Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to "Woodstock"

Roots of the 1969 Woodstock Festival: The Backstory to “Woodstock”
Edited by Weston Blelock and Julia Blelock, foreword by Bob Fass
WoodstockArts, 2009
ISBN 9780967926858
By now most of us know that the 1969 Woodstock Festival didn’t actually take place in Woodstock—while promoters wanted to have the concert there, it ended up being held many miles away, in the Sullivan County town of Bethel. But the town of Woodstock is closely connected to the 1969 concert, and a new book published by WoodstockArts helps to define that connection by taking a close look at the events that led up to the iconic American music festival, told in the words of those most closely associated with it.

The origins of the book are actually in a panel discussion held at the Colony Café in Woodstock in August of 2008. This panel discussion included many of the people who helped make Woodstock 1969 possible, including Michael Lang, a Woodstock resident and legendary 1969 Woodstock Festival promoter; Jean Young, co-author with Lang of Woodstock Festival Remembered; Bill West, active in local government since the 1960s; Jeremy Wilber, former Town Supervisor and bartender during the sixties at the Sled Hill Café, and Paul McMahon, a local music icon and bona fide hippie. The book is essentially a transcript of that panel discussion, richly illustrated with photographs (some of which are rare) of Woodstock from the 1920’s to today. These photographs, along with the text, tell the full story of the Woodstock Festival, from its origins in the Maverick Festivals of the early 20th century, through the Sound-Outs of the 1960s.

The book is a fascinating read: there’s an interesting story on every page, and it is a must-have for anyone interested in the Woodstock Festival, the history of Woodstock or the counterculture movement in the United States.