Volume 11 , Issue 33

Looking Back 40 years -- Woodstock Summer of '69

What were you doing 40 years ago, August 15-18, 1969? This NW Okie had been married a couple of weeks the Summer of '69, living in Alva, Oklahoma and attending Northwestern State College.



Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place on a great meadow of Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, N.Y. in August 15-18, 1969. Woodstock Music and Arts Festival held on a 600-acre pasture in the Catskill Mountains near White Lake in Bethel, Sullivan County, 43 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County, in August, 1969.

The festival was billed as "Thee Days of Peace and Music," started on a Friday, August 15th with more than 450,000 persons journeyed to this 600-acre field on a dairy farm in upstate New York in the psychedelic Summer of ?69, seeking fulfillments as varied as the colors in a tie-dyed T-shirt. Woodstock was billed as "An Aquarian Exposition in White Lake, NY - 3 Days of Peace & Music." It drew people from all over the country, young and longhaired and eager for a show of solidarity against the Vietnam War.

Others were ripe for a long weekend of anti-establishment music. Many were hungry for both. There were also those that simply came to party, reveling in an atmosphere of uninhibited free love and unlimited smoke, drink and mind-altering drugs. BUT ... many did not know what they were rally getting into.

Friday afternoon, of August 15-17, 1969, the miles-long traffic jam lead many into the festival on Highway 17B. Roads were jammed with parked cars and the massive festival crowd made coming and going impossible, unless one had a helicopter.

Woodstock became less about politics and more about the camaraderie of the whole event.

Woodstock is widely considered the crowning moment in the late-?60s counterculture movement against the war in Vietnam and social strife in general ? and a rock ?n? roll milestone.

Young people abandon their trucks, cars and buses as some 200,000 persons try to reach the Woodstock Music and Art Festival on a leased cow pasture at White Lake in Bethel, New York Friday, Aug. 15, 1969. Cars were backed up for 10 miles. The festival closed the New York State Thruway, creating the nation?s worst traffic jam.

Such artists as Richie Havens opens the show and (much later) Jimi Hendrix closes it. Other Artists were:

Friday, August 15
* Richie Havens
* Swami Satchidananda - gave the invocation for the festival
* Sweetwater
* The Incredible String Band
* Bert Sommer
* Tim Hardin
* Ravi Shankar
* Melanie
* Arlo Guthrie
* Joan Baez

Saturday, August 16
* Quill, forty minute set of four songs
* Keef Hartley Band
* Country Joe McDonald
* John Sebastian
* Santana
* Canned Heat
* Mountain
* Grateful Dead
* Creedence Clearwater Revival
* Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band [23]
* Sly & the Family Stone
* The Who began at 4 AM, kicking off a 25-song set including Tommy
* Jefferson Airplane

Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18
* The Grease Band
* Joe Cocker
* Country Joe and the Fish
* Ten Years After
* The Band
* Blood, Sweat & Tears
* Johnny Winter featuring his brother, Edgar Winter
* Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
* Paul Butterfield Blues Band
* Sha-Na-Na
* Jimi Hendrix
Creedence Clearwater Revival were the first act to sign a contract for the event, agreeing to play for ten thousand dollars.

Grass and leaf huts are used as makeshift living quarters for some of the attendees at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival at White Lake in Bethel, N.Y., in Aug. 1969. The festival, billed as "Three Days of Peace and Music," -- Woodstock Festival - Summer of '69
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