Woodstock 99 was held July 22–25, 1999 at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York. Promoted by Michael Lang (co-creator of the original festival) and John Scher, the event was intended to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Woodstock 1969 with a similar spirit of peace and music.
What followed was a catastrophic failure. Held on miles of old concrete tarmac in brutal summer heat, with inadequate water, overpriced food ($4 water bottles), and poor sanitation, conditions rapidly deteriorated. By the end of the festival, fires had been set, stages were torn apart, and reports of sexual assault emerged from the crowd.
The performers at Woodstock 99 included Limp Bizkit, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews Band, Korn, and many others. The festival drew approximately 225,000 attendees.
Woodstock 99 is widely seen as the antithesis of the original 1969 festival — a commercial enterprise that exploited the Woodstock brand while failing to capture any of its spirit. The Netflix documentary "Trainwreck: Woodstock 99" (2022) examines what went wrong.