Before “Woodstock” became shorthand for an entire generation, it was simply the Woodstock Music & Art Fair — a massive gathering built around music, community, and the counterculture of the 1960s.
Held August 15–18, 1969, the festival actually took place on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, not Woodstock itself. The event was originally planned for Woodstock, which is where the name came from. What organizers expected to be a three-day festival turned into four days when traffic, weather, and delays pushed performances into the early morning hours.
And the lineup? Legendary barely begins to describe it.
Performers included Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Santana, Canned Heat, Mountain, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly & The Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Ten Years After, The Band, Johnny Winter, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Jimi Hendrix.
Hendrix famously closed the festival, performing on the morning of Monday, August 18, after the enormous crowd had already begun to thin.
One of the original posters.
A Few Far-Out Facts
• The festival was supposed to last only three days, but performances ran late and continued into Monday morning.
• The location wasn’t Woodstock. Organizers moved the festival to Bethel after problems with the original site.
• Woodstock became much more than a music festival. It came to symbolize the ideals, fashion, music and counterculture of the 1960s.
• The festival’s official theme was essentially captured in the phrase “3 Days of Peace & Music.”
• Rain turned the festival grounds into a sea of mud, but rather than stopping the event, the conditions became part of the Woodstock legend.
• More than five decades later, the original site is preserved by Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which continues to celebrate the history and cultural legacy of Woodstock.
Woodstock Comes to Second Life
Now, more than half a century later, that spirit is still easy to recognize: gather your friends, turn up the music, forget the outside world for a while, and enjoy the moment.
This August 14th–16th, Second Life gets its own celebration of that legendary Woodstock spirit — with music, dancing, colorful avatars, flowers, peace signs, good vibes and plenty of opportunities to get a little groovy.
Because Woodstock was never just about the bands.
It was about the people who showed up.
And sometimes, that’s what makes a festival memorable. ✌️🌼🎶
Bethel Woods Center for the Arts — Woodstock History
WOODSTOCK EVENTS IN SECOND LIFE
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