Remember Woodstock 50? This Poster Does.

This weekend marks the 57th anniversary of the Woodstock festival, held way back in 1969. That gathering is always worth revisiting and analyzing anew. But so too is the doomed attempt at a Woodstock 50th event.

I recently unearthed the poster for that fiasco while organizing my archives, so let’s dive into what could have been, but wasn’t, in 2019.

To refresh everyone’s memories of what was supposed to happen: Early that year, plans for Woodstock 50—three days of music to celebrate the five-decade mark of the landmark first festival—were rolled out at a press conference at Electric Lady Studios in New York. There, original Woodstock organizer Michael Lang, John Fogerty and Common officially announced that the long-rumored Woodstock 50 was actually happening. (Adele was supposedly in a studio upstairs, working on what would be 30, but she didn’t wander downstairs.)

Lang also confirmed the lineup, which would bring back a handful of Woodstock ’69 players (Fogerty, Santana, David Crosby, John Sebastian, some of the Grateful Dead, now Dead & Co.) but emphasize contemporary acts too. And there they all were, on a poster distributed to all of us in attendance: Jay-Z, Miley Cyrus, the Killers, Halsey, Imagine Dragons and so forth.

At that point, everything appeared to be on track. But soon after, the on-sale date for tickets was postponed, and word leaked that a mass-gathering permit for the festival wasn’t yet in hand. Hmmm.

Some of you may remember what came next. As documented in a story I wrote with Kory Grow at the time, Woodstock 50 became a super-slow-motion car wreck. Each week and month after that press conference brought denied permits, lawsuits between the promoters and the media and marketing company that first backed the gathering and artists dropping out or complaining about it.

Watkins Glen International, the raceway pegged as the original site, gave way to a smaller venue in Vernon, New York, and finally to Merriweather Post Pavilion outside Washington, D.C. The festival went from three days to one, from paid to free. Eventually, a few weeks before Woodstock 50 was finally supposed to take place, it collapsed altogether.

Here’s how chaotic it all was. On the day Woodstock 50 formally died, I conducted an interview with Rod Argent of the Zombies—who had no idea the festival was off and was utterly taken aback that his band, who were on the bill, would not be playing Woodstock 50. He heard it first from me.

Lang said at the time that he wanted to revive the festival in some form or another. But it never happened, and he died in 2022.

Once Woodstock 50 folded up its modern tie-dye tent for good, I knew I had to hold onto that poster, and I’m glad I did. Like a traffic accident, you can’t look away from it. Examining it now, you can see how Woodstock 50 really was a successor to the original in terms of its lineup, in ways both good and bad.

Just as the first Woodstock didn’t include the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan or the (no longer touring) Beatles, Woodstock 50 didn’t book any of the biggest-selling pop and rock acts of 2019. Those artists were Taylor Swift, Post Malone, Billie Eilish, Twenty One Pilots and Panic! At the Disco, none of whom were on the bill. (For the record, I am not equating Twenty One Pilots with the far superior Stones.)

Hip hop was the top-selling genre of that year, and Woodstock 50 did include Jay-Z as well as comparative upstarts Earl Sweatshirt and Chance the Rapper. But no Drake, YoungBoy Never Broke Again or Juice WRLD, who were the year’s major hop-hop artists. The poster is also revealing of the shaky state of rock & roll in 2019. The leading rock act was the Black Keys, who by then had peaked (and pulled out of the festival early on).

That said, look at who was supposed to play: future arena acts like Boygenius, Maggie Rogers, Sturgill Simpson and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, all of whom were just making their marks. Not to mention Marcus King, Margo Price, Janelle Monáe and Soccer Mommy. Who would have been the Richie Havens or Joe Cocker—the breakout act—of Woodstock 50? Tantalizing to consider. How historic it would be now to see footage of any of them playing that weekend at that point in their careers.

That poster is also sobering in the way it reminds us how many of the first Woodstock musicians are now gone: Bob Weir, David Crosby, Country Joe McDonald and Melanie, all deceased. (I’d also forgotten that Canned Heat and Hot Tuna were on the bill.)

Did we need a Woodstock 50 given the chaotic legacy of Woodstock ’94 and the rap-metal hellscape that was Woodstock ’99? Maybe not. But as snapshots go—of the state of music in 2019 and who would emerge from this mess—that poster is a keeper. Rain or shine.

Did you buy a ticket and plan to go? I want to hear your stories. Share below!

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