Woodstock reunion needs more peace, love and understanding

IT WAS intended to be a celebration of a cultural event of mythological status, a gathering to commemorate freedom and joy and music and life.

But with only 60 days until Woodstock’s 50th anniversary concert, the event is more filled with panic and legal chaos than peace and love.

The show, organised by original Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang, is scheduled for Aug 16-18 and features a lineup of Sixties bands and new acts. Headliners include Jay-Z, the Killers and Miley Cyrus, who will play alongside a series of “Woodstock originals” like Santana, Canned Heat, and David Crosby.

But the concert, announced in December, has been plagued by problems and Mr Lang now has the same predicament he faced in the summer of 1969: running out of time to pull off the show.

This week its venue fell through, with the owners claiming they had not been paid. Now there are signs of a revolt from some performers.

“We’re all sick of the lack of professionalism and lack of truth,” the manager of one of the original Woodstock bands set to play in August told The Sunday Telegraph.

Stu Cook, bass guitarist for Creedence Clearwater Revival, said it was a fool’s errand to try to recreate the original. “The real concert was actually never about the bands,” he said from his Arizona hotel, where he and fellow bandmember Doug Clifford were about to go on stage.

“The real story is the audience; how they kept it together, despite the lack of food, or running water, or shelter from the torrential rain. What they are doing with the 50th show is trying to recreate something that was simply magic, and can’t be repeated.”

The lead up to this year’s anniversary festival has suffered a series of hiccups. An announced date for ticket sales to begin – April 22 – came and went and even today tickets are still not available on the website.

Meanwhile, on April 30 the festival’s Japanese financial backers, Dentsu, pulled the plug.

Mr Lang and his team sued, and in May a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that Dentsu had no right to unilaterally cancel the festival. But the judge declined to order the return to the organisers of $17.8million (£14million) of Dentsu’s funds. Later that month financial services firm Oppenheimer & Co signed on as an adviser to complete the financing.

But on Monday the venue, Watkins Glen racetrack, pulled out, claiming it had not been paid its $300,000.

Meanwhile, the original Woodstock site is planning its own celebration on the same weekend, featuring Arlo Guthrie and Ringo Starr, among others.

Amanda Pelman, an associate producer of Mr Lang’s Woodstock 50 concert, said that “an announcement” would be made this week.