50 Rarely Seen Images From Woodstock 1969

Woodstock was the biggest event in music history. It was a gathering of some of the best musicians of the time, with nearly three dozen acts performing over the course of four days. In August 1969, an estimated four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand people attended Woodstock in Bethel, New York. It became a defining moment in the countercultural movement of the era. The Woodstock Music & Art Fair is considered to be the very height of the 1960s Peace and Love countercultural movement.

Woodstock was created by Artie Kornfeld, Michael Lang, Joel Rosenman, and John Roberts, and they formed the company Woodstock Ventures. The original location of the festival was supposed to be Howard Mills Industrial Park in Wallkill, near Middletown, New York. 

Wallkill fell through as the location for Woodstock, so the promoters turned to Bethel, New York. Max Yasgur owned a six hundred acre dairy farm in Bethel, and he respected the desire of concert-goers to share in a communal experience and allowed organizers the use of his property for a fee of fifty thousand dollars. 

Rosenman, Roberts, Lang, and Kornfeld had to pay for the entertainment, production costs, location, and other expenses in the hope of profiting from ticket sales. Originally, a one-day ticket cost seven dollars, and to attend all three days, the ticket cost eighteen dollars. 

Jimi Hendrix was the highest-paid performer at Woodstock; he was paid eighteen thousand for his performance. Creedence Clearwater Revival was the first act booked and was paid ten thousand. 

Many were concerned about the anticipated misbehavior of the concertgoers. However, there were virtually no reports of violence other than after the food shortage, some attendees looted nearby farmland for corn and produce. 

They needed a way to communicate with the audience, so a staff member, Edward "Chip" Monck, would take the microphone to deliver announcements. He would alert the crowd to unattended children and notify the people where they could find help. 

The organizers only had twenty-nine days to find a new site for the concert and get everything ready. Chip Monck stated, "The thing is that it was such a short time. It was particularly difficult to try and re-create what we had in design. 

The lineup at Woodstock was incredible, with thirty-four acts on the bill. The lineup on Friday was Swami Satchidananda, Sweetwater, Tim Hardin, Richie Havens, Bert Sommers, Melanie Safka, Joan Baez, and more. 

Credence Clearwater Revival was set to perform at Woodstock, but they experienced big travel delays, and then they didn't get to play until sometime between one and three Sunday morning. They didn't get to play until late because the Grateful Dead went on too long, which left Credence Clearwater Revival feeling like they got the shaft. 

Sometimes outdoor festivals can have terrible sound, but not Woodstock. Pioneering audio engineer Bill Hanley created a custom sound setup that became known as the 'Woodstock sound system,' and many said it was the most advanced, expensive, and largest ever constructed. 

When the Grateful Dead took the stage for their performance on Saturday night, it was pouring rain. Rain and electrical instruments don't work well together. "It was raining toads when we played. The rain was part of our nightmare. The other part was our sound man, who decided that the ground situation on the stage was all wrong." 

Woodstock was not long after the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. However, Michael Lang did not want the festival to be political; instead, he wanted it to be a place where opposing ideas could coexist. 

At the time of Woodstock in 1969, outdoor festivals were still a fairly new thing, and large food vendors said that Woodstock was too daunting a task. So, the organizers hired three men with little food experience who called themselves Food for Love. 

Organizers had no idea that so many people would show up for the Woodstock festival, and as a result, they didn't have anywhere near enough toilets. They only had about six hundred toilets, which is roughly one toilet for every seven hundred people. 

Jimi Hendrix was the last performer at Woodstock, and it was 8:30 Monday morning by the time he got onstage. There were several delays and bad weather, so most of the concertgoers had headed home. Sadly, the crowd had dwindled from four hundred thousand to just thirty thousand. 

Sadly, there were two deaths at the Woodstock festival. One of the deaths resulted from a drug overdose, and the other one was someone who had fallen asleep in a nearby field and was accidentally run over by a tractor. 

Max Yasgur was a dairy farmer who owned the land where the festival took place. He considered the festival a resounding success and a victory for peace and human kindness. 

There have been several promoters that have tried to re-do Woodstock. In fact, there was supposed to be a Woodstock 50 featuring the Killers, Jay Z, John Fogerty, Robert Plant, Miley Cyrus, Janelle Monae, and The Raconteurs. 

In order to project the sound out to the thousands of people, the team needed to come up with something special. Michael Lang found a man in Boston, a sound engineer, Bill Hanley. 

E.H. Beresford "Chip" Monck came up with professional-level lighting for the Woodstock festival. They had planned on building a roof but ended up not having time, leaving a lot of mounted light left unused. 

Woodstock organizers expected roughly fifty thousand attendees but between four hundred thousand and five hundred thousand showed up. However, in secret, they did plan on two hundred thousand because they had pre-sold more than one hundred and eighty thousand tickets, but it still ended up being twice that much. 

They called the festival "three days of peace and music," but the organizers knew that they would have to find some way of controlling unruly elements. However, they didn't feel like uniformed police would be a good idea, and they decided against having teams of off-duty cops. 

There were so many people trying to get to the festival, which meant the roads leading to the site were backed up for miles. The drive from New York was taking around eight hours when normally it would take two hours. 

One of Joni Mitchell's most well-known songs is actually called "Woodstock." However, Mitchell didn't perform at Woodstock and didn't even attend. She didn't perform because her manager thought it would be more beneficial to play The Dick Cavett Show. 

Because of a severe lack of planning and underestimating the number of attendees, the festival ran out of food on the very first day. Thankfully, members of the Monticello Jewish Community handed out sandwiches. 

A particular stage was designed for Woodstock, and the hope was that it would cut down the time between acts considerably. The stage would rotate like a turntable, and it would allow one band to get ready as another band was still performing. 

Thousands and thousands of pictures were taken at Woodstock, but there were none quite as famous as the couple huddled together under a blanket as hundreds of people sat around. In fact, the photo was even used as the cover of the Woodstock live album. 

In addition to the food shortage, there was also a shortage of drinking water. In fact, they dug six wells just to try and accommodate the crowd, but weed was in better supply than water. People were warned beforehand to bring plenty of water, but most didn't listen. 

The idea for Woodstock originated in New York with entrepreneurs John P. Roberts and Joel Rosenman. The two were approached by Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, music promoters. 

Not everyone was excited about the Woodstock festival, especially the farmer's neighbors. Bethel had a population of just two thousand three hundred and sixty-six, and most of the area was farms. 

Monck also made announcements about bad drugs, saying the brown acid was circulating around, and it wasn't too good. He suggested that they stay away from it and also get down from the towers because of the electrical danger. 

The footage shows Joe Cocker extremely sweaty during his performance. However, he wasn't actually sweaty; he had just had a huge amount of water dumped on him. 

Right before Jimi Hendrix took the stage, Sha Na Na played at 7:30 a.m. Monday. They were a 1950s-styled doo-wop group, singing hits like Duke of Earl and At the Hop, which didn't really fit in with the rest of the music from the festival. 

British rockers Iron Butterfly were one of the bands scheduled to perform at Woodstock, but they ended up stuck at New York's LaGuardia Airport. They couldn't secure ground transportation, so they demanded that the festival organizers send a helicopter for them.

Joan Baez was one of the 1960s biggest stars and a major draw at Woodstock. Her first set was on the first day of the festival, right as the storm clouds started rolling in. 

Hugh Nanton Romney is well known as a political activist and a member of the California hippie community Hog Farm. He went by the name of Wavy Gravy, a clown, and would spray concert-goers with seltzer and throw custard pies. 

Jimi Hendrix was not supposed to be the festival closer; it was intended to be singing cowboy Roy Rogers. Michael Lang and his co-organizers wanted to have the show closed out with the famous song "Happy Trails." 

In the 1978 movie musical Grease, Johnny Casino and the Gamblers was the band that played the Rydell High School dance. The band formed at Columbia University and came on the scene in 1969. 

Initially, the media didn't pay much attention to Woodstock because not everyone anticipated its significance. In fact, The New York Times actually rejected a pitch to cover the festival, but the writer went anyway and later talked his editors into publishing it. 

Melanie Safka was only twenty-two years old when she performed at Woodstock. She was fairly unknown at the time, but her performance made her a star. However, she stated that during her performance, she was terrified and had an "out of body experience." 

Martin Scorsese was hired as an assistant director for the 1970 documentary film Woodstock. He had the opportunity to do some editing work on the one hundred and twenty hours of footage from the festival. 

There were several amazing performances at Woodstock, but many bands also declined to play there. Those bands included The Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, and Jethro Tull; Ian Anderson stated that he didn't like hippies. 

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young performed at Woodstock, and it was only their second gig together. Drummer Dallas Taylor stated that the band was not well-rehearsed, and Neil Young skipped most of the acoustic part of their set. 

There were two deaths reported at Woodstock, and while there weren't any other major injuries reported, there were several medical cases. Most involved drug-related issues and bare-feet injuries, and eight women reported they experienced miscarriages. 

Cleaning the venue was a massive task and took several days, bulldozers, and tens of thousands of dollars. The workers actually started the clean-up by shoveling the trash; it looked like a tornado had gone through. 

The site where Woodstock was held is now known as the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. The original hill that overlooks the field where the festival took place now has a concert pavilion and museum. Several of the performers from Woodstock have come back and performed at the pavilion, such as Joe Cocker, Melanie, Santana, and Arlo Guthrie. 

Even though John Sebastian said on stage that "some cat's old lady just had a baby," no one has ever been identified as a Woodstock baby. However, the festival's medical director reported that one baby was born in a local hospital after the mother was transported from the concert. 

Woodstock is known for several reasons, including hippies covered in mud. It rained almost continuously during the festival and was often downpouring, which caused muddy roads and fields. Some attendees were seen frolicking in the mud; however, the puddles were a mix of water, mud, and sewage. 

The Woodstock documentary team ended up with one hundred and twenty miles of footage that they edited down to three hours. The movie was a huge hit and won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.