R.I.P.: John Morris, Helped Organize The Original Woodstock

John Morris (1939-2023)

John Morris, who helped organize the historic 1969 Woodstock Festival of Art and Music, died Friday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., his family confirmed to The LA Times. He was 84.

Morris died after dealing with a long illness — he suffered from COPD for years and had previously battled cancer.

“One of the things that I always loved most about John is that he was one of the most egalitarian people you would ever meet. He would think nothing of putting a plumber next to the Queen of England at a dinner party and it would be fun — that’s just the way he was. He saw people for who they were,” Luzann Fernandez, Morris’ partner of 33 years, told The Times.

Morris at Woodstock

“He was an adventurer, I had amazing adventures with him. He had a great sense of humor. I used to love teasing him about how he was semi-famous,” Fernandez continued. “He had friends all over the world from all walks of life and he always stayed in touch.”

Before joining the organizing committee for Woodstock, Morris worked as a rock concert producer for notable acts such as Jefferson Airplane, the Doors and the Grateful Dead. He worked alongside Bill Graham — the acid-tongued concert promoter who championed rock acts during San Francisco’s psychedelic era and went on to play a leading role in pop music’s emergence as a cultural force.

Morris produced the San Francisco-based Jefferson Airplane’s first East Coast tour and helped them go on their first European tour, accompanied by the Jim Morrison-led Doors. After spearheading those tours, Morris put together shows at New York City’s Anderson Theatre, one of the first downtown rock halls in the city. He then began working at Graham’s NYC rock venue, the Fillmore East, which opened in 1968. There, Morris produced shows for Janis Joplin and B.B. King.

Due to the success of his many gigs, Morris was tapped to be the head of production for the Woodstock festival and served as one of the de facto MCs of the program. He notably made the public address announcement that Woodstock had converted into “a free concert.”