43 incredible images of Woodstock that will transport you back to 1969
It's been 50 years since over 400,000 people converged at Woodstock and made it the most famous music festival in the world.
Coined as the ‘festival that changed America’, hundreds of thousands of festival goers descended on a three-day festival held at a dairy farm in Bethel, New York.
During those iconic 72 hours, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were among the famous names to headline where the 400,000 hedonistic attendees dabbled in sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
Rain didn’t tarnish the festival billed as ‘An Aquarian Experience: Three Days of Peace and Music’, the brainchild of four 27-year-olds: John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang.
Having previously organised the Miami Music Festival in 1968, Lang along with Kornfield – who was the youngest vice president at Capitol Records – brought in entrepreneurs Roberts and Rosenman to help form Woodstock Ventures Inc., and host the now infamous festival.
Advance tickets for Woodstock - which, at the time, was also referred to as Bethel Rock Festival and the Aquarian Music Festival - cost $18 (£15) and door tickets cost $24 (£19.90). But, after festival goers turned up in their hundreds and thousands (they were initially only expecting around 50,000), the organisers decided to waive the fee and make the event free of charge.
The chilled-out attendees of Woodstock echoed the changing times. Back then the US was embracing the hippie era as the country was deep into the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. Woodstock gave attendees a chance to celebrate peace and love.
Hendrix was the final performer at Woodstock, closing the festival on Monday August 18. Now, the site of Woodstock houses the Bethel Woods Centre for the Arts, which hosts outdoor concerts, alongside a museum dedicated to the 1960’s, dubbed the Museum At Bethel Woods.
Click through the gallery above to see stunning images from Woodstock Festival in 1969.
