Woodstock Festival’s Co-Creator Michael Lang Dies at 77

Michael Lang, a co-creator of the 1969 Woodstock music festival alongside Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman, died over the weekend at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center after a battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. 

“He was absolutely a historic figure, and also a great guy,” Michael Pagnotta, a spokesperson for the Lang family, said about his friend of 30 years. “Both of those things go hand in hand.”

Lang and his partners created a historical event in Woodstock’s “three days of peace and music.” The festival became a major touchstone for music fans across eras and generations. 

In his memoir “The Road to Woodstock,” Lang wrote: “From the beginning, I believed that if we did our job right and from the heart, prepared the ground and set the right tone, people would reveal their higher selves and create something amazing.”

Photo credit: Andrew F. Kazmierski / Shutterstock.com