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Birthdays, Today in history, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang

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Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang

Remembering Michael Lang on his birthday
December 11, 1944 – January 8, 2022

If you’ve arrived here directly or via Facebook, I will assume that you are already familiar with Mr Lang and who he is. I’ll just bullet-point a few facts about him.

  • he was born in Brooklyn, New York
  • in 1967, he moved to Coconut Grove, Florida and  opened a head shop: papers, posters, black lights, and similar things to help enhance one’s day.
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
  • in 1968,  Lang assisted in the production of the 1968 Miami Pop Festival.” It featured Steppenwolf, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Mothers of Invention, Blue Cheer, Crazy World of Arthur Brown,Chuck Berry, The Blues Image, Pacific Gas and Electric, and Three Dog Night.
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
  • he left Miami and moved to Woodstock, NY. He also spent a lot of time in NYC where he and Artie Kornfeld came up with the idea to create a recording studio in Woodstock for the growing number of so-called “underground” musicians living there such as Paul Butterfield, Van Morrison, and others. Of course, Bob Dylan was there, too.
  • he, Kornfeld, John Roberts, and Joel Rosenman formed Woodstock Venturers for that purpose.
    Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang

    Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
    August 18, 2013, Michael Lang and Joel Rosenman at memorial service for Richie Havens at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (photo by James Shelley)
  •  he did not help produce the Altamont Free Concert in December 1969, but he did assist in the relocation of the event after it had to be moved.
  • Lang also managed several successful international recording artists, including Joe Cocker, Rickie Lee Jones, Willie DeVille, Tarkan, and Spanish recording artists El Ultimo de la Fila.
  • Lang owned and operated Just Sunshine Records, which produced and released more than 40 albums by such diverse musical artists as Karen Dalton, Betty Davis, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.
  • Today, Woodstock.com is a place where people can explore what Michael Lang and the others involved in Woodstock Venture are up to and offering now.

Death

Michael Lang died at Sloan Kettering hospital in New York. He was 77.

Michael Pagnotta, a rep for Lang and longtime family friend, confirmed the promoter’s death to Rolling Stone, adding that the cause was a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Remembrance

Michael Lang’s death was obviously in the news everywhere. Likely hundreds of obituaries and remembrances could be found. I chose the following from Bill Hanley, the person who did the sound at Woodstock:

Michael Lang died on January 8, 2022.

He was a friend of mine. We worked together at many festival gigs, most notably Woodstock ’69.
Because of my experience Michael believed I would deliver the best possible sound, and I did.
He told me decades later he knew I could be trusted to be fully conscious all the time because I didn’t do drugs or drink. He was right.
In the past month there has been much written and broadcast about Michael, all favorable and to which I don’t feel I could add anything more to this distinguished person’s character.
Except one thing…
For the summer of August, 2019, because plans for the 50th Woodstock Event were canceled, Michael came up to Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, NY. Me, my wife, my son and all his friends, Rona Elliot and Henry Diltz were staying at Max Yasgur’s house (graciously offered to us by Jeryl Abramson, now owner of Yasgur’s Farm).
Michael was a celebrity when he came, everyone was thrilled to see him. With an extended hand shake he humbly spoke to everyone. After the drum circle and the place calmed down me, my wife Rhoda, Rona and Michael were left sitting around Max’s kitchen table. The four of us started talking about our childhoods, our families, telling stories. Some were so funny we were just bending over the table with laughter. Into the wee hours of the early morning we shared our past. I got to know Michael and he got to know us just as plain ordinary people. No rock ‘n roll, not show biz just human beings with stories, many just totally hilarious. I treasure this night.
I will miss Michael.
February 3. 22
Woodstock Ventures Michael Lang
Today in history

Joe Namath Deferred

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Joe Namath Deferred

December 9, 1965

Joe Namath Deferred
Defensive tackle Dave Costa (#63) delivers The Shot Heard Round the World” to Jets quarterback Joe Namath

The Vietnam War reverberated across all of American culture, including sports. Professional athletes and celebrities had famously left their sport or career to join the military. In World War II (and Korea) baseball’s Ted Williams. Elvis served when called.

By the mid-60s, many viewed the Vietnam War not just as an unnecessary American involvement in a Vietnamese civil war, but an immoral war. The “Domino Theory” — if we didn’t stop the spread Communism in Southeast Asia other countries would follow — was increasingly viewed as false.

The most famous athlete associated with the Vietnam War is Mohammed Ali. The new heavyweight champion argued that as a conscientious objector he could not fight. He said that he had no fight with the Vietnamese. It was here in his own country that he was treated as an inferior.

Joe Namath deferred
Mohammed Ali
Joe Namath Deferred

US Department of Army review

On March 20, 1964, the Army stated: “The Department of the Army has completed a review of Cassius Clay’s second pre-induction examination and has determined he is not qualified for induction into the Army under applicable standards.” The Army had given Ali a second test after it was determined that the results of his initial test were inconclusive. Ali’s response was, “I just said I’m the greatest. I never said I was the smartest.”

Joe Namath Deferred

Joe tested

More than a year later, on September 15, 1965 Joe Namath took his Army physical. Three months later, on December 9, 1965 the Draft Board classified Joe Namath 4F and ineligible for the draft.

Nevada Daily Mail December 9, 1965 >>> Namath 4F

Joe Namath Deferred

Ali re-evaluated

On February 12, 1966, the Louisville, KY draft board re-classified Muhammad Ali as 1-A. With the notion that Joe Namath’s knee issues would be a hazard to his fellow soldiers and that the Army didn’t have the proper medical for him that the NFL obviously did rang false with Ali and others. It is easy to see how Ali challenged the re-classification as politically motivated.

Deseret News, May 10, 1966 >>> Army Can’t Afford Joe Namath

Joe Namath Deferred

Joe in his own words

The good Lord works in strange ways. I failed three military physicals. The surgeon general had to read a report to Congress that I was 4F, because I was still playing pro football. The way he put it was that being in sports, you have doctors and trainers around the whole time. In the military, your comrades are counting on your performance and you don’t have doctors around you all the time. If something happens to a soldier, they are putting the other soldiers in jeopardy. I simply wasn’t fit for it. (entire AQ article)

Three years later, in 1969, Namath led his NY Jets to a Super Bowl championship and as happened to many famous people of that time, Ed Sullivan invited him to his show.

Ali continued to challenge his re-classification. In 1971, the Supreme Court’s 1971 decided in his favor.

Joe Namath Deferred

Ali back

And on October 30, 1974, Ali fought the reigning champion George Foreman in an outdoor arena in Kinshasa, Zaire. Known as the “Rumble in the Jungle.”  Ali defeated Foreman and after seven years reclaimed the title of Heavyweight Champion of the World.

By then, American involvement in the Vietnam war had ended.

Joe Namath Deferred
Beatles, John Lennon, Today in history

John Lennon Too Soon Gone

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John Lennon Too Soon Gone

John Lennon Too Soon Gone
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1980

Too Soon Gone

For the parents of Boomers, December 7 is the day that would live in infamy.

For Boomers, we all know where we were crying on December 8, 1980 after hearing that Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon five times and killed him.

Too Soon Gone.

Earlier that day on an ignorantly innocent morning, Rolling Stone photographer Annie Liebowitz had met John and Yoko to take a portrait. One of the most photographed couples in history posed for another historic photo.

Historic in too many ways.

John Lennon Too Soon Gone

John Lennon Too Soon Gone

Annie Liebowitz

Liebowitz recalled years later that Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner “never told me what to do, but this time he did. He told me, ‘Please get me some pictures without [Yoko].’ Then I walk in, and the first thing [Lennon] says to me is ‘I want to be with her.'” An angry Liebowitz reluctantly agreed to John’s request, and the image she captured proved to be one of her most famous—one that Lennon told her on the spot had “captured [his] relationship with Yoko perfectly.”

John Lennon Too Soon Gone

Crowd Gathers

From the NY Times: A crowd began to gather at West 72d Street and Central Park West immediately after John Lennon…was shot and killed last night. Some of the first people to gather were eyewitnesses to the murder. Others had been only a block away. (NYT article)

John Lennon Too Soon Gone

Jimmy Breslin

NY newspaper writer Jimmy Breslin was famous not only for his excellent writing, but for the perspective his columns took. For John Lennon, he spoke to the cops who arrived at the scene. Here is his December 9, 1980 piece that appeared in the NY Daily News. [Thank you to distant kindred spirit Jean Van White for the link]

That summer in Breezy Point, when he was 18 and out of Madison High in Brooklyn, there was the Beatles on the radio at the beach through the hot days and on the jukebox through the nights in the Sugar Bowl and Kennedys. He was young and he let his hair grow and there were girls and it was the important part of life.

Last year, Tony Palma even went to see Beatlemania.

And now, last night, a 34-year-old man, he sat in a patrol car at 82nd St. and Columbus Ave. and the call came over the radio: “Man shot, 1 West 72 St..”

Palma and his partner, Herb Frauenberger, rushed through the Manhattan streets to an address they knew as one of the most famous living places in the country, the Dakota apartments.

Another patrol car was there ahead of them, and as Palma got out he saw the officers had a man up against the building and were handcuffing him.

“Where’s the guy shot?” Palma said.

“In the back,” one of the cops said.

Palma went through the gates into the Dakota courtyard and up into the office, where a guy in a red shirt and jeans was on his face on the floor. Palma rolled the guy over. Blood was coming out of the mouth and covering the face. The chest was wet with blood.

Palma took the arms and Frauenberger took the legs. They carried the guy out to the street. Somebody told them to put the body in another patrol car.

Jim Moran’s patrol car was waiting. Moran is from the South Bronx, from Williams Ave., and he was brought up on Tony Bennett records in the jukeboxes. When he became a cop in 1964, he was put on patrol guarding the Beatles at their hotel. Girls screamed and pushed and Moran laughed. Once, it was all fun.

Now responding to the call, “Man shot, 1 West 72,” Jim Moran, a 45-year-old policeman, pulled up in front of the Dakota and Tony Palma and Herb Frauenberger put this guy with blood all over him in the backseat.

As Moran started driving away, he heard people in the street shouting, “That’s John Lennon!”

Moran was driving with Bill Gamble. As they went through the streets to Roosevelt Hospital, Moran looked in the backseat and said, “Are you John Lennon?” The guy in the back nodded and groaned.

Back on 72 St., somebody told Palma, “Take the woman.” And a shaking woman, another victim’s wife, crumpled into the backseat as Palma started for Roosevelt Hospital. She said nothing to the two cops and they said nothing to her. Homicide is not a talking matter.

Jim Moran, with John Lennon in the backseat, was on the radio as he drove to the hospital. “Have paramedics meet us at the emergency entrance,” he called. When he pulled up to the hospital, they were waiting for him with a cart. As Lennon was being wheeled through the doors into the emergency room, the doctors were on him.

“John Lennon,” somebody said.

“Yes, it is,” Moran said.

Now Tony Palma pulled up to the emergency entrance. He let the woman out and she ran to the doors. Somebody called to Palma, “That’s Yoko Ono.”

“Yeah?” Palma said.

“They just took John Lennon in,” the guy said.

Palma walked into the emergency room. Moran was there already. The doctors had John Lennon on a table in a trauma room, working on the chest, inserting tubes.

Tony Palma said to himself, I don’t think so. Moran shook his head. He thought about his two kids, who know every one of the Beatles’ big tunes. And Jim Moran and Tony Palma, older now, cops in a world with no fun, stood in the emergency room as John Lennon, whose music they knew, whose music was known everywhere on earth, became another person who died after being shot with a gun on the streets of New York.

John Lennon Too Soon Gone

Aftermath

Strawberry Fields Memorial in Central Park, NYC
John Lennon Too Soon Gone

MDC

Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty and remains in prison. In 2000 he became eligible for parole. It was denied and he has continued to request parole every two years (again as permitted) since then. All have been denied.

In 2014 he said, “At that time, I wasn’t thinking about anybody else, just me….But now, you know, obviously through people’s letters and through things I hear a lot of people were affected here. I am sorry for causing that type of pain. I am sorry for being such an idiot and choosing the wrong way for glory.” (USA Today article)

On August 29, 2016, a three-person state parole board panel rejected Chapman’s ninth parole attempt. In part, the panel stated, ““In spite of many favorable factors, we find all to be outweighed by the premeditated and celebrity seeking nature of the crime.”

Also that, “From our interview and review of your records, we find that your release would be incompatible with the welfare of society and would so deprecate that seriousness of the crime as to undermine respect for the law.”

His next parole hearing was August 2018. The Board denied parole again in August 2018 and again in 2020.

 

John Lennon Too Soon Gone