Remembering WOODSTOCK

Exactly 57 years ago from this Saturday, August 15^th, marked the beginning of a four-day music festival, held on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York. That location, a venue selected at the last minute following a desperate, chaotic process of failed plans and inadequate preparation, was actually about 60 miles away from the town that gave the event its eponymous name.

50,000 people were expected to attend, but in the end, Woodstock attracted nearly ten times that much. And so marked one of the largest, most influential music events in history.

It was not profitable at first; the organizers were left with nearly $1.3 million in debt. But as the  counterculture phenomenon became the stuff of legend – indeed, the very name “Woodstock” evolved into its own brand – money started rolling in.

Key to this success was Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning 1970 documentary film. With its ingenious split-screen visuals, it covered not just the musical acts, but the massive hippie audience, the crammed, muddy living conditions, the casual nudity and skinny dipping…the epitome of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Wadleigh’s film was so commercially successful that it even helped save distributor Warner Bros. during what was a financially precarious time for the studio.

Richard Amsel, then fresh out of art school, did no less than three poster designs for the film. Of them, the “free love” design – featuring a young couple in an embrace – is the most well-known and widely used. But the others are similarly effective in their kaleidoscopic colors and patterns.

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Above: A slideshow of Richard Amsel's posters for the 1970 ducmentary, WOODSTOCK. 

While, from all my interviews, I haven’t heard any testimonials claiming Amsel himself attended the event, one can’t deny he managed to effectively capture its spirit. Amsel may have had a rebellious and independent streak, but he was never a hippie.