‘A REALLY BIZARRE TRIP’
Promoter Michael Lang laments festival that might have been
Shortly after Woodstock 50 organizers announced the shambolic anniversary festival has been canceled after months of setbacks and holdups, Michael Lang summed up the drama in six words: “It’s been a really bizarre trip.”
Over the last seven months, Lang, 74, who put on the original Woodstock festival in 1969 and anniversary shows in 1994 and 1999, moved like a cat using all nine lives to make Woodstock 50 work. The first plan — to have an all-star concert with the likes of Jay-Z, Dead and Company, the Killers and more at the Watkins Glen International speedway in New York’s Finger Lakes region — was scuttled after the venue backed out. Then the plan was to have it at a harness racing track and casino in the central New York town of Vernon, but organizers couldn’t get the necessary permit.
Lang finally found a viable location in Maryland, but numerous artists, including JayZ, Dead and Company, Santana and John Forgety, pulled out of the festival, and he decided to scrap the event altogether.
“What can I say?” Lang said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s not been surprising that we weren’t able to pull this off.”
If Lang, a longtime Ulster County resident, could go back and do things differently, he says, he would have tried to get permits earlier. And he would have worked with a different financial partner.
Land didn’t announce Woodstock 50 until January, with just seven months to go, and the lineup of performers wasn’t unveiled until March. A quarter-century ago, by contrast, Lang and his partners laid the groundwork for Woodstock ‘94 about a year and a half ahead of time.
Woodstock 50 took a dramatic turn for the worse on April 29, when Lang’s financial backer, Dentsu Aegis Network’s Amplifi Live, announced it had taken back about $18 million — the remains of the $49 million it had put in — from the anniversary event, set to take place Aug. 16-18. In its statement, the company also prematurely said that Woodstock 50 had been canceled, and some media outlets reported it as fact. (Lang sued,
and a judge ruled Dentsu could not single-handedly call off the show).
Lang said Dentsu’s decision “really put a halt to our efforts to get a mass gathering permit because all of the government agencies stopped working when they announced that. That nearly lost us about six weeks. That was a crucial six weeks.”
When asked about the official cancellation of Woodstock 50, Dentsu told AP it had no comment.
Lang said Dentsu approached him about coming on board to handle some of the finances, media sales and sponsorships. He said he isn’t sure why the relationship went sour.
“I’ve been struggling with that all along. For them to walk away from such a big investment, frankly, it was puzzling,” Lang said. “I think because the permit was not completed, which I attribute to the fact that Dentsu just dragged its feet in getting our producing team in place and our booking team in place.”
Lang added that when it was leaked to the press that artists booked to perform were not paid on time, Dentsu might have thought he had done it. Lang said all the artists eventually were paid, and he denies leaking the info.
“That really sort of destroyed
the trust that we might have had together,” he said. “It was probably one of the agencies who were just doing their job and trying to get their band paid.”
So Lang got a new financial partner, although the original venue, Watkins Glen International, pulled out in mid-June, as did production company Superfly. And tickets still were not available for purchase some two months after the announced on-sale date.
Then Woodstock 50 organizers were denied a permit to hold the festival at the Vernon Downs racetrack and casino in Oneida County, N.Y., because it was filed too late and had problems. Local officials denied permit applications amid concerns about having 65,000 people come to a largely rural area on short notice.
And while Lang hoped to make the event work as a free concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., less than a week after announcing that location, he announced everything was canceled.
“Merriweather was just an attempt to do some good with some of the talent that were available,” he said.
Asked why he hadn’t worked with a concert promotion juggernaut like Live Nation, which has puts on hundreds of festivals, Lang
said: “We really wanted to keep it independent. That’s part of the character of our brand and our position in the world.”
Melanie, known as the first lady of Woodstock and scheduled to perform at Lang’s 50th anniversary celebration, said she noticed things were taking a turn when she couldn’t get in touch with him: “I have a personal line with Michael Lang, but after a while he stopped returning my phone calls.”
Scheduled performers for Woodstock 50 included contemporary artists like Imagine Dragons, Miley Cyrus and Chance the Rapper, along with acts who performed at the original festival, including Santana and Fogerty.
“The thing lacked heart,” said Melanie, whose full name is Melanie Anne SafkaSchekeryk. “He didn’t get the support because of that, really and truly.
“Woodstock’s a living thing, and you can’t package a living thing,” she added.
Melanie is one of the scheduled performers at WE 2019 Experience — another concert celebrating 50 years since Woodstock across two weekends at Saloon Studios Live in West Jefferson, N.C. WE 2019 producer Kenn Moutenot said he removed “Woodstock” from the name of his event after Lang’s lawyers
sent him legal papers.
Performers at the North Carolina shows, Aug. 9-11 and Aug. 16-18, include Jefferson Starship, Ten Years After, John Sebastian, Greg Errico of Sly and the Family Stone, Corky Lang of Mountain, and Canned Heat.
“I know what went wrong,” Moutenot said when asked about Lang’s festival. “I’ve done 5,000 concerts from Africa to Zimbabwe. I’ve been everywhere in the world ... it’s second nature. Now Michael Lang has done five concerts in 50 years. The first one was really unorganized. It just happened to be peaceful.”
The 1994 show, in Saugerties, also went off well — save for rain and mud, reminiscent of the 1969 show. The 1999 show in Rome, N.Y., however, was was plagued by riots, fires and reports of sexual assaults.
Moutenot said the important things are planning and organization. “Money doesn’t do it . ... It’s not about, for me, making a dime. It’s about serving the artists. If we broke even, I’d be happy as can be. It’s not about me trying to pay Jay-Z a million dollars or pay Miley Cyrus,” he said.
The Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Sullivan County, at the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, will hold lower-key events on the Aug.
16-18 anniversary weekend. The main pavilion on the grounds will host concerts by Ringo Starr, Santana and John Fogerty on consecutive nights. (An earlier plan for a more expansive anniversary event at Bethel was scaled back as Lang’s festival took shape.)
“I can tell you it’s consumed the last two years of our lives,” Bethel Woods CEO Darlene Fedun said of plans the celebrate the Woodstock anniversary. Besides the three main concerts, Bethel will host performances by lesser-known acts on smaller stages, exhibits, film screenings and other activities.
Melanie said that despite Woodstock 50’s ending, the legacy will live on.
“Because it was canceled, does that mean that the sentiment, does that mean that peace and love has been canceled? Is that what the message is? Because it’s not,” she said.
Lang said he’s not worried that Woodstock 50’s troubles will hurt the brand’s legacy. Woodstock “still represents exactly the same motivations and important social issues that it reflected back then,” he said.
And he’s still hoping there will be a Woodstock 50 at some point. “Maybe next year,” he said. This report includes Freeman staff contributions.