The 1969 Woodstock Festival

The 1969 Woodstock Festival

By: Mary Daugherty

                  Woodstock was a three-day concert (which eventually turned into four days) that has become an icon for the 1960s free love movement and hippie counter culture. The concert involved a lot of drugs, sex, and rock and roll. Four young men organized Woodstock. One of the young men was the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, which he planned to invest in order to make more money. The original plan of the young men was to create a recording studio and retreat for musicians in Woodstock, New York, where some big rock musicians already lived. Their original plan was to have a three-day concert in order to raise money for their recording studio. [[1]]

                  Many things went wrong during Woodstock, one of which being the location. The men were having trouble finding a location that was willing to allow a bunch of hippies who were doing drugs onto their property. Eventually the original location of the concert banned the young men from having their concert there. About a month before the concert Max Yasgur offered up his 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York for the new location of the Woodstock Festival.[2] This last minute change put them behind in their planning of the concert. Because they had less time to set up, not all of the fences were put up in time and the concert was eventually made into a free concert, attracting even more people. The original 50,000-person concert quickly turned into a concert with around 500,000 people in attendance. [3]

                  In spite of the insane crowds and hour-long waits just to use the bathroom, Woodstock turned out to be a huge success. There were a lot of drugs, sex, and nudity at the concert and it is a great example of the spreading of the Free Love movement. Even though the men who threw the concert ended up in debt and face multiple lawsuits, the Woodstock Festival was eventually turned into a hit movie, which the men profited from.

                  Woodstock is one of the most memorable events from the late 60s. It was a great example of how people were becoming more open minded with their views on sexuality. People in this time period were no longer interested in settling down and starting families like previous generations had been. Woodstock ties into what we have been learning in class because it is a great icon of the hippie era. This era helped change the views on sexuality in America as people started becoming more liberal. Since the county had just gone through a very conservative era, the liberal views expressed in this time period had a large impact on the history of sexuality overall.

---

[1] "Woodstock-Preservation Archives." Woodstock Preservation. N.p., 5 Mar. 2002. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. http://www.woodstockpreservation.org/SignificanceStatement.htm

² "Woodstock-Preservation Archives." Woodstock Preservation. N.p., 5 Mar. 2002. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.http://www.woodstockpreservation.org/SignificanceStatement.htm

3 "Woodstock-Preservation Archives." Woodstock Preservation. N.p., 5 Mar. 2002. Web. 29 Apr. 2014http://www.woodstockpreservation.org/SignificanceStatement.htm