Woodstock, 50 Years on

50 years ago today a music festival in Upstate New York changed youth culture forever, epitomised the more positive aspects of the countercultural movements of the 1960s, and created an archetype that similar events would strive to follow for decades. Here, music journalist Jeremy Allen speaks with Elliott Landy about his photographs of Woodstock ’69. 

A selection of Elliott Landy’s photographs, made in Woodstock, are available as fine prints on the Magnum Shop, here.

It’s 50 years since a sizable portion of America’s youth made a pilgrimage to Max Yasgur’s 60-acre dairy farm in Bethel, Upstate New York, in search of Utopia. The 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair retains a special place in the American psyche – and universally too for that matter – such was the unifying spirit of the collective participants. Billed somewhat grandiloquently as ‘An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music’, the Woodstock festival actually became four days of music due to a monsoon-like storm on the Sunday which led to extensive delays. The event remained almost entirely peaceful though, with no reported incidents of violence among the estimated half a million attendants. In the face of intermittent weather, mudslides and near starvation, peace and love prevailed.

Given the many disasters that almost befell the assembled that weekend, it could have gone down in history as something more akin to 2017’s Fyre Festival than the ushering in of the Age of Aquarius. Indeed, had mass electrocution across a waterlogged site because of worn out cabling occurred (which looked like a distinct possibility for a few nerve-wracking hours on Sunday afternoon), then the death toll could have made Woodstock infamous down the decades. Instead it is seen as the microcosmic exemplar of harmony, brother and sisterhood; the forebear of every subsequent triumphant musical gathering from Glastonbury to Live Aid. And yet the lack of organization, sanitation, available food, proper security or policing would be considered wholly unacceptable to a festival audience today. The precedent Woodstock set was more to do with its indomitable collective spirit than its meticulous planning; the idea more than the execution.

Photographer and Woodstock resident Elliott Landy, some of whose music-related archive is represented by Magnum Photos, was on hand to photograph the event of ’69 thanks to a personal invitation from promoter Michael Lang, who rode over to his house on his motorbike. Landy had made his reputation photographing The Band in their fledgling pre-fame days, and Bob Dylan when he was the most recognizable counter-culture figure on earth. “I don’t give instructions when I’m photographing musicians, and [Dylan] doesn’t like to take instructions, so I guess I was lucky that my style fitted his needs,” says Landy on the phone from Woodstock, where he still lives.

Amongst Landy’s pictures from the weekend there are the merest hints of disorder: Ravi Shankar laughing with his musicians in the rain, exemplifying a defiant, celebratory mood. Joe Cocker performing his trademark air guitar, tie-dyed, sundried, windswept and lightly soiled. John Morris, the stage announcer, grabbing a quick shave with a cutthroat razor and bucket at the side of the stage. But opener Richie Havens – shot from the back and standing majestically before the crowd, belies any of the backstage panic caused by Sweetwater being stuck in traffic (Havens was pushed to the top of the bill out of necessity).

Sweetwater weren’t the only ones stuck in traffic. Authorities were initially notified that 50,000 ticket holders would attend when – in reality – a figure closer to 186,000 tickets had been sold in advance, and nearly three times that number made it with many thousands stuck in traffic on motorways. The situation worsened when hopeful attendees started to abandon their vehicles where they stood to continue by foot to the farm.

Max B. Yasgur’s Hog Farm in White Lake was actually about 60 miles south of Woodstock, with the festival forced to relocate at the last minute due to licensing issues. The main financiers, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, were faced with an impossible choice between the stage being erected or a sturdy perimeter fence being put up to keep non-paying patrons out. With the entertainment clearly a priority, the makeshift fence had to be swiftly dispensed with for safety reasons when hippies started clambering over it days before the event was due to begin. It essentially became a free festival from then on in.

“Joel Rosenman and John Roberts don’t often get enough credit for this,” explains Landy, “But they were very careful. They knew what would happen if they stopped doing the right thing. If they said, ‘Well gee, I’m not making money, why should I do anything here?’ then there would have been riots and there would have been danger.”