If you Google images of Woodstock 1969, you will see pictures of what was really a very poor and inadequate stage area for an event that was always going to be of some significant size. The Woodstock stage was little more than a platform with a couple of loose tarpaulins strung over the top of it. Here’s one example.
At IOW1970, no rainstorm was going to stop the music by driving performers from the stage, nor was it going to destroy any equipment, nor even temporarily short the electrics. Every square inch of stage was enclosed, sheltered under a completely waterproof roof, with walls at the back and sides.
Yes, I know, at one point during the Festival, this roof supposedly caught fire, but look at it, and what it’s made of. To this day, apart from the nameboard, which was later attached to where this rigger is sitting, I don’t know what was up there that could have been flammable enough to produce the flames and smoke that were in some of the press shots.
Perhaps it was just a pyrotechnic effect that went wrong.
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