David Cosby is not holding back on his feelings about the troubled Woodstock 50 ahead of the golden anniversary of the famous 1969 music festival. In a new interview with ABC News , the legendary Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young singer is adamant that the Woodstock 50 festival will not take place next month as previously announced.
With the clock ticking for concert organizers to find a spot for Woodstock 50, Crosby has a dire update on the status of the doomed three-day show.
“It’s not happening. It’s dead.”
Crosby, 77, who famously performed at the original 1969 Woodstock as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, revealed that the 50th-anniversary show has been marred by one person in particular.
“There is a person in that situation who is a scammer, and has always been a scammer, and he scammed this.”
Crosby refused to confirm if he was referring to festival co-founder Michael Lang, who has been vocal about trying to keep Woodstock 50 afloat. Apparently, Lang has been frantically trying to find a new venue for Woodstock 50 after the originally-announced site of the festival, Watkins Glen International Racetrack, pulled out of the event amid a plethora of permit problems and issues with the festival’s financial backers.
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Surprisingly, Woodstock 50 has not yet been officially canceled, despite its lack of venue less than one month before the festival’s scheduled dates. No tickets have been sold, but the event is still scheduled for August 16-18, exactly 50 years after the original festival, which was held at Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm near White Lake in Bethel, New York. The iconic festival was attended by more than 400,000 people.
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David Crosby is one of just a handful of performers who are slated to play Woodstock 50 five decades after playing the original festival. Radio.com notes that Lang previously billed the anniversary show as “a mix of some of the old bands who are still performing and a lot of new headline talent.” The concert promoter promised a lineup of “cross genres from rock to pop, folk and hip hop.”
While Woodstock 50 may never see the light of day, the announced lineup includes The Black Keys, Imagine Dragons, Jay-Z, Miley Cyrus, Greta Van Fleet, Halsey, and many more popular acts. In addition to original Woodstock performer David Crosby, members of the Grateful Dead (now Dead and Company), Country Joe McDonald, The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian, Canned Heat, Carlos Santana, Hot Tuna’s Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, and John Fogerty are all slated to give generation-spanning performances at Woodstock 50 — if the show is not dead, that is.