CHAPTER 2
Yasgur’s Farm
Woodstock Ventures only had about five months to make the concert happen. They needed everything—fast. That meant they had to pay high prices. Of course, they hoped to earn all their expenses back. They’d make money selling concert tickets. Plus, they planned to make a film and album based on their festival.
They picked a site in Wallkill, New York, about forty miles south of Woodstock. They had a meeting with some town leaders. It seemed they would approve the idea of having a festival there. So a building crew began work.
Over the following weeks, some Wallkill residents grew worried. They wanted to stop the festival. It would be noisy. They’d heard that hippies were dirty, rude, and violent. And hippies were known for using illegal drugs like marijuana, which was nicknamed weed, pot, or grass.
The Woodstock producers argued with the town. They’d already spent time and money working in Wallkill. But in mid-July, the town officially turned them away. There was only one month left till the concert! It wasn’t much time to start over from scratch.
Tens of thousands of tickets had already been sold. If you bought tickets early by mail or in a record store, they were cheaper. They cost eighteen dollars for all three days, thirteen dollars for two days, or seven dollars for one day. (Tickets were going to be twenty-four dollars on festival weekend.)
If they had to cancel the concert, the Woodstock team would have to give all that money back. And they’d lose all they’d spent so far in advertising, planning, and building. Did they give up? No! They looked for a new festival site—fast.
Michael Lang took a helicopter ride around the area. The first place he visited turned out to be a swamp. Then someone told him about a farm in Bethel, New York.
Lang and Mel Lawrence went to check it out. Lawrence was director of operations. That meant he was in charge of building, landscaping, and coordinating many details of the event. The two guys drove down a street called Happy Avenue on the way to the farm. Happy Avenue? That seemed like a good sign. It turned out that the site had a sloping hillside shaped like a giant shallow bowl. It was more than big enough to seat the expected crowd. At the bottom of the hill there was a flat area where the stage could go. It would be like stadium seating. Everyone would have a good view of the bands onstage.
Lang started getting excited. He asked to lease about six hundred acres of field. Unfortunately, the owners, Max and Miriam Yasgur, said no. They were dairy farmers and were growing a crop of alfalfa there to feed their cows.
Lang was desperate. He told Max Yasgur what had happened in Wallkill. Yasgur agreed that hadn’t been fair. He was almost fifty years old and didn’t know much about hippies. However, he thought all young people deserved a chance to show they could be well-behaved. He agreed to lease the property to Woodstock Ventures. But they had to guarantee to leave his farm in good shape after the festival. A deal was made.
On July 22, only one week after the Wallkill site fell through, the festival’s building crew moved to Yasgur’s farm.
