Woodstock Trivia for Seniors
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Woodstock Trivia for Seniors trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Woodstock trivia for seniors quiz is written for people who remember August 1969, whether they were in the mud at Bethel or watching the news reports at home. It covers the basics everyone recalls (whose farm it was, which town it was really in, who opened and who closed the show) and the stories that came out afterwards: how it became a free concert, why Joni Mitchell wrote the song without going, the acts that turned it down, the band that played its third-ever gig there, and the movie that turned the promoters' losses into an Oscar. The questions are pitched for a senior centre quiz, a retirement community social or a family game with grandparents. Most are answerable from memory of the era and the film; a few are there to spark a story. There is nothing here about the harder edges of the weekend, and no lyrics are quoted. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and the artists' own histories, and each question shows its source. All 50 questions are free with no sign-up. Fans who want more can try our main Woodstock trivia page or our 1960s music quizzes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On whose farm in upstate New York was the 1969 Woodstock festival held?
Max Yasgur
Max Yasgur. Neighbours pressed the 49-year-old to cancel and he refused, then told the crowd on day three that half a million young people had proved they could have three days of fun and music and nothing else.
Q 02Despite its name, the 1969 Woodstock festival was held not in Woodstock but in which other New York town?
Bethel
Bethel. The promoters first planned a recording studio in Woodstock itself, an artists' town where Bob Dylan lived, and kept the fashionable name when the festival landed on farmland elsewhere.
Q 03Woodstock opened in mid-August, less than a month after which other headline event of that summer?
The Moon landing
The Moon landing. Apollo 11 touched down on 20 July 1969 and the festival opened on 15 August, then overran so badly that its final act played on the morning of Monday the 18th.
Q 04How was Woodstock billed on its posters?
An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music
An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music. Arnold Skolnick was handed the job on a Thursday and delivered the bird-on-a-guitar poster the following Monday; it became one of the era's most familiar images.
Q 05Why did Woodstock become a free concert?
The fences and ticket booths were never finished
The fences and ticket booths were never finished. Three days out the foremen could complete the fencing or the stage, not both; the stage won, and the promoters came away about $1.4 million in debt.
Q 06Besides a post office box, advance tickets for Woodstock were sold only through which kind of New York store?
Record stores
Record stores. A three-day pass cost $18 in advance and was meant to be $24 on the door, yet hardly anyone paid the door price: most of the half-million crowd simply walked in free.
Q 07Which folk singer opened Woodstock after the scheduled first act was stuck in traffic?
Richie Havens
Richie Havens. With the next acts stuck on jammed roads he was sent back out again and again, and after running out of songs he improvised 'Freedom' around an old spiritual, the number that made his name.
Q 08Who was the last performer at Woodstock, walking on early on Monday morning after most of the crowd had left?
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix. He was the festival's highest-paid act, yet rain delays pushed his set so far back that only a small fraction of the crowd, around 30,000 people, was still there to hear it.
Q 09Which piece did Woodstock's closer famously play with feedback imitating rockets and bombs?
The Star-Spangled Banner
The Star-Spangled Banner. Pundits heard a protest against the Vietnam War, but the guitarist, an Army veteran, shrugged off talk that his version was unorthodox and said simply, 'I thought it was beautiful.'
Q 10Which band was the first major act to sign a contract to play Woodstock, for $10,000?
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Creedence Clearwater Revival. Their signature brought the other big names running, yet they went on after midnight to a sleepy crowd, and John Fogerty thought the set so poor he kept it out of the film.
Q 11Which British band walked on at Woodstock at five in the morning?
The Who
The Who. Their new rock opera was Tommy, released earlier that year; with the schedule running hours late they played it as dawn approached, and Pete Townshend finished by tossing his guitar into the crowd.
Q 12Which little-known Latin-rock band got onto the Woodstock bill because their manager, promoter Bill Graham, insisted?
Santana
Santana. They had no album out and were among the least-known names on the bill, yet their Saturday set, driven by 20-year-old drummer Michael Shrieve on 'Soul Sacrifice', became one of the festival's highlights.
Q 13Which gravel-voiced English singer closed his Woodstock set with a cover of 'With a Little Help from My Friends'?
Joe Cocker
Q 21Which British blues-rock band's marathon 'I'm Going Home', sung by Alvin Lee, was a highlight of the Woodstock film?
Ten Years After
Ten Years After. The 11-minute showpiece was immortalised in the 1970 film, and the band led by the Nottingham-born guitarist saw their popularity in America explode.
Q 22Which singer led the Woodstock crowd in the 'Fish Cheer' before his 'I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag'?
Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald. Pushed out alone to kill time, with a rope for a guitar strap, he was ignored through a whole set until he walked back on and shouted 'Give me an F!'
Q 23Which son of the 'This Land Is Your Land' writer played 'Coming into Los Angeles' at Woodstock?
Arlo Guthrie
Joe Cocker. He turned a gentle singalong into a seven-minute soul anthem, for which its co-writer Paul McCartney said he was forever grateful; his recording later became the theme to The Wonder Years.
Q 14Which singer-songwriter wrote 'Woodstock' without attending, after boyfriend Graham Nash described it to her?
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell. Her manager kept her away so she would not miss a Dick Cavett Show booking, only for acts fresh from the festival to turn up on the same programme; she wrote the song in a New York hotel room from the TV news.
Q 15Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's version of the song 'Woodstock' appeared on which 1970 album?
Déjà Vu
Déjà Vu. The band's rocked-up version came out a month before the songwriter's own sparse recording and became the one America knows, reaching number 11; another take of it plays over the closing credits of the Woodstock film.
Q 16What did Stephen Stills tell the Woodstock crowd at CSNY's second-ever live show?
'We're scared shitless'
'We're scared shitless'. It was only the quartet's second concert, played around 3 a.m. on the final night; Neil Young refused to be filmed, which is why the famous footage shows only his three bandmates.
Q 17Which director debuted with the Oscar-winning 1970 Woodstock documentary?
Michael Wadleigh
Michael Wadleigh. With the film deal struck only days before the festival, he hastily assembled a crew and shot some 120 miles of footage, which seven editors then cut down to a three-hour feature.
Q 18Which future Oscar-winning director worked as an editor on the Woodstock film?
Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese. He was a recent NYU film graduate with a handful of credits, and the job paired him with fellow editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who earned an Oscar nomination for it and went on to cut his own films for decades.
Q 19Which Canned Heat song became the unofficial theme of the Woodstock film?
Going Up the Country
Going Up the Country. The hippie anthem was really a 1928 blues in disguise: record-collecting singer Alan Wilson took the tune from Henry Thomas's obscure 'Bull Doze Blues' and wrote new words for it.
Q 20Which group brought 1950s doo-wop to Woodstock, playing on the final morning?
Sha Na Na
Sha Na Na. The Columbia University glee-club offshoot had been together only a few months, yet the film's exposure helped spark a 1950s revival that put them in Grease and gave them their own TV variety series.
Arlo Guthrie. In the film he tells the crowd that the New York State Thruway is closed, but the director of the museum on the festival site says the road never was.
Q 24Which folk singer performed at Woodstock while her husband was jailed for resisting the draft?
Joan Baez
Her appearance and the film raised her profile worldwide. Fifty years later she turned down Woodstock 50 because her instincts said no.
Q 25Which singer's 'Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)' was inspired by the Woodstock crowd lighting candles during her set?
Melanie
Melanie. She was so little known that her mother drove her to the festival, yet the song that came out of that night, recorded with the Edwin Hawkins Singers, became her first American top-ten hit.
Q 26Grace Slick called which band's early-morning Woodstock slot 'morning maniac music'?
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane. Last on Saturday's bill, they finally began at about eight on Sunday morning, and two days later they carried the festival onto network television on The Dick Cavett Show.
Q 27Which singer played Woodstock in the small hours with her Kozmic Blues Band but is missing from the original 1970 film?
Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin. She went on at about two in the morning, leaned on songs from a solo album still a month from release and held 'Piece of My Heart' back for the encore.
Q 28Which group of former Bob Dylan sidemen played Woodstock on the Sunday night but appears nowhere in the 1970 film?
The Band
The Band. They lived in the town of Woodstock itself, yet Robbie Robertson said facing the festival crowd felt like being 'a bunch of preacher boys looking into purgatory'.
Q 29Which hard-rock band, known for 'Mississippi Queen', played only its third-ever gig at Woodstock?
Mountain
Mountain. Forty years later guitarist Leslie West came back for the anniversary concert on the same site and got married on stage, walking his bride under a canopy of raised electric guitars.
Q 30Which former Lovin' Spoonful frontman went to Woodstock as a spectator and was pushed on stage to play an unscheduled acoustic set?
John Sebastian
John Sebastian. Organisers needed one man and a guitar to fill a gap, and his rambling set still made the film; in 1976 he topped the American chart with the theme to Welcome Back, Kotter.