The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who and Ravi Shankar, the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding to a mass American audience.
WATCH IT HERE, OR IF YOU MISS THE ADS WATCH ON YOUTUBE.
The Association
The Los Angeles-based band the Association with hits such as "Along Comes Mary" and "Never My Love" was the first act to perform at the festival.
Jefferson Airplane
With two huge singles behind them, Jefferson Airplane was one of the major attractions of the festival, having built a large following on the West Coast.
The Who
Although already a big act in the UK, and now gaining some attention in the U.S. after playing some New York dates two months earlier, the Who were propelled into the American mainstream at Monterey. The band used rented Vox amps for their set, which were not as powerful as their regular Sound City amps which they had left in England to save shipping costs. At the end of their frenetic performance of "My Generation", the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and slammed the neck against the amps and speakers. Smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage. During Jimi Hendrix's stay in England, he and the Who had seen each other perform; they were both impressed with and intimidated by each other, so neither wanted to be upstaged by the other. They decided to toss a coin, with the Who performing before Hendrix.
Grateful Dead
Michael Lydon, author of Flashbacks (2003) commented: "The Grateful Dead were beautiful. They did at top volume what Shankar had done softly. They played pure music, some of the best music of the concert. I have never heard anything in music that could be said to be qualitatively better than the performance of the Dead, Sunday night. Jerry Garcia commented on the Who "smashing all their equipment. I mean, they did it so well. It looked so great. It was like, 'Wow, that is beautiful.' We went on. We played our little music. And it seemed so lame to me, at the time. And [Jimi Hendrix] was also beautiful and incredible and sounded great and looked great. I loved both acts. I sat there gape-jawed. They were wonderful." It took some wrangling to get the band, who were suspicious of the commercialism of the Los Angeles faction, to agree to perform; at one point, the Dead threatened to create an alternative festival opposite Monterey Pop.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced the Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Monterey Pop Festival on the evening of Sunday, June 18. Jimi Hendrix's use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, aware of the Who's planned explosive finale, he asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of "Wild Thing", which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike. Robert Christgau later wrote in The Village Voice of Hendrix's performance:
Music was a given for a Hendrix stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour de force. It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire, but the showboating does distract from the history made that night—the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying. Admittedly, nowhere else will you witness a Hendrix still uncertain of his divinity.
Interestingly, an early draft of the lineup had the Experience scheduled to play on the Friday night bill, rather than Sunday. The move could have been made by the organizers discovering the London rivalry between Hendrix and the Who. Fruitless wrangling between the two acts over which would perform before the other was ultimately settled by a coin flip. Hendrix and the Who also had what is sometimes described as a backstage jam session, but Pete Townshend disputes that description: "I've heard Roger talk about it as a jam session, but it wasn't a jam session. It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me. Playing at me like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit.'"
Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin)
Monterey Pop was one of the early major public performances for Janis Joplin, who appeared as a member of Big Brother and the Holding Company. Joplin gave a provocative rendition of the song "Ball and Chain". Columbia Records signed Big Brother and the Holding Company on the basis of their performance at Monterey.
Eric Burdon and the Animals
Eric Burdon changed gears with his performance at Monterey. After three years of playing with the original band the Animals as part of the British Invasion, and the breakup of that band, Eric assembled a new band, a "New Animals", and at the festival, they performed the Rolling Stones' song "Paint It Black", which showcased Burdon's new style: anti-war and hard rock. Monterey affected his career intensely, as later captured in the song he wrote about it.
Otis Redding
Redding, backed by Booker T. & the MG's, was included on the bill through the efforts of promoter Jerry Wexler, who saw the festival as an opportunity to advance Redding's career. Until that point, Redding had performed mainly for black audiences, besides a few successful shows at the Whisky a Go Go. Redding's show, received well by the audience ("there is certainly more audible crowd participation in Redding's set than in any of the others filmed by Pennebaker that weekend") included "Respect" and a version of "Satisfaction". The festival would be one of his last major performances — Otis Redding died only 6 months later, in a plane crash, at the age of 26.
Ravi Shankar
Ravi Shankar was another artist who was introduced to the U.S. at the festival. A dhun based on the raga Panchamse-Ghara (later miscredited as raga Bhimpalasi) concluded the Monterey Pop film. Shankar's set began Sunday afternoon following a rainy morning, and the audience filled the arena to about 80% capacity. All other musical acts played to a packed house. Shankar performed several ragas, two of which were released on the album Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival.
Laura Nyro
A 20-year old Laura Nyro gave one of her earliest performances at the Monterey Pop Festival. Critics at the time were divided in their opinions of her performance, some claiming that the black-gowned Nyro was out of sync with the psychedelic sensibilities of the event. Upon the conclusion of her set, Nyro was upset, claiming to have heard "boos" from the audience and refused to believe otherwise for many years. Her performance was not included in the original film's release. In the mid-1990s, D.A. Pennebaker was assembling an expanded release of the film and reviewed the Nyro footage for inclusion. Revealed on the soundtrack was an audience member saying "beautiful" at the end of the performance, which Nyro had apparently thought was a "boo". Pennebaker contacted Nyro and invited her to a screening of the footage so that she might see for herself but she died before this could be arranged.
The Mamas & the Papas
The Mamas & the Papas closed the festival. They also brought on Scott McKenzie to play his John Phillips-written single "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)". Their set included their hits "Monday, Monday" and "California Dreamin'". The song "Dancing in the Street" was the final song performed at the festival, with Mama Cass telling the audience "You're on your own".