Woodstock's Influence On American Counter Culture

Peace and music over powered the 600-acre dairy farm in the town of Bethel, New York 46 years ago. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was a festival known as an Aquarian Exposition of three days. For an audience of 400,000 people, 32 acts performed outdoors. Woodstock was a pivotal moment in music history as it changed the world of rock ‘n’ roll. The festival connected the 1960s counterculture generation through the power of music. Art and new ideas were the main historical force that changed society August 15th through the 17th in 1969, leaving a powerful influence on the Western world between the late 1960s and mid 1970s.

Hippies, also known as the counterculture, were longhaired people who wore vibrant colors and held up peace signs. The

counterculture came to be in the early 1960s. They lived mostly in hippie districts located in San Francisco, New York City, and Old Town Chicago. Gardens, head shops, restaurants, and music venues were located within these districts providing a cheap and alternative ways of living. Within the districts, the economic history force began to change in these parts of the United States because hippies wanted a lower and simpler cost of living. The generation encouraged the experimental use of psychedelic drugs and music for an alternative way of thinking. Folksy music by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Grateful Dead were some of the many groups this generation enjoyed. Drugs and music were influencing the hippies’ ideas of life and art. One of the biggest promotions the counterculture established was free love. Free love was a way to combat the societal ills of gender inequality, war, and racial discrimination. Personal identities began to change in the 1960s, especially within the counterculture. Gender roles did not have a large distinction between men and women, and racial discrimination wasn’t on any of their minds. The New Age of Aquarius was also on the rise. The people of this culture conformed to Buddhism, Confucianism and Western spiritualism. Religion and philosophy took a large turn during this time in the counterculture as a decline in Christianity began. Overall, the counterculture was one of the first generations within the United States to completely change the American culture, and brought fourth new thoughts on how to live life.
As the 1960’s progressed, tension in American society sprung due to the Vietnam War.

The middle-class youth made up the bulk of the counterculture, so they had the leisure time to focus their attention on political issues in America. At the time, the counterculture rejected the cultural standards of the United States and those older than them, specifically the initial support for the Vietnam War. The politics and government history force held a high influence during this time of change. The Vietnam War devastated the young adult population and families of those who enlisted. Some Americans found the movement to reflect American ideals of free speech and equality, while others thought of it to reflect pointless rebellious acts and very unpatriotic. In the end, authorities restricted political gatherings and the counterculture collapsed once civil rights, liberties, equality, and the end of the Vietnam War were

accomplished.
During the time of the counterculture rise, one of the grooviest and peaceful events in music history took place, Woodstock. John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield, and Michael Lang wanted to hold the rock ‘n’ roll three day festival to raise money to build a recording studio near the arty town of Woodstock, New York. Roberts and Rosenman financed the festival, while Land promoted the concert since he had organized a smaller festival, Miami Pop, the prior year. Roberts and Rosenman were entrepreneurs and were in the process of building a large audio recording studio in Manhattan. Land and Kornfeld were also involved with the recording studio and were advised by their lawyer, Miles Lourie, to recommend financing a similar, but much smaller, studio in Woodstock, New York. Roberts and Rosenman were interested in the Studio-in-the-Woods proposal and decided to organize a concert featuring the kind of artists known to the Woodstock area, such as Bob Dylan, for funding. So, the idea for Woodstock was created in January of 1969, but there was much preparation needed to be planned.
There wasn’t a proper size venue in town, so the festival was held at Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York. Kornfeld’s cousin, Lenore, was neighbors with the nephew of Yasgur. Kornfeld asked Lenore to give Yasgur’s nephew his number to get in contact about holding the festival at his farm. Yasgur agreed to their proposal, and his dairy farm became the most important locations in music history. Roberts, Rosenman, Kornfield, and Lang wanted the event to be three days of peace, which is a similar idea to how people like Gandhi organized events and protests for change. By the weekend of the event, the group had sold a total of 186,000 tickets and was expecting no more than 200,000 people to show. Once Friday night had arrived, thousand of people were pushing to enter. Since the crowd was doubled than what was expected, promoters decided to make the concert free. The roads around Bethel were jammed with eight miles of traffic. After Woodstock, Yasgur was sued by his neighbors for property damages caused by the large crowd, and his property also faced extensive damages. Less than a year after the festival, he received a 50,000-dollar settlement and sold his farm two years later. Max Yasgur died at age 53 due to a heart attack. His specific role in Woodstock earned him a full-page obituary in Rolling Stone Magazine, which was very uncommon and an honor for a non-musician.
It was a rainy weekend during Woodstock, but that didn’t stop the weekend of music and peace.

The crowd was filled with 400,000 people who were part of the counterculture generation. They watched 32 artists perform over the three-day weekend. Janis Joplin, Santana, Grateful Dead, and Jimi Hendrix were some of the many who played for the massive crowd. Muddy roads and fields caused facilities to not be equipped to provide sanitation or first aid to the large amount of concertgoers. On Sunday, August 17th, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller called Roberts, the festival organizer, and told him he wanted to order 10,000 New York State National Guard troops to the Woodstock festival. Roberts was able to persuade Rockefeller not to order in the troops, but the Sullivan County declared a state of emergency and had the nearby Air Force Base assist in helping airlift the performers out of the grounds. Jimi Hendrix was the last performer and didn’t go on until Monday morning at 8:30. The audience was now reduced to 30,000 of those who wanted to catch a glimpse of Hendrix before leaving the

festival.
The sound of the concert was put together by an engineer named Billy Hanley. He had built special speaker columns to be placed on the hills. There were also 16 loudspeaker array towers going up the 70-foot hill. The speaker set up was created to provide sound for 150,000 to 200,00 people, but double the expected amount showed up to Woodstock. Behind the stage, three transformers provided 2,000 amperes of current to power the amplification set for the festival. Systems used for concerts similar to the Woodstock’s set up are referred to as the Woodstock Bins.
Few reporters from outside the area were able to be on the scene. The media that covered the first few days of the festival focused on the problems of the concert. One headline reads “Hippies Mired in a Sea of Mud.” Toward the, end more positive coverage emerged because parents of concertgoers told the media their reporting was misleading based on their children’s phone calls.
A documentary directed by Michael Wadleigh was filmed during the weekend and titled “Woodstock.” Kornfeld went to Fred Weintraub, a Warner Bros executive, and asked for money to film the Woodstock festival. Weintraub put his job on the line by giving Kornfeld 100,000 dollars to make the film. The Woodstock documentary ended up helping save the Warner Bros at the time because the company was about to go out of business. A crew of about 100 people from the New York film scene gathered up and told they would be paid a double-or-nothing payment. The double-or-nothing payment meant the crew would receive double the pay if the film was successful. The focus of the film was about the hippies and the music. It explored their feelings about the festival and their thoughts on the Vietnam War. The documentary “Woodstock” was released in 1970 and received an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The award was the success the crew had hoped for.
Overall, the festival was peaceful given the amount of people who attended. Woodstock met the expectations of the counterculture generation, which was a sense of social harmony, quality music, bohemian fashion, and positive attitudes to promote peace. There could have been potential for disaster, looting, and catastrophe, but the crowd spent three days with only music and peace on their minds. The counterculture generation wanted to turn the problems of America into hope for a brighter and more peaceful future. Around 80 lawsuits were filed against Woodstock, mainly by the farmers in the area. The documentary “Woodstock” financed the settlements and paid off the 1.4 million-dollars of debt from the festival. In 1984, a plaque was established at the farm commemorating the rock ‘n’ roll festival. Today, the field and stage area remain, and a concert hall was built in 2009 on a hill within the grounds. The fields of Max Yasgur’s farm are still visited by people. For many, the festival was seen as a victory of peace and love.