Stage Crew
The people who built it and made it work. Bill Hanley's sound system, purpose-built and bigger than anything before it; the towers, the scaffolding and the unfinished turntable stage; the stage announcements about the brown acid and the rain; and the crew who never slept.
Part of Woodstock
18 moments in this segment.
- - The Port-O-San Man. The scene from the Woodstock documentary in which the man servicing the portable toilets explains that one of his sons is at the festival and another is in Vietnam.
- - The Brown Acid Announcement. The original stage warning, archived by the author of a book on the festival's medical operation.
- - It Is a Free Concert From Now On. The stage announcement conceding that the fences were down and Woodstock had become a free festival.
- - Woodstock Stage Announcements - Fifty-Two Minutes. A long compilation of the announcements made across the whole festival: warnings, missing persons, food, medical calls and instructions to the crowd.
- - John Morris Announces from the Stage. Production co-ordinator John Morris addressing the crowd with the festival's practical news.
- - Woodstock Opening Stage Announcements. The very first announcements from the stage, before Richie Havens went on, straight from the festival tapes.
- - Stage Announcements After the Swami and Richie Havens. The public-address channel immediately after the festival's opening invocation and first set.
- - The sound and light towers. A GENUINE 1969 FESTIVAL PHOTOGRAPH of the scaffold towers that carried Bill Hanley's sound system over the Woodstock crowd.
- - Stage Announcements After the Santana Set. Sixteen minutes of the festival's public-address channel: lost persons, medical calls and crowd instructions, recorded straight off the stage tapes.
- - Stage Announcements, Saturday Morning. The morning announcements to a crowd that had slept in the field, from the raw festival tapes.
- - Stage Announcements Around the Jefferson Airplane Set. The morning announcements as the Airplane closed the festival's second day well after sunrise.
- - Stage Announcements Around the Janis Joplin Set. The overnight announcements bracketing Joplin's pre-dawn set.
- - Stage Announcements Around the Johnny Winter Set. Announcements from the after-midnight stretch of the festival's final night.
- - The Hanley Sound memorial. A memorial in Medford, Massachusetts to Hanley Sound, the company that built and ran the Woodstock sound system. A modern photograph.
- - The Original Woodstock Stage Has Been Found. The story of how the timber from the 1969 stage was rediscovered fifty years later.
- - Working backstage at Woodstock. Bill Pratt, one of Bill Hanley's sound engineers, describes the backstage working conditions during a 2019 panel at Bethel Woods.
- - Bill Hanley and the sound system. PBS piece on Bill Hanley, the Boston engineer hired to build a sound system for an unprecedented crowd, and how his setup shaped the recordings.
- - Bill Hanley and the Woodstock Sound Crew Reunion. A Bethel Woods panel with sound engineer Bill Hanley and his crew on building and running the festival's PA.
