Woodstock Festival’s Co-Creator Michael Lang Dies at 77

Michael Lang, a co-creator of the 1969 Woodstock music festival alongside Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman, died over the weekend at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center after a battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. 

“He was absolutely a historic figure, and also a great guy,” Michael Pagnotta, a spokesperson for the Lang family, said about his friend of 30 years. “Both of those things go hand in hand.”

Lang and his partners created a historical event in Woodstock’s “three days of peace and music.” The festival became a major touchstone for music fans across eras and generations. 

In his memoir “The Road to Woodstock,” Lang wrote: “From the beginning, I believed that if we did our job right and from the heart, prepared the ground and set the right tone, people would reveal their higher selves and create something amazing.”

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Photo credit: Andrew F. Kazmierski / Shutterstock.com