Bill Hanley: The Father of Festival Sound

Woodstock

Hanley's work on Woodstock is one of his proudest accomplishments. Rain turned the farm into mud, and the crowd was dangerously oversized. It is said that only two things at Woodstock worked consistently, the water supply and the sound. (Though the revolving stage failed.)

Bill and his crew made the tapes used in the Woodstock album and the movie, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

"It worked very well," Hanley says of the event. "I built special speaker columns on the hills and had 16 loudspeaker arrays in a square platform going up to the hill on 70-foot towers. We set it up for 150,000 to 200,000 people. Of course, 500,000 showed up."

The Woodstock Bins: Bill built his own plywood speaker cabinets that weighed a thousand pounds each, stood 6 feet tall, 4 feet deep, and 7 feet wide, with four 15-inch JBL D140 drivers. The high frequencies were handled by 4x2 and 2x10 multicell Altec Horns.

Amazing Bonus Video...

Joe Cocker Decoded!

Sitting atop his specially built platform, Hanley enjoyed both an excellent view of the Woodstock stage, and the sonic perspective essential for proper live mixing.

But when Procol Harum Lead Singer and Ray Charles sound-alike Joe Cocker delivered his psychedelic rendition of Lennon and McCartney's "A Little Help from My Friends," Bill was confounded.

Achieving Intelligibility is a major part of a sound engineer's job, and Hanley's system was up to the challenge. Good (Shure) mics, McIntosh amplifiers, (Bill was a McIntosh Dealer,) and custom built speakers placed high above the stage, with little chance of echo...But...

“I didn’t have a clue what he was saying!” says Bill.

Now, through the magic of the Internets, we all can understand the deeper, previously hidden meaning of this amazing vocalist's verbosity.

(Cocker's gesticulations, however, remain a mystery, perhaps to be deciphered by some future generation.)