SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES
Is the controversial Woodstock 50 now a free concert? Just like 1969!
LOS ANGELES Spinning wheel got to go ’round ...
That’s what insiders are saying about the latest attempt to have the Woodstock 50 show go on. Celebrity website TMZ is reporting that the beleaguered festival is now pivoting to become a free concert — just like in 1969! That’s when the New York State Thruway was essentially shut down and the gates to the concert toppled as 500,000 descended on the grounds of Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, N.Y., and organizers gave up trying to collect tickets.
This time, the “free” moniker seems loosely tied to the concept of a benefit concert, though it’s unclear which charities may partner with the fest or whether attendees would simply be “encouraged to donate,” as TMZ reports.
A representative for Woodstock 50 declined to comment on the accuracy of the report.
How would a benefit concert work now that two of the three headliners — Jay-z and Dead & Company — have bowed out? That leaves Miley Cyrus, Imagine Dragons and Chance the Rapper as possible understudies.
Just 24 hours before the free concert reveal, agents, managers and lawyers were considering pulling their artists out simultaneously, so as to partly show potential litigators that this three-day event had no chance of coming together. On Friday night, some Woodstock stakeholders received a note that organizers “had a new plan.”
Artists and their representatives have been re-evaluating the proposed rebrand. The thinking behind it being that if you’ve already been paid, why not play and benefit a cause? Skeptically, one could also deduce that Woodstock organizers are trying to minimize their legal liability, anticipating an onslaught of lawsuit to come. That rationale being: organizers successfully execute a show called Woodstock 50 and meet their end of the deal.
Of course, that brings to question the original breach of contract for an event in Upstate New York, which the festival has already acknowledged, effectively allowing artists to be released from their contractual obligations to play Woodstock 50.
And there are other issues to contend with. Among them: tour routing during a very busy concert season and other associated travel costs and burdens, an unclear lineup, to-be-determined beneficiaries and the logistical challenges of getting tickets to the market, even if they are for free. Plus, several acts are booked to play in Bethel Woods, N.Y., the site of the original festival, that same weekend for an alternative Woodstock celebration that Live Nation is producing, including Santana and John Fogerty, who was first to abandon the Maryland plan. But probably the most disconcerting unknown, what if 100,000 people decide to show up to a 32,000-capacity venue? Then you have safety issues.
To recap: Woodstock 50 lost its original site in Watkins Glen, N.Y., and a second alternative in Vernon, N.Y., due to permit issues, and now has a tentative hold on Maryland’s Merriweather Post for Aug. 16-18. The Smashing Pumpkins are scheduled to play at Merriweather on Aug. 17 and would have to either join the lineup or reschedule their show. Seth Hurwitz, of Washington D.C.’S 9:30 Club and I.M.P. Concerts, who operates Merriweather, has been tasked with putting on the show, “if it’s real,” he told Pollstar.
So now the onus is on the artists to decide if they’d like to participate in this new charity-affiliated iteration, essentially guilting them into it. Woodstock founder Michael Lang is, according to sources, scrambling to find a headliner to commit, hoping others will follow suit. Could that be Cyrus, founder of her own aptly named Happy Hippie foundation, whose mission is to “rally young people to fight injustice facing homeless youth, LGBTQ youth and other vulnerable populations” — or Imagine Dragons, who have also been active in LGBTQ causes? Chance the Rapper has donated millions to Chicago-area schools, so his cause is certainly worthy.
Time will tell, and the clock counting down on the Woodstock site remains (a webmaster finally got around to removing the Watkins Glen language from artwork on the lineup page). Lang “is still trying,” says an insider. “To his last breath.”