Michael Lang, a co-creator and promoter of the 1969 Woodstock music festival, has died.
Michael Pagnotta, a spokesperson for Lang’s family, said the 77-year-old had non-Hodgkin lymphoma and died on Saturday at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
“He was absolutely an historic figure, and also a great guy,” Pagnotta said. “Both of those things go hand in hand.”
With partners Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, Lang put together the festival billed as “three days of peace and music” in the summer of 1969, as the Vietnam war raged and led disaffected young Americans to turn away from traditional mores and embraced a lifestyle that celebrated freedom of expression.
Around 400,000 people descended on the hamlet of Bethel, about 50 miles north-west of New York City, enduring miles-long traffic jams, torrential rain, food shortages and overwhelmed sanitary facilities.
More than 30 acts performed on the main stage at the base of a hill on land owned by farmer Max Yasgur, concertgoers treated to famous performances from artists including Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, the Who and Jefferson Airplane.
Lang, sporting a head of bushy brown hair, is seen throughout Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary that chronicled the festival.
“From the beginning, I believed that if we did our job right and from the heart, prepared the ground and set the right tone, people would reveal their higher selves and create something amazing,” Lang wrote in a memoir, The Road to Woodstock.
Lang and others sought to mount a 50th anniversary concert in 2019 but the endeavor was scrapped due to financial issues and difficulty securing a venue.
In an interview with the AP at the time, Lang called the experience “a really bizarre trip” and said he hoped to hold the concert in the future.
Although Woodstock is viewed as creating the template for large-scale music festivals, it wasn’t the first in the US. Two years earlier, the Monterey Pop festival drew about 200,000 people to California. In 1968 the Miami Pop Festival followed, which Lang also organized.
But Woodstock nonetheless holds an indelible place in history.
“A lot of them are modeled after Woodstock, Bonnaroo and Coachella in particular,” Lang said in 2009. “There was a ritual that was created that keeps getting replicated.”