05/03/2026
Chip Monck turns 87 years old today on March 5, 2026. Happy Birthday Chip! 🎂Chip set a high bar for future festival emcees with his Woodstock 1969 performance.
“Helen Savage, please call your father at the Motel Glory in Woodridge; Helen Savage please call your father at the Motel Glory in Woodridge.” ~ Chip Monck (stage announcements)
Woodstock Master of Ceremonies Chip Monck was originally hired to do the stage lighting, but when the concert was moved to Bethel from Wallkill at the last minute, the stage lighting quickly became a casualty of the move and the original stage lighting was stored under the stage for the duration of the event.
Chip’s talents did not go to waste however; when Michael Lang realized that in the chaos of the final weeks of preparation he had failed to hire an emcee, Chip was nominated! His performance as Master of Ceremonies proved to be just another of the intangible qualities that gave Woodstock its place atop the pantheon of festivals.
Monck began working at Manhattan's Greenwich Village nightclub Village Gate in 1959, lighting comedians and jazz and folk artists, and living in the basement apartment under the club where Bob Dylan eventually wrote "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" on Monck's IBM Selectric typewriter.
He began extensive relationships with both the Newport Folk Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival, lasting eight and nine years, respectively, while continuing to work at the Village Gate. He became friends with Charles Altman of the Altman Lighting Co., repairing equipment and borrowing lighting instruments to improve the stage lighting of the Gate. He began lighting the stage of the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
In 1967, he lit the Monterey Pop Festival, which featured the first major American appearances by Jimi Hendrix and The Who, as well as the first major public performances of Janis Joplin.
Monck's work can be seen in the D. A. Pennebaker film Monterey Pop. That year, he also lit The Byrds at the Hollywood Bowl and his first Rolling Stones concert. The following year, he designed the half-shell stage at the Miami Pop Festival (December 1968), called the Flying Stage, that was one of the festival's two, simultaneously operating main stages. In 1969, he worked with Crosby, Stills and Nash in Europe, and began working with concert impresario Bill Graham, renovating the Fillmore East and Fillmore West theaters.
In 1969, he lit the concert that would define his career and make him a public figure. Monck was hired to plan and build the staging and lighting for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair's "Aquarian Exposition" music festival. Paid $7,000 for ten weeks of work, much of his plan had to be scrapped when the promoters were not allowed to use the original location in Wallkill, New York.
The stage roof that was constructed in the shorter time available was not able to support the lighting that had been rented, which wound up sitting unused underneath the stage. The only light on the stage was from spotlights.
Chip Monck also traveled to the United Kingdom to act as the announcer for the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.
Monck is recognized as the voice announcing sets at the 1970 festival, including the closing, where he can be heard saying, "ladies and gentlemen, The Who" against feedback as they finished their performance.
The 1970 Isle of Wight festival is often referred to as the "British Woodstock" and featured many of the same artists, with a similarly immense crowd estimated at 600,000.
His involvement in the 1970 Isle of Wight festival continued his role in defining major 1960s-70s rock festivals
