Woodstock Then and Now is a first-hand transcription of a series of roundtable discussions and interviews with "Woodstock luminaries" held at the Berklee College of Music in April 2019. Here, the words of Michael Lang (Woodstock cofounder) Chip Monck (emcee, stage and lighting designer), Bill Hanley (audio engineer), Henry Diltz and Elliott Landy (photographers), Rona Elliot (public relations), and Gerardo Velez (percussionist for Jimi Hendrix) are presented for scholars and fans alike. Meeting all together for the first time since 1969, these luminaries shared Woodstock stories, talking about the impact of the festival on their careers and on society as a whole.

In August of 1969, a dairy farm in the state of New York hosted a pivotal moment in the history of pop music. Taking place only two years after the “Summer of Love” and one year after the tumultuous events of 1968, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair put an exclamation point on the transformational decade of the 1960s. Joni Mitchell did not attend Woodstock, but her song of the same name captures an opposition inherent to the turbulent and divisive era. “We are stardust . . . caught in the devil’s bargain,” Mitchell sings, “and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” In order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, Berklee College of Music hosted a week-long celebration that included conversations with luminaries from the era. Participants included Woodstock co-founder, Michael Lang; emcee, stage and lighting designer, Chip Monck; audio engineer, Bill Hanley; photographers Henry Diltz and Elliott Landy; public relations officer, Rona Elliot; and Gerardo Velez, drummer for Jimi Hendrix. Woodstock Then and Now commemorates the discussion between these Woodstock luminaries, making available the transcripts of this historic event.

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Woodstock festival nears, Woodstock 1969 stands out for its singular voice. Photojournalist Jason Lauré followed his unerring instinct for being in the right place at the crucial moment. He and coauthor Ettagale Blauer trace the historic events that preceded the festival and then envelop the reader with photographs of the headliner rock stars that performed during the landmark three-day concert including the Who, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, and Santana. Threading his way back and forth from the stage, through a sea of happy audience members, Jason Lauré photographed the communal life that was an essential part of the phenomenon that was Woodstock. Never intrusive, yet working close-up, he managed to capture these innocent moments in the pond and in the woods with the same compassion and intimacy he brought to his coverage of all the crucial events of the era. After Woodstock, he photographed such legends as Jimi Hendrix, Tina Turner, and Jim Morrison of the Doors. Woodstock 1969 gives the reader an appreciation of the lasting impact of the festival, showing the way it changed the lives of all who experienced it. It served as the high point of the counterculture that started in earnest in the Summer of Love, and also as a leading influence in the decades that followed. The book concludes with a look at Woodstock's lasting legacy, from Greenwich Village and the rock scene of the Fillmore East to the establishment of Earth Day and the burgeoning environmental movement.

For three days in the summer of 1969, 500,000 people spontaneously gathered like no others had before or since then, bringing together peace, love, aromatic smoke and the sounds of the greatest rock 'n' roll show in history. Sounds and smells wafted through the air, making this legendary event one that has never been duplicated. Barry Z Levine, a member of the Academy Award-winning Woodstock documentary film team, captured this entire event. Levine arrived days before the crowds when Woodstock was still a green, grassy pasture and continued to photograph long after the last person had departed the debris-strewn mud hole. Over the course of that tumultuous week, Levine had taken so many pictures, he had blisters on his index finger and thumb from clicking the shutter and advancing the film. Levine stopped only once, for a 45 minute nap on top of a piano cover that was on stage while Blood, Sweat & Tears performed. Along with 240 full-color photographs, the text by Linanne G. Sacket presents a chronological account of this historical event, capturing the performers, personalities, audience, excitement, mood, and actions. The Woodstock Story Book is a must for anyone who was at Woodstock, wishes they had gone, or just wanted a bird's eye view at the greatest historical event of the 1960s.

Building on their studies of sixties culture and theory of cognitive praxis, Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison examine the mobilization of cultural traditions and formulation of new collective identities through the music of activism. They combine a sophisticated theoretical argument with historical-empirical studies of nineteenth-century populists and twentieth-century labour and ethnic movements, focusing on the interrelations between music and social movements in the United States and the transfer of those experiences to Europe. Specific chapters examine folk and country music, black music, music of the 1960s movements, and music of the Swedish progressive movement. This highly readable book is among the first to link the political sociology of social movements to cultural theory.

The Woodstock festival of 1969, which featured such groups and artists as the Who, Country Joe and the Fish, Ten Years After, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, is remembered as much for its 'bringing together' of the counter-cultural generation as for the music performed. The event represented a milestone in the use of music as a medium for political expression while simultaneously acting as a springboard for the more expressly commercial of rock and pop events which were to follow. In the thirty years since the festival took place, Woodstock has become the subject of many books, magazine articles and documentaries which have served to mythologise the event in the public imagination. These different aspects of the Woodstock festival will be discussed in this wide ranging book which brings together a number of established and new writers in the fields of sociology, media studies and popular music studies. Each of the five chapters which will focus on a specific aspect of the Woodstock festival and its continuing significance in relation to the music industry, the rock festival 'tradition', sixties nostalgia and the cultural impact of popular music.