The Making of Woodstock
Joel Rosenman woke up on Friday, August 15, 1969, at 6:00 A.M. This was the first day of what is now known as the most famous rock festival in history, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Joel, along with John Roberts, Artie Kornfeld, and Michael Lang, created Woodstock. Joel woke to one of the biggest traffic jams in history located outside The Pines, the hotel where Woodstock's staff was staying. Route 17B lead right to the site of the festival, Max Yasgur's Farm. It took Joel twenty minutes weaving in and out of traffic on his motorcycle to go four miles on Route 17B. The traffic was backed up for ten miles(Rosenman, 155). When the people saw the traffic jam, they knew this thing was going to bigger than they had originally thought. Joel and the rest of the staff have been through hell to get this festival going and now the first day of Woodstock was about to begin. Joel Rosenman was a graduate of Yale Law School and the son of a Long Island orthodontist. Joel met John Roberts on a golf course in the fall of 1966. Within a year they were roommates. Joel thought, "It was instantly a good relationship because he was able to give me so much help in my golf game."(Makower, 21). Joel made his money by
playing guitar for lounge bands all over the country. Roberts was heir to a drugstore and toothpaste fortune. He got his money from his multimillion-dollar trust fund. He was a graduate of University of Pennsylvania and had a lieutenant's commission in the Army (http://www.goecities.com/~music-festival/how-w.htm). The first task of the Ventures was to find a location for the concert. Joel, the other three men, and real estate agents were searching for a site. They first settled on the 300-acre Mills Industrial Park in the town of Wallkill. The men did not like Mills, but they needed a site as soon as possible. Joel told the Wallkill officials that the concert would have jazz and folk bands and only 50,000 people would attain(http://www.goecities.com/~music-festival/how-w.htm). This would all change when the ads for the concert were printed and bands were signed. The bands playing around the clock seemed to have calmed the crown and stopped a possible riot. Joel then got the worst phone call of the festival. It was the stage electrician. He said that the rain had washed away the dirt that was covering the main feeder cables and that it was starting to rain again. The crowd walking over the cables had started to wear down the cables' insulation. With the insulation gone and the kids drenched and packed in the way they were, there could have been a mass electrocution. Joel remembers that, "It had been two years since I'd given up cigarettes, but at that moment I lit up a Camel."(Rosenman,189) At 12:40 A.M. the sheriff called Joel and told him that he got the traffic jam turned around, but now he needed authority from the fair to tell the people they can not get in. Joel went to go down to where a deputy was and told the disappointed people they could not attained Woodstock. The deputy was waving the people into an exit on the road to try to get the cars off Route 17B, but all of the cars were just going to the next exit and returning on the eastbound lanes. Joel was put in charge by the sheriff of Bethel to turn all of the cars around and head them back towards the city(Rosenman,166-168). Many people never made it to Woodstock due to the traffic. This is something that people have regretted ever since that day. They have to live with the fact that they could not go to Woodstock because they were stuck in traffic(http://www.well.com/woodstock/wstockconf?) While Joel was busy with the cars, Joan Baez's "We Shall Overcome" (http://home.columbus.rr.com/woodstock1969/)closed the first day of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Two men came to Joel and Roberts with an idea for either building a recording studio or a rock festival. Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang grew up in the same neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Queens. Kornfeld was a vice president at Capitol Records was smoked hash in his office. Lang was a long hair hippie, who was described by friends as a "cosmic pixie, with a head full of curly black hair that bounced on his shoulders." (http://www.goecities.com/~music-festival/how-w.htm) Lang had already produced the two-day Miami Pop Festival and managed a rock group called Train. Lang moved in with Kornfeld and his wife not long after they met(Makower, 25). On his way to the office, he saw hitch hikers up and down Route 17B still trying to get to the festival. As soon as Joel walked into the office, he was faced with his first problem of the day. Some of the kids had attacked a water main. This cut off some of the festival's water supply. Around noon Quill opened the second day of the festival with "Waitin' For You" (http://home.columbus.rr.com/woodstock1969/). In order to get plot ideas for their show they ran an ad in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times which read, "Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions." (New York Times, March 22, 1967, p.54) They got replies about everything fro
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Approximate Word count = 3390
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)
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