EXCLUSIVES

Words by Steve Wozniak
Images by Frank Carol

Many Mac enthusiasts may not be aware of this, but Steve Wozniak, creator of the Apple II and co-founder of Apple Computer, loves music.

Steve Wozniak has spent millions of dollars of his personal fortune to back concerts and musicians since the founding of Apple. For example, Woz was a major supporter the memorable US Festivals in 1982 and 1983. The inaugural festival in 1982, which was broadcast on the new MTV, included performances from The Police and A Flock of Seaguls.

The 1983 US Festival included INXS, The Clash, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, The Scorpions and Van Halen. Many regard the US Festival as one of the most outstanding concerts of the 80s. MacDirectory special columnist Steve Wozniak tells us about his love affair with music over the years:

"Popular music has been a big part of the lives of many people. It was very important to me from sixth grade on. As a quiet, shy and introverted person, popular music, along with television, was a major source of my insights into personal relationships. In high school, popular music started becoming one of my major sources of philosophical inspiration. This was in the years when you are looking for religion or other sources of an outlook on life.

"The words of a song or a musical instrument technique were things that we'd often talk about. I was more the 'word song' sort of person, influenced by the folk-rock of people like Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie. Steve Jobs and I occasionally talked about this subject and we both concluded that Bob Dylan was more important to us than the Beatles because he had more insightful comments on life and relationships and politics and morals.

"In my time frame, there were a few large rock concert spectacles that seemed to arise very spontaneously. One of these, Woodstock, became very famous because of the movie [of the same] title. Another, Altamont, also gained it's share of notoriety. I did attend some of the "Day on the Green" stadium shows in the 70s. I liked to observe the people and come to quiet resolutions as to what they were like and what brought so many of them to these events. I wondered quietly how many of them might be like myself. "I developed interests and expertise in various types of electronic projects and products. This led me to designing the early computers which were the basis of the start of Apple Computer. Apple kicked off the home computer revolution, and was incredibly successful. A few years later, I had achieved great wealth. After a plane crash I took some time off from Apple, and
returned to college [Berkeley] to finish my degree.

One day I was driving along, listening to some good folk-country music, when I thought that the time was right for another huge concert in a field to come about. It occurred to me that the only way such a thing would happen would be if I did it myself, because most people that had enough wealth to were only going to
pursue more wealth.

"I didn't have the management skills to put together such a huge operation. But I started talking to friends and acquaintances now and then about the idea, and expressed my willingness to sponsor such an event. I met Jim Valentine while looking into a music group (The Joe Sharino Band) to play at my 1981 wedding, and we remain good friends until this day. He had a minor closeness to the music industry, by virtue of the fact that he'd run a nightclub in Santa Cruz. Jim thought that this idea of a huge concert in a field somewhere made sense, and that feedback further inspired me.

"One day Jim told me that he had run the idea past one of the few people he knew that could pull off such a huge endeavor as this concert was to be. That person was Peter Ellis. He had the management skills to do it. I met Peter and told him what I wanted to do and he agreed to do it. I was to kick things off with a check for $2,000,000. Peter was quietly surprised when he showed up for a meeting at my Berkeley apartment and I handed him the check.

"Well, a lot of the planning, including the site search, went on while I attended classes. We lost out on sites that we were interested in, but eventually Peter and his team made contact with some county officials in San Bernardino that were enthused about the idea and who actually worked to help us pull it off.