In 1969 more than 450,000 people assembled in a small town in upstate New York for three days of peace, music and sex. Hippies with flower garlands in their hair, holding joints and chanting “make love not war” were the pioneers of the free love movement, which championed pleasure for the sake of pleasure, and fiercely opposed state interference. A famous photo shows a dark-haired, topless young woman, sitting on someone’s shoulders and enjoying the music with closed eyes and a joint in hand. It encapsulates the feeling of freedom and the bygone idealism of a generation. The acts included groundbreaking musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Santana. While there were reports of drug overdoses and at least three deaths, we remember the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair for promoting the ideal of free expression, love and liberation.
The festival became a cultural touchstone, so it’s no surprise that in the decades afterwards a succession of anniversary concerts were organised in an attempt to recreate its heady atmosphere. “Peace and love and music” is what Michael Lang, the music producer who co-created Woodstock 1969 when he was 24, wanted when he decided to relaunch Woodstock in 1999. Lang, who died in January this year, was also certain that this time it “absolutely had to make a profit”, as he explains in the new Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99, which narrates the events of the now-infamous festival.
Content from our partners
