Michael Lang
The Road to Woodstock
HARPERCOLLINS

This book, its chapters already written in interviews, articles, conversations over dinner or a J, has finally been assembled by Mr. Woodstock himself and his co-author Holly George-Warren, in one lengthy and revealing narrative.

Michael Lang, the driving force behind the 1969 Woodstock Festival, has recounted the storyline from his slightly rebellious youth to his paraphernalia-selling days in Miami to his against-all-odds triumph in a heretofore no-name town in upstate New York, miles from the actual Village of Woodstock.

Lang intersperses his own memories with those of the many people who helped move his gargantuan project forward, and the result is a comprehensive, interesting read. For readers who know little of the background story, The Road to Woodstock will reveal how different and free-wheeling the making of a huge event could be back then, as a real-life Mickey Rooney urged, "Let's put on a show, kids!" I found the straightforward recounting of the stage events was by far the most interesting section, as well as the Aftermath and Epilogue chapters.

As we often do, Lang skips lightly through his own debris, including his part in the subsequent disastrous Altamont festival (which, to his credit haunts him), but about which he wrote, "What happened at Altamont was terrible and showed how awful things can get without foresight and proper preparation." Woodstock itself materialized not from foresight and proper preparation, but from Lang's vision and unstoppable dynamism. Events could have easily shifted the other way at Woodstock or at Altamont, reversing Heaven and Hell, but literally millions of music lovers are grateful that Michael Lang realized his Heaven, Woodstock.—Suzanne Cadgene