Woodstock 2019? Lang says it’s possible
Michael Lang, one of the organizers of the original 1969 Woodstock music festival and the two that followed, says talks are underway to stage a 50th anniversary concert in 2019 at one or more yet-to-be-determined locations.
Lang, 71, who lives in the Ulster County town of Woodstock, says discussions have started with potential partners and that the idea of staging anniversary concerts at multiple lo- cations is being explored.
The original Woodstock festival was held Aug. 1518, 1969, on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, Sullivan County, and drew 400,000 to 500,000 people. Performers included Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Who and Joe Cocker. The show was put on by Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman and Artie Kornfeld, operating as Woodstock Ventures.
Part of the Bethel site is now occupied by a summertime performing arts center known as Bethel Woods, which opened in 2006, as well as a museum dedicated to the 1969 festival and its era
25th anniversary concert called Woodstock ’94 was held in August 1994 at the Winston Farm in Saugerties, with the same producers, minus Kornfeld. It drew an estimated 350,000 people and such acts as Aerosmith, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Dylan, Melissa Etheridge and Green Day.
The 1994 show, like its 1969 namesake, was attended largely by people who got in without paying. And both shows were notable for torrential rain and the resulting mud.
Five years later, the 30th anniversary Woodstock ’99 concert at a former Air Force base in Rome, N.Y. — also produced by Lang, Roberts and Rosenman — was marred by rioting, fires and reports of sexual assaults.
Last year, Lang cofounded the Woodstock Music Lab, a rock music school for college-age students, in the former Zena Elementary School building in the town of Woodstock.