student sit-ins at college during the Cambodia bombings.

I was barely twenty years old. I followed a girl I had met the week before in Tarrytown N.Y. She was in a Camaro with her girlfriend and two guys. One looked like Jimi Hendrix, the other like Lynyrd Skynyrd. I followed on my motorcycle, with ape hanger handlebars and a sissybar to which was tied a very large duffel bag. I stayed the three days. Pretty much. I was a loner but followed a car with four people in it. One was a girl that intrigued me.

I wasn't a protester but I was a seminarian questioning my vocation. I was on vacation and went spur of the moment. No one knew what was in store for us up there. I didn't get injured but the person I ended up with did.

I lived in Sleepy Hollow, i.e., Tarrytown, New York. I was single and in the seminary as I stated. I also went to Woodstock 79, 94 and 99. At Woodstock 69 I did a few things I shouldn't have. At Woodstock 79 no one was there. At Woodstock 99 I went around telling the young people to be careful.

Here's a recap of the best Woodstock story ever told. I was barely twenty as I said. I had my motorcycle against the curb on Beekman Avenue in Tarrytown when a pretty girl pulled up in a new Mustang. She noticed me admiring her car and asked me if I wanted a ride. I said yes if I could keep my helmet on because I didn't trust female drivers. We drove around Tarrytown for two hours and became friendly. She invited me to follow her and her girlfriend up to Woodstock the following week. I met her and her girlfriend and the two guys I mentioned above at the foot of the Tappan Zee Bridge that Friday, and we headed up the New York Thruway. When we got within 15 miles the traffic began to back up. The girl jumped out of the car wearing only jeans, a top, and no shoes. She made me throw my gear in the trunk of the car and we rode along the edge of the highway into the festival site and waited for the car to catch up. It never did. All the cars came to a stop and we realized we would not connect with our friends. I turned to her and asked if she had any money? She had $60, which was a fortune in 1969. I told her that the rules of he road dictated I watch out for her the entire weekend but she would have to split the dough. She agreed and jumped back on the bike and we got a bottle of wine and rode into the Festival. She was barely seventeen. So there I stood on the edge of the grassy oval looking down upon the stage, with this pretty girl with hair down to her waist (she looked like the girl on the Mod Squad TV show), a bottle of wine and my bike, surrounded by 400000 soul mates. It doesn't get any better! Then we watched as a tractor drove along a cleared portion of earth (all the grass was trampled and the mud and 500 years of cow manure were coming to the surface). I watched as the tractor ran over what appeared to be a mound of earth, as a human hand flung out. It became evident that a person had been inside a mummy sleeping bag and had been run over. I ran to the trailers and banged on a door until the doctor came out. I told him he had to come and help because someone had been run over! "What do you want me to DO!" he said, explaining that thousands of people were overdosing, having babies etc. "Are you kidding?" I said "I'll knock you out, damn it!"

" I'm sorry," he said "but I will call a medi-vac unit." The helicopter flew in and removed the young man already dead. It was like a replay of the 6 o'clock news with all my fellow young Americans coming back in body bags from Nam. Then the rain came. We were cold and wet and found refuge in other people's tents was we slept briefly an hour at a time. We sloshed around together the entire weekend, listening to the music and taking in the scene. My friend stepped on glass and cut her foot. She got help in on of the medical tents. In between the music played and everyone got along- no assaults or murders. People loving each other. Saturday night Sly and The Family Stone came on stage and sung "Gotta Get Higher" and 500,000 young people working out to the beat on car rooftops, shouted the lyrics at the top of their lungs.

By Sunday I was sick and thought I had pneumonia. So I decided not to wait for Hendrix and took my friend home. Riding down the Thruway in torrential rain I had a premonition of a crash. Just then the memory of my roommate from the seminary, entered my mind to remind me he worked in a camp somewhere in the Catskills. I turned off the road and stopped at a store and asked if they ever heard of St. Vincent's camp. It was just down the road! I pulled in to the camp with a full beard and leather jacket, a big knife strapped to my waist on my black bike. The young girl on the back was literally in tatters. The old Irish Catholic nun at the gate was mortified when I told her I was seminarian. My roommate identified me and was let in. I collapsed under ten covers in a big log bed while news reports about the disaster area we had just come from, blared over the TV.

The next day it was sunny and clear as I drove down the NY Thruway. I dropped my new friend of on a corner in Tarrytown. Tears welled up in her eyes as I explained I was headed back to the seminary. Once back at school in my vestments, I opened my prayer books and the picture of that sweet girl with tears in her eyes would appear. I put up with it for three months before I cranked up the bike and rode back over the Throggs Neck Bridge to tell her I just maybe I might be able to see her, once in a while. PS: Thirty two years later we are still married! A very true story.

There was no police harassment at Woodstock that I observed. Just the opposite. They left everyone alone and were friendly.

I felt a camaraderie with the downtrodden and oppressed. I was poor, strong willed, and a fiercely independent thinker. I was a philosopher and an existentialist. When I ultimately decided to leave the seminary (I had studied since age 13 for the priesthood) I underwent a religious and moral crisis. It was a time of deep emotion and psychological soul searching.

I think a lot of us became disillusioned back then just after Woodstock, with Altamont and Kent State. We all went on with our lives and buried our ideals. We became jaded and cynical. We pursued wealth and power. We ultimately matured (how horrible!). But there is a reawakening, a resurgence beginning to sweep the country, I feel. A lot of us including myself are beginning to look back to those times and question the paths we have taken. (That's part of the reason I wrote my book). We are trying to recapture the magic and the light we left behind.

The experiences of the past were both liberating and debilitating. Many of us who experimented with mind altering substances for instance, may have actually changed who we were, the very makeup of our own brains and personalities. There is something sad in that I think. Maybe that explains the comical situation I put myself in at the twenty-fifth reunion at Woodstock in Bethel were I walked around at night telling young people smoking pot that "you really shouldn't be doing that". Being a parent now myself (a grandparent actually), I wished I had taken it a little easier on my own parents.

To borrow a phrase, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." To be fair I have enjoyed the fruits of my labors to some extent in my adult life. I bought my first house at age 25, and drove fancy cars most of my life, but I never became a slave to money. I did become a slave to the retail business, however. A workaholic, putting in 12 hour days for thirty years. I took few too many vacations, and smelled few too many flowers. Yet for what reason, I now as others ask myself.

by Christopher Cole author of The Closer's Song

The film

Title: Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music ( 1970 )
Producer: Bob Maurice
Script and direction: Michael Wadleigh
Awards:
- Oscar for Bob Maurice ( Best documentary film )
- Oscar-nomination for Thelma Schoonmaker ( Best cut )
Appearing musicants: Joan Baez / Joe Cocker / Country Joe & The Fish / Crosby, Stills & Nash / Arlo Guthrie / Richie Havens / Jimi Hendrix / Carlos Santana / John Sebastian / Sha-Na-Na / Sly and The Family Stone / Ten Years After / The Who
Additionals musictitles: "Going Up The Country" by Canned Heat / "Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell

The longplay

woodstock - music from the original soundtrack and more ( 1970 )

number		group / singer	title	m:ss	written by ...
1	.1	John B. Sebastian	I Had A Dream	2:35	John B. Sebastian
	.2	Canned Heat	Going Up The Country	3:20	Alan Wilson
		Text: Stage Announcements
	.3	Richie Havens	Freedom	4:36	Adapted from "Motherless Child"
	.4	Country Joe & The Fish	Rock & Soul Music	2:08	Country Joe McDonald, ...
	.5	Arlo Guthrie	Coming Into Los Angeles	2:07	Arlo Guthrie
	.6	Sha-Na-Na	At The Hop	2:00	A. Singer, J.Medora & P. Withe
2	.1	Country Joe McDonald	The "Fish" Cheer	3:15	Country Joe McDonald
	.1	Country Joe McDonald	I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin-To-Die Rag	3:15	Country Joe McDonald
	.2	Joan Baez featuring Jeffrey Shurtleff	Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man	2:07	James Roger McGuinn & Graham Parsons
	.3	Joan Baez	Joe Hill	2:40	Earl Robinson & Alfred Hayes
		Text: Stage Announcements
	.4	Crosby, Stills & Nash	Suite: Judy Blue Eyes	8:11	Stephen Stills
	.5	Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young	Sea Of Madness	3:24	Neil Young
number		group / singer	title	m:ss	written by ...
3	.1	Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young	Wooden Ships	5:27	David Crosby & Stephen Stills
	.2	The Who	We're Not Gonna Take It	4:25	Pete Townshend
		Text: Stage Announcements
	.3	Joe Cocker	With A Little Help From My Friends	7:40	John Lennon & Paul McCartney
		Text: Rainstorm, Crowd Sounds, Announcements, General Hysteria
4		Text: Crowd Rain Chant		2:20
	.1	Santana	Soul Sacrifice	8:06	Carlos Santana, ...
		Text: Stage Announcements
	.2	Ten Years After	I'm Going Home	9:20	Alvin Lee
number		group / singer	title	m:ss	written by ...
5	.1	Jefferson Airplane	Volunteers	2:44	Paul Kantner & Marty Ballin
		Text: Max Yasgur
	.2	Sly & The Family Stone	Dance To The Music	2:10	Sylvester Stewart
			Music Lover	6:59
			I Want To Take You Higher	4:07
	.3	John B. Sebastian	Rainbows All Over Your Blues	2.10	John B. Sebastian
6	.1	Butterfield Blues Band	Love March	7:45	Gene Dinwiddle & Philip Wilson
	.2	Jimi Hendrix	Star Spangled Banner	12:45	Traditional, arranged by Jimi Hendrix
	.2	Jimi Hendrix	Purple Haze & Instrumental Solo	12:45	Jimi Hendrix

@@ Line 50: / Line 50: @@
 Woodstock has been mythologized in American popular culture as a festival where nearly 500,000 people came together to celebrate peace and love.  However, Woodstock did indeed experience its share of crime and drug related misbehavior.  As stated before, Woodstock was not intended for such a large crowd and thus, many needed facilities were not present, such as toilets and [[First aid|first-aid]] tents.  Many who attended the festival felt that it was chaotic and did not report having a positive experience.
-Eye-witness account:
+== Eye-witness account: ==
 I was twenty years old in 1969. I was a seminary student for the priesthood and on vacation in the summer of 1969. I was a loner, a peripheral man on the fringes of both the counterculture and society at large.