Michael Lang, who brought the legendary Woodstock music festival to life in 1969, died Saturday at age 77 from a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Lang, a Brooklyn native and New York University dropout, made a name for himself as a concert promoter in the late '60s, particularly the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, which included Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry and Frank Zappa.
But it was in Woodstock, New York, where Lang, alongside Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld and John Roberts, made history.
More than 400,000 people descended on the three-day festival in mid-August 1969, converging on Max Yasgur’s farm for a heady mix of sex, drugs and music from Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Carlos Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and more.
“Woodstock offered an environment for people to express their better selves, if you will,” Lang told Pollstar in 2019. “It was probably the most peaceful event of its kind in history. That was because of expectations and what people wanted to create there.”
Lang followed up the show’s unimaginable success with two more festivals: Woodstock '94, featuring Green Day, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nine Inch Nails, and Woodstock '99, with Metallica and Rage Against the Machine.
A planned 50th anniversary show in 2019, with scheduled performances including The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Halsey, Miley Cyrus, Janelle Monáe, Dead and Company, Santana and David Crosby, fell apart over financial issues.
Lang is survived by wife Tamara and five children.
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