Big names drop out of beleaguered Woodstock 50 festival
Others reportedly released from contracts due to move
Rapper Jay-Z, classic rocker John Fogerty and Grateful Dead spinoff band Dead & Company have pulled out of the troubled Woodstock 50 festival, and a leading music industry magazine says all performers booked for the mid-August event have been released from their contracts.
Jay-Z was among the biggest names on the bill and was slated to be the festival’s closing act. Fogerty, who performed at the original 1969 festival in Bethel with Creedence Clearwater Revival, was at the press event in March at which the Woodstock 50 lineup was announced.
Dead & Company, whose withdrawal was confirmed to The Associated Press late Friday, comprises three surviving members of the Grateful Dead and other musicians. The Grateful Dead, like Fogerty, played at the 1969 show.
The three pullouts are latest in a series of setbacks for the festival, most recently the denial by the central New York town of Vernon to hold the event at the Vernon Down harness racing track.
Vernon became the preferred site for Woodstock 50 after the original venue, the Watkins Glen International motor speedway, in New York’s Finger Lakes region, pulled out. Bloomberg News reported Thursday that the festival now appears headed to the Merriweather Post Pavilion, an in
door-outdoor venue in Columbia, Md., that’s similar to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
Bethel Woods is at the Sullivan County site of the original 1969 Woodstock festival.
Woodstock 50, whose lead promoter is longtime Ulster County resident Michael Lang, remains scheduled for the weekend of Aug. 16-18, just three weeks from now, but tickets have not gone on sale. Bloomberg said single-day passes at Merriweather will range in price from $129 to $595.
The Merriweather pavilion and lawn can hold a combined 32,000 people — far less than than the 150,000 the promoters hoped to attract to Watkins Glen or the 65,000 that Vernon Downs could have accommodated.
Billboard magazine reported on its website Friday that all the acts initially signed to perform at Watkins Glen have been released from their contracts. That means they’re not obligated to perform at Merriweather but still are welcome to, Billboard said.
Bill Werde, a former editorial director of Billboard magazine, told The Associated Press that “most booking contracts are sitespecific, so with the move to Maryland, I think in all probability these artists have easy outs.”
“And looking at the debacle that this festival has been, I would really be surprised if a lot these artists, if not all of them, didn’t start exercising those outs,” Werde said.
Werde, who now is affiliated with the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, lamented the woes that have beset Woodstock 50 plan.
“If you’re a music fan and you appreciate the history of Woodstock as a cultural, pinnacle moment, even as a brand, it’s hard not to be sad about this seemingly never-ending torrent of missteps and false hopes,” he said. “For the sake of the legacy of Woodstock, I kind of wish they would stop. It’s like watching a boxer who just won’t stay down when he really should.”
Though no longer performing at Woodstock 50, Fogerty still is scheduled to perform at Bethel Woods at a smaller anniversary event — really just a series of concerts on consecutive days over the anniversary weekend — that’s not connected to Woodstock 50.
Fogerty, 74, is to play at Bethel on Sunday, Aug. 18. Ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, who was not part of the original festival, will perform Aug. 16; and Carlos Santana, who did play at the 1969 show and also is booked for Woodstock 50, is to perform Aug. 17 at Bethel.
The Black Keys, originally scheduled to perform at Woodstock 50, announced in April that they had to cancel their performance due to a scheduling conflict.
The original announced lineup for Woodstock 50 boasted more than 80 acts, including Miley Cyrus, Robert Plant, the Killers, Imagine Dragons, Chance the Rapper and Janelle Monáe, as well as Jay-Z, Fogerty, Dead & Company and the Black Keys. It’s unclear which of the initially announced acts, if any, now plan to play at the Maryland venue.
Representatives for Woodstock 50 and Lang declined to comment Friday about Jay-Z and Fogerty backing out of the festival.
Previous Woodstock anniversary festivals, also led by Lang, were held in 1994 on the Winston Farm in Saugerties and in 1999 at a decommissioned Air Force base in Rome, N.Y. The 1999 show, just 20 miles north of Vernon and in the same county, was marred by fires, rioting, looting and reports of sexual assaults.
Saugerties officials earlier this month dismissed speculation that the town could step in as a last-minute host of Woodstock 50.
Dead & Company will also not perform at Woodstock 50, a person familiar with the band’s decision told the AP late Friday.