The Road to Woodstock by Michael Lang

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Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music
The Road to Woodstock is the novel written by Michael Lang. Michael Lang was known as the man behind the legendary festival. Lang paints a vivid picture of how Woodstock changed America forever. He takes you through the hard work, dedication, passion, and struggles of creating the country’s most powerful music and peace festival in history.
Michael Lang grew up in New York in the early fifties. He came from a middle-class family, and had a passion for music. During his early teenage years he has experimented with drugs like marijuana and LSD. This was the time that LSD became popular, a way to explore your conscious mind. Lang was fascinated by hippies and their free-spirits, he went to many concerts and later called himself a hippie. After he graduated high school he moved to Miami and opened a smoke shop. In Miami he met several men involved in the music industry. Eventually, he would orchestrate the famous Miami Pop Festival. When business slowed down Michael moved to Woodstock, New York.
After Lang moved to Woodstock, he thought that the town needed a recording studio. He, his partner, Artie Kornfeld planned to open a recording studio in the small town. Lang wanted to bring music back, it had been years since any famous musician had played there. Their idea of opening a music studio failed, so they decided to have a three-day music festival. Along the road they met John Roberts and Joel Rosenmen who both became in charge of the finances for the festival. These four men were the brains behind the festival.
Organizing Woodstock did not always go as planned. At first the festival was to be held in Wallkill, but the citizens did not agree with having thousands of drugged-out and naked h...

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...these musicians put into their lyrics is breath-taking. It makes me angry and sad that music does not have an effect on humans like it used to. Lang explains in the prologue, that when Jimi Hendrix arrived to Woodstock more than half a million people left. Jimi was the last performance, and about 40,000 stayed to see him play. First he started off with his most popular songs, like Purple Haze and Voodoo Child, but slowly slid into the Star Spangled Banner. Jimi was able to capture the emotional turmoil and confusion young Americans were experiencing. Lang said “his song takes us to the battle field, where we feel the rockets and bombs exploding around us”. Woodstock was a powerful rebuke of the war, social inequity and a wake-up call to fix the broken things in society. Three days that America will never forget.

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The Road To Woodstock by Michael Lang

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