Even though the 1969 and 1999 festivals had similarities and differences, I’m not sure if Woodstock would consider bringing back their festival 30 years later, considering what happened in 1999.
However, if they improve and don’t make the same mistakes that they made in 1999, then it’ll be successful (plus it would be nice to see Woodstock redeem itself)
Considering so many listen to the music of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s now …would it be even possible to create the vibe?
and Canucks won’t come 
I always thought what made Woodstock special was that a huge music festival with multiple major acts was a completely new idea, and was nothing to do with the specifics of it being the 60s or it being at Woodstock, or whatever. It’s legendary, for sure, but it was a one-off and a first.
Now we get music festivals several times a year, across the world, and having another one called Woodstock is not reliving anything or doing anything special at all. It’s just another music festival.
I mean, they can make it special by playing only rock music, but then they’d have to make it accessible to all the fans with walkers.
Not to mention band members with the same sorts of appliances.
And the original Woodstock ended up being a free concert and a moment in a decade of counter-cultural and political intensity, with politics and art and hope woven together in an unwieldy, fraught, contradictory way. Hard to replicate all that.
Hey, Angus Young will still be rocking it in '29.
No. For example the Newport Pop Festival preceded it by a year and had over 100,000 attendees
No, you had to buy a ticket to get in. There are lots of examples online.
…
My personal goal is to attend the 100th anniversary of Woodstock, in 2069. I’ll be 91.
The area is not the same as it used to be. It’s expensive, ‘city’-fied and gentrified, a far cry from the vibe it used to have even for the 1999 one. Yes that’s the town itself, not the field, but there is carryover. I don’t know if it’s possible to bring it back to that area due to the people who would likely attend today.
They sold tickets originally, wanting it to make money, but due to poor organization it ended up being a free concert for the majority of attendees.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190813-50-facts-about-woodstock-at-50-money
It may not fit the legend of free love and free music, but Woodstock was intended to be a profit-making enterprise by the three organisers – Michael Lang, Joel Rosenman and John P Richards. The tickets weren’t free – advance tickets cost $18 if bought from record stores in the New York City area, or via a post office box. That’s slightly more than $125 (£100) in 2019 money.
Had things run to plan, Woodstock would have charged $24 on the door for those arriving ticketless. The problem? The fencing and ticket booths weren’t finished in time. The crowd ended up being a lot larger than the 186,000 who bought advance tickets…
It went ‘viral’ and the number of attendees ballooned beyond any reasonable expectation. Even the best of organization wouldn’t have accounted for that.
“Woodstock” was a time more than it was a place. Trying to replicate it is futile and kind of pathetic.
I thought the unexpected huuuge crowd made it impossible to keep people out and it then became “free” for many, though that was not the promoters’ intent.
TBF, it was a two-off (even if the two-off did fizzle like a blocked cleric spell).
I fully agree. It was something that evolved organically because the time was right. Trying to make it happen again is futile.
I did not know about any of that.
My brother went to San Francisco in 1969 just to experience the Haight-Ashbury scene. If he’d been hip to what was going on in Newport Beach and Northridge (each one about an hour’s drive from our home in Torrance), he could have bought SO many God’s eyes with the gas money he saved.
Newport had had jazz and folk festivals for many years. Dylan went electric at the one in 1965.
The first big important rock festival was The Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, that had the cream of the California rock groups and introduced The Who and Jimi Hendrix to the wider American audiences. A film was released in 1968. Pretty much everything the Woodstock people did was modeled on it.
They weren’t alone. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami had festivals in 1968, not to mention Britain’s Isle of Wight Festival, and maybe twice that many cities did so in 1969 pre-Woodstock.
Newport and Monterey set the scene. Woodstock got all the publicity because it hit all the buttons of that moment like nothing else before or after.
There is no moment now. None. Maybe we will be celebrating the end of the Trump interregnum in 2029 but that will call for a different festival.
Yeah, I was there, too – not as a hippie participant, just a visitor. I was briefly in Vancouver at the time and thought it would be fun to check out San Francisco. I know I saw the live musical Hair around that time and I’m pretty sure it was during that visit.
Those being the hippie-infested times that they were, and me being a long-haired youth fitting that profile, I remember the US immigration guy at pre-clearance asking me how much money I had, and saying “show me your money”. He was satisfied when I produced a wallet loaded with wads of US cash.
I’m still not sure exactly what he thought that was supposed to prove. I suppose in his mind, the distinction between “legitimate visitor” and “hippie bum”..