by Bob Spitz
• • •
In November 1968, Michael was reunited with Don Keiter, who was then part of a band called Mandor Beekman after a Manhattan apartment house. Lang “got off on the group” and welcomed them as a possible entree for him into the music business. He offered his services to them as a professional rock manager and professed to be able to sell their services to a major label. Falling flat for the Lang charm, they agreed to sign a management contract for which Michael would be well compensated if he brought about all he promised. His only suggestion upon hearing them was that they change the name of the band. They decided it was to be called Train.
Within three weeks after the management papers had been signed, Train was committed to a long-term deal with Capitol. Lang had performed some sort of magic as far as they were concerned. What Keiter couldn’t figure out was “how the curly-haired kid managed to get his foot inside the door” so quickly. He knew that Lang’s only approach was to go knocking on doors hoping that some tired executive’s will would finally be broken down.
That was exactly what Lang had done. After a few curt rebukes at other record companies, he had gone to Capitol Records, where he was soon shown to Artie Kornfeld’s office by one of the division assistants. When she opened his door and Michael “saw Artie giggling and diving off his desk,” he knew his problems were over. According to Michael, he was not the one who introduced Artie to psychedelic drugs.
5
Kornfeld felt that the second meeting with Challenge International had been most successful. All indications pointed to some sort of formal offering being presented to them at their next rendezvous with Roberts and Rosenman.
As far as the budget that John and Joel had requested of them was concerned, Artie and Michael decided to improvise. “I’ve got a general idea what we spent on some of the gigs I did in Florida,” Michael said. “What I don’t remember, we’ll just make up. They won’t know the difference, and by the time they suspect anything, we’ll have produced the genuine goods.”
The two boys pasted together a superficial budget, consisting of one typewritten page of lump sums, which they presented to Roberts and Rosenman at the next meeting.
“You’ve got to break some of this stuff down for us,” Roberts advised them. “Otherwise, Joel and I are ready to go ahead with the project. I think we’ll all have a lot of fun with it.”
“And get ourselves filthy rich in the process,” Joel concluded. They all laughed and slapped palms.
“Before you rush off,” Joel said, “I think we’d better discuss the corporate structure.”
It was decided that, in proportion to what each participant had already brought to the project—Roberts and Rosenman, the money and necessary financial experience, Lang and Kornfeld, a unique knowledge of the rock culture and production technique—they should share equally in the corporation. Each would receive a twenty-five percent share, including ancillary income.
“But there’s a hang-up, guys,” Kornfeld interjected. “I can’t legally sign any contracts until I’m free and clear of my obligation with Capitol.”
“You’ve got an exclusive contract?” Joel asked.
“Right on. Isn’t it a pisser?”
“We can work it out, man,” said Michael. “Look, all you gotta do is make me a fifty-percent partner. You’re almost outta that gig anyway. As soon as you get your freedom, I’ll sign half of that over to you. At least that way we won’t hafta wait to get things movin’ and you won’t get the shaft. Anything illegal about that?” he wondered, looking around the room.
“Not that I can see,” Roberts said. “As long as Artie doesn’t announce to the rest of the music business that he’s connected with us in any way. It’s a simple transfer of stock. That’s all.”
“Whaddya think, Artie?” Michael asked.
“As long as I don’t stand a chance of getting fucked by Capitol, it’s okay by me.”
“Settled,” Michael said.
Before they disbanded that afternoon, they chose a name for the new corporation. It was to be called Woodstock Ventures Incorporated. Its officers were to be decided at a later date.
• • •
Miles Lourie, acting as the new corporation’s counselor, however, did not approve of his client’s entering into an agreement whereby one of the parties was under exclusive contract to a major record corporation. “Artie is being paid by Capitol. It’s a very dangerous situation if that gets out,” he warned Michael, but Michael just smiled, and Miles felt as though he might be acting too lawyerlike. This was a different breed of client, he cautioned himself. Often, what applied to one was way off course for another. Maybe he was overdoing it. The matter dropped quietly, and never resurfaced.
CHAPTER THREE
An Assembly of Good Fellows
Their feet through faithless leather met the dirt,
And oftener chang’d their principles than shirt.
—Edward Young (1683–1765)
1
By the end of March 1969, the acquisition of land for an adequate festival site was presenting Woodstock Ventures with its first major problem. Weeks of dreaming and hanging-out, of informal organization and visionary planning, of feeling out the intentions of new associations, of fruitless expeditions into the hinterlands of upstate New York on motocycles and horseback had failed to turn up a sanctuary suitable for three days of peace and love.
The town of Woodstock, while undoubtedly possessing the atmosphere conducive to just such an event, had been ruled out early as being too small to accommodate the expected turnout. After a few scientific projections were made, the forecast for daily attendance had climbed to over one hundred thousand. Had there been even the remotest possibility of squeezing that many people onto a site slightly smaller in scale, Lang might have pressed his associates to consider doing so to preserve their namesake. But the largest available plot of land was a manicured pasture that, he realistically estimated, would hold not more than thirty thousand at tops, and that would not do at all. In addition, access to the community was limited to one major thoroughfare, a two-lane macadam boulevard badly in need of repair, that ran through the center of the sleepy hamlet and, besides promising traffic congestion, was too narrow to handle heavy vehicles bringing construction supplies to a site.
Michael meanwhile had made a number of tours around the countryside evaluating the feasibility of holding the show in a nearby community and weighing their options. There were few alternatives open to them considering the specifications they had mapped out beforehand—size, aesthetic beauty, access, proximity to Manhattan—and each abortive orbit around the area narrowed the possibilities even more.
On one of his expeditions, Lang had spotted what he thought to be a natural amphitheatre etched into a wooded area from the New York Thruway right off Exit 20. Upon further inspection, he discovered that it was part of six hundred acres of farmland, owned by a frankfurter magnate named Shaler, in the town of Saugerties. “It’s got everything you could want to put on a site,” he deliriously related to Artie after scooting back to the city. “There’s acres of trees lining the property, seven permanent buildings already up and—get this, man—it’s got a natural fuckin’ bowl. It’s perfect!”
Michael met the landowner and considered him to be a strong-minded, solid individual, whose reputation might provide Woodstock Ventures with the link for excellent community relations, and agreed on the lofty rental price of $40,000 for twelve weeks’ use of the premises, pending the approval of his partners.
In practically no time, Michael, Artie, Joel, and John rented motorcycles, biked north to Saugerties, and spent an afternoon surveying the Shaler land. It was perfect, they agreed unanimously. It would take some renovation, but with the proper development and police assistance, it could easily accommodate one hundred thousand or more for the weekend. The exit right off the Thruway and its octopuslike appendages provided exce
llent access, and the permanent facilities—drainage, plumbing, wells, electric power—solved a number of outstanding questions about where to house the crew, situate the concession stands, toilets, and offices.
A week later, however, Lang asked John and Joel to intercede with Shaler on his behalf.
“I just don’t know what’s goin’ down with this dude, man,” he puzzled. “Only last week he was goin’ for the whole scene in a big way and now I can’t get the guy on the phone to save my life. I think the town got to him, y’know—leaned on him kinda heavy not to get involved with hippies, man. What a bummer.” Michael gave them the phone number of Shaler’s New York attorney, and John and Joel made an appointment to see him on March 29. “Maybe they’ll dig dealing with some straight cats like you guys,” Michael said optimistically. “You speak the same language.”
The meeting though, which lasted less than a half hour, was abrupt and cataclysmic. Shaler’s attorney, a Mr. Holmes, was a diminutive man who succeeded in intimidating Joel and John by posing questions that undermined their maturity and their ability to manage his client’s land in a responsible manner.
After what seemed like an unnecessary inquisition, Joel brought the disagreeable attorney directly to the point. “Look, we were led to believe your client, Mr. Shaler, wished to comply with our offer to rent his land for a brief period in order that we might hold our festival there. We agreed to the price, we agreed to post a bond for any damages, we even agreed to return the land to its former state after we’re finished with it. Now, that doesn’t seem unreasonable to us, sir.”
But, he informed them rather casually, it did to Mr. Shaler. He never had the slightest intention of renting his property to Michael Lang for a music and art festival, nor had he made Lang any promises of the sort. “I must tell you that my client wishes to keep this land inviolate for his sons, gentlemen. As far as I know, he’ll never rent it to anyone whomsoever.”
Michael was distraught by the news of the meeting. Instead of supplying his usual whirlwind optimism, he lapsed into moodiness and picked at their lack of progress.
“It’s not happenin’,” he told John dejectedly in Miles Lourie’s office later that week. “The whole thing’s not goin’ down the way it should be, man. We don’t have the land, we don’t have personnel, there’s no adequate staging proposal, we don’t even have our own offices. It’s gonna go down the tubes unless we get on with it.”
Joel decided it was time he and John took a greater interest in acquiring land. Until now, he had made it a point to stay out of Lang and Kornfeld’s designated areas of responsibility, but Michael was right—if there was no site, they would have no festival. It was time, as Michael would say, to “get it on” at any cost.
On March 30, a beautiful translucent Sunday morning, John and Joel got into their car and drove north along the Major Deegan Expressway, which bypassed Harlem and the Bronx and led onto the New York State Thruway toward Woodstock.
Joel reasoned that they would do best to consult local realtors who knew the area and what was available rather than driving blindly from farm to farm looking for owners.
Locating realtors on a Sunday afternoon was equally difficult. This was churchgoing country populated by large sects of Lutherans and Methodists who found it particularly offensive to discuss business on God’s day. “Call back on Monday, son,” they would say, only to do a quick about-face when they heard the proportions of the land desired. “Six hundred acres? Whew! Meet me at the office in half an hour. I’ve got just what you’re looking for.” But invariably, they were being corraled by small-time agents out to take some of that free-flowin’ city money into their pockets. They had nothing that remotely resembled the amount of space the boys were asking for.
They were about to give up and head back to New York City when they came across a concern representing an industrial park on the fringe of Middletown, a small farming community about fifteen miles from Woodstock and part of a larger town called Wallkill. The realtor told them that the land comprised several square miles of acreage in various degrees of development and was owned by a man named Howard Mills. Mills was preparing to offer it to manufacturers as a place to build their offices and was planning to construct a housing community of his own on a small adjacent portion. There was, he told them, a good possibility that Mills would lease it to them for a definite period of time before he was ready to show it to the industries. If they would like to see the land, the realtor offered to call Mills and arrange for it.
Roberts and Rosenman hesitated. Michael had insisted that their site be bucolic, the type of place where music and surroundings would complement one another and induce feelings of peace and love. Industrial parks hardly embodied that sense. On the other hand, their backs were to the wall. They couldn’t afford not to look at everything that was available. They informed the realtor they would like to see the land as soon as possible and were taken quite literally. The agent picked up the phone and called Howard Mills, who made an appointment to see them at his house within the hour.
2
By the time Roberts and Rosenman pulled their green Porsche off the newly cindered road in front of Howard Mills, Jr.’s house, the anxious landowner had been awaiting their arrival for close to three hours. The boys had made a wrong turn in their attempt to get from the realtor’s office to the industrial park (where Mills resided with his family), and then found themselves cruising along the New York Quickway toward Albany without being able to exit.
When, at last, they unfolded themselves from behind the wheel of the car, it was almost dark. An astral blanket of twilight appeared to float mysteriously several feet above the large sloping roof of the Mills house. All that remained of the day was in between the house and the infinite night darkness—a milky-gray haze that outlined the large structure and cast translucent shadows over the periphery. Except for the innate feeling of expansiveness that land exudes, it was difficult for John and Joel to make out the surroundings. Nothing, however, could have detracted from the unusual and disarming symmetry of the house, a swaggerish piece of architecture—ridiculous, yet foreboding.
Howard Mills, a craggy man of about forty with slightly stooped shoulders, a receding hairline, and sharp facial features, met them at the door. Perturbed by their lateness, he treated John and Joel with much the same impatience a self-absorbed father inflicts upon a wanting child.
“What’s all this hubbub I hear about a music and art fair?” he asked curtly, leading them through the wood-paneled family kitchen and down a flight of stairs to his office.
John and Joel took seats in front of Mills’s metal desk and cautiously explained their undertaking. Their scenario was less than forthright; they guarded their words so that implied information would be interpreted to each party’s liking. The four partners—John, Joel, Michael, and Artie—had discussed previously with Miles Lourie how to approach prospective landowners: with kid gloves, so as not to scare them away. It was an important tactic in their negotiations. Howard Mills, Jr., was a country farmer, a man of modest worldliness, and they knew full well that he would never go along with their presenting a rock festival of any proportion on his property; in fact, they assumed that rock music, to Mills, meant hippies, drugs, sex, and violence, all four of which the local papers had been devoting much unsympathetic space to throughout the past several months. So they discussed their proposition in terms of an art fair that would appeal to all members of the community and “would also encompass some music, probably small concerts, featuring a few of the area’s finer musicians.”
Mills, listening attentively, clasped his arms behind his head, dropped his feet on the desk, and tried to find a hole in their story. He thought they were crazy to assume people would wander through a field looking at pictures and listening to chamber music, but if he could rent his property for a function of that sort—why not? It was like found money, and he was not about to turn it away.
He described his property for John and Joel, occasionally referring to a map taped to the wall behind him. The lot comprised seven hundred acres of open farmland, which included a small barn and a few temporary installations used to aid construction crews in land development. But aside from a road he was putting in and several houses in the vicinity, there were no obstructions that might hinder this “cockeyed festival idea” of theirs.
Then Mills ushered John and Joel to his new Cadillac parked outside and drove them over to his property. While they bounced over gullies and partially developed terrain, Howard Mills told them about his life as a fruit farmer and about how he had arrived at the decision to divide his family’s land. It had not been an easy decision for him to make; it meant his breaking a two-century-old Mills family tradition of farming, dating back to his great-great-great-grandfather, Jacob, who made shoes for General Washington’s Continental Army. In 1963, Howard had decided to convert a large portion of his property into an industrial park. It wouldn’t take much more than a minor face-lift on what he already owned and it would be up to those who leased it from him to provide their own facilities.
While Mills rambled on about his objectives as a developer, Joel studied him with unabated relish and deduced that underneath the crusty exterior, there was the soul of a complex man fashioned from pride and determination. It would be difficult for Woodstock Ventures once Mills caught on to the magnitude of their project, but Joel was sure he would eventually come around to viewing it as they all did—a financial investment with exceptionally attractive rates of return. He and John could talk to Mills as businessmen, appeal to his ambitions. Mills would be a pushover for Michael if he could get past what Joel was certain were the farmer’s prejudices toward hippies. It would take a group effort to win him over to their side, but it could be done with finesse.
