50 years of Woodstock: how the festival became an event that defined a generation

Sure Saturday, August 16th 50 years ago, nearly half a million hippies and hedonists camped on muddy ground in Bethel, NY, for what was billed as "a watercolor exhibition", but remembered as Woodstock, the the link of the counterculture movement and the most famous music festival that has ever existed.

From high street boho-chic to twee "Wedstock" marriages, the festival's legacy lasts five decades on, precisely because it was the last youth movement that was not easily bottled and sold. Developed by "The Summer of Love" two years ago, the North American hippie movement would be dead before the end of the year. Remembered as "The Anti-Woodstock", the infamous Altamont Speedway free festival organized by the Rolling Stones in December 1969 was tainted by widespread violence and a stage front murder, captured by the Hells Angels, captured on the film to see everything.

It was not the world's first music festival, but its legacy was huge

But thanks to a different film, Three hours of 1970 Woodstock documentaryThe term "Woodstock Generation" would come to define millions of Americans who have never laid foot on the North East Max Yasgur dairy farm. The greatest legacy of the meeting was to instill the concept of music festival into the popular imagination, idealizing the image of thousands of like-minded souls wallowing in the mud, absorbing a flood of act under the sun. This once unique hobby is one that millions of people are actively looking for every summer.

For many of the 32 bands who performed the Event, who ran from Friday, August 15 until Monday, August 18, 1969 – such as Joe Cocker, Clearwater Revival Creedence, Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, The Group, Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – The Guaranteed Association a sense of notoriety and an endless stream of foginterview questions for the coming decades. But like a baby boom picture go: if you remember Woodstock, you are not here.

The Woodstock ragthe tag of the organizers was not invents the concept of the festival. the The Newport Jazz Festival was founded in 1954 and in 1961 Britain welcomed its first National Jazz and Blues Festival – a forerunner of today's annual successful reading festival. Woodstock's biggest star, Jimi Hendrix, it's made famous in 1967 when he fired his Fender Stratocaster at the Monterey Pop Festival, where Joplin and Otis Redding also played before appearing in Woodstock. (The doors transmitted the lastbecause they feared it would be a "secondrepeat clbad "de Monterey).

And although the first festival of the Isle of Wight in Britain took place a year before Woodstock and attracted only 10,000 peopleit was the 1970 event that, inspired by the making of the Woodstock myth, attracted more than 600,000 spectators and was defeated by many of the same stars who had made headlines in Bethel a year earlier., including The Who, Joan Baez, Ten Years Later and Sly & the Family Stone.

Partly because of his death one year later, Hendrix is ​​remembered as the greatest interpreterbut with a good cause. His short-lived badtet, billed as Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, closed the festival to an exhausted crowd of latecomers shortly after 11am August 18 – the day after the festival planned climax – due to organizational incidents. Hendrix a tempered and instrumental feedbackn American national anthem Starry Banner aroused patriotic indignation, but his interpretation has also inspired electric guitarists for decades to come. "I thought it was beautiful," Hendrix later says on Dick Cavett's show. Millions at variance.

"Hippies mired in an ocean of mud"

While Woodstock is today considered a bucolic ideal – an endlessly referenced, ridiculed and appropriate event – contemporary American culture is frowned upon. of that. Thto 186,000 ticket holders were joined by about 250,000 party-goers who broke the fence and were at liberty were signs of a minor insurgency, not the free-for-all youth remembered today. From New York Sunday news headline at the time: "The hippies mired in a sea of ​​mud. "The same mainstream media titles this Let's now celebrate Woodstock as a moment of innocent fraternity and ideological unity frowned upon by poor sanitation, bad weather, unashamed hedonism and, yes, mud.. These are also all part from the festival experience a lot of people actively seek out when bUying a ticket for similar events today.

Again modern bigmusic festivals bear little resemblance to our collective memory of the summer 1969, Halcyon's ideals of peace and love are completely shattered by the reality of big box capitalism. In the 1980s, Woodstock Joel Rosenman and John Roberts Criticized "Greedy Promoters, Unruly Crowds and exorbitant fees for performers' who have ruined their festival spirit 'of local origin'. CSNY The cost of freedom Bar code in the cash register and ticket prices for spiral tickets, VIP areas and heavier branding and sponsorship.

From Woodstock to Glastonbury, ethical music festivals are now hard to find

While delivering a Ted Talk with an ostentatious title Walmartifestival of music festivals, Kevin Lyman, an experienced event organizer, has identified a "second generation" of music festivals created in the early 90's, the iconography and ideals of the "counter-culture" had been completely consumed, co-opted and sold to music lovers.

While The British Glastonbury Festival remains ethically noble, it has gone from a marginal event that has attracted only 12,000 people in 1979 at an annual television show watched by 20 million. Rather than exist for a small number of insiders on the confines of society, for better or for worse, today's festivals address with defiance to any demographics. and are presented as a necessary rite of pbadage for young adults eager for experience, as well as a source of endless nostalgia for sentimental seniors who missed all the fun of the first time. This summer both my 70-something mother and her teenage niece loving EDM have found festivals it suited their tastes.

"It has become deeply embedded in our culture of going to festivals," says Lyman, who is 199 years old.5 founded the Vans Warped Tour, a one-day traveling festival which has attracted an audience of 750,000 viewers each year in the United States. "We will enjoy this tribal experience and use our student loan money."

An appropriate epitaph for making money by co-opting the hippie dream

Woodstock lost money – later recovered by the movie's cinematic success – cash hunger has affected the brand's many times. The 30th anniversary of Woodstock in 1999 has been widely criticized for charging $ 4 ($ 15) worth of bottled water in a heat wave, while the catch was finally shot at a 50th anniversary event after the donors have left.

Latest month, the organizers announced that Woodstock 50 was officially canceled, the last nail in the month of coffin pounding.

Initially announced in large fanfare in January by Woodstock founder Michael Lang, the company was beset by a series of sad calamities. First he lost investors, then his site planned, then the license for a new one, and finally his headliners. Jay-Z, Santana, Miley Cyrus, Dead & Company, The Raconteurs and The Lumineers had all abandoned at the moment when the weather news officially broke out late Wednesday, July 31 that Woodstock 50 was a toast.

If you are looking for an appropriate epitaph to earn money by co-opting the hippie dream, look no further. A last piece of irony? Cash-seeking listeners can instead relive every second of the sweat of the original Woodstock weekend with a new box of 38 records and 432 tracks called Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Final 50th Anniversary Archives, who sell for $ 800 a pop.