Woodstock, 40 years later the catalyst of outdoor concerts

Woodstock the outdoor concert that would be the catalyst of outdoor events today.

40 years ago on August 15-18 1969, Woodstock a festival of peace and love took place. This historic event was filmed and documented as the staple of what music, peace, love and folk music was in the 60’s.

Woodstock took place in Bethel , New York; a small dairy farming community south west of Woodstock NY. The promoters told Bethel authorities the event would attract approximately 50,000 people. The promoters had set up for 150,000 to 200,000 people, 500,000 people showed up for the three day event.

Woodstock was setup by promoters as a money maker, and the first outdoor concert that would attract at least 150,000 concert goers. Tickets were sold in advance at the time for US$18 (approximately US$75 today) and US$24 at the gate for all three days. It was confirmed 186,000 tickets had been sold.

Eventually the gates were torn down, and Woodstock quickly became a free festival, where half a million people showed up. Making it one of the largest outdoor concert in history; also the greatest logistics nightmare of all times.

Woodstock was setup for 150,000 to 200,000 people. This created parking and traffic nightmares in Bethel, NY. There was not enough food and sanitary supplies to accommodate this amount of people. Plus there was no way there would be sleeping accommodations in the area for this amount of people. Add to this the rain, which created a muddy environment for all; and of course there was no shortage of drugs at the event. I believe this was well documented as well.

All in all considering the poor setup and logistics, it amazingly did not turn into a bad situation that it could have been; if riots had taken place.

Woodstock had the following performers, which of course made many of them into even bigger stars after the even. (34 artists)

Richie Havens	Swami Satchidananda	Sweetwater	The Incredible String Band
Bret Sommer	Tim Hardin	Ravi Shankar	Melanie
Arlo Guthrie	Joan Baez	Quill	Keef Hartley Band
Country Joe McDonald	John Sebastian	Santana	Canned Heat
Mountain	Grateful Dead	Credence Clearwater Revival	Janis Joplin
Sly & the Family Stone	The Who	Jefferson Airplane	Joe Cocker
Country Joes and the Fish	Ten Years After	The Band	Blood, Sweat & Tears
Johnny Winter	Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young	Neil Young	Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Sha-Na-Na	Jimi Hendrix

The following are the artists that were invited to perform at Woodstock, but declined. It is amazing if you think about it, how if these artists had performed how it would have changed Woodstock, and also their careers, as we would have known them today.

The Doors	Led Zeppelin	Jethro Tall	Tommy James and the Shondells
Bob Dylan	The Byrds	Mind Garage	The Moody Blues
Spirit	Joni Mitchell	It’s a Beautiful Day

There is a Limited Edition 6CD Boxed set available from Amazon, commemorating the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. See all the excitement as it happened. The boxed set is for a limited time.

 

…and the greatest memory of all of course goes to Jimi Hendrix, and his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner which totally amazed everyone at Woodstock, and 40 years later still does.

 

 

 

 

 

By George Luker © Copyright 2009 Krule Music Group