'It wasn't just a concert, it was a revolution!' Woodstock founder recalls how the iconic three-day festival changed American culture in new ABC special to mark 50-year anniversary
- Generation Woodstock is a new ABC documentary airing Tuesday at 10pm that celebrates 50 years since the iconic music festival
- The three-day concert, which featured performances as from Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, is being remembered as a defiant display of love and equality
- Generation Woodstock also examines the impact of The Stonewall riots - the landmark LGBTQ event that also occurred in the summer of 1969
- Transgender activists, including Orange Is The New Black's Laverne Cox, pay tribute to queer heroes who stood up for their rights
Woodstock is being hailed as the musical festival that changed American cultural history in a new documentary set to air at 10pm on ABC Tuesday night.
Marking 50 years since the watershed event, Generation Woodstock features interviews with Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, the duo who planned the three-day concert when they were just in their mid-twenties.
In a sneak preview of the TV special, Lang, now 74, says the extravagant event - held in August 1969 - was an explosive response to the political malaise that the hippie generation had been feeling over the course of the decade.
Disillusioned by the Vietnam War, the backlash over Civil Rights and the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, 400,000 young Americans descended on Bethel, New York, to defiantly declare their love of equality and freedom, as well as sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
'The best political statement we could make is that it worked,' Lang can be seen reminiscing in a new preview of the show.
A new ABC special entitled Generation Woodstock looks at how the three-day music festival impacted American culture
Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang is interviewed in the ABC special, reminiscing on the iconic event
He and Kornfeld - who also features in the documentary - said they were hoping 200,000 people would attend the event.
But more than double that number turned up to listen to artists including Joan Baez, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
The three-day love-in - complete with tie-dye t-shirts, mudslides and ample amounts of marijuana - marked a drastic change in American youth culture, which had previously been buttoned-down and highly conservative.
'It wasn't just a concert, it was a revolution!' one interviewee from the documentary explains.
Tariq Trotter, a member of three-time Grammy winning band The Roots, also appears on the documentary, discussing how the event influenced his own career.
400,000 turned out to listen to artists including Joan Baez, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix
The three-day love-in - complete with tie-dye t-shirts, mudslides and ample amounts of marijuana - marked a drastic change in US youth culture
Generation Woodstock also examines the Stonewall Riots - another culture-changing event that occurred in the summer of 1969.
The riots, which were held in response to a police raid on a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, are widely regarded as a catalyst for the LGBTQ liberation movement.
'I'm here because they had the courage to fight back,' transgender activist and Orange Is The New Black star Laverne Cox says in a preview for the show.
Stonewall and Woodstock occurred within just weeks of each other, and marked the beginning of a more permissive phase of youth culture.
As one interviewee states in the documentary: 'It was an entire generation that exploded in day-glo colors, and changed America forever'.
Generation Woodstock airs 10/9c on ABC
Generation Woodstock examines the Stonewall Riots - another culture-changing event that occurred in the summer of 1969
Transgender activist and Orange Is The New Black star Laverne Cox is seen in the program
