Introduction
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a poster showing the dates of woodstock festival
The Woodstock Festival was a three-day concert (which rolled into a fourth day) that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll - plus a lot of mud. The Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 has become an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture.
Kornfeld and Lang's original proposal was to build a recording studio and a retreat for rock musicians up in Woodstock, New York (where Bob Dylan and other musicians already lived). The idea morphed into creating a two-day rock concert for 50,000 people with the hope that the concert would raise enough money to pay for the studio. The four young men then got to work on organizing a large music festival. They found a location for the event up in an industrial park in nearby Wallkill, New York.
Kornfeld and Lang's original proposal was to build a recording studio and a retreat for rock musicians up in Woodstock, New York (where Bob Dylan and other musicians already lived). The idea morphed into creating a two-day rock concert for 50,000 people with the hope that the concert would raise enough money to pay for the studio. The four young men then got to work on organizing a large music festival. They found a location for the event up in an industrial park in nearby Wallkill, New York.
Planning for the festival
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1/2 million people crowd in feilds of Bethel, NY, waiting for the festival to begin
The four young men then got to work on organizing a large music festival. They found a location for the event up in an industrial park in nearby Wallkill, New York. They printed tickets ($7 for one day, $13 for two days, and $18 for three days), which could be purchased in select stores or via mail order. The men also worked on organizing food, signing musicians, and hiring security.
The first of many things to go wrong with the Woodstock Festival was the location. No matter how the young men and their lawyers spun it, the citizens of Wallkill did not want a bunch of drugged-out hippies descending on their town. After much wrangling, the town of Wallkill passed a law on July 2, 1969 that effectively banned the concert from their vicinity.
Everyone involved with the Woodstock Festival panicked. Stores refused to sell any more tickets and the negotiations with the musicians got shaky. Only a month-and-a half before the Woodstock Festival was to begin, a new location had to be found. Luckily, in mid-July, before too many people began demanding refunds for their pre-purchased tickets, Max Yasgur offered up his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York to be the location for the Woodstock Festival.
The first of many things to go wrong with the Woodstock Festival was the location. No matter how the young men and their lawyers spun it, the citizens of Wallkill did not want a bunch of drugged-out hippies descending on their town. After much wrangling, the town of Wallkill passed a law on July 2, 1969 that effectively banned the concert from their vicinity.
Everyone involved with the Woodstock Festival panicked. Stores refused to sell any more tickets and the negotiations with the musicians got shaky. Only a month-and-a half before the Woodstock Festival was to begin, a new location had to be found. Luckily, in mid-July, before too many people began demanding refunds for their pre-purchased tickets, Max Yasgur offered up his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York to be the location for the Woodstock Festival.