By John Barry
Music industry icon and longtime Woodstock resident changed trajectory of live music experience
Michael Lang, the longtime Ulster County resident and driving force behind the staging of the 1969 Woodstock festival, who changed the trajectory of rock music and the live music experience while hosting a half million people for the 1960s counterculture’s milestone moment, died on Saturday, Jan. 8. He was 77.
According to Lang’s obituary, he died of complications from lymphoma in New York City.
Lang staged the Woodstock music festival with three partners, but since August 1969 had remained the public face of the famous gathering and its enduring ideals of peace, love and music. The festival was staged in Bethel, Sullivan County, but it was planned in the Town of Woodstock, in Ulster County.
