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Woodstock
St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Douglas Cooke
In the 1960s, the small town of Woodstock, New York, 40 miles north of New York City, nourished a small but growing community of folk musicians including Bob Dylan, the Band, Tim Hardin, and John Sebastian. In 1969, Michael Lang, a young entrepreneur who had promoted the Miami Pop Festival the previous year, decided to open a recording studio for the burgeoning music community of Woodstock, which would double as a woodland retreat for recording artists from New York City.
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Lang pitched his idea to Artie Kornfeld, a young executive at Capitol Records, and Joel Rosenman and John Roberts, two young entrepreneurs interested in unconventional business propositions. Together they formed a corporation, Woodstock Ventures, to create the studio/retreat. They also decided to organize a Woodstock Music and Arts Fair to promote the opening of the studio.
As their festival plans grew in ambition, they realized that the small town of Woodstock could not accommodate such a festival, and a site in Wallkill, in the neighboring county, was chosen for the three-day weekend event. Throughout the summer of 1969 the project snowballed as more and more artists were signed to perform. It was decided that day one would feature folk-rock artists, day two would spotlight the burgeoning San Francisco scene, and day three would be saved for the hottest acts. By the time Jimi Hendrix was signed for $50,000, most of the major American bands were involved in Woodstock, as well as major British groups like The Who and Ten Years After. The music soon eclipsed all other aspects of the festival, such as the arts fair (which is almost forgotten) and the recording studio (which never materialized).
