Rock legends Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead gave historic performances. In a nation divided over the Vietnam War and shaken by the previous year’s assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, America’s stoned and tie-dyed youth rode a wave of optimism after the US put the first men on the Moon. The hit concert movie Woodstock immortalised the music and the crowds, bringing the festival’s flower power to a global audience. Woodstock was hailed as a cultural watershed for a generation desperate for change. But the reality was very different. Ahead of Woodstock’s 50th anniversary in August, insiders look back on a festival plagued by chaos, confusion, pneumonia, heatstroke and a generation whose naive idealism was pretty short-lived. Afterwards, fires of rubbish burned for weeks and it was years before the land could be returned to agricultural use again.

British rocker Pete Townshend, who headlined Woodstock with The Who, said: “The dream and ideology of rock’n’roll was rooted in the idea that this generation, the ‘Woodstock generation,’ were super-luminaries – but I’ve never agreed with that.

“I always thought that was the biggest crock of **** America has ever come up with.”

Singer Billy Joel, among the crowds at Woodstock, recalls: “I hated it. I think a lot of that ‘community spirit’ was based on the fact that everybody was so wasted.

“Because everybody was so stoned, passing around pot and acid, I walked out and hitched a ride home.” Problems struck long before the first tab of acid was dropped at the festival.

Officially it was billed as The Woodstock Music and Art Fair (An Aquarian Exposition: Three days of Peace and Music). But thanks to a catalogue of troubles, it was actually staged nowhere near Woodstock.

The festival organisers – music lovers Artie Kornfeld and Michael Lang, and investors John Roberts and Joel Rosenman – had never staged a concert before. They had planned the event in Woodstock in upstate New York, but were unable to find a venue there.

They leased an abandoned industrial park in nearby Wallkill, but as legions of long-haired stoners began constructing the largest sound system in history, locals panicked.

Residents threatened to “shoot the first hippie that walks into town,” and the anxious local authority withdrew the festival’s permit only a month before it was due to begin.

Dairy farmer Max Yasgur stepped in, offering his 600-acre farm as an alternate venue, beside White Lake near the small town of Bethel, which is how the Woodstock festival ended up 43 miles from Woodstock.

Days before the opening, as 1,000 workers readied the site, worried town officials withdrew their permits, posting “Stop Work” signs. Organisers tore them down and construction continued.

Yasgur was promised that no more than 50,000 people would attend the threeday leaving the Yasgur who to the festival. In the end, almost half a million music fans turned up to trample his fields.

As concertgoers descended, traffic ground to a halt 20 miles outside town. Thousands abandoned their vehicles and walked the rest of the way. Another half a million were estimated to have given up and gone home.

Gates and fences were toppled by the throng, most entering without paying.

Traffic was so heavy that many bands could not reach the festival.

Folk singer Richie Havens, poised to headline the first night – Friday, August 15 – was persuaded to open the festival at 5pm because he was the only act that had arrived. He performed without his band for three hours, as workers finished building the stage around him.

Every time Havens tried to leave the stage organisers pushed him back on, stalling while a fleet of US Army helicopters was hired to ferry artists to the event.

Five inches of rain fell on Friday night, turning the field into a mud bath. Portable toilets flooded and overflowed.

Drinking water from wells and mobile water tanks proved woefully inadequate for the vast crowds. Food concessions ran out and resupplies could not get through the snarled traffic.

Heavy rains returned at 5pm on Saturday, continuing through the night. Lovin’ Spoonful singer John Sebastian admits he was happily stoned watching the festival, when organisers begged him to perform while they swept rain from the stage.

“It’s frustrating, because you can wake me up any night of the week and I can sing better than I did at Woodstock,” he recalls.

Artist’s fees were capped at $15,000, but dissent spread when word leaked out that Jimi Hendrix was being paid $32,000.

The Who, Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead refused to go on stage on Saturday night unless they were paid in advance: more than $30,000.

A local bank only agreed to loan organisers the money when it looked like the crowd might riot. Ultimately, few artists were paid in full.

Bands played through the night. The Who finished performing rock opera Tommy by sunrise on Sunday.

Their performance had been interrupted when American political activist Abbie Hoffman grabbed the microphone to lecture the crowd.

Pete Townshend hit him on the head with his guitar, yelling: “Get off my stage!” Baking sun followed the rain.After many had contracted pneumonia in the downpours now heatstroke struck.

Many suffered cut feet from broken glass.The water supply was spiked with LSD and many endured bad trips. Emergency hospitals were erected in every spare space, treating 5,000 patients. There were three deaths and eight reported miscarriages.

The portable toilets became unusable. Food was almost impossible to find.

Conditions were so dire that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was poised to call out the National Guard to break up the festival.

Scheduled for three days, Woodstock dragged into a fourth.

Jimi Hendrix, set to headline on Sunday night, took to the stage at 9am on Monday, playing an electric Star Spangled Banner as thousands packed up their mud-drenched belongings.

The crowd left an environmental disaster in its wake. It took months to pick up the rubbish, at a cost of $100,000.

Trash fires burned for weeks. It was years before the land could be used for agriculture again.

Organisers ended up $1.3million in debt, dogged by lawsuits for the next decade.

It took 11 years for them to break even, thanks to royalties from the Woodstock documentary, released in 1970.

Woodstock is most fondly remembered by those who never attended, mythologising it as a moment when America’s innocent youth united dreaming of a better future.

It was not to last. Months later a Rolling Stones concert at Altamont in California descended into a nearriot, with Hells Angels beating fans and stabbing one to death.

It is widely considered the day the Sixties died.

As the Seventies brought the Watergate scandal and the energy crisis, Americans clung to the rose-tinted memory of a Woodstock that seemed more radiant with each passing year.

Yes, many of the performances were great, but only those up front could clearly hear them. Thousands could barely see the stage.

It is a testament to our enduring nostalgia for an idealised Sixties that Woodstock continues to shine as a mirage of love, peace and music, rather than the chaotic, mud-soaked, acidspiked, biohazard it actually was.

In an ironic post script, the 50th anniversary Woodstock concert planned forAugust has been cancelled. Investors said they could not guarantee the “health and safety” of artists and fans.

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