Original subtitles

The Woodstock Festival was going to take place

in Woodstock, New York, till they were kicked out.

Well , there wasn't an original location until down the road .

I mean , we were looking for quite a while.

BELL: They had been moving around.

I mean, these festival guys,

you know, had had three prior locations

announced on the radio, starting in March of 1 969.

We finally settled on Wallkill at the end of March ,

out of desperation , really.

And it was a site that I always hated .

It had the virtue of being there and being available, so we went for it.

We lost Wallkill .

It was kind of miraculous the way that happened .

We lost Wallkill on the 1 4th or the 1 5th when the town council decided

that they were not going to approve our permit,

the permit they invented for this event.

And I found a better one on the 1 6th , a day later.

Well , we wound up there because somebody named Elliot Tiber called me

and said , "I have a site and a permit, and we want you ."

Met Elliot at the El Monaco Motel

right in the middle of the town of White Lake.

And Elliot led us down to a field behind the motel

that he and his parents operated , which from the rim looked beautiful .

As we walked down into it, it began to get squishy,

(CH UCKLI NG) and then it got squishier,

and then we wound up in mud to our knees.

And Elliot had bugged out, Elliot had simply disappeared .

And that was the end of that site.

MEL LA WRENCE: I received a call through Elliot Tiber,

who said that there was this man , a fixer,

someone who's a go-between,

who puts this guy together with this guy and they make a deal.

And he knew a man who had a farm.

We got in this big Buick and we went driving through the countryside.

Michael and I drove up and we got there and we met Max.

And we drove out in two cars, the fixer and Max in one car,

Michael and I in the other,

and he took us to this enormous field , very flat but very big .

And there it is.

And , like, I looked at Michael and I said , "Boy, you know, it's big ,

"but this would make a parking lot.

"We need some elevation , we need something ,

"because people have got to see the stage."

And we said , "Do you have anything that has some roll to it, some contour?"

"I have a field , alfalfa."

And we go out and look at it.

So we drove out, and it was raining , drizzling ,

and there was a mist everywhere,

and we were on the top of what is now this famous amphitheater, you know.

And the mist started to rise, and there was the lake,

and here was this perfect amphitheater.

LANG: There it was. We stopped the car. You know, "This is it."

Sort of we were congratulating each other,

and then Michael took Max to the side

and very quickly they made a deal .

And he'd heard what happened to us in Wallkill

and thought that we were railroaded .

And so he was politically, if you will , on our side.

...and felt that we had been treated unfairly,

that a special case was being made,

and that he was gonna stand up for what was right.

Max and I went off into the field ,

and I said , you know, "This is it.

"We really want your field . This is where we need to be."

And we made a deal, right there on the field.

GOLDSTEIN: Max was a Yankee in the very best meaning of the words

and a true believer in the American dream.

I'm a farmer. I don 't know...

(AU DI ENCE CH EERI NG)

I don 't know how to speak to 20 people at one time, let alone a crowd like this,

but I think you people have proven something to the world.

Not only to the town of Bethel or Sullivan County or New York State,

you've proven something to the world.

The important thing that you've proven to the world

is that a half a million kids,

and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you are,

a half a million young people can get together

and have three days of fun and music, and have nothing but fun and music,

and God bless you for it!

LANG: Max was an amazing guy.

Max was, you know, one of those sort of real American

wholegrain kinds of guys,

very straight, very honest, very conservative in a lot of ways,

but a real man of his word

and someone who thought that people had the right to do

whatever they wanted to do

as long as it was not adversely affecting the people around them .