The official 50th-anniversary book on the festival that epitomizes the '60s
This is the official 50th-anniversary celebration of Woodstock, by the festival's co-creator and co-founder, Michael Lang. A large illustrated edition, it includes hundreds of photographs and documents accompanied by Lang's fascinating memories and insights into the most famous and influential festival of all time, with images of Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, Richie Havens, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald and the Grateful Dead. The ephemera from Lang's largely unseen archive include the original designs and plans for the event, correspondence, set-lists, information on artists' fees and much more. This wealth of information is accompanied by the best photographs of the event by famous and unknown photographers such as Ralph Ackerman, John Dominis, Bill Eppridge, Dan Garson, Barry Z. Levine, Elliott Landy, Lee Marshall and Baron Wolman, and notably featuring the archive of Henry Diltz. Diltz was the only official photographer at Woodstock and was there for two weeks, from an empty field of cows to first construction, crowds arriving and the aftermath. He also captured onstage performances and behind-the-scenes moments with the many artists involved. Woodstock is an exuberant volume that conveys the vision, hard work and elusive magic that made up "three days of peace and music."
Featured image is reproduced from 'Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Interview
Devon Ivie
Consider [Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music] a scrapbook of sorts—it has enough photos, historical documents, and even more photos to make it feel like you were actually there.
New York Post
Michael Kaplan
“Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music” [...] reveals that it wasn’t all good karma and rainbows. There was also plenty of mischief, skinny-dipping, public fornication — and trash.
Huck
Sara Rosen
Replete with images of Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Richie Havens, Santana, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, the Grateful Dead, and candid shots of festival-goers living out scenes of pure hippie bliss, [Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music] also features rare archival ephemera including set-lists, correspondence, and designs for the event.
Publishers Weekly
Lela Nargi
Billed as the official commemoration of Woodstock’s 50th anniversary, this book, written by festival co-creator Lang (who’s had a hand in several titles on the subject), is heavy on photos and a positive framing of the weekend.
Rolling Stone
[Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music] is a wonderful reminder of a time when you could still carry on a historic event while facing such setbacks.
Midwest Book Review
A coffee table style volume that is a pure nostalgia experience for those members of the baby boomer generation who were there, and offering insightfully visual and informational insights to those who were not, "Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music" is guaranteed to be an immediate and enduringly popular addition to personal, community, and academic library collections.
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Hold on to your hats and glasses! August 15 marks the beginning of the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock, the music festival that literally changed everything. Organized in 1969 by Michael Lang, the three-day show famously featured Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, Richie Havens, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald and the Grateful Dead, plus about 400,000 blissed-out spectators. Who better than Michael Lang himself—together with noted music publisher Reel Art Press—to bring us the official fiftieth anniversary publication! Watch this trailer and be transported. Books available for preorder. continue to blog
This August 1969 photograph by Bill Eppridge is reproduced from Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, the only official fiftieth anniversary book on the epic music festival that crystallized the American hippie counter-culture for the rest of the world. (See the amazing book trailer here.) Authored by Michael Lang, the festival’s original organizer, it is so much more than another music book. The photography is vivid and expertly curated to reflect not just the performers and the crowd, but the building of the event and the community surrounding it. The ephemera is rich. The texts are illuminating. And the design is basically perfect. As the official August 15–18 anniversary approaches, we highly recommend this volume for music lovers, utopians and historians of every generation. “At Woodstock, we would focus our energy on peace," Lang writes, "setting aside the onstage discussion of political issues to just groove on what might be possible." continue to blog
Today, we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock, which ran August 15–18, 1969. Co-founded and co-organized by Michael Lang, author of the stellar new scrapbook-like illustrated book from Reel Art Press, the festival remains the world's greatest icon of hippie ideals. "Though the counterculture was in full bloom in California and New York, hippies were still a rarity in lots of places," Lang writes. "But when all these people came together at our festival, it became clear there was a Woodstock Nation. Rob Kennedy, a teenager who hitched to Bethel from New Jersey, told me, 'I don’t think any of us believed there were that many hippies in the USA. We were the only freaks in our high school at that time. We knew there were some in surrounding towns, but we had no idea. That was one of the most empowering aspects of Woodstock. We realized we had the numbers.'" continue to blog
Featured photograph, made August 1969 by Ken Regan, is reproduced from Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, festival founder and organizer Michael Lang's official fiftieth anniversary book from Reel Art Press, launching tonight at Rizzoli Bookstore. "People began to improvise," Greil Marcus is quoted in the book, "drive on soft shoulders until they hit the few thousand who'd thought of the same thing, then stopping again.… It was a cosmic traffic jam, where all the cars fall into place like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and stay there forever.… It was an amazing sight, the highway to some White Lake: it looked, as someone said, like Napoleon's army retreating from Moscow." continue to blog
"The kids of the counterculture were not pigeonholed in their musical tastes. So I decided early on to book an eclectic group of artists," festival co-creator and co-founder Michael Lang writes in Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music, his new book from Reel Art Press. "I had a wild idea about having Roy Rogers end the festival with his song Happy Trails—a perfect end to three days of peace and music, but his manager turned me down. Instead, famously, Jimi Hendrix closed the festival at 9 a.m. on Monday morning when there was a dwindling but steadfast audience of around 20 thousand left: Jimi played in broad daylight to create what is now Woodstock history—a performance captured on film of The Star Spangled Banner that still gives me chills." Featured photograph is by Dan Garson. continue to blog
"On the weekend of August 15–17, 1969, our Woodstock festival became the second largest city in New York State," Michael Lang writes in Reel Art Press's remarkable new fiftieth-anniversary publication, Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music. "I later heard that some Hare Krishnas who were there compared the crowd to the multitudes in India who flock to the banks of the Ganges to ritualistically bathe in sacred waters. Stephen Stills quipped that the size of the crowd was like a combination of the Macedonian Army and the 12 Tribes of Israel. When musicians flew over the gathering in a helicopter, they were gobsmacked to see the massive audience below… It was the crowd that became the most important element for everyone. No one could have imagined what it would be like to be among 500 thousand people. It was the largest peaceful gathering in the history of the world at that point." Featured photograph, of John Sebastian on stage before the crowd, is by Henry Diltz. continue to blog
Thursday, July 11, from 6–8 PM, Artbook | D.A.P., Reel Art Press and Rizzoli Bookstore present Woodstock festival co-creator and co-founder Michael Lang in conversation with Woodstock's official photographer Henry Diltz, for the launch of Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music. Following the talk and a Q&A, they will sign copies of the book. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 10 x 12 in. / 288 pgs / 150 color / 150 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $59.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $75 ISBN: 9781909526624 PUBLISHER: Reel Art Press AVAILABLE: 6/25/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AFR ME
The official 50th-anniversary book on the festival that epitomizes the '60s
This is the official 50th-anniversary celebration of Woodstock, by the festival's co-creator and co-founder, Michael Lang. A large illustrated edition, it includes hundreds of photographs and documents accompanied by Lang's fascinating memories and insights into the most famous and influential festival of all time, with images of Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Crosby, Stills Nash & Young, Richie Havens, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald and the Grateful Dead. The ephemera from Lang's largely unseen archive include the original designs and plans for the event, correspondence, set-lists, information on artists' fees and much more. This wealth of information is accompanied by the best photographs of the event by famous and unknown photographers such as Ralph Ackerman, John Dominis, Bill Eppridge, Dan Garson, Barry Z. Levine, Elliott Landy, Lee Marshall and Baron Wolman, and notably featuring the archive of Henry Diltz. Diltz was the only official photographer at Woodstock and was there for two weeks, from an empty field of cows to first construction, crowds arriving and the aftermath. He also captured onstage performances and behind-the-scenes moments with the many artists involved. Woodstock is an exuberant volume that conveys the vision, hard work and elusive magic that made up "three days of peace and music."
