Woodstock co-creator and organizer Michael Lang passes away at 77

As active followers of all the things that go on in the music industry, we all are aware of the significance of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that was held way back in 1969. It shaped the future of the entire events industry to such an extent that its festival site (Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Sadly, news has broke that co-creator and organizer of the festival, Michael Lang, has recently passed away at the age of 77. The cause of death was stated as a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as stated by representative and family friend Michael Pagnotta, as per Rolling Stone.

Planned alongside John P. Roberts, Joel Rosenman, and Artie Kornfeld, Woodstock was the second major event that Michael Lang worked on in 1969, after previously co-organizing East Coast’s Miami Pop Festival. Some of the notable artists and acts that graced the stage of the festival were Grateful Dead, The Incredible String Band, Tim Hardin, Ravi Shankar, Johnny Winter, and Ten Years After. The festival gained so much appreciation that a documentary (funded by Warner Bros) was made out of it the very next year called Woodstock (1970), directed by Michael Wadleigh.

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Image Credits: Michael Lang (via Lauren Lancaster/The New York Times/Redux), Woodstock Aerial View