The American businessman and promoter of events Michael Lang died this Saturday (8), aged 77.
Lang was one of the creators and organizers of the Woodstock Festival – whose first edition, in 1969, went down in history as one of the greatest music festivals ever.
The businessman’s representative, Michael Pagnotta, informed the CNN Brasil that Lang died at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York from a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), a cancer of the lymphatic system.
Pagnotta also posted a photo on Twitter with Lang, who he was a longtime friend.
We are very sad to hear that legendary Woodstock icon and long time family friend Michael Lang has passed at 77 after a brief illness. Rest In Peace. pic.twitter.com/wTVNoZ353r
— MichaelPagnotta (@reachmp) January 9, 2022
Michael Lang is survived by his wife Tamara, sons Harry and Laszlo, and daughters LariAnn, Shala and Molly.
Cocriador do Woodstock
Born into a Jewish family in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York. In 1967, young Michael Lang, “who liked to smoke a joint and listen to jazz” (as he describes himself in his book “The Road to Woodstock”), dropped out of college and moved to Miami.
In the state of Florida, Lang opened a “head shop” – a store that sells tobacco products. In 1968, after promoting a series of concerts throughout the region, he organized together with another event producer, Artie Kornfeld, the Miami Pop Festival.
The event brought together 25,000 people on the first day to see artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, and served as a rehearsal for the festival that Lang would organize the following year.
In 1969, Lang moves to the village of Woodstock, New York. He and Kornfeld, his partner at the Miami Pop Festival, ended up teaming up with managers John Roberts and Joel Rosenman and started the company “Woodstock Ventures”.
That same year, the four conceived a festival that would occupy the green fields of the property of New York farmer Max Yasgur.
The “Woodstock Music and Art Fair”, which has gone down in history as the Woodstock Festival, was scheduled to take place between Friday, August 15, 1969, and Sunday, the 17th.
On Wednesday, the 13th, the organizers estimate that around 60,000 people were already on the farm with an armed camp. When the day of the festival arrived, the roads leading to the venue were so full of cars that the artists had to be taken by helicopter.
More than 100,000 tickets were sold in advance, but they soon became useless as people flocked to the farm. It is estimated that nearly 500,000 people participated in those days of music celebration.
The festival’s line-up featured some stars of the time such as Richie Havens, Santana, Janis Joplin, The Who. The closure took place only on Monday morning, August 18, 1969, due to delays caused by the rain.
Legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix took the stage at around 9 am and played 16 songs for about 40,000 people who were still on the farm.
The event also had traumatic episodes. Crowded restrooms, lack of food and water, and improvised hospital care formed the scene. There were approximately 20 beds for about 3,000 reported medical emergencies.
At least three people died during Woodstock. At least 400 accidents involving lysergic drugs, as well as sprained ankles from the mud and cuts to the feet have been reported.
Two babies were born at the festival – one of them in a car stuck in traffic to get to the farm.
How summarized a special report from CNN on the festival’s 50th anniversary, “there were three days of peace and love, music, sex, drugs and rock and roll. The days were ravaged by rain and chaos, and it should have been an epic humanitarian disaster, but there was enough human connection to influence entire generations.”
Michael Lang was just 24 at the time when he was negotiating with the agents of some of the top rock stars, hiring the security teams or, as they called it, “peacekeeping”, organizing the volunteer teams and appeasing the Yippies’ tempers, American revolutionary counterculture group.
“That’s what it means the most to me – the connection felt by all of us who work at the festival, all those who came to it, and the millions who couldn’t be there but were touched by it,” Lang said at the time.
Recall footage from the 1969 Woodstock festival
Reference: CNN Brasil

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