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Monday, January 10, 2022

MICHAEL LANG,
1944-2022

Michael Lang, the concert promoter who co-created and organized the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, died Saturday of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. He was 77.

Lang had an enduring association with the 1969 festival; he was its face in the film Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace, Love and Music—the charismatic young guy with an air of positive vibes that contrasted with the uptight locals, regional officials and police.

He was behind the anniversary celebrations as well, co-producing Woodstock ’94 and the troubled Woodstock ’99, and he ultimately failed after many attempts to get a 50th anniversary show staged in 2019. He also worked on smaller anniversary celebrations and with artists associated with the 1969 event.

Lang’s first major multi-artist festival was 1968’s Miami Pop Festival, headlined by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which concluded early due to rain on the second day.

He moved to the Woodstock, N.Y., area and forged the idea of a rock festival with Artie Kornfeld and the two men who would provide financial backing, John Rosenman and John P. Roberts. They ultimately wound up on a farm in Bethel, N.Y., with the expectation that 50,000 people would show up to see Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, the Grateful Dead and others; Woodstock, as it's been called almost ever since, attracted 400,000 people, went from being a for-profit festival to a free event and became the ultimate symbol of hippie life.

The Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead brought Lang in as an adviser for their attempt at a West Coast version of Woodstock, which became December 1969's Altamont Speedway Free Festival. The concert became a symbol of the decline of the hippie era after Hells Angels beat a concertgoer to death.

Lang returned to Woodstock and went into the record business, creating the Just Sunshine label and a management company that handled Joe Cocker’s career for more than 20 years.

Lang and promoter John Scher staged the Woodstock ’94 25th anniversary edition in Saugerties, N.Y., with acts from '69—Santana, Cocker, Crosby Stills & Nash—and such contemporary rock acts as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails and Green Day. Rainstorms turned the field into a mud pit and the festival became better known for what went on in the muck than its performances.

Lang and Scher also produced Woodstock ’99, in Rome, N.Y. It was marred by violence, vandalism and sexual assaults. Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine and Dave Matthews Band were on the hip-hop- and metal-heavy bill. Its troubles were explored in last year’s documentary Woodstock ’99: Peace, Love and Rage.

Having formed Woodstock Ventures with Sony Music Entertainment in 2009, Lang attempted to produce a 50th anniversary Woodstock festival in August 2019, even announcing a site at a Watkins Glen, N.Y., racetrack and booking a lineup that included Dead & Company, The Killers, Miley Cyrus and Jay-Z.

They lost financial backing, however, and after legal battles and an attempt to move the fest to a track near Utica., N.Y., Lang officially canceled the event.

 
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