Bethel Woods has announced that Ringo Starr and Santana will lead the original Woodstock sites 50th anniversary celebration to the legendary 1969 festival. New Yorks Bethel Woods Center for the Arts half-centennial event a separate festival from the one being organized by original Woodstock founder Michael Lang in Watkins Glen, New York will also feature performances by Edgar Winter Band and the Doobie Brothers during August 15th through the 18th, that exact dates of the original festival.
On Thursday, August 15th, Bethel Woods will host a screening of the concert film Woodstock: The Directors Cut on the field where the festival happened. Starr and the Edgar Winter Band will perform Friday at the venues 15,000-person amphitheater, with Santana and Doobie Brothers booked for Saturday. Sundays attendees will be announced soon.
Carlos Santana, who performed at the 1969 fest, previously revealed to Rolling Stone that he had aligned with the Bethel Woods celebration and not Woodstock 50.
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They have an amphitheater there, Santana said in January of the Bethel Woods event. Im going to invite whoever is still here, whether its Joan Baez or members from Sly Stone, and Im going to play Santana music. Santanas going to be the house band, but I want to be able to honor those who are still here and maybe invite rappers like Common or Kendrick Lamar. Santanas very interested, like Miles Davis, into connecting with people from seven-years-old to under 33. I dont want to be just like a jukebox in the twilight zone, stuck in the Sixties.
However, with just four artists booked, Bethel Woods has dramatically reduced the original scope of their 50th anniversary celebration, which initially promised live performances from prominent and emerging artists spanning multiple genres and decades, and TED-style talks from leading futurists and retro-tech experts.
We are humbled by the interest in the anniversary year and we realized it was greater than wed ever dreamed, Bethel Woods Center for the Arts Chief Executive Officer Darlene Fedun said in a statement. We recognize the importance of this place to so many, and our mission of preservation and interpretation of the 1960s is central to A Season of Song and Celebration, as it provides our guests the opportunity to reflect, to learn and to celebrate the legacy of what occurred here.
Michael Langs Woodstock 50 festival, taking place August 16th through 18th, will announce its lineup when tickets go on sale later this month, although the organizer said 40 bands, including big-name headliners, have already been booked.
Itll be an eclectic bill, Lang told Rolling Stone. Itll be hip-hop and rock and some pop and some of the legacy bands from the original festival.