Music festivalsare among the most sacred aspects of the music industry, dating back to the Middle Ages. In the modern era, music festivals have served as weekend-long safe havens for fans of a specific genre, sociopolitical movement, or simply live music in general,because there is really nothing like watching an artist perform live.
From annual staples likeCoachella, to now-defunct traveling festivals like the Vans Warped Tour, and once in a lifetime events likeLive Aid, nothing beats a music festival. That said,no music festival, no matter how revered, has ever reached the heights ofthemusic festival in 1969: Woodstock.
For a three-day weekend in 1969, people from all across the nation gathered in Bethel, New York, to celebrate music, and advocate for peace in a war-ridden world. The festival lineup was stacked with some of the greatest musicians of the decade, andon its 56-year anniversary, people still romanticize Woodstock as the blueprint for all other music festivals today.
Woodstock Boasted Some Unbelievably Legendary Performances
Nearly every artist who played Woodstock in 1969 is a household name today, but there were a handful of performances that stood out, and are still regarded among the best live performances of all time.
Sly & the Family Stonetook the stage for their instantly memorable performance at 3:30 in the morning, and when they played “I Want to Take You Higher,” that’s exactly what they did with the crowd. When they got on stage to perform,it was after a torrential downpour, making the transcendent performance even more so.
While Sly Stone crushed it in front of a crowd of adoring fans, Carlos Santana took the stage on Saturday afternoon with his band Santana, just over a week before the release of their debut album. Their electrifying performance of “Soul Sacrifice” endeared them to thousands of new fans, andput them on the map before they ever released their first record.
Of course,no live performance at Woodstock, and maybe of all time, has ever beaten Jimi Hendrix, whose set closed out the three-day weekend in the perfect way.The guitar virtuoso, known for making his guitar sing, made his guitar sing a beautiful and symbolic rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” that has continued to blow audiences away for 56 years.
Music Festivals Have Been Striving For Woodstock Levels of Greatness Since 1969
Today, there’s Bonnaroo,which is probably the closest to Woodstock that we’ll ever get in the 21st century.It takes place on a 700-acre farm in Tennessee, and festival-goers camp out on the grounds in order to fully immerse themselves in the experience, just like fans did at Woodstock.
In the 1980s, Live Aid succeeded in bringing together the global community for a greater cause, but, relying heavily on technology that didn’t exist 20 years before to keep the London and the Philadelphia stages connected,it still didn’t fully capture the feelings of love and peace and music that Woodstock did.
Coachella has a similar scope of national impact as Woodstock did, butwhen everyone is on their phones, recording the show to relive it later rather than actually live it the first time around, it detracts from the magic.Not to mention the fact that many modern music festivals take place annually, which also inherently takes away from their magic.
There was even an attempt to recreate Woodstock itself in 1999 for its 30-year anniversary, butthe 1999 festival did not live up to the Woodstock name,and is not remembered in the greatest light.
Try as they might, no music festival has ever quite captured the feeling of that fateful August weekend in 1969.Artists starting their sets at three o’clock in the morning, taking the stage while openly under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and sheets of rain coming down for hours on end, Woodstock was truly unlike anything else.
