On the same day organizers for the troubled Woodstock 50 event announced they would be relocating their music festival from its initially proposed locations in upstate New York to the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, two of the scheduled highlight performers in Jay-Z and John Fogerty have pulled out from participating.
According to a report shared by Billboard, representatives for Fogerty, who played at the original Woodstock in 1969 as a member of Creedence Clearwater Revival, confirmed the veteran rock guitarist will only plan on performing his previously-announced show at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts in Bethel, NY in on Sunday, August 18th alongside Grace Potter and more. The smaller anniversary-themed concert event is not connected to Woodstock 50, despite taking place at the same area of land where the original Woodstock took place 50 years prior.
A representative for Jay-Z also confirmed that the rap superstar will not participate in the event with its new Maryland location.
It’s worth noting that Fogerty sat right next to Woodstock co-founder and Woodstock 50 organizer Michael Lang during the event’s official lineup unveiling in New York City back in March. In the months since, however, Woodstock 50 has continued to undergo legitimate setbacks ranging from permit denials and location changes to artist cancelations and more, not to mention the event is now less than a month away and tickets have yet to go on sale.
News of Fogerty’s departure from the Woodstock 50 lineup shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as he was one of the first major artists who began to share doubts about the event in the months following its announcement.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate,” Fogerty said to Rolling Stone about the troubled event back in the spring. “I’m just a guy who plays guitar and is ready to show up. It’s not my job to know about the selection of artists or permits. But it’s a shame … They postponed announcing the tickets, and I remember reading a while ago that they didn’t have some of the permits. That just blew my mind. You’d think it would be the first thing you’d do and not the last thing. You got the sense there was some shakiness to this whole thing.”
Woodstock 50’s new location at Merriweather Post Pavilion should be able to accommodate about 32,000 people—a much smaller total than the ~100,000 that was originally expected in the events initially-announced home of Watkins Glen, NY. Tickets for Woodstock 50 at its new location are still not yet on sale, but will be available here “soon.”
[H/T Billboard]
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