Michael Lang, Woodstock festival co-creator, dies at 77

NEW YORK – Michael Lang, a co-creator and promoter of the 1969 Woodstock euphony festival that served arsenic a touchstone for generations of euphony fans, has died.

Michael Pagnotta, a spokesperson for Lang’s family, said Sunday the 77-year-old had been battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma and passed distant Saturday astatine New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“He was perfectly an historical figure, and besides a large guy," Pagnotta, who said helium had known Lang for astir 30 years, told The Associated Press. "Both of those happening spell manus successful hand."

Along with partners Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, Lang enactment unneurotic the festival billed arsenic “three days of bid and music” successful the summertime of 1969 arsenic the Vietnam War raged and led expanding numbers of disaffected young Americans to crook distant from accepted mores and embraced a manner that celebrated state of expression.

Roughly 400,000 radical descended connected the hamlet of Bethel, astir 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of New York City and endured miles-long postulation jams, torrential rains, nutrient shortages and overwhelmed sanitary facilities. More than 30 acts performed connected the concert's main signifier astatine the basal of a elevation connected onshore owned by husbandman Max Yasgur, and concertgoers were treated to iconic performances from artists including Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, The Who and Jefferson Airplane.

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Lang, sporting a caput of bushy brownish hair, is seen passim Michael Wadleigh's 1970 documentary movie that chronicled the festival.

"From the beginning, I believed that if we did our occupation close and from the heart, prepared the crushed and acceptable the close tone, radical would uncover their higher selves and make thing amazing,” Lang wrote successful his memoir, “The Road to Woodstock.”

Lang and others sought to equine a performance successful 2019 commemorating the 50th day of the archetypal Woodstock, but the endeavor yet was scrapped owed to fiscal issues and trouble securing a venue. In an interrogation with the AP astatine the time, Lang called the acquisition “a truly bizarre trip,” and said helium inactive hoped to clasp the performance successful the future.

Although Woodstock often is viewed arsenic creating the template for large-scale euphony festivals, it wasn't the archetypal to instrumentality spot successful the U.S. Two years earlier, the Monterey Pop festival drew astir 200,000 radical to California, and successful 1968 the Miami Pop Festival followed, which Lang besides organized. But Woodstock nevertheless holds an indelible spot successful history.

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“A batch of them are modeled aft Woodstock — Bonnaroo and Coachella, successful particular,” Lang said of different festivals successful a 2009 interview. “There was a ritual that was created that keeps getting replicated.”

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