and down there. and the story that was told, i was overwhelmed by people in their graciousness at the hardest part of their lives taking me in. : >> we feel the spirit of woodstock stilllies, and we -- still lives, and i have to say i kind of fit all three of the

criteria you mentioned about people interested in the book, i was definitely interested in the topic for my historical, musical perspective being a music writer for a long time. i wish i had been there, but i was 12 years old, and now i feel like i was there because of getting to spend so much time with michael and working on the book and all the incredible people i've gotten to meet that worked on woodstock with michael whose stories are also part of the book. tonight what we're going to do is talk a little bit amongst ourselves for you guys to listen and be thinking of questions because we will have time for questions at the end after we chat for a little while. and i'm going to go think a little bit of back story with michael because like many people who were not at the festival, my impressions of woodstock were pretty much based on the film that came out in march of 1970. and come to find out when michael and i started working together on the real story, i found out there was a whole lot

more to it than what we got to see in that wonderful film. >> [inaudible] anybody here who was at woodstock? >> all right. cool. >> feel better already. [laughter] >> so, now, some people don't realize, but woodstock was actually not michael's very first festival that he put on. he was living in brooklyn and in new york city and ended spending time in the west village and getting involved in the music scene and becoming a fan and then found his way down to coconut grove, florida, in 1966. so, michael, why don't you tell us a little bit about what the scene was like there, what took you there and -- >> um, i guess growing up, you know, i never really had a clear understanding of where i wanted to go with my life, and that's probably still true. [laughter] but i was at nyu, and i'd been there for a couple of years, and i remember sitting in washington

square park looking over at the park and thinking, i'm done. [laughter] and so the next logical step, i thought, was to go to coconut grove and open a head shop. [laughter] and it was the start of a really great adventure for me. the grove was a sleepy town in southern florida, the only tropical part of florida, in fact, and it's full of artists and musicians, and it was a very, in those days, a very lazy town. a dog could sleep in the middle of the road for most of the day without getting disturbed. it was that kind of place. so i opened a head shop and sort of changed all of that. [laughter] and in the process i was doing concerts at local parks and, you know, with small groups, just local talent, sort of the -- [inaudible] movement. and i came up with this brilliant thought because we were into lucy and the drug laws in terms of use of marijuana in

specific. i had met some of the local indian tribes and discovered, to my chagrin, that you could smoke marijuana on an indian reservation without getting arrested. and perhaps that was, you know, a place for us to hold our next event. [laughter] and so we spent some time talking with the indians, and they kind of liked the idea too. for some reason they declined at some point. and i became friends with a guy named rick o' barry who was, you'll probably remember flipper the dolphin. flipper was a very popular children's show in the early '60s, i guess, and rick was the guy that trained the do have fin that played flipper -- the dolphin that played flipper. interesting side story, rick at one point when one of the dolphins sort of committed suicide, he realized that he shouldn't be responsible for starting this industry that he was responsible for which is capturing dolphins and putting

them in tanks and making them do tricks. he became an activist for freeing them around the world, and he's been doing that for 40 years. and this summer there's a movie coming out called the cove, an amazing, amazing movie, i encourage everyone to see it, and it's an amazing film about what rick and what he's doing today. so we put something together with a couple other people. marshall had a club called the blue image which was the big rock club in miami, and he also had some partners with squashed noses -- [laughter] see, that's what -- [inaudible] so one condition was we had to do the show in three weeks. so there began my career as a producer. and i flew to new york and met with an agent, and we managed to

put together an interesting show. jimmy hendrix was the headliner. local jazz musicians from the grove to the crazy role of arthur brown, it was a pretty eclectic show, and he hired gulf street park to do it. it was an improvisation for me, and that's sort of how i get through life, frankly. i don't know a lot about anything in particular, but i can figure it out as i go along. so we do this show, and the first day was absolutely amazing, and we had had a long drought in miami that spring and actually was getting kind of dangerous, but we decided to forgo the rain insurance because there was no chance in the world it was going to rain. [laughter] and we'd been 60 days without a drop. [laughter] so, you know, saturday came along, and it was perfect. it was blue skies and dry as a bone, and sunday morning we read that they had seated the clouds

over the everglade to end the drought, and the skies opened up, and that was my first experience with heavy rains. [laughter] so rick and i tried to recoup our losses, you know, for about a month. we had planned two additional concerts with steppen wolf and, of course, the rain never stopped, and we lost the rest of our money. so i decided, you know, miami was over for me and headed north back toward new york. and then woodstock, because my parents had taken my sister and i on lots of trips to canada when we were kids, and she liked to stop and look at the art galleries on the way back. so i knew the town somewhat, and it was very famous for its musician residents, particularly bob di hand and the band -- bob dylan and the band and later janice joplin and van morrison was living there. in any case, i decided to move to woodstock, which is what i

did. take to it the next step. >> woodstock had this history of being an arts community that attracted not only independent, free thinkers, but musicians and artists and seemed like a perfect place for michael to be having had these interests and also being in coconut grove. and, um, he did, of course, end up hanging out on the scene, meeting people, but also participanting in some -- participating in some events that added to your idea of an outdoor festival after your miami experience. >> sure. there was a woman named pam copeland who was a local realtor and owned a farm just outside of woodstock, and every weekend she ran these concerts out on her farm, a stage that was six inches off the ground. it was very low key and sort of casual and informal but an amazing way to see music. she'd get a crowd of 3 or 400 people, and it was $2 or $3 over the weekend, and people could

camp out if they wanted to. and most of them, you know, the music was local, but it was van morrison and paul butterfield and it was an amazing array of talentment and so comfortable and felt so natural being in that environment, you know, whether you spent the night or not that it kind of curred to me then that this was really the best way i'd seen music. and so i started to think about a series of concerts, you know, based on that but with larger crowds. and somewhere along the line that summer i started to manage a band called the train. i say manage, who knew what management was. [laughter] someone in the band said would you manage us, and i said sure, and i became a manager. [laughter] but i knew the manager was the guy that did the business, so i figured i had that responsibility. so we needed somebody to support the band and maybe help us get them recorded. and the drummer, a guy named

abbey raider, was aware of or friendly with or had some ekg to artie cornfield who was the vice president at capital records. he was a writer, he wrote dead man's curve and the rain in the park and a bunch of hits and was from my neighborhood which, you know, informed me. so when i called his office to get an appointment, i said it's michael lang. who's michael lang? i have no idea who michael lang is. tell him i'm from the neighborhood. okay, have him come up. so he was charming and funny, and we became friends and have known each other all our lives. having net the fall, we were talking late into the night every night about these ideas of producing concerts, and artie was a studio guy, not really very familiar with the rock scene and hadn't been at a concert, so i would drag him out

to see shows shows and get him e right frame of mind. it also occurred to me that woodstock was becoming a mecca for musicians, but there was no place to record. people would have to go into the city to do their albums, and it seemed that was the perfect answer was to build a recording studio in woodstock where you can come and spend some time in the country and record at your leisure. so we proceeded to try and put that together. so we were following these two paths, and i hired a local realtor, tim young, to help me look for sites for this idea of a festival which according to artie started one night around 2 in the morning. i don't remember the actual night, but we decided, okay, instead of a concert series, we wanted to just put it all together and do the biggest event anybody had ever seen. and so we proceeded along those lines to try and finance these two projects. i think our target was 200,000

people, and although the biggest show that i had been aware of was my festival in miami, and i think we had 40,000 people the first day, we picked 200,000 because we figured we were in the northeast corridor, there's lots of people living around, if we only get 1% of 1%, we'd have 200,000. so that was our target. and that's sort of how we began that road. >> and then you guys found some partners, john roberts and joel rosierman who became more or less the financial backers and handled the business end of out -- oh, there's someone going to woodstock right now on that motorcycle. [laughter] did some sort of working on the business aspects of it while you were concentrating on the booking and also looking for the actual site because originally you did want to have it in woodstock, you'd found one area, winston farm, but it wasn't available for leasing, and so you looked and looked until you found a place called wallkill. now, can you imagine the

wallkill generation? [laughter] anyway, why don't you tell us a little bit about how wallkill came about and how you segwayed from wallkill to white lake -- [inaudible] >> originally, woodstock was supposed to be in woodstock. and when we couldn't be in woodstock anymore, i wanted to take the name with me because i thought it really gave everybody the idea of what we were doing in kind of a nice, concise way. but i wanted to be close to woodstock, so we looked in expanding circles from the town and found the perfect place to do the festival 10 miles out of town. and it belonged to mr. shaller who was the owner of shaller and weber meats, an old sort of, you know, well-known german meat packing company. and i spoke to the caretaker, he said, yeah, it sounds interesting, and i'll check. and he checked and said, yeah, we'd like to talk about it. of course, they didn't know what they were talking about.

but they never used the place except for hunting. and so i said, great, you know, we have a site. and we thought, you know, we would offer $5,000, and we'd be off and running. so in the meantime, through an attorney i was using we met with john and joel, john roberts and joel rosierman to finance the studio idea because they were building a studio in new york called media sound which for years was one of the premier studios in the city. so we went to meet them, and they were, you know, very yuppiish and nothing like me and a little like artie, i guess, on the fringes. so i kept my mouth shut, and artie did all the talking. and he talks very well. and they seemed, you know, interested but not really, you know, convinced. and at the end of the conversation i think i may have mentioned this idea of doing this festival, and that was another project we were working on and might have some time in the studio, and they seemed to perk up at that. and asked us if we'd come back,

talk more about it and come back with a budget. so we said, sure. we went away, and artie and i had been talking to a guy named larry bell about the festival, and he had called and said he was interested in proceeding. so we called had -- he called, e called john and joel back and said, sorry, the festival's already sort of spoken for, but we'd like to continue speaking about the studio. they had been bitten, so they were a little bit crushed. artie and i talked about it and said, well, if they'll do both projects, they both seem nice and bright and our age, and that would be more fun than working with a big company. and that's what happened. so two weeks later we signed a contract and started to go. and, you know, i would say within three or four days of steining the contract -- signing the contract, i went back up to try and pursue the site that mr. shaller owned, and by then i think the district attorney or one of the officials in the

county had gotten wind of what we were doing and put shock r something in the local -- put something in the local newspaper saying never again will we entertain an event in woodstock because they were having problem with the soundouts by then. so i guess mr. shaller read that, and that was the end of the shaller site. so we started looking further afield for something that would fit. we needed 3 or 400 acres, we needed access, we needed water, we needed, actually, a place where you could build a small city to support this crowd of potentially 200,000 people for three days. and we weren't finding it. and one weekend john and joel were riding around in the catskills and saw a sign off route 17 which said mills industrial site for rent. and it was for rent. [laughter] and they found it, and mills was willing to represent it, i think, for $10,000.

they agreed on the spot, and then they called me and said, look, we've agreed but can always back out. you've got to look at it, it's not exactly what you're looking for, not exactly what you've described. and they went through this whole thing, so i knew i was in trouble. but i went up to look at it anyway, and it was horrible. it was an industrial site and would require an immense amount of work to give the feeling that we wanted when people arrived. but it did have the advantage of being there and being rent bl and had water and power and all those other things. so we said, okay. they were getting really nervous by that point, i think it was early march. so we proceeded to work there. and because they looked so straight, they were the ones who went to approach the town fathers with this idea. there were no permit requirements in those days. the only permits you really needed were building permits if you were putting up permanent structures. so they described what the festival was going to be, it was going to be folk and jazz and

wandering in the afternoon, maybe 20 or 30,000 people -- [laughter] and then they came back and said, we've got it. and i said, great, and we started setting our crews up, and i, you know, went up -- i had hired by that point an amazing staff of people. from all walks of life, you know, engineers and construction people and guys that had most of the experience in the music business with setting up big events. nothing like we were planning, but at least they had some of that. and a bunch of just, you know, genius characters like chris reinhart who could build anything that you would suggest to him, he would build. and so we put this team together, and i sent them up there, and we started to convert this industrial site into something very beautiful and interesting and, um, as the weeks progressed the town began to realize that, you know, how come all the people that are working here have long hair -- [laughter]

and where is all the jazz -- [inaudible] acoustic guitars? none of that was happening. so they found out what we were up to and got really uptight and afraid of, you know, these hordes of hippies that were going to come and overrun the town and rape the women and torch their fields. [laughter] and we're trying, i guess, to figure out a creative way to get a better town. we're spending a lot of money in town, so the merchants were kind of on our side. and i remember having many town meetings, you know, where people would sort of whistle as i walked to the microphone. and we were able to get through to them in the beginning, but the resistance built really quite strongly to the point where they formed something called the concerned citizens' committee, the ccc. that'll give you an indication what they were about. [laughter] and at one point they started firing these occasional shots at

our line which was our headquarters. and so it was getting kind of intense, and we started thinking how are we going to bring people to this kind of atmosphere? so i made sure we didn't plant anything in the ground when we sort of laid out the site and started putting the pieces in place, we just piled them up to see what would happen. they passed a law saying you needed certain permits to proceed with an event and, of course, we're not giving you those permits. so on the. 14th of july, they sent the decision down that we're not issuing these permits, you're violating, you know, our laws, and you have to shut down immediately. um, the miracle of woodstock is after spending all this time trying to find a site and having to settle for wallkill on the 15th, i found bethel and max yasgur and the most perfect field of my dreams in any case.

and it had to be more than luck. i mean, it was just, you know, it was too good to be true. and a man called me, and he's the subject of a movie that an lee has just directed and produced called "taking woodstock," it's coming out, i think, on the 14th of august. calling me and then his world changes as we descend in a helicopter, it turns out. [laughter] and they called my office when we were sort of pan bicking at our lawyer's trying to figure out what moves we could make, and we were right, you know? we could have won the lawsuit, it probably would have wound up sometime around christmas, and the festival never would have happened, so i said, you know, let's get out. and i had everybody pack and start loading trucks, and anybody who wasn't busy packing the boxes i put on the phone to call the radio station, press, anybody they could think of to get the word out that we needed

the site. because i knew if anybody stood around for more than 30 seconds they'd get completely demoral eased, and that would be the end of it. we kept everybody pumped up and said, don't worry, it's going to work and kept everybody moving. sure enough, the next day i get a call saying we're in bethel, i have a permit, and we want you. i rushed to the lawyer's office and grabbed trisha who was my assistant, hello. and i called two of the guys on my staff and had them meet me at this hotel. turns out grew up around the corner from my sister and i in brooklyn, and, um, you know,. [inaudible] so we take a walk behind the motel which is hard to describe. [laughter]

everything was still open. and it was really. so we take a walk down behind the motel into this field, and it was traipsing down the hill, and suddenly i noticed that my ankles are getting wet, and it's up to my knees, and finally i said, hold on, elliot, where are we going? he said, you're in the middle of it. >> it was a swamp. >> it was a swamp. i sort of calmed everybody down and i said on the way up here, we've been passing all these beautiful farms. so trisha and i and this guy named morris abrahams chofs affiliated with a group in florida picked us up and took us around the neighborhood, and we

went down route 17, came up over a hill and there it all was laid out before us. stop the car, this is it. and that was when the miracle happened. we all got out of the car, looked at each other and tried not to float off the ground too far. we said, who owns this? it's a local dairy farmer named max yasgur. and max was the leading sort of business person in the community. he was really a self-made man, he was quite an amazing man. he was totally right wing, behind the war in vietnam, but he didn't think that anybody had to share his views, he was that kind of person. and so i said does he own any other land, and they said, yes, he pardon farms about 2,000 acr. so we went right the his house and knocked on his door, and he came out, told him what we had in mind. he'd known about us, you know, we'd been all over the press by then and everybody knew what was going on with woodstock. and max and i took a ride back with tisch shah and mel to this initial field, and we went off,

and i asked tisha to keep this guy morris abrahams busy in the car, the realty guy. and max and i went off into the field, and we started the deal right there on the spot. and then we were off and running. >> so, i mean, there's so many stories like this in the book because in addition to dealing with these kind of confrontations in wall kill, in the meantime michael was having to put out all these fire with the new york city office. you would think the underground, culture people would be together on this, but instead there was strife and factions and people demanding money and the yippees wanting money and bill graham, the great concert promoter in new york wanting, you know, not thinking he liked the idea of this whippersnapper coming along and starting this festival and booking all these bands that usually played his venues. in the meantime, things travel along until there's, like, three weeks to go for them to put together this massive site, like michael said, it was, basically,

a city. with i don't know how many people live in the area, but if you think about how june was, you know, i think it rained something like where we lived 27 out of 30 days. that was kind of the weather conditions they had in that three weeks to put together the stage, the lighting, the campgrounds and all the infrastructure that they needed. but somehow they did it. [laughter] >> yeah. i mean, it was 24/7 for be everybody. by that time we'd grown to probably 3 or 400 people working the site. and, basically, you had a complete what should have taken four months in 30 days and 26 or 23 in any case were rain. but we, we did. i mean, and it wasn't just us. we had the help of all of the local sort of power company and telephone company, all of the utility companies really pitched in and helped us tremendously. those guys worked through the night every day and every night to bring power and telephone from eight miles away.

we were, basically, constructing this city, you know? and that means water all over the site, and the site is probably the initial patch was 100 acres and power all over the site and toilets and ways to service those toilets and foods and ways to service those food stands. we had sort of figured woodstock from the beginning as an event that would be welcoming for anybody who wanted to come. i had spent that year going to every other show in america just about, from small festivals to concerts. and there were violent occurrences at lots of them, and gate crashing was a problem, and there was a lot of confrontation with the police and tear gassing, and i wanted to eliminate any of those confrontations. when we designed it, it was designed to welcome anybody who came. it was a free campground, if you couldn't afford food, we had free kitchens.

we just wanted to make sure anybody that wanted to be there could be there. this was a gathering of all of our sort of friends from anywhere, new and old friends. so, um, we proceeded, you know, sort of based on that principle of everything being welcoming and all encompassing. and when we designed sort of the infrastructure campgrounds, you know, we were bringing people for three days to the country. campgrounds were kind of a critical portion of our plan realizing that people were coming from cities, they'd never been to the country or they've certainly never camped in the country for three days and wouldn't know, you know, how to get through this. so we brought in a group called the hog farm, and that was kind of -- [inaudible] at the time, now wavy gravy. and they were great at this. they were a commune, they were used to setting up big, outdoor facilities, outdoor kitchens, they were into, you know, organic gardening, their food was organic, you know, probably

the first time anybody had really seen granola was when they passed out 400,000 portions of granola one day. and more than that, more than what they provided in terms of talent, they set up kind of a vibe, if you will, of welcoming everybody, getting them situated and then getting them to understand that it's now their job to welcome the next group and get them situated. so that started this whole idea of sharing responsibility and that we were all in this together, and that was really what started to bring this community together in a great way. these are your brothers and sisters, and, you know, we help each other with whatever you have, and if you have something they don't, you share it. and really that, you know, plus the fact that there was nothing to confront, there was no outside, you know, sort of anything, this was us and this was how -- we were in charge, and this is, you know, how we've wanted it, so let's see how we can do with it.

and i think that's probably what had most to do with the success when 200,000 turned into 500,000 and everything had to stretch. >> and that same kind of philosophy also applied with the musicians as they started arriving and, you know, i think some of -- i mean, michael always says the biggest star of woodstock was the audience. and i think when the musicians started coming and seeing this vast gathering of people and then also how people were following that vibe of introduced by you and the hog farm and the team, everyone helping each other, that they were willing to kind of maybe make compromises from their usual things that they needed. >> for the most part, that's true. you know, richie havens was the first act up, not by choice. i hunted him for hours and finally convinced him to go on when nobody else was in place. and, but the bands were there for the same reason everybody else was there. this was blowing everybody's mind, just, you know, the number

of people and the feeling in the audience. and that feeling really stretched from the site to the town to the thruway to, you know, the parking lot that stretched into new york city. there was the same feeling. everybody had this sort of -- there was this energy that, you know, just it didn't matter where you were, you were okay. you were enjoying yourself even if you were sitting on the parked cars on the thruway just to be part of this. and that spread to the bands, you know, for the most part. there were a couple of exceptions, pete townsend who didn't want to be there, didn't like being there was an asshole for the entire day he was there. [laughter] and wound up bashing -- [inaudible] in the head once he got on stage. but he did play an amazing set. but pretty much everyone else through that weekend because we were delayed by rain, we were delayed by traffic, we were

delayed by everything, equipment. we were running hours and hours late, and everybody just did their best. when we were redd -- ready for us, not always, some people imbibed at the wrong time. [laughter] i think we're running out of time, i don't know if you want to take some questions. >> okay. well, just to wrap up, michael, why don't you just finish up by telling a little bit about after, you know, the festival was over the partnership splintered and you were no longer part of the woodstock veptures team anymore, you and artie. but still the effect of woodstock on you once your future endeavors and traveling around and people you would meet who had seen the film and knew about woodstock and what that was like for you. >> well, i was in the film, so it was it was hard to get away from it which is something i tried to do afterwards because if you don't get away from an event like this

when you're sort of, you know, in your formative years, you can get trapped, and i didn't want to get trapped. but i get recognized a lot, and i traveled all other the world, you know -- all over the world from very early on, and people would always come up to me aren't you the guy, or you look like the guy, whatever it is. but they always said the same thing, woodstock changed their lives. even if they weren't there, they understood what it was. it seemed to have a life-changing effect on everybody who was there. i know it did on me, and i know it must have on all the people that were there. and you sort of take away from that experience a very positive outlook on life and on the possibility of, you know, maybe the world can actually work things out at some point. um, and i think that's how it's probably affected my life most dramatically, and i think most people who were there. >> great. okay, thanks. >> okay. now -- >> questions. >> we're going to have time for questions. >> sorry. >> we have time for about five or six questions.

if you would like to ask a question, we're going to ask you to come and form a line, stand right here because you will be on tv. so don't be shy. if you have a question, just form a line right here and step up to the microphone. >> how you doing? >> good. >> steve, two quickies, maybe one for you, mike, and maybe one you both can answer. i'm assuming maybe the whole festival might have been filmed and they trimmed it down to make the movie. if that was the case, because i bought the cd of the hendrix set, anyway that could will be found and put into a movie to see the hendrix set? and the second question, i heard the dead show gig there was a nightmare for them, they played horrible, and there was water on the stage and all that kind of stuff. i thought maybe you could comment on those two things. >> there was water on the stage, that's true. this new boxed set released of dvd of the film has a lot of

unreleased footage. >> yeah, i think 18. there's 18 performances never before seen that are -- >> and it's very well done. eddie kramer went in and remixed everything; so that's pretty amazing. the dead did have a horrible time on stage. they had a great time off stage. [laughter] this had a lot to do with why they had a horrible time on stage. also, their sound man was a guy named stanley, and he was famous for two things; he was famous for being the grateful dead's sound man with thousands of speakers, and he was also famous for being the major producer of lsd in the country. so when you put these two things together, you sometimes wind up with things that are shocking a bit. so before the grateful dead took the stage, he decided to rewire everything. and when he did, you know, i don't know if any of you were from new york or have ever been to steeple chase, and if you

have, you'll remember getting off the horse race and going through this tunnel and having this horrible little clown prodding you with a cattle prod. you know? electrocuting everybody that came on. any any case, it was kind of like that. they'd try to play a chord and sparks would fly. they had a horrible time. turns out that they didn't play as badly as they thought. probably by accident, and so they're include inside this box set. >> the other cool thing rhino's putting out in a couple of weeks for the first time ever you'll be able to actually hear every single artist that performed at woodstock including sweetwater, the dead, everybody at least one track, and it's going to be chronological in the order they actually performed at woodstock because, of course, the film to make a great film is complete hi out of -- completely out of sequence. so check it out. >> in great, thank you. >> i have two quick questions. the first is other than the

beatles, what act would you have liked to have signed for woodstock, and why does woodstock make resonance in the culture of today since 1969, and why do you think that's so? >> in terms of the acts, i tried to get john lennon to come, and he wanted to come, but he couldn't get into the country. he had been busted, he was in canada, he had a very strong anti-war stance, and our government was not thrilled with having him around. it was a funny story. i'd been corresponding with apple trying to work out what to do about getting him in, and it turns out that just around the time i lost the wallkill site they had sent me some correspondence. we didn't have, you know, e-mail in those days, so it was letters. so they sent us a letter that said, you know, basically, that instead of sending john, we'd like to send you an installation of the plastic ono man and james taylor and billy preston all

three of which would have been terrific. and because we were in the midst of chaos, i never saw the letter. and, in fact, i never saw the letter until i started writing this book and we started going through the archives i never thought i had. [laughter] and there it was. >> it's pretty amazing. so we could have had the singer/song writer movement start in 1969 with james taylor who had just done his first recording in england instead of waiting until 1971. >> thanks for coming to vermont and thank you to the north shire bookstore. my name is ron evans, and for the past 25 years my wife linda and myself have traveled around the country introducing your amazing program to all the originallal artists that played woodstock in '69. it's been a fascinating road, but it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for this beautiful printing and great graphics of the rhee 60s -- of the '60s, so i was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the history of the program as it

relates to yasgur's farm and a little bit about the graphics itself. and, of course, i'm going to ask you to participate in the program before you leave tonight. [laughter] thank you. >> the program that was given out at the festival? >> are you talking about the program book? >> the program, yeah. it's an amazing piece of memorabilia. >> with the poetry and the lyrics and all that kind of thing. well, the interesting thing, um, which you can believe and, in fact, we met someone at a signing last night who was on woodstock and on the way out, leaving sunday -- couldn't handle the rain -- found a carton of the programs and took one was, actually, they didn't show up until sunday. the trucks bringing the programs that were going to be distributed for free were stuck in that traffic jam along with, you know, another million people or so. and so many of the people that attended the festival never even got to see the program. >> it was put together by two guys in philadelphia concert hall productions, and they were,

you know, they were part of, part underground, i guess, one part michael -- [inaudible] was heavily into the underground press and very well connected, and berth cohen was a little bit less connected in many ways as i recall. [laughter] but they did a great job putting the book together. they didn't do a great job of getting it there. [laughter] >> how many were printed? >> i think 150,000. >> is that correct? >> i think so, yeah. >> wow. >> and i think you can also see isn't the jeff beck group list inside there too? and iron butterfly. >> yeah. >> rod stewart quit the jeff beck group -- >> just before. >> -- at the beginning of the summer, so they couldn't play -- >> and they called the day before we were going to send helicopters to pick them up, and by that time we were so busy i just said, leave 'em there.

[laughter] >> a lot of them mellowed over the years. >> i know. i think they really wish they had been there too. it was bad. >> you're welcome. >> i have a question. >> go to the mic, please. >> was there a specific moment during the three days when you realized, this is historic? it's not just a music festival, it's beyond that? >> yeah. i think we realized that the fist day. i mean, when you looked out at that crowd, that was historic in itself. what it would mean, of course, not. it was just once you got that picture, it was, okay, now let's see if we can get through this. but, yeah, it was, it was beyond anybody's imagination. >> here comes another question, good. >> have you been able to do anything since then that's given you the same kind of satisfaction? >> oh, yeah. many be things. >> such as? >> kids. [laughter]

not the same category. that's the secret. [laughter] anybody else? >> just, um, from the business end of it you put all these people together, 3 or 400, and all the bands and everything, but you got paid some, i mean, how did the finances all pan out? is. >> oh, good question. at the end of it, actually, we had about 2500 working by the time the weekend rolled around. and by the end of it we were a million, we'd sold 126,000 tickets in advance, and we were a million two or a million four in debt, a million four, i think. and i say we, i really mean john roberts because it was his money. and his family came in and sort of took over. they thought he was an idiot for getting involved in this in the first place, and his father was a miserable character, actually.

and, you know, john was a wonderful guy, he died, unfortunately, a few years ago but also steadfast and, you know, morally like, you know, right on the money always, all the time. and once he made the commitment, he, you know, he sort of saw it through. so after the festival we had a meeting at the bank on wall street to, you know, the bank had sort of financed unwittingly the weekend. [laughter] and wanted to make sure that they were going to be covered because nobody had ever signed, you know, the trust over. and, um, we were not mature enough to handle things. artie and john and joel were at odds with each other, and i'd come with artie, i was leaving with artie if we were going to leave. so it broke down to this thing where we were going to buy them out, they were just going to buy us out. it just got really ugly, mostly because of john's family because we were paranoid about what they

would do. if we were smart, we would have gone off to a room and realized we had a great deal of goodwill, and if we'd just kept our wits about us, we would have done fine. but we didn't. we got out, artie and i were bought out because they threatened to take the company bankrupt if they weren't the ones to buy us out. and then warner brothers bought them out of most of what they had in the film to make up the loss or most of the loss. and then warner brothers went on to earn $80 or $90 million on the film and records. >> so warner brothers was the big winner. >> yeah. well, in some ways. >> financially speaking. >> anybody else? okay. thanks. [applause] >> thank you, everybody.