Four decades on, Woodstock has gone wrinkly. Thousands of aging flower children sporting tie-dyed shirts, bandanas and bushy white beards flocked to the site of the legendary music festival at the weekend to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love.

A sell-out crowd of 15,000 made the trek to the famous field on what used to be Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York State — now transformed into a $100million arts centre.

Many of the grey-haired hippies had been among the half-million crowd at the festival that ran from August 15 to 18, 1969, when tickets cost $6 a day. This time, the old-timers brought their children and grandchildren to share the experience and tickets to the concert cost between $19 and $69.

Though only a fraction of the size, the anniversary concert was marked by some of the same problems that plagued the original: overcrowded lavatories and ten-mile traffic jams. Yet, instead of wallowing in a sea of mud, the concertgoers this time lolled in lawn chairs rented for $5 each and sipped chardonnay. A bottle of Pepsi at this year’s concert cost $2.50 — in 1969 a glass of water cost 25c. Camping and cameras were banned.

The original Woodstock was one of the defining moments of the tumultuous 1960s — coming just days after the first Moon landing and the murder of Sharon Tate by the followers of Charles Manson.

The weekend-long celebration of peace and love — not to mention sex and drugs — marked the high point of the hippies’ self-proclaimed Age of Aquarius. Sweatshirts at the time proclaimed Woodstock “the Greatest Weekend since the Creation” and with performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, the Grateful Dead, Joe Cocker and Jefferson Airplane — as well as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and a six-months pregnant Joan Baez, it was certainly a religious experience for many music fans.

What Woodstock did was stimulate the taste for weekends of live music and “freedom”, and ever since the format has been slowly refined until it made its way into the mainstream. Festivals have come a long way since the original Woodstock. At Glastonbury this year, while some listened to Bruce Springsteen, the grandaddy of US rock, others were queueing for the merchandising stalls and showers. The more well-heeled visitors were being helicoptered in and out of the site’s VIP sections.

Saturday’s reunion of the “Woodstock generation” brought together half a dozen acts whose members had played the original gig.

Jefferson Starship performed a Jefferson Airplane set, but this time without their lead singer Grace Slick. The other veterans also lacked key personnel: Big Brother and the Holding Company were without their lead singer, the late Janis Joplin; Ten Years After were without Alvin Lee; Canned Heat without Bob “the Bear” Hite; and Tom Constanten appeared without the rest of the Grateful Dead.

The concert was opened by Conrad Oberg, a 15-year-old electric guitarist who played the instrumental version of The Star-Spangled Banner that Hendrix made famous in 1969.

The original atmosphere of peace and love prevailed in the open-air amphitheatre of the Bethel Woods Centre for the Arts, and there was none of the vandalism and arson that marred the 30th anniversary concert, when dozens of fans set fire to an overturned car with peace candles handed out by the organisers.

Sam Yasgur, whose father offered the use of his farm when a permit for the intended venue was denied, told the crowd: “He would have been overjoyed that four decades later, you and hundreds of thousands of others continue to have fun and music, and nothing but fun and music, on this beautiful site.

“He would have said, ‘God bless you all’.”

What they did next

Jimi Hendrix He was supposed to play at midnight on the Sunday of the festival but did not appear until 9am on Monday, by when much of the crowd had gone. Just over a year later he was found dead in his Notting Hill home after an overdose

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young The group disbanded two years after Woodstock. At this year's Glastonbury, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Neil Young played separately

Joan Baez Leaving her relationship with Bob Dylan behind, Baez used the decade after Woodstock to concentrate on humanitarian efforts, founding the human rights group Humanitas International

Santana One of the lowest-paid artists on the Woodstock bill, Carlos Santana made a comeback in 1999, selling 25 million copies worldwide of his album Supernatural and winning nine Grammy awards

Sha Na Na Famed for their gold lamé dinner jackets and bouffant hair, former members departed to new careers, including linguistics professor, sports coach, band manager and Bible studies teacher

Keef Hartley Band Hartley, born in Lancashire, and his jazz-rock band were among the few British artists to play Woodstock. He now has a carpentry business in Preston

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