“We’ve got plenty of good production people around,” Lang said. “We’re coordinating with everyone around, including HITS (Horseshows In The Sun, located on the other side of Saugerties)…We’ll stage our traffic, and events, so there’s never a huge crush on one Thruway exit, or road access.”
Unlike the 1994 event, which set its main stage in what Lang refers to as the “north fields,” plans are to create a more intimate setting in what was known, then, as the South Stage area…which boasts a natural bowl.
Eventually, Lang said, more direct parking could be accessed with the building of a $300,000 bridge on site. Along with a more permanent structure than the temporary stages and other facilities currently planned.
“We don’t want the land to be overused so there’s a lot of thought going into moving parking and other needs around the site,” Lang said, describing his planning days now as being made up mainly of “time and pencils.” “This is all so much smaller than what I’ve grown used to working with.”
He mentioned how, in 1994, artists were put up across the Hudson in Dutchess County and ferried across by boat or helicopter. This time around, “local hotels will be filled up with our people.”
Live and learn
What was it like returning to Winston Farm, we asked.
“I love it there,” Lang said. “It’s right down the road and I have good memories of the place.”
What about Woodstock ’99, the 30th anniversary event that had to be moved to an air force base in Rome, New York, where most people’s memories of the festival came down to images of raging fires on the final night as concession stands burned during the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ performance of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire.”
“That involved some bad booking. Concrete,” Lang noted. “It was a perfect storm…and an odd moment, musically, where at times it seemed that everyone was trying to out-anger each other. But in spite of the problems most people had a good time. You learn.”
Finally, we asked Michael Lang about some of his other projects, mentioned in recent years, including a Broadway show and a movie.
His idea for a Woodstock festival musical, he said, was moving ahead…still stumbling on its book. “A playwright is a playwright,” he said. “The work has to have a single vision. That’s coming…”
As for the film adaptation of “The Master and Margarita” that he’s been developing for years, a shoot is actually now planned for next summer…with Baz Luhrmann directing.
But there’s much to do on so many fronts between now and then, Lang reminds.
Why next year?
“Why not?” Lang replies.
