Posted on 01/09/2022 1:22:03 AM PST by nickcarraway
After helping to create the original 1969 festival, Lang was also behind follow-up events Woodstock '94 and Woodstock '99.
Michael Lang, co-creator of the legendary Woodstock Music and Art Fair in August 1969 that proved to be a generation-defining touchstone, has died. He was 77.
Lang died of complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at Sloan Kettering hospital in New York City, a representative confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
A Brooklyn native, Lang dropped out of New York University before heading to the Miami area to organize music events, including the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, which featured Jimi Hendrix.
He later moved to Woodstock, N.Y., where he helped plan the famous festival, which took place from Aug. 15-18 on Max Yasgur’s farm near Bethel, N.Y. The hugely attended event became a signature moment for the counterculture movement and featured such performers as Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Joe Cocker and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
“Woodstock offered an environment for people to express their better selves, if you will,” Lang told Pollstar in 2019. “It was probably the most peaceful event of its kind in history. That was because of expectations and what people wanted to create there.”
Lang, who was portrayed by Jonathan Groff in Ang Lee’s 2009 film Taking Woodstock, also produced follow-up events Woodstock ’94 and Woodstock ’99. He helped plan Woodstock 50, which was set to take place in August 2019 until the concert was ultimately canceled.
He is survived by wife Tamara and his five children, Shala, Lariann, Molly, Harry and Laszlo.
Yes, but you’re clearly a disciplined conservative. Not an acid head hippie.
Nearly all the same bands played at the Newport Jazz festival a month before Woodstock. I rode a Triumph Bonnieville there with a friend of mine from Connecticut. The whole weekend was similar to Woodstock. All the stores and restaurants sold out of everything. There were 10s of thousands of hippies there knocking down the fences and making the whole thing a free for all! When we got home we turned down an offer to go to Woodstock because we were so worn out from the Newport fiasco.
Thanks for letting us kids throw a party in your field.
Couldnt have done it with out your blessing!!
Did he take the brown acid?
Biggest concert in history. 60 million baby boomers claim to have attended.
Hendrix was not “spotty”.
RIP.
Well OK if you say so. Now you know why I wrote “a very few others...” Point being, quite a lot of the music there was pretty bad.
Yeah, I say so.
I play guitar.
I have some idea of what it takes to put on the performance he did.
Cheers, ‘Pod
LOL!!
Hendryx was over rated, as a lot of the folks at Woodstock were, frankly. I mean he was good - as a producer even, I believe “All Along The Watchtower” was a killer arrangement of an obscure Dylan tune. It is an all time great, for that alone. He was also technically very astute and creative and made novel use of lots of guitar effects.
I never saw Hendryx, but I’ve seen Buddy Guy up close, and he never wore any feather boas, got kicked out of the Army, nor overdosed himself to death, and I think he was better, and he wasn’t even in his natural prime. That guy can shred.
A few friends and I organized a pig roast/beer bash at a forest campground in college. 400lbs of pig, 20 kegs and a band.
From what I was told it was a raging success even after it was crashed by a biker gang.
I'd say so.
A historical event, but so were thousands of other unique events.
Yes, but it would be the 3+ hour long documentary film that came out the following year and that would be replayed endlessly on PBS stations that really turned it into the significant cultural event it would become.
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