Inside the Limited-Edition "Woodstock Experience" Box Set

Part of the Woodstock experience in our photo gallery looking back at the landmark festival comes straight from The Woodstock Experience, an awe-inspiring limited-edition box set from Genesis Publications that features rarely seen shots snapped by Dan Garson — who nabbed a press pass as a 17-year-old Woodstock attendee — as well as images by the fest's photographer Henry Diltz. Shepard Fairey designed the set's cover (as well as Rolling Stone's current cover), and promoter Michael Lang contributed his hand-drawn festival map along with contracts and memos. The set's run is limited to 1,000 copies signed by Lang and Arlo Guthrie, who penned its preface. Check out the full set:

Woodstock Experience the signed, handmade limited edition book of 1,000 copies is available through Genesis Publications

• Rolling Stone's Essential Woodstock Coverage

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  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
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  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
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  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
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  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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