Post by KotO on Jan 9, 2022 15:16:28 GMT
www.yahoo.com/entertainment/michael-lang-woodstock-organizer-dies-060027484.html
Shirley Halperin and Chris Willman
Sun, January 9, 2022, 1:00 AM
Michael Lang, the co-creator and organizer of 1969’s Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and its follow-ups Woodstock ’94 and the ill-fated Woodstock ’99, died Saturday at the age of 77 at Sloan Kettering in New York City. The cause of death was a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to family spokesperson Michael Pagnotta.
He last appeared publicly just before the COVID pandemic hit around the 50th anniversary of the festival, which was marked by controversial will they-or-won’t attempts to stage a Woodstock 50 festival that played out in the press.
Shirley Halperin and Chris Willman
Sun, January 9, 2022, 1:00 AM
Michael Lang, the co-creator and organizer of 1969’s Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and its follow-ups Woodstock ’94 and the ill-fated Woodstock ’99, died Saturday at the age of 77 at Sloan Kettering in New York City. The cause of death was a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to family spokesperson Michael Pagnotta.
He last appeared publicly just before the COVID pandemic hit around the 50th anniversary of the festival, which was marked by controversial will they-or-won’t attempts to stage a Woodstock 50 festival that played out in the press.
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Lang was raised in Brooklyn and attended college in New York City before jumping into concert promotion in the late 1960s. The first multi-artist event he organized was the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, which featured Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and John Lee Hooker, among other acts of the era.
His move to the Woodstock, New York area sowed the seeds of a more ambitious three-day festival. Along with co-founders John Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and John P. Roberts, they conceived of Woodstock, one of the most impactful events in music history, drawing some 400,000 people to a farm (owned by Max Yasgur) in Bethel, New York and shutting down the New York State Thruway as scores left their cars stranded and found other means to arrive to the festival grounds.
Woodstock itself arrived at a time of great social upheaval in the United States, which was engulfed in an unpopular war in Vietnam that saw many thousands of young adults drafted and subsequently killed in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile back at home, the hippie movement was influencing art, fashion, film and music, as the tagline to the festival — “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music” — illustrates.
The festival exceeded all expectations — and everyone’s worst case scenarios — when a mini-city spontaneously erected to take in the tunes, and many mind-altering substances, throughout the three-day showcase. Among the 30-plus bands on the bill were: The Grateful Dead, The Who, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Joan Baez, Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane. A 1970 soundtrack album and documentary film, in which Lang was featured extensively, detailed the scheduling snafus, weather issues and general lack of preparedness for what would turn out to be the seminal cultural moment of the 1960s.
Shirley Halperin and Chris Willman
Sun, January 9, 2022, 1:00 AM
Michael Lang, the co-creator and organizer of 1969’s Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and its follow-ups Woodstock ’94 and the ill-fated Woodstock ’99, died Saturday at the age of 77 at Sloan Kettering in New York City. The cause of death was a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to family spokesperson Michael Pagnotta.
He last appeared publicly just before the COVID pandemic hit around the 50th anniversary of the festival, which was marked by controversial will they-or-won’t attempts to stage a Woodstock 50 festival that played out in the press.
Shirley Halperin and Chris Willman
Sun, January 9, 2022, 1:00 AM
Michael Lang, the co-creator and organizer of 1969’s Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and its follow-ups Woodstock ’94 and the ill-fated Woodstock ’99, died Saturday at the age of 77 at Sloan Kettering in New York City. The cause of death was a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to family spokesperson Michael Pagnotta.
He last appeared publicly just before the COVID pandemic hit around the 50th anniversary of the festival, which was marked by controversial will they-or-won’t attempts to stage a Woodstock 50 festival that played out in the press.
Scroll back up to restore default view.
Lang was raised in Brooklyn and attended college in New York City before jumping into concert promotion in the late 1960s. The first multi-artist event he organized was the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, which featured Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and John Lee Hooker, among other acts of the era.
His move to the Woodstock, New York area sowed the seeds of a more ambitious three-day festival. Along with co-founders John Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and John P. Roberts, they conceived of Woodstock, one of the most impactful events in music history, drawing some 400,000 people to a farm (owned by Max Yasgur) in Bethel, New York and shutting down the New York State Thruway as scores left their cars stranded and found other means to arrive to the festival grounds.
Woodstock itself arrived at a time of great social upheaval in the United States, which was engulfed in an unpopular war in Vietnam that saw many thousands of young adults drafted and subsequently killed in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile back at home, the hippie movement was influencing art, fashion, film and music, as the tagline to the festival — “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music” — illustrates.
The festival exceeded all expectations — and everyone’s worst case scenarios — when a mini-city spontaneously erected to take in the tunes, and many mind-altering substances, throughout the three-day showcase. Among the 30-plus bands on the bill were: The Grateful Dead, The Who, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Joan Baez, Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane. A 1970 soundtrack album and documentary film, in which Lang was featured extensively, detailed the scheduling snafus, weather issues and general lack of preparedness for what would turn out to be the seminal cultural moment of the 1960s.