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It’s been over five decades since the original Woodstock Music Festival took place, and the performances — and images from those sets — remain iconic.
The historic event took place on a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y., from Aug. 15-18, 1969. Half a million people attended the rainy festival, which coincided with the country grappling with major cultural and political issues.
“With everything that was going on in the late 1960s — the war in Vietnam, civil and human rights issues, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination — we rallied and relied on strength in numbers,” Richie Havens, who performed the first set of Woodstock, wrote for CNN in 2009. “We came together communally to be heard and to be acknowledged.”
However, not everyone saw the three-day festival as magical.
“Woodstock wasn’t peace and love. There was an awful lot of shouting and screaming going on,” The Who singer Roger Daltrey told The New York Times in 2019. “By the time it all ended, the worst sides of our nature had come out. People were screaming at the promoters; people were screaming to get paid. We had to get paid, or we couldn’t get back home.”
From Jimi Hendrix’s interpretation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and Joe Cocker’s passionate “With a Little Help From My Friends” to Joan Baez’s performance of “Joe Hill” and Santana playing a version of “Soul Sacrifice” that seemed like it might never end, the artists’ sets were as legendary as the muddy fields.
Santana was a crowd favorite. Meanwhile, other musicians experienced difficulties, like the Grateful Dead’s extended set that nearly electrocuted them.
“The people were just glad to be entertained, to get their minds off the rain and wind and mud, no matter what was happening,” singer-songwriter and guitarist Bob Weir of the Dead told Rolling Stone in 2019. Weir continued, “Had we played a good set, we probably would have transported them to another reality entirely. Some people made their careers at Woodstock, but we’ve spent about 20 years making up for it.”
“It was probably the worst set we’ve ever performed. And to have performed it in front of a crowd that size was not an altogether fulfilling experience,” added Weir.
From Hendrix to The Who, relive Woodstock through 12 of the festival’s most iconic performance photos.
Jimi Hendrix
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The self-taught guitarist closed out Woodstock with one of the most memorable sets of the festival. He performed fan favorites like “Hear My Train a Comin'” and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” before finishing his set with a scorching interpretation of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that has become nearly synonymous with Woodstock.
One month later, during an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, Hendrix, who had only slept eight minutes the night before the interview, said, “I don’t know, man. I’m an American, so I played it.”
“They made me sing it in school, so it was a flashback,” he told host Dick Cavett of the now career-defining moment.
When Cavett mentioned that playing the song in an unorthodox way is almost guaranteed to garner hate mail, the “Hey Joe” singer cut him off, saying, “It’s not unorthodox! I thought it was beautiful.”
Joan Baez
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Baez was six months pregnant when she closed out the first night of Woodstock, taking the stage just before 1 a.m. for what would become a historic performance. Before performing “Joe Hill,” she told the crowd, “This is an organizing song,” according to Rolling Stone. At the time, the folk singer and activist’s husband, David Harris, was in prison in Texas after refusing to serve in Vietnam.
When asked if she thought Woodstock had been romanticized over the years, the “Diamonds & Rust” singer told the publication in 2009 that as both a concert and cultural event, “it hasn’t been” and “was fantastic.”
“I think it takes a moment, and then you get that feeling. It was like the March on Washington,” she said. “All of a sudden, you realize there are 350,000 people out there, and something is never going to be the same after that. That is true of Woodstock.”
Baez added, “It wasn’t political. It wasn’t like King, but nothing really was the same after that.”
Richie Havens
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The soulful folk singer-songwriter kicked off Woodstock with the first performance of the festival. Four artists were scheduled ahead of Havens, but massive traffic delays impeded their arrival, so he took the stage after some convincing by promoters.
Initially planned as a 20-minute set, Havens extended his performance time as the stage was built around him. His biggest moment came from the song “Freedom” that he improvised onstage.
“When you see me in the movie [Woodstock] tuning my guitar and strumming, I was actually trying to figure out what else I could possibly play! I looked out at all of those faces in front of me, and the word ‘freedom’ came to mind,” Havens wrote, per CNN.
Joe Cocker
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Cocker and his group, The Grease Band, recorded a cover of The Beatles’ song “With a Little Help from My Friends” in 1968. His powerful live performance of the tune on the third day of Woodstock put the bluesy British rock singer on the map worldwide.
After the legendary set, the crowd allegedly gave Cocker a standing ovation, but the rocker would later refer to his performance as just “okay.”
“Were we epic? I dunno. We got some nice footage for memories,” he told Louder (formerly Classic Rock) in 2013, referring to the 1970 concert movie and documentary Woodstock. “I was wearing a tie-dyed shirt, and when I took it off after, the colors had stained my chest in the exact same pattern.”
Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
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When Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young took the Woodstock stage after 3 a.m., it was only their second-ever live performance together. The supergroup consisted of David Crosby of the Byrds, Graham Nash of the Hollies and Stephen Stills and Neil Young of the Buffalo Springfield band.
Onstage, Stills told the crowd that they were “scared s——-” — but that fear faded once the group got going.
“Scared s— was gone by, I’d say, bar 16 of the first song at Woodstock,” Stills told the Los Angeles Times in 2025.
Graham Nash and David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
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The group — Young joined shortly before Woodstock — performed a mix of acoustic and electric songs during the festival’s wee morning hours, including “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” a cover of Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” and “Marrakesh Express.”
They reportedly started off the set as a trio, with Young joining in later.
“When we started the suite, it sounded fabulous to me,” Nash told the Los Angeles Times, adding, “You know, Woodstock has taken on this incredible myth in the years since, and I understand why — it was an incredible gathering. But it’s gotten larger and larger and larger, the myth of it all.”
David Brown and Carlos Santana of Santana
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A San Francisco-based psychedelic band that fused Afro-Latin rhythms with blues rock, Santana was one of the least-known bands on the festival bill. However, their eight-song set on day two became a surprise standout.
During an epic rendition of “Soul Sacrifice,” each band member got their own solo, with then-20-year-old Michael Shrieve’s drumming still spoken about in reverent tones and legendary frontman Carlos Santana showing the world what he could do with a guitar — while accidentally still high from a hallucinogenic drug given to him by friend and fellow performer Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead.
“It was like being inside a kaleidoscope,” the guitarist told PEOPLE in 2023. “And then somebody told me, ‘Trust in God. Just ask him to keep you in time and in tune.’ So I said, ‘God, I really believe in you. If you help me right now, I won’t poo my pants in front of everybody.’ Next thing I knew, we hit the notes and the people went, ‘Wooo!’ ”
The band’s encore song, “Fried Neck Bones and Some Home Fries,” was the only tune they played that day that did not end up on their self-titled debut album, released only days after Woodstock.
Carlos told PEOPLE he was “absolutely not prepared” for the fame that followed.
Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane
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Jefferson Airplane hit the stage on the second day of the festival. The psychedelic rock group was technically the Saturday headliner; however, due to logistical issues, they didn’t take the stage until 7 a.m. on Sunday — after being up for 24 hours and having accidentally taken LSD.
“Alright, friends, you have seen the heavy groups. Now you will see morning maniac music. Believe me, yeah. It’s a new dawn!” lead singer Grace Slick told the audience, per the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.
Jefferson Airplane performed chilling renditions of their songs, including hits like “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit,” and closed out with “The House At Pooneil Corners.” Despite rave reviews, Slick doesn’t look back at Woodstock with rose-colored glasses.
This was partially due to the drugs, as Slick told CBC Radio in 2019 that she “usually did not take acid on purpose” as it “can really mess with your perception of things,” like playing songs correctly.
“For us, it wasn’t quite as marvelous as it might be for somebody who’s 18 years old. I was 29, so my idea of fun is not having to watch out for a white dress and no bathrooms and playing at six o’clock in the morning,” Slick told the outlet.
She added, “So Woodstock, personally, was not fun. But the idea of it, and the idea that we attracted that many people, was kind of amazing. But that’s all in your head. That’s not what actually happened.”
Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead
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Garcia and The Grateful Dead were only supposed to play for 45 minutes on Woodstock’s Saturday bill. Weather and logistical delays caused the San Francisco jam band — then not nearly as well known to East Coasters — to go on 90 minutes late at 10:30 p.m., and their extended set lasted almost two hours.
The band performed a total of five songs, including opening with “Saint Stephen” and playing the then-unrecorded Garcia-penned ballad “High Time.” There were a multitude of issues during their festival performance, which wasn’t included in the original 1970 Woodstock docufilm and live album.
One major problem was sound engineer Owsley “Bear” Stanley tinkering with the setup for two hours to accommodate the group’s notoriously heavy equipment, including removing the grounding, and the large amount of LSD the band consumed.
Weir told Rolling Stone that “the rain was part of our nightmare” and that “every time I touched my instrument, I got a shock.”
“The stage was wet, and the electricity was coming through me. I was conducting!” he added. “Touching my guitar and the microphone was nearly fatal. There was a great big blue spark about the size of a baseball, and I got lifted off my feet and sent back eight or 10 feet to my amplifier.”
John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival
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One of the most popular bands on the bill and the first to sign on to the festival, Creedence Clearwater Revival hit the stage on day two at 1 a.m.. The swamp rock pioneers followed the Grateful Dead, a fellow Bay Area band that played for nearly three hours after dropping LSD.
Lead singer-songwriter and guitarist John Fogerty blames the Dead for his band’s sleepy reception.
“At the time, I was what you would call pissed off. They sabotaged our chance in the limelight,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2019. “But over time, I have developed quite an affection for the Dead.”
Fogerty feels CCR played “a great set,” which kicked off with “Born on the Bayou” and included “Bad Moon Rising,” “Proud Mary” and “Suzie Q,” but says “there was almost no reaction,” which is part of the reason he didn’t allow CCR’s set to be included in the Woodstock documentary and live album.
“About halfway through, I went to the microphone and said, ‘We’re playing our hearts out for you and want you to have a good time.’ And from the back of the field somewhere, I heard a voice shout, ‘Don’t worry about it, John,’ ” he told the outlet. “So, in my mind, there was one guy who was awake, and we finished our set for that guy.”
Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone
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Despite a downpour earlier in the day and delays that caused them to not go on until 3:30 a.m. — including the late Sly Stone having to be convinced to get onstage — Sly and the Family Stone played one of the most memorable sets of the festival. The band was a progenitor of blending funk, soul, R&B, psychedelic rock and gospel, and their blazing performance kicked off with “M’Lady” and included their hits “Everyday People” and “Dance to the Music.”
However, it was the band’s live rendition of “I Want to Take You Higher” that is long remembered as the peak of their Woodstock performance and was immortalized in the 1970 concert documentary and album.
“It was pouring rain. Freddie got shocked. The equipment was crackling. But Sly was like a preacher,” trumpet player Cynthia Robinson told PEOPLE in 1996 about their performance of the song. “He had half a million people in the palm of his hand.”
In his 2023 memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), the bandleader recalled the call and response of the Woodstock crowd as feeling “like a church.”
“The horns went up into the sky. When the show was over, we were wet and cold …” Sly wrote, per Rolling Stone. “By the next day, it was clear that Woodstock had been a big deal, and that we had been a major part of that deal.”
He added, “The festival had put a spotlight on lots of groups, but us and Jimi the most.”
Roger Daltrey of The Who
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Many bands on the Woodstock bill weren’t nearly as well known at the time as they are today. However, The Who was not one of them.
Considered one of the best bands in the world, their loud and iconic performance is long remembered as a Woodstock favorite. They went on 14 hours later at 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 17, performing songs like their first single “I Can’t Explain” and their rock opera double album Tommy, featuring “Pinball Wizard.”
The set was full of big moments, like the sun rising as the British rockers performed “See Me Feel Me,” a stage-storming interruption by Abbie Hoffman and an encore with a riff-filled rendition of “My Generation.” Not everyone loved the performance, though.
While lead vocalist Daltrey considered Woodstock to be a sign of The Who hitting it big in the United States, he also described it as the band’s worst show ever.
“It was a particularly hard one for me, because of the state of the equipment. It was all breaking down,” he recounted to The New York Times in 2019. “I’m standing in the middle of the stage with enormous Marshall 100-watt amps blasting my ears behind me. Moon on the drums in the middle. I could barely hear what I was singing.”
