Woodstock, Three days of peace and music

Woodstock is a festival that changed the world. On August 15, 16 and 17, 1969, in a vast pasture lost in the southwest of New York State, the largest music festival ever organized in the world took place. During these three days, a real city of 500,000 people suddenly arose, entirely populated by very young people. Attracted by the announcement of a folk, blues and psychedelic rock festival, young people from the East Coast of the United States, from all walks of life, from all origins, converged on this site, in proportions never before seen, to listen to, among others, Joan Baez , Janis Joplin , Jefferson Airplane , the Who and Jimi Hendrix .

Those who attended Woodstock had an experience in the full sense: collective, of course, and even unanimous, but also existential, mystical, even religious. The Woodstock experience was full of chaos, fervor, joy and even delirium, far beyond those famous "three days of love, music and peace", too often limited to a fashion statement and a superficial message.

A book by Michka Assayas

Michka Assayas collaborated from a young age with Rock & Folk and Libération, as a specialist in new wave music, a movement that was then in the minority (New Order, the Smiths, etc.). An editorialist for the magazine Inrockuptibles, Michka Assayas is the editor of Dictionnaire du rock , in the Bouquins collection at Robert Laffont. His book of conversations with the singer Bono of the group U2 has been translated around the world. Also a writer, Michka Assayas has published several novels, including Exhibition which won the Prix des Deux-Magots in 2003. Since September 2008, he has produced a weekly radio show on France Musique, devoted to the history of rock: Subjectif 21 .