Essay on Woodstock: People

Submitted By maddawg207
Words: 1035
Pages: 5

Woodstock
In the middle of a 600 acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, Woodstock took place. It lasted 4 days, starting on August 15 and ending on August 18, 1969. Over half a million people showed up for music, art and speeches. 32 acts were performed by new and old performers.
People like Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Who, Janis Joplin, and
Crosby were all in the line­up pr music. Woodstock has been considered to be the largest and most effective music movement in all of America. So many people showed up they had to close the surrounding roads and the performers had to come by helicopters. Everyone wanted to be apart of the music and peace offered by the Woodstock festival.
The four creators of Woodstock were John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, and
Mike Lang. The four men were young but they were all set on accomplishing their shared goal.
Roberts had just gained a lot of money from a pharmaceutical fortune. He and his friend
Rosenman wanted to find a way to use the money to make an even bigger fortune. Through an ad they put in the “The New York Times”, they met Kornfeld and Lang and began their mission.
Kornfeld and Lang’s original idea was to build a recording studio for lodging area for rock musicians at Woodstock, New York. The, the four of them changed the idea to a 2­day rock concert that could entertain 50,000 people which would raise even more money for their orginal recording studio idea. So, they began planning a huge music festival. They started by finding a place to have it, then they started on tickets. Tickets could be ordered or delivered by mail. Next, they started working on food, signing musicians, and hiring security. The whole thing began to come together. just as everything was going right, it all took a spin and things started to go down hill.
First off, the land where they would have the festival went wrong. No one wanted a bunch of drugged out hippies stumbling around their property for three days straight. Also, no one wanted to listen to rock bands and screaming bands while they were trying sleep at night. After a lot of fighting and arguing, the town of Wallkill (where Woodstock was originally supposed to be held), banned the festival from taking place in their town. This left the festival with no place to go. Woodstock supporters and performers started to freak out. A new place had to be found to perform in less than a month. Luckily, a new place was found, but the date of the event was majorly pushed back. Construction of the stage, parking lots, concession stands, ticket booths, and children's playgrounds were all barely finished in time for the festival. The four men soon realised that 50,000 couldn't pay for all they were doing plus make a bigger profit, so they raised the amount of people allowed to 200,000. The people who ran the concession stands started to freak out because they didn't have enough food for the new amount of people allowed. They had to airlift rice in as a back up food supplies for the people to eat.
Two days before the festival began, thousands of people started to show up early.
Already the first estimate of 50,000 people were setting up camp around the stage. The people walked right through the area where the fences were supposed to be placed, but never were

because they ran out of time. Because it is basically impossible to make 50,000 people leave or go buy a ticket, they were forced to make the concert free. This free festival left the four men with two main problems. First, the organizers of the event were going to lose huge amounts of money since people got in for free. And second, once news spread about the music festival was free, over half a million people headed that way since it was free.