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Sunday 20 August 2017

Rock festival

The first widely promoted and heavily attended rock festival, the Monterey Pop Festival, began at the County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California on June 16, 1967, running to June 18th. It was the first of many big Rock festivals, with The Who, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and The Animals among those performing. Many consider it the beginning of the "Summer of Love."

Woodstock is a small town in Ulster Co, south-east New York. The town became world famous for the 4- day rock festival held at nearby (Max) Yasgur’s farm as part of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair from August 15-18, 1969. About 400,000 people attended, many not having bought a ticket, making it the largest rock festival of the 1960s.

The crowd at Woodstock. By Derek Redmond and Paul Campbell 

Jimi Hendrix was the highest-paid performer at Woodstock, making $18,000 at the festival—that's around $120,000 today.

The event was immortalized in the song "Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell, who wasn’t at the festival.

On January 7, 1970: Max Yasgur was sued for $35,000 in property damages by neighboring farmers.

Woodstock is now seen as a symbol of the era of 'flower power', psychedelia, civil rights, and anti-war protest.

The Glastonbury Festival is held at Worthy Farm near Glastonbury, Somerset, England, most years, during the last weekend in June.

Early Sunday afternoon crowd at the Pyramid. By Paul Holloway, UK

The festival is hosted and organized by local farmer Michael Eavis. He hosted the first festival, then called Pilton Festival on September 19, 1970 after seeing an open-air Led Zeppelin concert at the  Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music.

Glastonbury is the largest greenfield festival in the world, and is now attended by around 175,000 people each year.

Oregon had the only state-sponsored rock festival in United States history. In the summer of 1970, some tens of thousands of people converged in rural Clackamas County for an event called Vortex 1
It was an elaborate ploy to lure young people away from Portland during a planned visit by President Richard Nixon.

Source Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999

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