Woodstock

The Woodstock Festival was a three-day concert that involved lots of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll – plus a lot of mud. Other names for the festival are Woodstock Music Festival, an Aquarian Exposition, and, Three Days of Peace and Music. Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Roseman and, Artie Kornfeld were the organizers of this event which was held through August 15-18, 1969. It was held at Max Yasgur’s 600 acre farm in Catskills after its late venue change from Mills Industrial Park in Wallkill, New York only a month away from the date. The change was due to the townspeople did not want a bunch drugged out hippies in their town. Only anticipating around 50,000 people would attend the festival, the facility could not handle the 500,000 people who actually showed up. With this huge event there were only reported 3 causalities. Two of which were from overdoses and the one was ran over by a tractor while he was in the fields. There were also 3 births during the festival. Over 20 artists preformed over the three day period, including the Incredible String Band and Jimi Hendricks.
As disaster strikes
As so many people drove to the festival on Wednesday, August 13 (2 days before the festival) many of the security gates had not been set up around the farm 50,000 were camped out in front of the stage, and people saw the concert for free. As soon as this news got out thousands of people rushed to the site to see a free concert. What began as a paid event drew so many viewers from across the world that the fences were torn down and it became a free concert open to the public. Highways became huge parking lots, as spectators left their cars and walked the rest of the way to the festival. With the huge amount of numbers the organizers soon hired helicopters to shuttle performers from their motels to the stage. With huge amount of people who came there were not enough resources waiting in line for water was about a 30 minute wait, and at least an hour long wait to use a toilet. Another huge dilemma was the rain, people become covered in mud and there was nowhere to escape the rain. Even throughout the bad times the Woodstock Music Festival of 1969 has become an icon of the 1960s hippie counterculture. The Woodstock Festival became the most popular music event in history.