The influx of people to the rural concert site in Bethel created a huge traffic jam. The town of Bethel did not enforce its codes, fearing chaos as crowds flowed to the site. Radio and television descriptions of the traffic jams eventually discouraged people from setting off to the festival.
Arlo Guthrie made an announcement that was included in the film saying that the
New York State Thruway was closed, although the director of the Woodstock museum said that this did not happen. To add to the problems and difficulty in dealing with the large crowds, recent rain had created muddy roads and fields. The facilities were not adequate to provide sanitation or first aid for the number of people attending, and hundreds of thousands found themselves in a struggle against bad weather, food shortages and poor sanitation. The event's security was to be handled by a group of 346 off-duty New York City police officers, but the officers were forced to withdraw when they were warned that they were violating regulations against
moonlighting. On the morning of Sunday, August 17, New York governor and future vice president
Nelson Rockefeller called festival organizer
John P. Roberts and told him that he was thinking of ordering 10,000 National Guard troops to the festival site, but Roberts persuaded him not to.
Sullivan County declared a state of emergency.
Jimi Hendrix was the last to perform at the festival, taking the stage at 8:30 Monday morning after delays caused by the rain. By that point the audience numbers had fallen to about 30,000 from an estimated peak of 450,000. Many left during Hendrix's performance, having waited to catch a glimpse of him. Hendrix and his new band Gypsy Sun and Rainbows were introduced as
the Experience, but he corrected this and added: "You could call us a Band of Gypsies". They performed a two-hour set, including his psychedelic rendition of the national anthem, which became "part of the sixties
Zeitgeist" after it was captured in the Woodstock film. Births were claimed to have occurred, one in a car caught in traffic and another in hospital after an airlift by helicopter, but extensive research by a book author could not confirm any births. Several miscarriages were reported (sources range from four to eight) Max Yasgur, who owned the site, spoke of how nearly half a million people had spent the three days with music and peace on their minds. He stated, "If we join them, we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future".
ALTEC designed marine plywood cabinets that weighed half a ton apiece and stood tall, almost deep, and wide. Each of these enclosures carried four
JBL D140 loudspeakers. The
tweeters consisted of 4×2-Cell & 2×10-Cell Altec Horns. Behind the stage were three transformers providing 2,000
amperes of current to power the amplification setup. For many years this system was collectively referred to as
the Woodstock Bins. The live performances were captured on two 8-track
Scully recorders in a tractor trailer backstage by
Eddie Kramer and Lee Osbourne on 1-inch Scotch recording tape at 15
ips (0.38 m/s) then mixed at the
Record Plant studio in New York.
Lighting Lighting for the concert was engineered by lighting designer and technical director
E.H. Beresford "Chip" Monck. Monck was hired to plan and build the staging and lighting, ten weeks of work for which he was paid $7,000 (equivalent to $ today). Much of his plan had to be scrapped when the promoters were not allowed to use the original location in
Wallkill, New York. The stage roof that was constructed in the shorter time available was not able to support the lighting that had been rented, which wound up sitting unused underneath the stage. The only light on the stage was from spotlights. Monck used twelve 1300 Watt
Super Trouper follow spots rigged on four towers around the stage. The follow spots weighed each and were operated by
spotlight operators who had to climb up on the top of the lighting towers. Monck also was drafted just before the concert started as the
master of ceremonies when Michael Lang noticed he had forgotten to hire one. He can be heard and seen in recordings of Woodstock making the stage announcements, including requests to "stay off the towers" and the warning about the "
brown acid".
Declined invitations or missed connections •
The Beatles were recording
Abbey Road at the time and on the verge of
breaking up. Promoter
Michael Lang, realizing the Beatles were not an option, invited
John Lennon and the
Plastic Ono Band. Due to Lennon's position on Vietnam and 1968 drug bust in England,
Richard Nixon and the U.S. government reportedly did not want him in the country.
Apple Corps sent a letter to the promoters offering the Plastic Ono Band, but the letter arrived as promoters were losing the location in
Wallkill, so distractions did not allow arrangements to be finalized. •
The Jeff Beck Group disbanded prior to Woodstock. "I deliberately broke the group up before Woodstock," Beck said. "I didn't want it to be preserved." Beck's piano player
Nicky Hopkins performed with
Jefferson Airplane. •
Blues Image agreed to appear at the Woodstock festival, according to a 2011 interview with percussionist
Joe Lala. Their manager did not want them to go and said, "There's only one road in and it's going to be raining, you don't want to be there". The band instead took a gig at
Binghamton. •
The Byrds were invited but chose not to participate, believing that Woodstock would be no different from any of the other music festivals that summer. There were also concerns about money. Bassist
John York later said, "We had no idea what it was going to be. We were burned out and tired of the festival scene." •
Chicago had initially been signed to play at Woodstock, but they had a contract with concert promoter
Bill Graham which allowed him to move their concerts at the
Fillmore West. He rescheduled some of their dates to August 17, thus forcing them to back out of the concert. Graham did so to ensure that
Santana would take their slot at the festival, as he managed them as well. •
Eric Clapton wanted English supergroup
Blind Faith to play the festival, which occurred during their only tour, but was outvoted by the rest of the group. •
The Doors were considered but canceled at the last moment. According to guitarist
Robby Krieger, they turned it down because they thought that it would be a "second class repeat of
Monterey Pop Festival" and later regretted that decision. Other sources claim that lead singer
Jim Morrison "hated playing large outdoor concerts and feared [...] he might be assassinated." •
Bob Dylan lived in the town of Woodstock but never seriously negotiated to appear. Instead, he signed in mid-July to play the
1969 Isle of Wight Festival on August 31. He intended to travel to England on
Queen Elizabeth 2 on August 15, the day that the Woodstock Festival started, but his son was injured by a cabin door and the family disembarked. Dylan and his wife Sara flew to England the following week.
The Band accompanied him during his Isle of Wight appearance. •
Free was asked to perform and declined, •
Iron Butterfly was booked to appear, and is listed on the Woodstock poster for a Sunday performance, but could not perform because they were stuck at
LaGuardia Airport. According to Production Coordinator John Morris, "They sent me a telegram saying, 'We will arrive at LaGuardia. You will have helicopters pick us up. We will fly straight to the show. We will perform immediately, and then we will be flown out.' And I picked up the phone and called Western Union ... And [my telegram] said: For reasons I can't go into / Until you are here / Clarifying your situation / Knowing you are having problems / You will have to find /Other transportation /Unless you plan not to come.'" •
It's a Beautiful Day had a verbal agreement with Michael Lang to perform at the festival. Violinist and band leader
David LaFlamme said their manager Bill Graham wanted Santana, who he also managed, to play the festival instead. Lang and Graham agreed to flip a coin to decide which band would play, Graham won, and Santana performed instead. •
Tommy James and the Shondells claimed to have declined an invitation. James stated: "We could have just kicked ourselves. We were in Hawaii, and my secretary called and said, 'Yeah, listen, there's this pig farmer in upstate New York that wants you to play in his field.' That's how it was put to me. So we passed, and we realized what we'd missed a couple of days later." •
Jethro Tull also declined. According to
Ian Anderson, he knew that it would be a big event, but he did not want to go because he did not like hippies and had other concerns, including inappropriate nudity, heavy drinking, and drug use. •
Led Zeppelin were asked to perform. Their manager
Peter Grant stated: "I said no because at Woodstock we'd have just been another band on the bill." •
Lighthouse declined to perform at Woodstock. •
Arthur Lee and Love declined an invitation, in part due to turmoil within the band. •
Essra Mohawk was scheduled to perform at the festival, but her driver took a wrong turn on the way. "We got there in time to see the last verse of the last song of the last act of the first night, and then the stage went dark before we got to it from the parking lot," she recalled in a 2009 video interview. •
The Moody Blues were included on the original Wallkill poster as performers, but they backed out after being booked in Paris the same weekend. •
Laura Nyro was invited by Woodstock creator Michael Lang to perform at Woodstock but her crippling stage fright prevented her from accepting the invitation. She would miss out on numerous gigs due to negative reception she received at the Monterey Pop Festival. •
Poco were offered a chance to perform at the festival, but their manager turned it down for a concert at a Los Angeles school gymnasium. •
Procol Harum were invited, but refused because Woodstock fell at the end of a long tour and also coincided with the due date of guitarist
Robin Trower's baby. •
The Rascals were invited to play, but declined because they were in the middle of
recording a new album. •
Raven turned down an invitation to play because they played at one of the
Woodstock Sound-Outs the year before and it did not go well. •
Rotary Connection turned down Woodstock for a better-paying gig in Toronto. •
Roy Rogers was asked to close the festival with "
Happy Trails", but he declined. •
The Rolling Stones were invited, but declined because
Mick Jagger was in Australia filming
Ned Kelly, and
Keith Richards' girlfriend
Anita Pallenberg had just given birth to their son Marlon. •
Simon & Garfunkel declined the invitation, as they were working on their
new album. •
Spirit also declined an invitation to play, as they already had shows planned and wanted to play those instead, not knowing how big Woodstock would be. •
Steel Mill,
Bruce Springsteen's then band, was reportedly offered a slot but was already booked. •
Steppenwolf was contacted to play Woodstock, but according to John Kay in his autobiography, turned it down as they had already played some festivals and were getting tired of dealing with them. •
Strawberry Alarm Clock declined an invitation because they did not think Woodstock would be "that big of a deal". •
Zager and Evans were invited to play Woodstock and appear on
American Bandstand, but Rick Evans was injured by a drunk driver in a crash. •
Frank Zappa was then with
The Mothers of Invention; he said, "A lot of mud at Woodstock ... We were invited to play there, we turned it down." Coverage became more positive by the end of the festival, in part because the parents of concertgoers called the media and told them, based on their children's phone calls, that their reporting was misleading. When the festival was over, Collier wrote another article about the exodus of fans from the festival site and the lack of violence at the event. The chief medical officer for the event and several local residents were quoted as praising the festival goers.
Middletown, New York's Times Herald-Record, the only local daily newspaper, editorialized against the law that banned the festival from Wallkill. During the festival, a rare Saturday edition was published. The paper had the only phone line running out of the site, and it used a motorcyclist to get stories and pictures from the impassable crowd to the newspaper's office away in Middletown.
East Village Other reported, before
Woodstock Music and Arts Fair in the 14 August 1969 issue, and after the event in the 20 August 1969 issue. ==Releases==