The Monterey Pop Festival

The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 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.

The Monterey Pop Festival embodied the theme of California as a focal point for the counterculture and is generally regarded as one of the beginnings of the "Summer of Love" in 1967; the first rock festival had been held just one week earlier at Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, the KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival  Because Monterey was widely promoted and heavily attended, featured historic performances, and was the subject of a popular theatrical documentary film, it became an inspiration and a template for future music festivals, including the Woodstock Festival two years later. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner said, "Monterey was the nexus – it sprang from what the Beatles began, and from it sprang what followed."

The festival was planned in seven weeks by John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, record producer Lou Adler, Alan Pariser and publicist Derek Taylor. Monterey and Big Sur had been known as the site for the long-running Monterey Jazz Festival and Big Sur Folk Festival; the promoters saw the Monterey Pop festival as a way to validate rock music as an art form in the way in which jazz and folk were regarded. The organizers succeeded beyond all expectations.

The artists performed for free, with all revenue donated to charity, except for Ravi Shankar, who was paid $3,000 for his afternoon-long performance on the sitar. Country Joe and the Fish were paid $5,000, not by the festival itself, but from revenue generated from the D.A. Pennebaker documentary. The artists did however have their flights and accommodation paid for. Apart from Shankar, each act was given up to 40 minutes for their performance. Several ended their sets earlier, including the Who, who played for only 25 minutes.

The Performers

Jefferson Airplane

With two huge singles behind them, Jefferson Airplane was one of the major attractions of the festival, having built up a large following on the West Coast.

The Who

Although already a big act in the UK, and now gaining some attention in the US 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 ending up 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.[page needed] 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."[citation needed] 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

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. 

Big Brother and the Holding Company (Janis Joplin)

Monterey Pop was also one of the earliest 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 "SatisfactionThe festival would be one of his last major performances. He died six months later in a plane crash at the age of twenty-six.

Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar was another artist who was introduced to the U.S. at the festival. The Raga Dhun (Dadra and Fast Teental) – which was later miscredited as "Raga Bhimpalasi" – an excerpt from Shankar's four-hour performance at the festival, concluded the Monterey Pop film. Shankar's set began in the afternoon following a rainy morning, and the audience filled the arena to about 80% capacity. All other musical acts played to a packed house.

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 biggest 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".

Performance Sets

Friday, June 16 (evening)

The Association
The Paupers
Lou Rawls
Beverley
Johnny Rivers
Eric Burdon and The Animals
Simon & Garfunkel

Saturday, June 17(afternoon)

Canned Heat
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Country Joe and the Fish
Al Kooper
The Butterfield Blues Band
The Electric Flag
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Steve Miller Band

(evening)

Moby Grape
Hugh Masekela
The Byrds
Laura Nyro
Jefferson Airplane
Booker T. & the M.G.'s
The Mar-Keys
Otis Redding

Sunday, June 18 (afternoon)

Ravi Shankar

(evening)

The Blues Project
Big Brother and the Holding Company
The Group With No Name
Buffalo Springfield
The Who
Grateful Dead
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Scott McKenzie
The Mamas & the Papas