Woodstock Impresario Michael Lang Dead at 77
Source: Rolling Stone
By JASON NEWMAN
Michael Lang, the concert impresario who helped conceive the landmark, generation-defining 1969 music festival Woodstock, died Saturday night at Sloan Kettering hospital in New York. He was 77.
Michael Pagnotta, a rep for Lang and longtime family friend, confirmed the promoter’s death to Rolling Stone, adding that the cause was a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Alongside businessmen John Roberts and Joel Rosenman and music industry promoter Artie Kornfeld, Lang, who had previously promoted the 1968 Miami Pop festival, co-created the Woodstock Music and Art Fair the following year. Famously billed as “Three Days of Peace and Music,” the upstate New York festival drew up to 400,000 people to Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, NY and featured dozens of rock’s biggest names, including Santana, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Who, Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Lang was only 24 when he helped conceive the festival, which would go on to become a massively influential counterculture touchstone, thanks in part to a documentary on the event released the following year. Over the years, Lang’s name became synonymous with the Woodstock brand, as the promoter helped helm subsequent iterations of the festival in 1994 and 1999. (When Pollstar asked Lang in 2019 what it’s like to be the “Woodstock poster child for eternity,” he replied, “Life is full of experiences, and not everything works out. But you keep trying or nothing works out … That’s always been my attitude.”) A 50th anniversary concert in 2019 was mired in controversy and legal issues and was canceled before it could go on.
Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/woodstock-michael-lang-dead-1281681/
He rides the motorcycle in the movie.
= new reply since forum marked as read
"I don't want to make this about me, but it is what it is. I was the most popular guy at Woodstock. Everyone loved me. The lib media will distort the truth, lie and maybe say I was off doing luxury golf at taxpayer expense, but no. I was a SuperStar teenage hippie. Many people say, 'Sir, you were totally Mr. Woodstock.' What can I say? I'm naturally cool." - TFG (R-Loser)
BREAKING: Researchers have found that the the Number One Lie told by Boomers is to claim that they were at Woodstock.
I wasn't quite old enough to go but I was only a couple hundred miles away! Was totally into the music.
Last edited Sun Jan 9, 2022, 07:34 PM - Edit history (1)
My peers are dropping like flies. 
I'll always remember him as that curly haired "kid" who helped organize Woodstock.
RIP, Michael. 
