Another giant of the music industry has passed on.
Woodstock organizer/promoter Michael Lang succumbed to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma just hours ago.
According to Rolling Stone, Michael Pagnotta, a longtime family friend, Lang passed away Saturday evening at Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York. He was 77.
Lang was only 24 years old when he conceived and spearheaded the original Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969.
But only days before the sold-out, much talked-about (at least in the northeastern U.S.) music festival was set to begin, a potential catastrophy of untold proportions was about to explode on the entire affair.
The permit for the original site in Woodstock was revoked by the town after outraged citizens complained. The intrepid Lang would not cancel the fest and instead him and his crew scouted out and found Max Yasger’s farm in Bethel, New York. It it had not been for the loving grace and open arms of Mr. Yasger, the festival may have never taken place.