Michael Lang, co-founder and driving force behind the 1969 Woodstock festival – obituary

Michael Lang, who has died aged 77, was the co-organiser of the Woodstock Festival when, in the summer of 1969, half a million people descended on a farm in upstate New York for performances by rock legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and The Who.

The festival’s reputation as three days of love, peace and music was established by a best-selling soundtrack album and Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning 1970 documentary Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music. For the organisers, however, it did not seem so idyllic at the time.

Woodstock was the brainchild of Lang, a concert promoter and owner of a “head shop” (specialising in drug paraphernalia), and Artie Kornfeld, head of artists and repertoire at Capitol Records.

The pair had responded to an ad in The New York Times placed by John Roberts, the heir to a pharmaceuticals fortune and Joel Rosenman, the son of a dentist and financial entrepreneur, which read: “Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions.’’

In April 1969 the four met up, and a few hours later Kornfeld and Lang left with a guarantee of $165,000 to stage a three-day outdoor music and arts festival that would cater to an audience of around 50,000, each of whom would pay $6 per day.

Though they did not have a site, to establish credibility with headline bands of the day, “Woodstock Ventures”, as they called themselves, had to produce cash up front. “We overpaid a bit, to establish the reality of the festival,’’ Lang recalled. “Once that happened, the word started to go out. We established a top price of $15,000 for headline acts. Hendrix wanted a lot more. He wanted $50,000…’’

But there was still no venue. Attempts to find a site in the bohemian town of Woodstock, home to a colony of artists and musicians, and then the village of Saugerties, failed due to local opposition.

After much negotiation, an abandoned industrial park in Wallkill was settled on as the festival site, at a cost of $10,000 (about $100,000 at today’s prices) for three days’ use. A poster was printed and groundworks began. But the town withdrew Woodstock’s permits, on the grounds that the proposed portable lavatories would not meet local regulatory requirements.

By early July the organisers were in deep trouble: they had performers booked, but nowhere to hold their festival. So when Max Yasgur, a dairy farmer from nearby Bethel, offered them the use of his land, with no other option available they paid $50,000 (half a million dollars in today’s terms) for a three-day use of the farm, putting another $75,000 in escrow to restore the property afterwards.

But there was a little over a month to go – not enough time to put all the groundwork in place – and by the time fans started to pour in no secure fences had been built and no ticket booths erected. Woodstock was now a free concert.

Some 450,000 people turned up, and police estimated that one and a half million people were trying to get to the festival before they closed the roads and Sullivan County declared a state of emergency. As a result, the organisers had to spend tens of thousands of dollars more for helicopters to transport food, supplies and musical acts to and from the site.

“By the time we got to Woodstock/ We were half a million strong/ And everywhere there was song and celebration,” sang Joni Mitchell – and indeed, for most of those in the audience, despite dodgy acoustics, storms, mud, a shortage of food, medical incidents (some related to contaminated drugs) and raw sewage (there was one lavatory for every 833 people), it was an enthralling experience.

For the organisers things were more fraught, though Lang tried to remain philosophical: “I was running around organising everything, but I was also going all over the site so I saw what was going on. I’d say it was expressions of freedom right? That’s really what the overall message was of the festival, it was about freedom… When things get weird I just get calmer, I’ve never panicked.”

Woodstock had begun as a money-making venture, but by the time it ended it looked set to be a financial disaster, a fact of which Lang became aware while reviewing the devastation that would take three weeks (and strong stomachs) to clear up, from a helicopter.

“I got a call… saying, ‘You gotta get down here,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Where’s here?’ He said, ‘Wall Street. The bank.’ So I got a lift to Wall Street from one of the helicopter pilots… What a shock that was…’’

As the scale of the losses – estimated at $1.4 million – became clear, the organisers and their backers faced an army of angry bankers and creditors. But they refused to declare bankruptcy and eventually found a solution in a partnership with Warner Bros in the production of Michael Wadleigh’s film. They eventually paid off their debts, though it took 11 years.

Long after the event, Lang tended to take a rose-tinted view of proceedings. “We always wanted to have it as a counter-culture event,” he told The Sunday Telegraph in 2009. “It was important to me to have it about politics, interests in ecology and human rights. The Vietnam war was a huge issue at the time. Woodstock was a picture of what life would be like if we were in charge. Fun in the sun with a lot of mud.”

He went on to organise the follow-ups Woodstock ’94 (which also lost money), and the ill-fated Woodstock ’99, which ended in a riot after an aggressive mob – angered at high ticket prices, costly bottles of water and a poorly curated lineup – set the festival site ablaze.

Much to the relief of many, Lang’s plans for a Woodstock 50 festival in 2019 came to nothing after a series of permit and production issues, financial disputes, venue relocations and artist cancellations.

Michael Lang was born on December 11 1944 to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, where his father ran a construction and heating company. Dropping out of New York University, where he was studying business and psychology, he moved to Coconut Grove in Florida to open a head shop and began promoting rock concerts.

In 1968 organised a first pop festival in Miami, at which 25,000 people turned up to see Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, though torrential rain brought a premature end to the event, after which Lang returned north and settled at Woodstock.

He met Artie Kornfeld while hustling for a record contract for Train, a band he was managing. Kornfeld rejected the band but was inspired by Lang’s ideas for a rock festival.

Four months after Woodstock, Lang helped to organise the Altamont Festival, a free concert headlined by the Rolling Stones, in California, an occasion now remembered for considerable violence, including the beating and stabbing to death of an 18-year-old black man by Hells Angels employed as security guards.

Despite such setbacks Lang, who subsequently established the label Just Sunshine Records and managed artists including Joe Cocker and Rickie Lee Jones, remained committed to the Woodstock myth.

“Almost all of the big movements that have emerged over the years are elements of Woodstock that have survived,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “ – the green movement, the less-is-more mentality, and even the sexual revolution. Before Woodstock, the idea in America was that sex should only happen between married men and women at home with the lights out. But at Woodstock, there were naked couples kissing in the lake and couples making love in the grass.’’

Lang is survived by his second wife, Tamara, and their three daughters and two sons.

Michael Lang, born December 11 1944, died January 8 2022