Woodstock Turns 40, Returns to Its Roots

New York Music Anniversary Weekend to be Marked in Bethel N.Y. Home of the Original 1969 Festival..

by CBS

Published: Tue, August 11, 2009 - 2:48 pm CST

(CBS) The Woodstock Music and Art Fair is celebrating its 40th anniversary in a familiar place, with some very familiar faces.

Bands that performed at the iconic music festival four decades ago will take to the stage once again in Bethel, N.Y., the original festival site, on Saturday, Aug. 16, for a concert that that is open to the public. Tickets for the show are currently on sale.

Those slated to appear at the "Heroes of Woodstock" concert at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts include the Levon Helm Band, Jefferson Starship, Ten Years After, Canned Heat, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Mountain, Tom Constanten and Country Joe McDonald.

The next day, photographer Barry Levine, historian John Conway, author Jan Cherpiko and Sam Yasgur, whose father owned the dairy farm on which the Woodstock festival took place, will reflect on their memories at a panel titled "Woodstock Remembered." The panel is free and open to the public, and tickets are available online at BethelWoodsCenter.org.

Bethel is the original site of the 1969 festival, which was billed as "Three Days of Music and Peace." More than 400,000 people attended over the course of the three-day event, where artists like the Grateful Dead, The Who and Jimi Hendrix took to the stage. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine named it as one of the "50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll."

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