Band music and my uncle loved jazz. He always listened to jazz. That was the influences i had to. Was she a performer . No, my mother was the founder of the freedom wives. When you read my book it will blow your mind, about my mother. She was the star in my family, not me. I am just a representative of the hope, of a dream. It was kind of a new concept and you took a commanding position. How did that come about . My good friend, charles coughlin, he was chairman of the board of emi records for 15 years. We met by accident in Queens College night school and he had just taken over the job for hal evans music. If you were a writer, i already had a record out when i was 16, you know . I was signed when i was 16. I had a record out and then it died and nothing else happened. I ran into charles. You will crack up, this story. It is hysterical how it happened. We met. I had a demo and i played it for donnie. Here i am now signing all the music. Brian wilson. Great writers, all around. There i was, we had just signed screen gems at the time. There i was, you know. It was so simple. You wrote a song and you played it for donnie kirschner, because he was the boss and if he liked it, you got a budget to go in to bella sound well, not bella. I am trying to remember the names, i dont even remember, but charles, that was when they played the most. You would get three hours and play three songs in three hours. The vocals, everything. I dont even know if it was to track at that point. I think it was to track. What happened was they put out a two track demo. They had to leave the set. And he saying hey girl. I did it with a song called tonight you are going to fall in love with me. We got so good at making demos, that a lot of us went into producing records. You know. After you left capital yes, capital, before capital i had already run mercury, so it was the third label. It was my biggest, because i was the first Vice President of rock. That is the way the pr went out, Vice President of rock. When rock was just coming in. It was about 1965 or 1966. That was when i was hanging out with the mobi great and signed quicksilver and stuff like that. That was like the start of rock, right . The manager was a total lunatic. He used to drink his own urine. He did, he had his daughter do it, too, and he believed it was the key to a long life. Anyway, that is a private story. Sorry, matt. I lived near him in malibu, thats how i knew. What was the Tipping Point where you said, gee, i am going to create this Company Called the woodstock music and Arts Festival . I was running capital. I was very successful. They had no budgets. The president and chairman of the board loved me. I signed the first deal where i had no limits. Nobody could say no to what i wanted them to do. I was in the studio with debbie harry at the time. Axelrod was producing the walls. Things were happening in the company, you know. And then one day, and i was known for having an open door for everybody. My secretary said there is a kid out here with long hair, which i had never seen. I did have birds summer and i knew the guys who wrote hair. She said his name is michael. Does he have an appointment . She said, no. She got back on the phone and said tell him he is from bensonhurst, so he is from the neighborhood now. So i brought them in. His story is that i was sitting at my desk and smoking hash and that is so bizarre because i hadnt even gotten high yet. He is the one who got me into grass. John sebastian gave me a joint one time, that is the extent of my drug experimentation. The Police Closed him down in florida. I was living in manhattan. In a penthouse apartment, you know. Still in my genes. With my wife, i had a new baby and it was wonderful. Everything was wonderful. Michael lang came in and we became friends, like that. You know. And he didnt have money, so i supported him for like a year and a half. One night we were shooting pool. Playing bumper pool. I was on the 30th floor. That was the highest residential building at that time and you could look out over the whole city. Michael said, you know, you are tainted, you dont go to concerts anymore. I said michael, ive been doing this since 1956 and ive seen so many concerts, ive played in so many clubs. Ive seen so many concerts. You know, im in the studio all the time and i write and you dont do that stuff. Your way of getting connected to music is to go see it. Mine is to make it. I said what if we took a broadway theater and just made it free . Will use my money, because you dont have any. When we run out of money, we will just close it down. But we will try to get the biggest acts we can and we will make it free. He said, well, i started work on a thing in miami called miami pop, but what happened is it rained and it folded, you know. It was called the festival. So that stuck in my mind, festival. Then linda, my late wife, may her soul rest in peace, said g, what if you guys took it outside . Then the bell went off. I saw the actual field. They said if we took it outside, michael, suppose we had hendrix and joplin and all these people, how many people do you think would come . He said 50,000. I said it would have to be 100,000. My wife said there would be more than 300,000, just like that. I swear to god i looked up that terrace and i actually saw that field. In the movie i was always spaced out. Of course i was spaced out. I was looking at a dream that it come true and i had seen it before. I had seen it a year before, because we talked about it for four or five months and then i met john and joel. Michael didnt say a word. I talked them into the 250,000 and that was the start, you know. Location, location, location. We were always going to call it woodstock, even though there was no land in woodstock big enough to have it. I had the band at capital. Richie was living up there. Everyone was living up in woodstock or in coconut grove, florida. Oran sausalito, you know, in california. That was just the way it was, you know. Location, michael did a stupid thing. He went out to the site and walked off with no permit from the town, so that wiped out the whole budget. So, i didnt even think we would sell tickets. I was shocked, you know. And we saw it, when it was all over, we were 1. 4 million in debt. It cost 2. 4 million. The original budget was 250,000. Michael went 600 over budget, i went 6 over budget. But i had too many people on the road still. I promoted it. I didnt promote it very heavy. I planted out. I know how to promote records. I had been writing songs for these people for so many years and they were buying my songs. I know the audience. I knew them, and i knew the program directors. I had timelines people couldnt get. I had disc jockeys talking about it. So it was really, like bruce mosher who lives here. He said, woodstock was not your greatest promotion, Tracy Chapman was. And he was right. Woodstock was easy for me to promote. I know exactly what to do and it wasnt me. I was the messenger. I was not the creator. I just knew from whatever power i had tapped in on, i just know exactly what to do. The real story is i am sitting in my appointment apartment and my cousin lived on 52nd street and she had a neighbor who was an interior designer. His uncle was max astor. I get a phone call from the sky. He says, mister kornfield, i live next door to your cousin lenore and my cousin has a cattle farm up in new york. Hes going to lose it and he needs 60,000 desperately. I said, let me have his number. I called michael and i said michael, there is a guy this is the honest truth. Their witnesses to this story and it is even in my book. People who heard the conversation. Michael and i went and met with max and made the deal for the farm. How much, do you remember . It was 60,000 originally. When i got up there i couldnt believe it. I just left from closing a movie deal and we left right from warner bros. Michael says to me, take the motorcycle. We are all over these farmers lands. There are 12 farms here and we have 12,000 people on the land. I said why didnt you get releases . He said you have to do that. I said first of all, i know youre on a motorcycle. You shouldve taken care of this. Im on the other side of the fence, in new york. So i went door to door. I drove the motorcycle and i went. I had the right to sign for Woodstock Ventures. If you were from italy and had your whole life invested in this farm and all of a sudden everything was getting trampled, if you said i want 50,000, i wrote down, Woodstock Ventures owes 60,000 to be paid within 120 days. I did that to about 16 farmers. I went to every farm and clued them in. Some were very nice and i had coffee and pie. Some were ready to come to the door with shotguns. That was my greeting to woodstock. After i got totally wasted with jerry harden and nikki garcia. I noticed that one of the things, you were able to get the acts, because you paid 12,000 i dont thats not true at all. No. There was no set price on anybody. The price i had to sign was sly stone. Really, davids manager was a friend of mine. So people would say sly got this and that, but i knew dave for 10 or 15 years before woodstock. He was in the music business and so was i. No, there was no set price on anybody. Thats a fable. Did you have the bands that were selected, did you have your a list and the list . No, what happened that was really good is michael got in touch with will graham, which was smart and he brought his whole crowd, the whole San Francisco group. In reality, sweet water and nancy nevins, the singer, they were the first ones get a major deal out of San Francisco. They never really happened, so that brought in santana, brought in the dead. That brought in sweet water. Who am i forgetting, the starship or the airplane at the time. So that was that group, you know. And i was talking with managers i knew, and different producers, you know . I put in bird summer, because i produced him. Melanie was a friend of mine. I got a record deal and i put her into woodstock. Michael, we both had a friend in hector morales. When i was a singer and had the pied piper out he got most of the acts, because he was a William Morris agent. He was really important and i dont know what he was doing for a living. He was in puerto rico, but he had a lot to do. I mentioned to him in my book. No one ever mentioned them. Also no one ever mentioned steve cohen, who was really the stage manager of woodstock. He is never mentioned. He is mentioned in my book. The pressure on him was so intense that he flipped out and i had to sit with him for four hours and talk him down. He lost it. The pressure got to him. He couldnt take it, because when the rain hit, michaels stage wouldnt turn anymore. So to change the acts, because if you took too much time with that many people, a big chance for a riot. You couldnt have people standing there for 45 minutes in between acts. So when i watched this crew work, i was mesmerized. I wanted to kiss every single one of these, every single one of these guys working. I saw what they were going through. Without the turntable and they were doing changes in 20 minutes, for bigname acts. That was amazing. I mean, that was really amazing. No, it is not true that jimi hendrix wanted to close the show because he was the headliner. If you listen, go into the archives and you will hear my interview with the percussionist from the band and i tell the whole story of jimi hendrix. He said to me, because they were friends of mine years before woodstock. Andy said, if i couldve played at 9 00 when i was supposed to, to half 1 Million People day she said, i was so tired and wore out i did the best i can. It was only average. And it was, because i heard jimi hendrix play before and it was only average. That is how he felt and how i felt. Were there bands that you couldnt entice . No. No. No. I dont know what michael was doing. I was really busy doing wordof mouth. Meeting with the black panthers, meeting with the weathermen. Traveling the country and meeting every group that could cause trouble in making deals with them. The only deals i made was for medical assistance, Legal Assistance if you are busted and we will give you food if you dont have any. Those were the deals you made with those groups . With all those groups, yeah. They accepted, so when they showed up, no problem. You dont read too much about all these groups would possibly take advantage of that situation. I didnt have a pr person so i didnt push that out there, but it is in my book. Such a fascinating concept. Well, i knew what i had to do. Like michael said to me on the phone last week, i said michael, you went 600 over. He said, you know i never did one. I didnt know what i was doing. There was a thing about that concert, there was no opportunity for a lot of sound checks no, when the rain hit, michaels crew came through. Michael did pull his weight. I mean, it took the two of us and my wife to come up with the idea and it took michael staff, because he went and bought the best he could get. Chip was doing lights, the best in the world. Andy was doing sound, the best in the world. Steve cohen was an incredible stage manager. John morris was a pro. You know, everybody was top drawer. So he covered himself. And i was proud that it held. When the rain hit it was so terrible in such a threat to everybody and that is when the miracle happened. When the rain hit, the miracle happened. We had the threat of being in jail for the rest of our life. Of committing manslaughter if someone died. Everyone on the field was so up about it. When my friend, barry, he has a lawyer, you know. He never lost a case and he was a public defender while he was with country joe and the fish. A great lawyer. So barry the fish started chanting no more rain, no more rain, and the rain did stop. I even did the mudslide. I wanted to see what they were doing and i wanted to enjoy it. I walked up on the field. I didnt go to the very top. I walked to the shops. The one that said smoke shop, that was one of my best friends that i played basketball with. The movie, which is iconic, you were instrumental in making that happen. According to the president of warner bros. , i was the only reason it happened. Honestly, thats true. It is just a fact. What happened was, when i was at murphy, freddie came with an act from canada and i spent 80,000 and produced his act. When i was getting ready to go up to woodstock, three or four days before i read in variety, Freddie Weintraub becomes Vice President of films for warner bros. So i called freddy and he says artie, im not going to talk to about that crazy thing you are doing upstate. I said, yes i am freddie, and you owe it to me. I went over and we sat for 35 hours. He even wrote about it in his book. His book is out. Freddie weintraubs book. In my book, there is a letter from Freddie Weintraub about how the movie happened. Handwritten after 35 hours, it was over. Ted ashley came in. Ted ashley was my agent when i was producing the castles. I had teddy and freddie and they both owed me. After 35 hours, they said, lets forget it. We are almost bankrupt at warner bros. Movies are not doing anything and documentaries are doing nothing and then i said, out of nowhere, after 30 hours, what if it is a disaster and 100,000 kids die . This thing will be the biggest movie in history. They started laughing like crazy. Then freddie just turned to me and said okay, ted, what you think . Lets get a couple secretaries down here. We sat there for 10 hours and wrote a handwritten contract. I signed it, i called michael. He flew wildly in. He was up there with no film. He flew to the top of the pan am building. I gave him a check for 100,000. He went to the places in new york, but the film, flew back up and started shooting the woodstock movie and that is how the movie happened, exactly. How many camera guys did you have . I think we had about six cameras going. Really . Yeah. Just the mere fact that film at the time michael was involved in that part. We saw the measly stuff. The Barbara Koppel stuff. The good documentarians work. The split screen concept fascinated us. We saw some of his work that he was working on and that was it. It took a while to actually come out. Did it get caught up in editing . No, first was the battle. Had to get through the battle. I really cant say anything, because of the legalities involved, but michael and i got screwed very bad. If i wouldve had more money, we wouldve won the case. Warner bros. Wanted me and michael out because they knew i made the deal. My deal was 50 of the gross, minus negative. They said you wont have to advertise, because we advertised the festival so much, you wont have to spend a dime on advertising. It was 5050 with warner bros. John and joel were rich kids. All they wanted to do is look good to their fathers friends. So we raised 1 million with albert grossman, who is a good friend of mine. The night we came to sign, we were going to sell to them for three months, the movie. We had 90 days to get the other 400,000 we needed. We didnt know, when i went to warners, they said they had to keep out of this and stay neutral. They were negotiating in bad faith with jewel and johns family, because one of johns brothers went to college with one of the board and they were negotiating the whole time because they knew all they wanted was the 1. 4 million back. They knew michael and i would stick to the 50 and that is what happened. Theodore keeler broke the New York Times strike, the litigator. He was, after i realized my lawyer wasnt heavy enough, we went and got him. He said it would cost another 50. I am doing this pro bono, but it will take another 50,000, because i need to get investigators to investigate this, because i have the proof that they lied to you, that they cheated you, and it will revert back that you want 50 . And i didnt have the 50,000. I said to michael, instead of this hitting the papers and ruining the name of the concert, lets just take the 75,000 or whatever weve got and lets just walk. And thats what i did. You know . I walked from that and i walked right into i have the tiger, rocking in the free world, all the records we did. Is it hard to watch the movie today . Hard to watch the movie . Yeah, when you had that bad blood . Ive only watched it three times in 45 years. So hard to watch it . I think the director cut is much better. You know. No, it is like my baby. It is like watching my child grow up. It is easy to watch it. Ive seen it on tv. I have a copy. Ive only played it twice. I gave i had 75 platinum albums. I gave them all to charity to be auctioned off. I have nothing on my wall, but i did see my woodstock that i signed sold for 9500 on ebay a few months ago. I gave it to a music business foundation, you know, that helps kids who are born to crack mothers and stuff like that. We raised about 200 million a year. It is that big. I ran a Golf Tournament and we raised about 6 million in a weekend. I was on the board. I give a lot of my income to that charity, yeah. The pied piper of woodstock , the moniker, do you like that . Yeah, because i wrote the pied piper ended almost predicts woodstock. Follow me, i am the pied piper, i will show you where its at. You were always masquerading and contemplating what to do. Can you see it is all around you . I was talking to a generation. Hey babe, what are you trying to prove . It is your mind and soul that is tricking you, so form a line. Today woodstock, 45 years ago. Whats the generation, you will speak to folks today, whats the message they will walk away with . Ive been working on the college for years now, because i knew the future, if america was going to be saved, it was going to have to keep the feeling of woodstock and i was going to have to get into college. My internet show, the number one in the world, 18 million hits. Everything in the archives has over 300,000 hits. My interview has 2. 4 million hits. Me and michael talking got a million listening live, just me and michael talking. So i am seeing what i dreamed about. Seeing what i dreamed about that this generation, i said it would take 3 to 5 generations, but woodstock is going to hang around. Why did i know . When i went to italy it was a documentary festival. They were firstclass. These kids were so into woodstock. When i went to korea, these kids were so into woodstock. I spoke at 12 colleges in 15 days in korea and all those kids were nuts. One kid, i was speaking at a college in seoul, and this kid comes running from the back with a rolex watch, waving, i love you. I want to give you a gift. I want to give you a gift. He is waving a rolex watch. Its heavy, im wearing my 19 yearold Swiss Army Watch that i wear. Now i am wearing my target 12 watch, because i am not really into that kind of stuff. So he comes running down. And he was tall, which is unusual for a korean, but it was really touching. I hugged him and said i dont need your watch. I just love you. He was walking back and was all excited that he came up. It was so bizarre. Out of nowhere. I thought it was going to stab me and he was waving this watch. It was hysterical. I didnt have a translator there, so i had no idea what he was saying, anyway. Does it still get it going when you get that reaction . Yeah, thats why i do my radio show every week. Do you think it is easy to sit there for two hours, because the show is always good because i know what to ask and i have great acts on. Finally, i am just so thrilled. What is the legacy of woodstock . The legacy of woodstock is that in 500 years when they forgot about the beatles, if there are still people living, they will still remember the event. The legacy was time magazine, when they listed the top 20 events of mankind, listing woodstock at number two. They said it was the greatest, peaceful manmade event in the history of all mankind. It was second to man landing on the moon. And the legacy of Artie Kornfeld is what . That im sitting with you right now, 45 years later. I hope what i do let next year will be my legacy. Yeah. Thank you. My pleasure. All week we are featuring American History tv programs is a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan3. Lectures in history. American artifacts. Reel america. The civil war. Oral histories. The presidency. And special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. What is your vision into thousand 20 . We are asking students, what issue do you most want to see president ial candidates address during the campaign . Student cam is cspans nationwide video documentary competition for middle and high school students. With 100,000 in total cash prizes at stake, including a 5000 grand prize. Students are asked to present a short, video documentary. Include cspan video and reflect differing points of view. Information to help you get started is on our website. 50 years ago, woodstock attracted nearly half 1 Million People to a dairy farm in upstate new york. Next, wade lawrence, director of the museum at bethel woods, describes how the rock concert ended up in bethel, 60 miles from the town of woodstock. The organizers of the festival originally planned to have it in woodstock, which is about 50 miles northeast of here. And woodstock, new york, was a bohemian community. And a lot of musicians lived there, off and on, including bob dylan, the band, richie havens, van morrison. The organizers called the company woodst