There can never be another Woodstock and it's high time we stopped trying to recreate it
Almost half a century ago, between August 15 - 18, 1969, half a million people descended upon Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm near White Lake in Bethel, New York, in the name of free love, peace and a celebration of the arts. Woodstock '69 will forever be remembered as a pivotal moment in music history - a brief oasis of respite in a world engulfed with political tension and Cold War conflict. Two years after the Summer of Love engulfed the West Coast and led the counterculture movement to its zenith, the East gave the world Woodstock and immortalized the flower power era in what Joni Mitchell called "a spark of beauty where half-a-million kids saw that they were part of a greater organism."
Forty-nine years later, after being documented and retold in a hundred different ways, how Woodstock is remembered today is a mix of many perceptions. Some remember it as the music festival that started it all - the one that laid down the template that still forms the backbone of music festivals today. The bohemian flavor and festival culture that is celebrated at some of the world's biggest and most popular festivals today, like Coachella, Lollapalooza and Glastonbury all goes back to Woodstock. Others remember it as a weekend of musical performances from artists who would go down in history as legends. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald, Santana, The Who, Janis Joplin, The Band, Jimi Hendrix - the lineup reads like a who's who of rock through the ages.