BETHEL, New York, Oct 27 AP - A museum dedicated to Woodstock will rock on even though the US government pulled $US1 million in funding for the memorial to the famous hippie music festival.
Officially the Woodstock museum, due to open next year, is known as the Museum at Bethel Woods. Bethel is the upstate New York town where organisers put on the three-day Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969.
``Our plans haven’t changed,’’ said Ellyn Solis, spokeswoman for the Bethel Woods Centre for the Arts, which is developing the museum as the newest part of its 800-hectare performing arts venue.
Last week, in a mostly party-line vote, federal politicians voted to strip the $US1 million allocation sought by New York Democratic senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer. Bethel Woods has received $US15 million in state funding.
Republican senator John McCain of Arizona tried to capitalise on the controversy over the allocation, running a TV ad that mocks fellow presidential candidate Clinton for the spending proposal.
The ads juxtapose psychedelic images with those of McCain strapped to a bed as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain, a navy pilot, was shot down in 1967 and spent five-and-a-half years in a North Vietnamese prison.
The Woodstock festival was billed as ``three days of peace and love’’ and drew about 500,000 people to the natural amphitheatre on Max Yasgur’s farm.
Aside from the drugs, mud and rain, there were career-defining performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and myriad others. - (INCLUDING …Richie Havens, Santana, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe and The Fish, Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, Sly & The Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, but it would have been better if Joni Mitchell had’ve got there too - showing my age, KK)
The museum is being built on top of the hill near where the stage was located. Thousands of people visit the site each year, where a stone monument is currently the only marker.