Woodstock festival

The Woodstock Music and Art Festival was the most famous rock festival of its era. The festival held at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, near Woodstock, New York on August 15, 16, and 17, 1969.

Although 10,000 or 20,000 people were expected, over 400,000 attended, most of whom did not pay admission. The highways leading to the concert were jammed with traffic as people tried to make it to the concert. The weekend was rainy, the facilities were overcrowded, and attendees shared food, alcoholic beverages, and drugs. However, no violence was reported. The Woodstock Festival represented the culmination of the counterculture of the 1960s and the high point of the "hippie era."

The festival did not initially make money for the promoters, although, thanks to record sales and proceeds from the highly regarded film of the event, it did eventually become profitable.

There were 2 deaths and 2 births at Woodstock.

Woodstock is also the name of the famous documentary film about the concert; the film, directed by Michael Wadleigh and edited by Martin Scorsese, was released in 1970 and won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The film has since been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Artists who performed at Woodstock:

• Joan Baez
• Arlo Guthrie
• Tim Hardin
• Incredible String Band
• Ravi Shankar
• Richie Havens
• Sly and the Family Stone
• Bert Sommer
• Sweetwater
• Quill
• Canned Heat
• Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Jefferson Airplane
• The Who
• Grateful Dead
• Keef Hartley
• Blood, Sweat and Tears
• Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young)
• Santana
• Jeff Beck Group
• The Band
• Ten Years After
• Johnny Winter
• Jimi Hendrix
• Janis Joplin
• Joe Cocker
• Mountain
• Melanie
• Sha-Na-Na
• John Sebastian
• Country Joe and the Fish
• Paul Butterfield Blues Band

See also: Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock II, Woodstock III.

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