(Senior picture McLane High School 1969)
The summer of 1969 was the beginning of the rest of MY life, I just didn’t know it back then!
What I was about to witness in the summer of 1969 would define my youth and ultimately define the “Baby Boomer Generation”.
But first I need to tell you what made the summer of 1969 possible. The happenings of the previous year of 1968 made the events of 1969 all the more historic. The Vietnam War had become the most unpopular war in the history of the USA. The war had dragged on for many years with no end in sight, all the while the casualties continued to add up daily. The youth of our country had become extremely disenchanted with the Vietnamese War and formed a nationwide, and very organized, opposition to it.
In April of 1968 Martin Luther King, the most prominent civil rights leader in the nation, was assassinated in Memphis, TN. The very next month, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, CA while campaigning for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination. Within those two months the hopes and dreams of this country’s youth and the disenfranchised were destroyed! The country was in disarray and divided over many issues. As the unhappiness boiled, the rest of the citizens watched the rebellion and demonstrations later that summer in Chicago, as the Democratic Convention convened in Chicago, IL. It appeared that our very societal foundations were crumbling before our very eyes.
Fast foward to April 1969, an enterprising young man named Michael Lang, along with as associate named Artie Kornfield, had devised a plan to put on a rock festival similar to the festival that had been staged earlier on the West Coast as the Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey,CA. The only catch is that he needed some investors. Fortunately for Lang, he came across an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal under the name of Challenge International, LTD: “Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions”
That ad had put into the Wall Street Journal by two young men that had just come into some money via an inheritance. Those two young men were John Roberts and Joel Rosenman.
Lang, Kornfield, Roberts, and Rosenman eventually agreed and formed “Woodstock Ventures” for the purpose of putting this idea together.
After viewing many potential sites, Woodstock Ventures settled on a 300 acre site at Mills Industrial Park located in Middletown, NY. On July 15, 1969, just 30 days before the scheduled concert date, the Walkill County Zoning Board of Appeals revoked the permit on the grounds that the portable toilets did not meet the county code. Fortunately, a farmer by the name of Max Yasgur was willing to allow the Woodstock Ventures to lease his 600 acre farm as the site of the festival! It was crunch time, could this thing be put together in less than 30 days??? Good old American ingenuity was about to shift into high gear!
Initially, there was difficulty signing up the entertainment, but once John Fogerty and Creedance Clearwater Revival signed up the other acts quickly jumped on board!
The line up looked like this.
Friday
Richie Havens
Ravi Shankar
Melanie
Arlo Guthrie
Joan Baez
Saturday
Country Joe McDonald
John Sebastian
Santana
Canned Heat
Grateful Dead
Creedance Clearwater Revival
Joan Baez
Sly & The Family Stone
The Who
Jefferson Airplane
Sunday
Joe Cocker
Country Joe & The Fish
Ten Years After
The Band
Blood. Sweat, and Tears
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young
Paul Butterfied Blues Band
Jimi Hendrix
Even though there were huge thunderstorms during the weekend, people came in huge masses to experience this once in a lifetime event. There were traffic jams on the NY State Thruway that were many miles long. People abandoned their cars and walked the remaining distance to the festival.
Little did the four people that were behind “The Woodstock Ventures” know that there would eventually be and estimated 500,000 people attend this festival. Additionally there was no way of knowing the wordwide impact that the weekend of August 15-18, 1969 on Max Yasgur’s farm would have on our society!
The legacy of Woodstock is still being written 40 years after that magical weekend on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, NY.
Joni Mitchell wrote a song that Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young made famous about this event. Oddly enough it was titled “Woodstock”!
Peace, love, and harmony existed for one weekend in August in 1969 at Max Yasgur’s farm in up state New York!!
I LOOKED IT UP SO YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO!