About Woodstock
Long before it lent its name to a festival it didn't actually host, Woodstock was an art town — and it never stopped being one.
The colony began in 1902, when Ralph Whitehead founded Byrdcliffe, an arts-and-crafts utopia on the slopes of Overlook Mountain. Painters and potters came first; the Art Students League set up a summer school; and a creative gravity settled over the town that never lifted.
Music arrived in force in the 1960s. Manager Albert Grossman put down roots in nearby Bearsville, and where Grossman went, his artists followed. Bob Dylan moved up, recovered from his motorcycle crash, and holed up with The Band at a pink house in West Saugerties — the basement tapes that became Music from Big Pink.
About that festival: the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair was held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, NY — some 60 miles southwest. The name stuck anyway. (You can visit the site today; see Road Trips.)
Today the town still runs thick with working musicians, painters, actors and writers, and its little venues keep the live-music tradition humming year round.
Grossman followed Glaser.
Dylan followed Grossman.
Hendrix followed Dylan.
The Band followed Dylan.
They all followed Dylan.