Michael Lang, a co-creator of the Woodstock pageant, has died at 77 - NPR

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Michael Lang, co-creator of the Woodstock tune & artwork festival Charles Norfleet/Getty photos conceal caption

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Michael Lang, co-creator of the Woodstock music & art competition

Charles Norfleet/Getty images

Michael Lang, co-creator of the Woodstock music & artwork fair, died on Saturday at the age of seventy seven.

Lang died at Memorial Sloan Kettering melanoma center in new york city. according to family spokesperson Michael Pagnotta, the reason behind demise changed into a infrequent type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Lang, together with companions Artie Kornfeld, Joel Rosenman and John P. Roberts, deliberate the famous 1969 festival on Max Yasgur's sprawling dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y. For 4 days, greater than four hundred,000 attendees have been handled to performances through artists including the Grateful useless, Janis Joplin, Jefferson plane, Jimi Hendrix and The Who.

fighting climate concerns, late venue alterations, and much greater attendees than predicted, Woodstock's free-wheeling ethos of "peace and track" persevered, making the festival a defining second within the decade's countercultural stream.

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"Woodstock become a verify of no matter if people of our generation really believed in a single an extra and the area we had been struggling to create," Lang wrote in his 2009 publication The road to Woodstock. "How would we do once we had been in cost? may we reside because the peaceful group we expected? i might hoped we could."

Born in Brooklyn, ny, Lang in short attended new york college earlier than moving to Florida. It was there he obtained the concept for Woodstock after organizing the Miami Pop pageant in 1968, that includes Jimi Hendrix as the headliner.

"i was amazed on the effect track had on the youngsters," he informed Billboard in 2009. "I went from John Lee Hooker to Jimi Hendrix, and they cherished it all... and looking out at their faces and the manner tune form of modified them basically begun me in that path."

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Featured prominently in the Academy Award-successful 1970 documentary Woodstock, commonly riding throughout the stage grounds on his bike, Lang became probably the most more recognizable faces behind the competition.

In later years, he would proceed to supply routine constructing on the legacy of that usual Woodstock, including fairs Woodstock '94 and Woodstock '99. The latter event, a three-day concert in Rome, N.Y., became infamously suffering from commonly-coated acts of violence and said sexual assault.

In 2019 Lang became planning to stage Woodstock 50, a reimagining of the festival featuring a wide array of performers together with probability the Rapper and Carlos Santana, however the festival turned into canceled after fiscal setbacks.

besides his wife Tamara, Lang is survived with the aid of sons Harry and Laszlo and daughters LariAnn, Shala and Molly.