Farewell to Michael Lang, the Woodstock organizer

Michael Lang, known for being the organizer of the concert-rally of Woodstock who, in August 1969, entered the history of music by right, died at the Sloan Kettering hospital in New York City due to complications due to a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 77 years old, a wife, Tamara, and five children, Shala, Lariann, Molly, Harry, and Laszlo. Born in Brooklyn, Lang abandoned his studies at New York University to move to the Miami area, immediately devoting himself to organizing important musical events such as the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, which was attended by the great Jimi Hendrix.

His name, however, is mainly associated with Woodstock, at that historic event organized together with Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman and John Roberts who, from 15 to 18 August 1969, at Max Yasgur’s farm near Bethel, it has become the symbol of counterculture and protest, with dozens of performances including those of Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Grateful Dead, Who, Carlos Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Joe Cocker and Crosby, Stills and Nash & Young, and the “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” label that it still enjoys great popularity in popular and intellectual jargon today.

“It was a test for our generation: if we truly believed in each other and in the world we were trying to create, would we have known how to live in the peaceful community we hoped for? ”Lang wrote in his memoir The Road to Woodstock. The organizer, who also produced Woodstock ’94 and Woodstock ’99, had been involved in the planning of the Woodstock 50, concert born on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock, which should have taken place in 2019 only to be canceled.