Over the last six months, Lang, 74, moved like a cat using all nine lives to make Woodstock 50 work. The first plan, to have an all-star concert with the likes of Jay-Z, Dead & Company, the Killers and more in Watkins Glen, New York, some 115 miles (185 kilometers) northwest of the original 1969 concert — was scuttled after the venue backed out. Then the plan was to have it in Vernon, New York, but organizers couldn’t get a permit. Lang finally found a location that would work — all the way in Maryland — but artists started to pull out of the festival and he decided to scrap the event and the anniversary concerts altogether.
“What can I say?” Lang said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s not been surprising that we weren’t able to pull this off.”
USA TODAY
CREATING WOODSTOCK
For three days in August 1969, nearly a half-million young people descended upon Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York for the rock ‘n’ roll event that defined a generation. Mythologized for 50 years, the filmmakers set the record straight with “Creating Woodstock,” the most comprehensive examination of how the festival came to be using original interviews with key figures, rare archival footage and unearthed photographs.
Link to WoodStock Video Youtube