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Carlos Santana and his group at the Woodstock Festival, August 16, 1969. From left to right: Jose Areas on timpani, percussionist Michael Carabello, drummer Michael Shrieve and bassist David Brown. Bill Eppridge / Gettyimages

Fifty years ago, between August 15 and 18, 1969, the Woodstock Festival was held, an iconic and mythical gathering of 1960s hippie culture. Three days and three chaotic nights of "music and dance". love "that have marked the world and the twentieth century, but also quite ruined its organizers.

The announcement, brutally fallen on July 31, snapped like a broken guitar string in Woodstock by Jimi Hendrix in the feverish solo of Red House. The great anniversary concert of fifty years of the mythical festival held between August 15 and 18, 1969 was canceled in extremis. A multitude of incredible twists and turns, the successive defections of the stars, and the refusal of many municipalities to host the event have been right in its holding.

A spicy detail is Michael Lang, one of the four historical founders of the first edition, who as co-organizer of the 2019 version, has himself announced that the candles were stored in the closet. If Woodstock 1969 proved to be a financial pitfall for its instigators, the 2019 attempt of an encore repetita in the pastures of the State of New York also knew a painful financing. The main financial partner, Amplifi Live, a subsidiary of the Japanese group Dentsu, withdrew from the project " doubting its feasibility ", taking with it the $ 18 million initially invested.

Nothing had been easy either in the organization of the Woodstock Festival half a century ago. Originally, they were four young Americans, whom nothing but the taste of doing business could meet. We tend to forget it today, but the most important cultural fact of the hippie and protest culture of the 1960s and 1970s was originally a project openly and honestly capitalist, thought and mounted to win the first time. 'money. At the beginning of January 1969, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman, each 24 years old, placed an ad in the columns of the Wall Street Journal , in which they present themselves as " two young men with unlimited capital looking for investment opportunities and other business proposals ".

Joe Cocker in Woodstock, 1969, during his performance during which he proposed to the public a breathtaking revival of the Beatles song, "With a little help from my friends". Fotos International / Getty Images

Shirtless, leather vest and long hair in the wind

Following the publication of this announcement, which elicited thousands of responses, Roberts and Rosenman, two businesspeople dressed as expected in a suit and tie, meet two young idealistic hippies in concert promotion, Michael Lang. and Artie Kornfeld, also dressed as would be expected, shirtless under a leather jacket and long hair in the wind. If the first two partners were originally enriched by producing a TV program, their association with Lang and Kornfeld leads them to consider the acquisition of a recording studio, Media Sounds, located in the very peaceful little Woodstock, Ulster County, in the heart of the New York State countryside.

Notwithstanding the initial promise of the WJS ad on "unlimited capital," the four friends need money to buy the studio of their dreams. And the best idea that comes to mind to raise the necessary funds is to organize a festival, a big, a very big festival bringing together all the best artists of the moment. And of course, it will be held in Woodstock. Why in Woodstock? Because many famous artists had made their home there, including Bob Dylan - who nevertheless refused to participate in the 1969 concert given his aversion to the hippie movement - and Jimi Hendrix who for his part wrote one of the most beautiful pages of the event.

"The losses were close to $ 10 million"

The newly formed Woodstock Ventures Inc., a young company set up by the four boys in the business wind, is following the refusal of the municipalities - Woodstock first - completely frightened by the idea of ​​hosting 50,000 hairy bandits, never seen at the time. For $ 50,000, the organizers set their sights on 250 hectares of alfalfa fields rented to a farmer named Max Yasgur in Bethel, a farming village not far from Woodstock. They add to the expense $ 75,000 placed in escrow for the restoration of the premises after the festival.

" We were expecting the show and quietly taking profits, but with what followed, it was especially crazy, the misadventure of a lifetime, " confided last year Joel Rosenman to the music magazine Classic Rock . " To say of Woodstock that this was a financial pit is a sweet way of saying things, if we adjust all the debts with the evolution of the inflation, the losses were close to the 10 million dollars " confessed he in the same interview. Losses aroused from the preparations for the festival, even before settling the field notes of Bethel, when it was necessary to engage artists and ensure them a suitable stamp. To make themselves look credible, the organizers do not hesitate to pay a little above the usual price by offering 15,000 dollars (about 90,000 current euros) to each artist. Jimi Hendrix will be happy with $ 18,000, far from the 50,000 he was trying to charge. But as the poster fills up, the cash drawer of Woodstock Ventures Inc. empties inexorably.

The festival that has kept the name of Woodstock although not taking place precisely, brings together from August 15 to 18, 1969 including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker , Joan Baez ... All gathered under a torrential rain that soon turned the herbaceous fields into a huge wading pool of mud, as a warning sign if there is financial quagmire in which will be permanently entangled after the festival Roberts, Rosenman, Lang and Kornfeld. Once the venue was adopted and the poster was printed and broadcast, promising "Three Days of Music and Peace", it was time to think about the logistics of the event. Fitting gates, erecting access doors, ticket sales outlets, but also installing sufficient sanitary facilities, not to mention a space of lodges for artists, expenses that further aggravate the deficit of the organization.

Bassist David Brown (l) and guitarist and singer Carlos Santana in Woodstock, August 16, 1969. © Getty images / Tucker Ransom / Intermittent

Eleven years to pay off Woodstock's debts

Less than a week before the festival, site installation teams warn that deadlines will not be met. In other words, you have to choose between finishing up the stage or finishing installing the barriers ... " If we do not have a scene, it's very annoying, and if we do a free concert, we will lose millions It's good because I do not have millions of dollars, "laughs Joel Rosenman in a filmed interview on the long version of Woodstock . Faced with such a tough choice, the four partners opt for a free concert. Free, which by multiplying the affluence will only accentuate the financial abyss in which they rush, to the heartbreaking sound of the guitar of a Carlos Santana under mescaline or the hoarse and soaked voice of a Joe Cocker. Additional resources, more helicopters to carry more food and more equipment are needed. The expected 50,000 participants ended up happily talking to half a million festivalgoers in three days. What once more seriously weigh down the bill.

On August 19, 1969, less than 24 hours after the last performance of the festival, assured for posterity by a flamboyant Jimi Hendrix, one of the co-organizers, Michael Lang, receives at home the call of one of his acolytes. " You have to come here right now, " they tell him. " Where are you here? He retorts. " At the bank, on Wall Street " he gets as an answer. An authentic cultural success can indeed conceal a financial disaster, the four associates understood it well during this meeting in front of the angry mine of their banker. Riddled with vertiginous debts, Roberts and Rosenman refuse to admit bankruptcy. But they must quickly find a way to bail out the coffers, starting with those of the bank.

In the chaotic rush of the concert, Artie Kornfeld had a last-minute agreement with Warner Bros. Studios, who filmed the event for the eventual release of a documentary. Less than 48 hours before the start of the festival, filming is entrusted to filmmaker Michael Wadleigh, who is hurrying up a team, featuring a fresh young fresh student from the New York Film School, a Martin Scorcese. The Oscar-winning Woodstock movie would become one of the most profitable films in its category, especially for Warner Bros. Taken by the throat, the partners of Woodstock Ventures Inc. sell the rights for $ 100,000. Ten years later, the Warner had already pocketed $ 500 million through the exploitation of the film and triple vinyl album, according to estimates of the magazine Rolling Stone . For its part, Woodstock Ventures Inc. managed to erase its colossal debts only from 1980, eleven years after the festival!

American singer Richie Havens opened the festival on August 15th. His rendition of the song "Freedom" is an integral part of the Woodstock festival legend. Elliott Landy

Exploit the legendary vein

" I do not know if you've ever been involved in a venture capital project - they're always exciting. I would say that the stressor was fun, but it was a rewarding project to work on. It took on an almost religious significance after the fact, "said Joel Rosenman in 1994 to the Washington Post . In his memoir The Road to Woodstock , Michael Lang goes so far as to write that " Woodstock should not be taken for a gold mine that appears after a rainbow, but much more for the rainbow. rainbow itself . But the spiritual dimension can not dismiss long the lure of gain. Ruined and having finally paid off its debts, Woodstock Ventures Inc. has since relentlessly exploited the legacy of the legend which it holds the intellectual property of the name, as well as the famous logo of the dove perched on a sleeve of guitar.

Each anniversary, they try to repeat the feat of the mega festival of 1969, with more or less success as evidenced by the recent cancellation of the fiftieth anniversary. In 1994, on the occasion of 25 years of Woodstock, a first souvenir concert was held, the antipodes of the first, with several million dollars dropped by the sponsors, only multinationals. More than just live music, today merchandising is the most profitable financial windfall with t-shirts, beach towels and other Woodstock logo caps. The fiftieth anniversary of the hippie High Mass was also an opportunity to market marijuana under the Woodstock brand, for sale in the US states that allow recreational cannabis.

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