50 Things You Never Knew About woodstock
1 Woodstock was sponsored by four men – John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang – and ultimately cost more than $2.4 million. The eldest of the four was 26.
2 Heir to a drugstore and toothpaste manufacturing fortune, John Roberts paid for the event via a multimillion-dollar trust fund and a lieutenant’s commission in the army. He had only ever seen one rock concert: the Beach Boys.
3 Woodstock was originally intended as a profitmaking venture. It became a free festival only when it became apparent that it was attracting hundreds of thousands more people than the organisers had prepared for. The final straw was when the fence was torn down by desperate groups of ticketless fans.
4 Woodstock concert tickets went on sale at $6 a day (and were due to sell for $8 on the gate), while three-day advance tickets were priced at $18. The price at the gate was set at $24.
5 The festival took six months of preparation. An estimated $50,000 was reportedly paid to rent the site, on around 600 acres of Max Yasgur’s farm.
Soon after the event, Yasgur revealed to magazine the details of a “deal” he’d made with promoter Lang. “If anything
