Michael Lang, Woodstock festival co-creator who 'changed the world,' dies

In 1969, Michael Lang helped organize one of the most influential events in entertainment history. He was 24 years old.

More than 400,000 people from across the country descended upon Bethel to take part in the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that August, changing the course of music history forever and inspiring generations of music lovers and social activists.

For Lang, it set a path for a lifetime promoting the ideals behind the festival and the meaning of Woodstock as a brand. For many others it turned Sullivan County into a mecca, a place to which thousands each year make a pilgrimage to remember “three days of peace and music.”

"I think it touched (Lang's) heart greatly... A lot of people have been coming back every year to commemorate what he did, and I think that his heart just filled," said Jeryl Abramson, the owner of the farm on which the original Woodstock festival was held, then owned by Max Yasgur. "I really think that he had a very good last few years."

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Lang died Saturday. Michael Pagnotta, a spokesperson for Lang’s family, said the 77-year-old had been battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma and passed away at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“He was absolutely an historic figure, and also a great guy,” Pagnotta, who said he had known Lang for about 30 years, told The Associated Press. “Both of those thing go hand in hand.”

He leaves a legacy as an icon for multiple generations of music fans, helping to popularize the modern music festival. It's a legacy that also includes high-profile failures, such as a 1999 Woodstock festival marked by violence and a 2019 50th anniversary event that ended in cancellations and legal action when Lang's organizing group repeatedly failed to obtain the proper permitting and satisfy the safety requirements needed to hold a modern event.

Lang and his three partners in 1969 "changed the world even though everything was against them," Lori Majewski, a host on Sirius XM's Volume channel and former "Entertainment Weekly" executive editor, told the USA TODAY Network in the wake of Woodstock 50's cancellation. "They faced adversity at every turn. But people came away feeling like, 'Yes we can, we can change the world.' I think that's why Michael Lang fought so hard for Woodstock 50."

Still, his original festival's anniversary prompted tens of thousands to visit Sullivan County's Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on Aug. 15-18 for a four-day celebration. Lang chose not to attend; the organizer and the organization that operates a concert venue on the original festival land had a longstanding rift, and Lang had asserted only Woodstock 50 would be the official anniversary event. Lang attended the Yasgur Road Reunion, an annual anniversary event held at Yasgur's Farm.

But, he also held an event to continue calling for change.

On Sunday, Aug. 18, 2019, the final day of the weekend marking the 50th anniversary of his landmark Woodstock Music and Art Fair, Lang stood among a small crowd at Catskill Distilling Company. He spoke about the need for sensible gun control laws, and signed a petition on a piece of the original festival stage floor.

"Fifty years ago, we were protesting Vietnam," he said. "No one wanted to go out and get killed in an unpopular war. Now, we're seeing kids get killed here at home.".

Forming Woodstock

Along with partners Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, Lang put together the festival as the Vietnam War raged and led increasing numbers of disaffected young Americans to turn away from traditional mores and embraced a lifestyle that celebrated freedom of expression.

Nearly 450,000 people descended on the hamlet of Bethel and endured miles-long traffic jams, torrential rains, food shortages and overwhelmed sanitary facilities.

Abramson was a young teenager living in Bethel in 1969 when she watched her tiny town transform into one of the most famous concert venues of all time.

"I was very greatly impacted by what I saw, by all the people that were here, the traffic, the way that people behaved. I was at a very impressionable age at that time and the whole movement of the generation was very inspiring," she remembered. "The biggest thing is almost funny, but I really remember the license plates from all over the country. I was a kid and the thing that stuck out was that I'd never seen license plates from such exotic places like Michigan! I was just floored seeing people from California, Alaska, all over."

More than 30 acts performed on the concert’s main stage at the base of a hill on land owned by Yasgur, and concertgoers were treated to iconic performances from artists including Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, The Who and Jefferson Airplane.

"I had an out-of-body experience, and not because I was on drugs. I was completely sober," said Melanie Safka-Schekeryk, who was 19 when she performed at the festival. "This was an incredible coming together of humanity. It was symbolic to me. There seemed to be everything good about people coming together and connecting with each other."

It rained heavily during Safka-Schekeryk's set, and festival workers passed candles out to the crowd. There was a feeling of togetherness and bonding, Safka-Schekeryk recalled, which inspired her to write one of her most popular songs "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)".

Lang, sporting a head of bushy brown hair, is seen throughout Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary movie that chronicled the festival.

“From the beginning, I believed that if we did our job right and from the heart, prepared the ground and set the right tone, people would reveal their higher selves and create something amazing,” Lang wrote in his memoir, “The Road to Woodstock.”

Although Woodstock often is viewed as creating the template for large-scale music festivals, it wasn’t the first to take place in the U.S. Two years earlier, the Monterey Pop festival drew about 200,000 people to California, and in 1968 the Miami Pop Festival followed, which Lang also organized. But Woodstock nonetheless holds an indelible place in history.

Lang in 2018, said the 1969 festival created “this hope for a better life — a better world, a more compassionate world; and it came at a time when things were very dark.”

He described Woodstock as “Sort of a miracle in a way."

"A half-million people got together, nobody followed anybody, everyone came together as a community and a family," he said. "It was so remarkably different than what the human experience, the day-to-day experience, is like. It was a moment of hope, something that was proof that this was possible — and that resonated.

“They came together from a counterculture that was very involved with trying to make the world a better place. This was a chance for all of us to see if that could happen when we were in charge — and it did.”

Abramson said it is this energy that she believes Lang will be remembered by.

"Of course I think he will be remembered by the Woodstock festival, but I think maybe more than that it will be the spirit that was behind it," she said. "That it was Michael's vision, and it was Michael's manifestation of what he wanted to create for the universe-— this embodiment of peace, love and music. I think that's what he stood for. That's his legacy. And that's what we here at Yasgur's are trying to continue for generations."

Recapturing the magic

In the months leading up to the 2019 anniversary, Lang often talked about how the country's political climate was reminiscent of 1969. Susan Cronin, a friend who worked closely with Lang as he attempted to organize Woodstock 50, said Lang wanted the anniversary festival to have a similar cultural impact to its namesake's.

"I think he understood that Woodstock was a bookend to one of the most tumultuous decades the country ever experienced: the 1960s," she said. "I think that's something he cherished . . . Michael always had his pulse on youth culture, always had his pulse on human rights and women's rights. These were all things that were very important to him, and he was truly a product of that generation and a leader of that generation. He was keen on continuing the positive messaging from that generation for future generations."

She continued, "If there's anything that he stood for, I would say that that was it. If Woodstock was a metaphor, Michael was it was it's poet."

Famously, Lang and his partners found Yasgur's farm after the planned site for the original festival in Saugerties fell through in March 1969, adding to Woodstock's mystique as an entity that could overcome obstacles.

But, repeated attempts to recapture that magic proved impossible, in part, due to how the modern music industry changed.

Woodstock '94 in Saugerties hosted 350,000 people, with 100,000 getting in for free, and was, perhaps, the first indication of Woodstock's struggles to find its footing beyond 1969.

Woodstock ’99 was held five years later at Griffiss Air Force Base near Rome, New York. But, the event was marked by violence, fires and reports of molestation.

In 2009, Lang had hoped to stage a free Woodstock 40th anniversary concert in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. But the cost of staging a free concert and failure to find sponsors to cover the $8 million to $10 million cost forced him to drop plans for the show.

Woodstock 50's plans changed multiple times; after failing to obtain the proper permits needed to hold the event at Watkins Glen International racetrack in Schuyler County, the town of Vernon rejected a more hastily designed plan for the event to be held at Vernon Downs. It was ultimately cancelled after a last-ditch attempt at an event in at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. The event cost millions — more than $23 million in artists' fees alone, according to documents — despite failing to materialize, and led to multiple arguments in court between Lang's team and financial backers.

John Scher, the longtime New York-based concert promoter and head of Metropolitan Entertainment, partnered with Lang on the Woodstock '94 and '99 anniversary concerts. Neither was a financial success, and each suffered through memorable problems.

"I told him a year-and-a-half ago to be very careful, that it wasn't for me," Scher said in summer 2019. "I said, 'Michael, you've not made any money three times. Why go for a fourth?'"

'He was unflappable'

Lang's vision for Woodstock 50 was never realized, but Abramson said throughout the ordeal he remained the smiling, laid-back person his friends always knew him to be.

"I think Michael wanting the greater good superseded his ego. And I think that he had a lot of ups and downs in his life, but most successful people do," she recalled, adding she worked with Lang numerous times over several decades. "His greatest success happened at 24 years old ... When you have your greatest success at 24, where do you go from there? So, I think personally, Michael gave his all so quickly in his lifetime, that he didn't leave himself enough for later on. I think that was probably his Achilles heel. He was his own tough act to follow."

Despite financial setbacks and other obstacles, Cronin said, Lang loved working on Woodstock and all the subsequent anniversary festivals.

"This was his life's purpose. This is who he was," she said. "If you work under the leadership of someone like that, you know the environment is very different. It's very energized and even through the worst of it he was kind of this little boat on this wide stormy ocean, and he just kept his course. . . He was unflappable. And he was really a joy and a pleasure to work with. I don't think I ever laughed so much or so hard — like a deep belly laugh — even in the worst of times."

Besides Woodstock, both Abramson and Safka-Schekeryk said they believe Lang will be remembered as an outgoing, youthful person with an infectious smile.

"He was a dreamer, a dreamer who had a real idea that materialized. He manifested it and I don't think even he could comprehend what he had done. He is a major part of history," Safka-Schekeryk said. "He had this smile, almost a Cheshire cat-type smile on his face and he was always laughing. We just had this friendship over the years. Ten years could go by, but there would always be the same connection. Just a lifelong friend."

Abramson said one word captured Lang: Charisma.

"I mean, he could talk anybody into or out of anything and make you happy about it," she said. "Michael had that Charm. Charm and charisma from the minute you meet him. That smile, and he had just a wonderful joy for life. He really he enjoyed life."

Information from archives and The Associated Press was used in this report.

This article originally appeared on Poughkeepsie Journal: Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang dies of non-Hodgkin lymphoma