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Music, money and myth-making behind the legendary 'gathering of the tribes'
By Alan Light
Special to MSN Music
Woodstock was a beginning, and it was an end.
Aug. 15 marks 40 years since the gathering of the tribes known as the Woodstock Music & Arts Fair. It remains the most famous event in pop music history, a weekend that came to define a generation. Its mythology runs so deep, in fact, that long ago it became almost impossible to assess what really happened during those "three days of peace and music" (which actually spilled over into a fourth) in 1969.
Related: An overview of all the 40th Anniversary releases
How many people attended? (Estimates range from 300,000 up to almost a million.) Which performances were the highlights? (Some of the biggest bands that played, including the Grateful Dead and the Band, didn't appear in the hugely successful documentary or soundtrack.) And, most crucially and most impossible to determine, what was it really like? For everyone who says Woodstock was a transcendent, glorious experience, there's someone else who describes it as a muddy, disorganized nightmare.
A barrage of new releases in honor of the 40th anniversary at least helps to fill in some of the gaps. Dramatically expanded versions of the "Woodstock" film (a two-disc "Director's Cut" DVD, plus another two discs of additional material, which include footage of the Dead and Creedence Clearwater Revival for the first time) and the recordings ("Woodstock -- 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm" is a six-CD set with 38 previously unreleased tracks) are just the beginning. Five of the most celebrated sets from the festival (by Janis Joplin, Santana, Sly & the Family Stone, Jefferson Airplane, and Johnny Winter) are being issued in full, doubled up with each of the artists' studio albums that came out closest to Woodstock.
In addition, original promoter Michael Lang's new book "The Road to Woodstock" leads a fleet of festival-related chronicles. One piece of the story is even being given the feature film treatment, with Oscar-winning director Ang Lee's comedy "Taking Woodstock."
But why does Woodstock still carry such weight in our culture? It wasn't the first major rock festival; the 1967 Monterey Pop event came two years earlier. Nor was it the biggest, an honor which is usually given to 1973's Summer Jam at Watkins Glen. Those who were on the front lines at Woodstock, though, insist there was something different about this one.
"There had been festivals in Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami," says Tom Constanten, who was the Grateful Dead's keyboard player at the time, "but Woodstock was lightning in a bottle. It created a sense of community, made connections between people who had felt sort of alone and defenseless.
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