Fact #31841
When:
Short story:
The third and final day of the Monterey Pop Festival is held in Monerey, California, USA, featuring The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who, The Blues Project, Dionne Warwick, The Impressions, Johnny Rivers, The Mamas And The Papas.Full article:
Al Marks (guitarist, among audience) : You could walk up to people like Brian Jones, Mickey Dolenz, and Mama Cass and just talk to them.
John Phillips (Mamas and Papas) : When we had called Jimi Hendrix in London, no-one in the States knew who he was yet. He was playing as Jimmy James And The Blue Flames at The Café Wha? the first time I saw him, and then I'd seen him in London in November (1966) as The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Then, when I talked with Brian Jones before Monterey, he told us the same thing McCartney and Andrew Oldham had said: 'You've got to have this guy - he's tearing Europe to pieces.'
Chet Helms (Family Dog Productions) : Hendrix was walking along the road outside the gate, with his guitar case, headed into the fairgrounds. We stopped and gave him a ride, and he and I exchanged hellos, and then proceded into the Festival.
Mitch Mitchell (bassist, JHE) : Monterey was the first American gig. It must have been amazing from Hendrix's viewpoint. The band had formed in '66 and eight months later Hendrix is headlining a festival before thousands of people.
Roger Daltrey (vocalist, The Who) : The dressing rooms at Monterey were under the stage and one memory that will live with me forever is of sitting under there with Jimi during the change-over between two acts. Jimi was playing Sgt Pepper on his guitar but, and this was the amazing thing, he was playing all the parts. He would go from a bit of orchestration, to a vocal part, to a solo - the whole thing on one guitar, and he was accompanied by me, Mama Cass, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and a bunch of other rockers, all of us banging on anything that came to hand. I'll never forget that.
THE BLUES PROJECT
Henry Diltz (rock photgrapher) : It was great to see them play in front of such a large audience on the West Coast, and give the California hippies a real taste of New York underground white-boy blues.
The Mamas And The Papas
Ravi Shankar : There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - they looked so good together.
John Phillips (Mamas And Papas) : After the concert itself, I was so exhausted. Michelle was a great part of that concert also. Should have been a co-producer, actually. She worked Night And Day for months.
Michelle Phillips (Mamas And Papas) : By the Monterey Pop Festival, we knew it (The Mamas And The Papas) was over. We hadn't rehearsed in four months. Denny turned up twenty-five minutes before we went on stage and it sounds like it.
John Phillips : It took us three months to put it together and we had no rehearsals or sang at any time during that three-month period. Denny was in the islands and he showed up ten minutes before we were supposed to go on stage. We thought he wouldn't show up at all. I thought we sounded really bad that night, which was a letdown for me, because after all the work we put into it, I wanted it to sound wonderful and it didn't.
Michelle Phillips : That night, I found out I was pregnant and I was more interested in being a mother. John wanted to branch out and wrote San Francisco for Scott McKenzie, Cass wanted to continue singing, so we gave her The Mamas And The Papas' song Dream A little Dream Of Me to record. We stayed together a while longer, but it had always been about a state of mind and, after Monterey, that didn't exist any more.
THE WHO
Chris Stamp (co-manager, the Who) : The Who had barely broken into the American market, so I felt the Monterey exposure would be great. Everyone was blissed out – even the local cops had flowers in their hair. We truly felt we were at the beginning of a great movement towards change. It certainly changed my life, and The Who's.
Pete Townshend : Over in England, the LSD revolution was much more politicized at the time than it was in San Francisco. It was smaller and very cliquey. We were very surprised when we went to Monterey at how wet everybody appeared to be. Kind of emotionally wet. They were using those borrowed, secondhand catch-phrases. You know, "Peace and love." People were spray-canning it on the walls. But they were still beating the shit out of one another.
Over in England, there were people like Tariq Ali and Richard Neville of the Oz magazine and the International Times. So it was much harder. Monterey did change the way we thought because we didn't like the atmosphere there. All the same, my wife and I, who was then my girlfriend, we did meet a lot of people at Monterey who are still our friends today.
Pete Townshend : I took Karen with me - we weren't married then, and the famous Owsley showed up. He's The Grateful Dead's sort of road manager and drug producer. He was on the research team that invented LSD and knew how to make it and used to make his own brand called STP which was much more powerful ... and it was bloody terrible. I mean, you wouldn't believe it. I mean I had to … You know when they say under Japanese torture occasionally sometimes if it's horrific enough the person actually gets the feeling that they're leaving their body. In this case I had to do just that, abandon my body, there's no doubt about it, that's exactly what happened. I said, "Fuck this, I can't stand any more." And I was free of the trip. This is really the truth, right.
And I was just floating in mid-air looking at myself in a chair, for about an hour and a half. And then I would rest and I would go back in again and it would be the same. And I was just like zap, completely unconscious as far as the outside world was concerned, but I was very much alive, in that, you know, like alive, crawling alive. Anyway, the thing about STP as distinct from LSD is the hump, the nasty bit. It goes on for about sixteen hours rather than ten. And just to walk or just to do anything fundamentally organic is very very tricky.
But eventually it tailed off and then you get like, instead of a night's lovely planning it, nice colourful images, you get about a week of it, and you get a week of trying to repiece your ego, remember who you were and what you are and stuff like that. So that made me stop taking psychedelics.
John Entwistle (bassist, The Who) : The guy that was doing road management for Hendrix used to be our road manager and he told us about the plot where Hendrix was going to go on first and steal out act. We were pretty pissed off about that. I know Keith was and Pete was. I mean, Pete will now look back … he looks back favourably on Hendrix … but at the time Hendrix was being an asshole and so was his manager, Chas Chandler.
Henry Diltz : Backstage, Townshend and Hendrix had been going back and forth about who should follow whom. John Phillips finally resolved the issue by flipping a coin. The Who lost, which is why they came out and played with such a vengeance,
Pete Townshend : They wanted to know what was gonna come first, and we couldn't really decide. I said to Jimi 'Fuck it, man, we're not going to follow you on.' He said 'Well, I'm not going to follow you on.' I said 'We are not going to follow you on and that is it.'
Brian Jones was standing with me, and Jimi started to play. He stood on a chair in front of me and he started to play this incredible guitar, like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit'. And then he snapped out of it and he put the guitar down and said 'OK, let's toss a coin'. So we tossed a coin and we got to go on first. He went on immediately after us. Jimi said 'If I'm gonna follow you, I'm gonna pull out all the stops.'
John Entwistle : Monterey was kind of a non-event for me. I hated every minute of it once we were onstage.
Country Joe McDonald : Watching a rock band, you didn't expect that to happen. [Keith Moon's] Drumsticks flying in the air, arms flying all over the place, microphone stands and equipment being thrown down. It was kind of a combination of wrestling and music.
John Phillips : The Who knew how good Jimi was and wouldn't be outdone, so they blew the entire stage up with bombs and fireballs and things. That's why Jimi burned his guitar and made love to his amp.
Eric Burdon [The Animals] : When The Who began smashing up the stage, which in America I suppose was a taste of brutal theatrics, Bill (Graham) was right in the middle of the melee, thinking it was a terrorist attack of some sort. I was standing right there and I could see the look of horror on everybody's faces. I think maybe that particular incident made Bill wake up and realize what he already knew. A little peace and brown rice may be all right, but there was still a monster running amok, and it was still alive and kicking. That fascism was still bubbling under.
Al Kooper : Everybody had dressing rooms. I knew The Who then and was very close to them. As a matter of fact I went into their dressing room after the set and asked Townsend if everything was OK. There was some politics about who was going to go on first because they were both smashers of guitars. The Who went on first, and Hendrix said to himself, 'let him bang his guitar. I'll set mine on fire.' (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jimi Hendrix EXPERIENCE
Barry Goldberg (keyboardist, Electric Flag] : I saw Jimi, and he called over to me, 'Hey Piano Man,' that's what he called me. 'What's happening?' 'You are!' I remember that like it was yesterday. Shortly afterwards I wrote a tribute song with Michael Bloomfield about Hendrix, 'Jimi The Fox' and we did it on our album 'Two Jews Blues.' Later, when Jimi and Buddy Miles did 'Band Of Gypsys,' Jimi told Buddy how much he really liked our song about him. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jerry Wexler (co-owner, Atlantic Records) : Before the psychedelic phase, Jimi was playing with King Curtis and around New York. At Monterey I'm in the wings when Jimi walked up to me just as he was going on stage, and now he is in full psychedelia regalia in feathers and a costume. And, he looks at me, and almost apologetically, runs his hands all over himself and days, 'Hey man, this is just show business.' Because of his outfit. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jim Marshall (photographer) : I'd met Jimi a year before in Greenwich Village with Johnny Hammond, but didn't photograph him. Then I met him at Monterey and said, 'Hey, man, my name is Jim Marshall, I'm taking pictures, is that cool? He said, 'Yeah, man, this shit is supposed to be. The dude makes my amplifiers is called Jim Marshall.' I go, 'I know that.' He says, 'Well, what you don't know is that my middle name is Marshall.' So that was pretty far out. We were both tweaked on a little acid. It was like, 'Hey, wow.'
Peter Pilafan : He took two hits of Monterey Purple just before he went on.
Danny Fields (publicist) : The Who had just brought the audience to its feet and I was backstage afterwards with, standing with Peter Townshend, and they announced Jimi Hendrix, and Peter said, 'Wow, come on, you've got to see him. I worship him. I sit at his feet.'
Eric Burdon : You had two expressions of violent action on that stage at Monterey. Although the actions were the same, they amounted to totally different statements. One was brutality, rape, and one was erotic. I saw Jimi Hendrix take the stage flashing to the max and almost transgress from male to female while the music still remained male.
Peter Tork : Jimi followed The Who onto the stage and there were these two destructo rock groups, and I said, ya know, c'mon! I saw Jimi flame out on his guitar, but that was just done. What's the big deal? But Mickey (Dolenz) picked up on it.
Steve Miller : I first met Jimi at the Monterey Pop Festival. We had jammed a little bit the night before, but I had never seen or heard Jimi play with his trio. By luck, I was hanging out with Jimi backstage before he went on. He was pretty wound up. I thought he was high on acid, and I wondered how he was going to pull it off. The Who had just done their thing, and the audience was in shock. No one had ever seen a band tear up its equipment like that before, and the stage was a mess. A lot of equipment had been broken, and mic lines and monitors weren’t working. Everything had to be reset, and there was a long wait and lots of confusion.
I was immediately amazed when he opened with “Killing Floor.” I had heard Wolf and Hubert play it so many times in Chicago, and when I saw what Jimi did to it, it was as if what I had been trying to do for years suddenly became perfectly clear. I immediately understood what I had been longing and searching for. I was hurt for a moment or two to see someone else jump miles ahead of me, but I got over that feeling by the second chorus, because I was totally caught up in what he was doing. Then, he did “Foxey Lady.” Wow, what a moment. The sound was so deep and powerful and free. Then came “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was so cool and smart because it expanded everything and included even more of what everyone was thinking and feeling. “Rock Me Baby” has always been one of my favorite songs, and the way Jimi kicked it was so much fun. It was what Chicago blues needed to become. “Hey Joe” was next. “Hey Joe”? What the hell? It was suddenly a really great piece. “Can You See Me” was followed by “The Wind Cries Mary,” which was so soulful and so beautiful, and then “Purple Haze” and “Wild Thing.” Only nine songs, and everything in my musical world had been sorted out and a way to the future clearly shown. It was so great to hear these songs delivered in such a beautiful, energetic way by such a soulful performer.
When Jimi decided to burn the guitar, it was a very awkward and painful thing to watch after such great playing, and I was embarrassed for him. But it happened. It’s not a perfect world, but there were a few minutes there when it was. I was 24 years old that night, and I was fortunate to become friends with Jimi. I saw him play live many times. We got to hang, and I always thought he was the Duke Ellington of the rock world. When he passed at age 27, we lost a universe of musical ideas. He was the greatest master of the Stratocaster, and he did it so simply and clearly. His music is a gift.
(Source : Guitar Player, May 2012)
David Crosby : Here was this guy, he looked completely outrageous. He was dressed more crazedly than any of us, and we were all trying to be as 'out there' as we could. He got up on stage and he could play better than our best guys. And we said 'Oh my God!' And he could do it while he was dancing. And he could do it while he was being completely outrageous.
Paul Body (audience) : Jimi, Mitch and Noel took the stage in their hippy finery. It seemed like they were wearing all of the colors of the rainbow. They jumped straight into Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" and all the while Jimi was playing guitar and smacking his gum. Super cool. They did some blues like 'Catfish Blues' and B.B. King's 'Rock Me Baby.' Done at breakneck speed. He did his English hits like 'Purple Haze' and 'Foxey Lady.' We were hearing a brand new thing. He was writing a whole new book. It was blues from Venus. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jerry Miller (guitarist, Moby Grape) : I saw Jimi and Otis take over the show. Monterey was perfect. I was sitting right in front of Jimi at Monterey. It was wonderful. We sure had a good time. And Jimi got to see me, too. We were both left-handed guitarists.
What Jimi did was that he did the full chord thing. Anybody can play lead a hundred miles an hour. But to do a full package with a three piece, and have the P.A. and the lights. It was his day. It was beautiful. He had it. The sound was right, the color was right. And it was the chords. The Stratocaster and the Marshall amps. It came out with the full body flavor. The Marshall amps gave the bottom a nice hairy bottom and a full six-string blend with meat. The meat and potatoes. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Country Joe McDonald : I first saw Jimi Hendrix at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. He performed with his trio The Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was held in June 1967 at the Monterey Fair Grounds in Monterey, California. It was and is quite an important musical event. I was almost in the front row of the audience with Jimi performed and found him quite entertaining and had the feeling that he would certainly be successful.
(Source : http://gimmeanf.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/jimi-hendrix.html)
Derek Taylor : He was just terrific. I won't throw adjectives around. He looked and performed like an established star, with confidence, subtlety and his brilliance and his kneeling and chuckling and crouching and general weirdness with the lighter fuel were a great coup, and could only have been followed by The Who.
Pete Townshend : I went out to sit with Mama Cass and watch Jimi and, as he started doing this stuff with his guitar, she turned around to me, she said to me, 'He's stealing your act'. And I said 'No, he's not stealing my act, he's doing my act'. And I think that was the thing. For me it was an act, and for him it was something else. It was an extension of what he was doing.
Doug Hastings (Buffalo Springfield] : One of my fondest memories was standing at the side of the stage watching Jimi. I had never seen anyone like him. He was a pretty amazing guitar player, but that was overshadowed by the visceral, animal approach to rock'n'roll he had. I knew it was r'n'b and I knew it was North-West r'n'b, so I knew where he was coming from and recognised some of the things he was doing that were things only Northwest guitar players did. But I didn't know where he was going with it. It was so absolutely overwhelming that it frightened me.
Eric Burdon : This was really the first time Jimi had the chance to play to his own people. So he just went for it. And he had special guitars he was going to sacrifice for the gig that he'd been saving. The afternoon before, he painted them out in the sun.
He looked more and more like a Native American to me as the weekend went on. He started out as a black American on Friday night. Saturday night he was Comanche. By Sunday night, he was an Apache warrior, just out to kill.
Ravi Shankar : I liked the music of Jimi Hendrix, but when he started being obscene with his guitar and started burning it, I felt sad. In our culture, the instrument is something which we respect. What he did was like sacrilege to me.
Scott McKenzie : I saw nothing wrong with Hendrix's stage act. It certainly never offended me. It was very exciting. Some people are finding difficulty distinguishing between deceit and truth.
John Phillips : I was standing in the wings when he brought out a can of Ronson lighter fluid, squirted it all over his guitar, and then lit it. The Monterey Fire Chief was right next to me. The stage was catching fire behind us and I was trying to distract this man wearing the fire helmet, saying, 'Look at the crowd over there, aren't they wonderful?'
Danny Fields (publicist) : Somehow, for me, that night the chemistry was wrong. When I saw him burning his guitar after The Who had done the complete hydrogen bomb number, I thought it was bad theatre.
Jimi Hendrix : I decided to destroy my guitar at the end. It was a painted guitar. I'd just finished painting it that day and was really into it. I had my little rawhide bag on stage, carried everything in it, including kerosene for my lighter, which was given to me by Chas at Christmas.
Nico (Velvet Underground vocalist who kissed Jimi as he left the stage) : He was the most sexual man I ever saw on stage. Even Mick Jagger said so. It was not all the vulgar things he did with his guitar, though I enjoyed it when he burned his guitar at the festival. It was his presence. He was like a cat. He moved elegantly for a man. He was suave.
Michelle Phillips (Mamas And Papas) : I was so embarrassed and shocked. I had never seen anyone so sexually explicit on stage. I had never seen anybody treat their axe like that. We were always so careful about our instruments and when we traveled we had the guitars in the plane with us. And then to see him set fire to the guitar, and to slam it to bits on the stage was very upsetting to me. It was a form of expression that I was not prepared for. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Al Marks (guitarist, among audience) : We watched Jimi's performance and were just blown away. I didn't even want to pick up my guitar again after watching him play. He blew me away.
Sometime after his set, we went backstage and saw him having a conversation with Mitch Mitchell. When he finished, I walked over and said, 'I also play guitar, but as of today I am putting it down.' He laughed in that cool way he had and said, 'Don't put it down. Just practice.' We spoke for about fifteen minutes, talking about guitars and amplifiers.
Jerry Miller (guitarist, Moby Grape) : After his show at Monterey Jimi was signing girls' breasts. They would pull up their sweaters, hand him a tube of lipstick, and he'd sign his autograph. I said to him, 'That looks like a nice job.' (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Steve Stills : Jimi blew me away so bad at Monterey that, through sheer force of personality I just bullied my way past all the security and sycophants to meet him. And he was delighted to meet a Southern boy who knew all the same people from New York and actually knew something about blues. And he was very intrigued by my acoustic guitar playing. So there was a lot to give and take between us. I wasn't that accomplished a payer on electric yet, but all that Travis picking stuff, he was interested to know how all that went, how I made the guitar sound like that on record. I'd tell him, "Well, first you get a 50 year old Martin."
Noel Redding (bassist, JHE) : Bill Graham offered us a Fillmore stint with Jefferson Airplane. We started into the tons of drink and smoke that appeared for the after-gig party.
Rock Scully (Grateful Dead manager) : I helped arrange impromptu jam sessions at the free campground we organised at Monterey College. We set up a stage and, after the shows, the various bands would put on jam sessions. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burdon, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, the Airplane. We hadn't met Hendrix and we didn't know The Who. We got to know them there. We all took acid together and played all night.
Mickey Dolenz (The Monkees] : After the Hendrix show that night, I ended up somehow as this sort of mascot to Jimi and God knows who else. I had acquired instruments, amps, guitars and a generator for electricity, and long after the show was over, and the event had essentially ended, everybody was so pumped up it was tough to go away. And there wasn't anybody who was forcing anyone out of the area. It was this ongoing kind of buzz that was happening, and people would gather in little groups, corners and tents, and keep going. There were jam sessions. I fell in with Jimi. And I sat there with a lot of other people, I wasn't playing, there was no drum set, and people were playing on their knees. It was like 'Kumbiah' in a psychedelic way. We all sat there for hours until the morning. Somehow, I got the idea, and everyone was hungry and thirsty, maybe it was the Boy Scout in me, but I wanted to contribute to the vibe, and I went out of the tent and somehow finding a case of oranges. I lugged this entire case of oranges back to the camp, the tent, and started giving out oranges, like I was 'Little Johnny Orange Seed.' I think I might have also heard at the time that oranges, or orange juice were helpful after an indulgence of chemicals. I later crashed out at the Carmel Inn. (Interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Chet Helms (Family Dog Productions) : Virtually everyone who played on the main stage played in some configuration on the free stage. One jam involved Jimi Hendrix on guitar and David Freiberg on bass, and they played for several hours. We were totally out of our minds on acid, and it was wonderful.
Gary Duncan : Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen were playing real loud. Hendrix walked in, looked over at me and said 'Hey' and I said 'Hey' to him. Then he reached in his pocket, took out this little candy tin, popped the lid and offered me some acid. He had about twenty hits in there, so I took about five and he took the rest. He swallowed them all, I swallowed mine. And we stood there for about fifteen minutes. Then he started smiling at me and I smiled at him, and we went over and played for two or three hours. That was fun. Somebody should have gotten that on tape.
Jorma Kaukonen (bassist, Jefferson Airplane) : It was one of the two times I got to play with Hendrix. There was Jimi, John Cippolina, myself and some other musicians. The thing about jams like this is that some of them are probably more memorable in memory than they would be if the tape existed, because we were just wailing and carrying on.
Chris Stamp (co-owner, Track Records) : It was a great moment historically. There was all sorts of things that happened at Monterey that were the real essence of the time. Monterey was the real monument and statement of the era and of rock'n'roll. It had this generosity of creative spirit from the word go. It was just incredible. Woodstock, which gets all the acclaim, was already the commercial idea. They were already trying to make some bucks.
Boz Scaggs (musician) : A big thing happened when the English bands performed at Monterey. It was a wake-up call to all the San Francisco and LA bands. To see the power of Jimi Hendrix and The Who - what those guys were doing was leaps and bounds ahead of anything anybody was doing in San Francisco.
Ravi Shankar : The Monterey Festival I really liked. There was innocence. When they gave you flowers and said, 'Love and peace' they meant it. But, within two years, I went to Woodstock and things did not go the right way. I saw half a million people rolling in mud. Music was incidental. At most there were five people listening to music.
(Observer magazine, 4 July 2004)
Matthew Bellamy (Muse) : When I was growing up, I didn't know that much about rock. I was more into jazz, blues and classical. But when I was 13, I saw a video of Jimi Hendrix setting fire to his guitar at Monterey. It just totally blew my mind. Both in terms of the theatrical side of live performance, but also the chaos and craziness of his guitar playing. The unpredictable elements of that really changed my perception of music. Up until then, my perception was that everything was very formalized and had to be done a certain way and written down. I didn't really understand improvisation. But Hendrix took improvisation to a different level. He took it outside of actual music; he took it to his lifestyle in the way he dressed and the way he moved the guitar.
(Source : http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/H/Hendrix_Jimi/2010/09/17/15387476.html)
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John Phillips (Mamas and Papas) : When we had called Jimi Hendrix in London, no-one in the States knew who he was yet. He was playing as Jimmy James And The Blue Flames at The Café Wha? the first time I saw him, and then I'd seen him in London in November (1966) as The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Then, when I talked with Brian Jones before Monterey, he told us the same thing McCartney and Andrew Oldham had said: 'You've got to have this guy - he's tearing Europe to pieces.'
Chet Helms (Family Dog Productions) : Hendrix was walking along the road outside the gate, with his guitar case, headed into the fairgrounds. We stopped and gave him a ride, and he and I exchanged hellos, and then proceded into the Festival.
Mitch Mitchell (bassist, JHE) : Monterey was the first American gig. It must have been amazing from Hendrix's viewpoint. The band had formed in '66 and eight months later Hendrix is headlining a festival before thousands of people.
Roger Daltrey (vocalist, The Who) : The dressing rooms at Monterey were under the stage and one memory that will live with me forever is of sitting under there with Jimi during the change-over between two acts. Jimi was playing Sgt Pepper on his guitar but, and this was the amazing thing, he was playing all the parts. He would go from a bit of orchestration, to a vocal part, to a solo - the whole thing on one guitar, and he was accompanied by me, Mama Cass, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and a bunch of other rockers, all of us banging on anything that came to hand. I'll never forget that.
THE BLUES PROJECT
Henry Diltz (rock photgrapher) : It was great to see them play in front of such a large audience on the West Coast, and give the California hippies a real taste of New York underground white-boy blues.
The Mamas And The Papas
Ravi Shankar : There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - they looked so good together.
John Phillips (Mamas And Papas) : After the concert itself, I was so exhausted. Michelle was a great part of that concert also. Should have been a co-producer, actually. She worked Night And Day for months.
Michelle Phillips (Mamas And Papas) : By the Monterey Pop Festival, we knew it (The Mamas And The Papas) was over. We hadn't rehearsed in four months. Denny turned up twenty-five minutes before we went on stage and it sounds like it.
John Phillips : It took us three months to put it together and we had no rehearsals or sang at any time during that three-month period. Denny was in the islands and he showed up ten minutes before we were supposed to go on stage. We thought he wouldn't show up at all. I thought we sounded really bad that night, which was a letdown for me, because after all the work we put into it, I wanted it to sound wonderful and it didn't.
Michelle Phillips : That night, I found out I was pregnant and I was more interested in being a mother. John wanted to branch out and wrote San Francisco for Scott McKenzie, Cass wanted to continue singing, so we gave her The Mamas And The Papas' song Dream A little Dream Of Me to record. We stayed together a while longer, but it had always been about a state of mind and, after Monterey, that didn't exist any more.
THE WHO
Chris Stamp (co-manager, the Who) : The Who had barely broken into the American market, so I felt the Monterey exposure would be great. Everyone was blissed out – even the local cops had flowers in their hair. We truly felt we were at the beginning of a great movement towards change. It certainly changed my life, and The Who's.
Pete Townshend : Over in England, the LSD revolution was much more politicized at the time than it was in San Francisco. It was smaller and very cliquey. We were very surprised when we went to Monterey at how wet everybody appeared to be. Kind of emotionally wet. They were using those borrowed, secondhand catch-phrases. You know, "Peace and love." People were spray-canning it on the walls. But they were still beating the shit out of one another.
Over in England, there were people like Tariq Ali and Richard Neville of the Oz magazine and the International Times. So it was much harder. Monterey did change the way we thought because we didn't like the atmosphere there. All the same, my wife and I, who was then my girlfriend, we did meet a lot of people at Monterey who are still our friends today.
Pete Townshend : I took Karen with me - we weren't married then, and the famous Owsley showed up. He's The Grateful Dead's sort of road manager and drug producer. He was on the research team that invented LSD and knew how to make it and used to make his own brand called STP which was much more powerful ... and it was bloody terrible. I mean, you wouldn't believe it. I mean I had to … You know when they say under Japanese torture occasionally sometimes if it's horrific enough the person actually gets the feeling that they're leaving their body. In this case I had to do just that, abandon my body, there's no doubt about it, that's exactly what happened. I said, "Fuck this, I can't stand any more." And I was free of the trip. This is really the truth, right.
And I was just floating in mid-air looking at myself in a chair, for about an hour and a half. And then I would rest and I would go back in again and it would be the same. And I was just like zap, completely unconscious as far as the outside world was concerned, but I was very much alive, in that, you know, like alive, crawling alive. Anyway, the thing about STP as distinct from LSD is the hump, the nasty bit. It goes on for about sixteen hours rather than ten. And just to walk or just to do anything fundamentally organic is very very tricky.
But eventually it tailed off and then you get like, instead of a night's lovely planning it, nice colourful images, you get about a week of it, and you get a week of trying to repiece your ego, remember who you were and what you are and stuff like that. So that made me stop taking psychedelics.
John Entwistle (bassist, The Who) : The guy that was doing road management for Hendrix used to be our road manager and he told us about the plot where Hendrix was going to go on first and steal out act. We were pretty pissed off about that. I know Keith was and Pete was. I mean, Pete will now look back … he looks back favourably on Hendrix … but at the time Hendrix was being an asshole and so was his manager, Chas Chandler.
Henry Diltz : Backstage, Townshend and Hendrix had been going back and forth about who should follow whom. John Phillips finally resolved the issue by flipping a coin. The Who lost, which is why they came out and played with such a vengeance,
Pete Townshend : They wanted to know what was gonna come first, and we couldn't really decide. I said to Jimi 'Fuck it, man, we're not going to follow you on.' He said 'Well, I'm not going to follow you on.' I said 'We are not going to follow you on and that is it.'
Brian Jones was standing with me, and Jimi started to play. He stood on a chair in front of me and he started to play this incredible guitar, like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit'. And then he snapped out of it and he put the guitar down and said 'OK, let's toss a coin'. So we tossed a coin and we got to go on first. He went on immediately after us. Jimi said 'If I'm gonna follow you, I'm gonna pull out all the stops.'
John Entwistle : Monterey was kind of a non-event for me. I hated every minute of it once we were onstage.
Country Joe McDonald : Watching a rock band, you didn't expect that to happen. [Keith Moon's] Drumsticks flying in the air, arms flying all over the place, microphone stands and equipment being thrown down. It was kind of a combination of wrestling and music.
John Phillips : The Who knew how good Jimi was and wouldn't be outdone, so they blew the entire stage up with bombs and fireballs and things. That's why Jimi burned his guitar and made love to his amp.
Eric Burdon [The Animals] : When The Who began smashing up the stage, which in America I suppose was a taste of brutal theatrics, Bill (Graham) was right in the middle of the melee, thinking it was a terrorist attack of some sort. I was standing right there and I could see the look of horror on everybody's faces. I think maybe that particular incident made Bill wake up and realize what he already knew. A little peace and brown rice may be all right, but there was still a monster running amok, and it was still alive and kicking. That fascism was still bubbling under.
Al Kooper : Everybody had dressing rooms. I knew The Who then and was very close to them. As a matter of fact I went into their dressing room after the set and asked Townsend if everything was OK. There was some politics about who was going to go on first because they were both smashers of guitars. The Who went on first, and Hendrix said to himself, 'let him bang his guitar. I'll set mine on fire.' (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jimi Hendrix EXPERIENCE
Barry Goldberg (keyboardist, Electric Flag] : I saw Jimi, and he called over to me, 'Hey Piano Man,' that's what he called me. 'What's happening?' 'You are!' I remember that like it was yesterday. Shortly afterwards I wrote a tribute song with Michael Bloomfield about Hendrix, 'Jimi The Fox' and we did it on our album 'Two Jews Blues.' Later, when Jimi and Buddy Miles did 'Band Of Gypsys,' Jimi told Buddy how much he really liked our song about him. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jerry Wexler (co-owner, Atlantic Records) : Before the psychedelic phase, Jimi was playing with King Curtis and around New York. At Monterey I'm in the wings when Jimi walked up to me just as he was going on stage, and now he is in full psychedelia regalia in feathers and a costume. And, he looks at me, and almost apologetically, runs his hands all over himself and days, 'Hey man, this is just show business.' Because of his outfit. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jim Marshall (photographer) : I'd met Jimi a year before in Greenwich Village with Johnny Hammond, but didn't photograph him. Then I met him at Monterey and said, 'Hey, man, my name is Jim Marshall, I'm taking pictures, is that cool? He said, 'Yeah, man, this shit is supposed to be. The dude makes my amplifiers is called Jim Marshall.' I go, 'I know that.' He says, 'Well, what you don't know is that my middle name is Marshall.' So that was pretty far out. We were both tweaked on a little acid. It was like, 'Hey, wow.'
Peter Pilafan : He took two hits of Monterey Purple just before he went on.
Danny Fields (publicist) : The Who had just brought the audience to its feet and I was backstage afterwards with, standing with Peter Townshend, and they announced Jimi Hendrix, and Peter said, 'Wow, come on, you've got to see him. I worship him. I sit at his feet.'
Eric Burdon : You had two expressions of violent action on that stage at Monterey. Although the actions were the same, they amounted to totally different statements. One was brutality, rape, and one was erotic. I saw Jimi Hendrix take the stage flashing to the max and almost transgress from male to female while the music still remained male.
Peter Tork : Jimi followed The Who onto the stage and there were these two destructo rock groups, and I said, ya know, c'mon! I saw Jimi flame out on his guitar, but that was just done. What's the big deal? But Mickey (Dolenz) picked up on it.
Steve Miller : I first met Jimi at the Monterey Pop Festival. We had jammed a little bit the night before, but I had never seen or heard Jimi play with his trio. By luck, I was hanging out with Jimi backstage before he went on. He was pretty wound up. I thought he was high on acid, and I wondered how he was going to pull it off. The Who had just done their thing, and the audience was in shock. No one had ever seen a band tear up its equipment like that before, and the stage was a mess. A lot of equipment had been broken, and mic lines and monitors weren’t working. Everything had to be reset, and there was a long wait and lots of confusion.
I was immediately amazed when he opened with “Killing Floor.” I had heard Wolf and Hubert play it so many times in Chicago, and when I saw what Jimi did to it, it was as if what I had been trying to do for years suddenly became perfectly clear. I immediately understood what I had been longing and searching for. I was hurt for a moment or two to see someone else jump miles ahead of me, but I got over that feeling by the second chorus, because I was totally caught up in what he was doing. Then, he did “Foxey Lady.” Wow, what a moment. The sound was so deep and powerful and free. Then came “Like a Rolling Stone,” which was so cool and smart because it expanded everything and included even more of what everyone was thinking and feeling. “Rock Me Baby” has always been one of my favorite songs, and the way Jimi kicked it was so much fun. It was what Chicago blues needed to become. “Hey Joe” was next. “Hey Joe”? What the hell? It was suddenly a really great piece. “Can You See Me” was followed by “The Wind Cries Mary,” which was so soulful and so beautiful, and then “Purple Haze” and “Wild Thing.” Only nine songs, and everything in my musical world had been sorted out and a way to the future clearly shown. It was so great to hear these songs delivered in such a beautiful, energetic way by such a soulful performer.
When Jimi decided to burn the guitar, it was a very awkward and painful thing to watch after such great playing, and I was embarrassed for him. But it happened. It’s not a perfect world, but there were a few minutes there when it was. I was 24 years old that night, and I was fortunate to become friends with Jimi. I saw him play live many times. We got to hang, and I always thought he was the Duke Ellington of the rock world. When he passed at age 27, we lost a universe of musical ideas. He was the greatest master of the Stratocaster, and he did it so simply and clearly. His music is a gift.
(Source : Guitar Player, May 2012)
David Crosby : Here was this guy, he looked completely outrageous. He was dressed more crazedly than any of us, and we were all trying to be as 'out there' as we could. He got up on stage and he could play better than our best guys. And we said 'Oh my God!' And he could do it while he was dancing. And he could do it while he was being completely outrageous.
Paul Body (audience) : Jimi, Mitch and Noel took the stage in their hippy finery. It seemed like they were wearing all of the colors of the rainbow. They jumped straight into Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" and all the while Jimi was playing guitar and smacking his gum. Super cool. They did some blues like 'Catfish Blues' and B.B. King's 'Rock Me Baby.' Done at breakneck speed. He did his English hits like 'Purple Haze' and 'Foxey Lady.' We were hearing a brand new thing. He was writing a whole new book. It was blues from Venus. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Jerry Miller (guitarist, Moby Grape) : I saw Jimi and Otis take over the show. Monterey was perfect. I was sitting right in front of Jimi at Monterey. It was wonderful. We sure had a good time. And Jimi got to see me, too. We were both left-handed guitarists.
What Jimi did was that he did the full chord thing. Anybody can play lead a hundred miles an hour. But to do a full package with a three piece, and have the P.A. and the lights. It was his day. It was beautiful. He had it. The sound was right, the color was right. And it was the chords. The Stratocaster and the Marshall amps. It came out with the full body flavor. The Marshall amps gave the bottom a nice hairy bottom and a full six-string blend with meat. The meat and potatoes. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Country Joe McDonald : I first saw Jimi Hendrix at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. He performed with his trio The Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was held in June 1967 at the Monterey Fair Grounds in Monterey, California. It was and is quite an important musical event. I was almost in the front row of the audience with Jimi performed and found him quite entertaining and had the feeling that he would certainly be successful.
(Source : http://gimmeanf.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/jimi-hendrix.html)
Derek Taylor : He was just terrific. I won't throw adjectives around. He looked and performed like an established star, with confidence, subtlety and his brilliance and his kneeling and chuckling and crouching and general weirdness with the lighter fuel were a great coup, and could only have been followed by The Who.
Pete Townshend : I went out to sit with Mama Cass and watch Jimi and, as he started doing this stuff with his guitar, she turned around to me, she said to me, 'He's stealing your act'. And I said 'No, he's not stealing my act, he's doing my act'. And I think that was the thing. For me it was an act, and for him it was something else. It was an extension of what he was doing.
Doug Hastings (Buffalo Springfield] : One of my fondest memories was standing at the side of the stage watching Jimi. I had never seen anyone like him. He was a pretty amazing guitar player, but that was overshadowed by the visceral, animal approach to rock'n'roll he had. I knew it was r'n'b and I knew it was North-West r'n'b, so I knew where he was coming from and recognised some of the things he was doing that were things only Northwest guitar players did. But I didn't know where he was going with it. It was so absolutely overwhelming that it frightened me.
Eric Burdon : This was really the first time Jimi had the chance to play to his own people. So he just went for it. And he had special guitars he was going to sacrifice for the gig that he'd been saving. The afternoon before, he painted them out in the sun.
He looked more and more like a Native American to me as the weekend went on. He started out as a black American on Friday night. Saturday night he was Comanche. By Sunday night, he was an Apache warrior, just out to kill.
Ravi Shankar : I liked the music of Jimi Hendrix, but when he started being obscene with his guitar and started burning it, I felt sad. In our culture, the instrument is something which we respect. What he did was like sacrilege to me.
Scott McKenzie : I saw nothing wrong with Hendrix's stage act. It certainly never offended me. It was very exciting. Some people are finding difficulty distinguishing between deceit and truth.
John Phillips : I was standing in the wings when he brought out a can of Ronson lighter fluid, squirted it all over his guitar, and then lit it. The Monterey Fire Chief was right next to me. The stage was catching fire behind us and I was trying to distract this man wearing the fire helmet, saying, 'Look at the crowd over there, aren't they wonderful?'
Danny Fields (publicist) : Somehow, for me, that night the chemistry was wrong. When I saw him burning his guitar after The Who had done the complete hydrogen bomb number, I thought it was bad theatre.
Jimi Hendrix : I decided to destroy my guitar at the end. It was a painted guitar. I'd just finished painting it that day and was really into it. I had my little rawhide bag on stage, carried everything in it, including kerosene for my lighter, which was given to me by Chas at Christmas.
Nico (Velvet Underground vocalist who kissed Jimi as he left the stage) : He was the most sexual man I ever saw on stage. Even Mick Jagger said so. It was not all the vulgar things he did with his guitar, though I enjoyed it when he burned his guitar at the festival. It was his presence. He was like a cat. He moved elegantly for a man. He was suave.
Michelle Phillips (Mamas And Papas) : I was so embarrassed and shocked. I had never seen anyone so sexually explicit on stage. I had never seen anybody treat their axe like that. We were always so careful about our instruments and when we traveled we had the guitars in the plane with us. And then to see him set fire to the guitar, and to slam it to bits on the stage was very upsetting to me. It was a form of expression that I was not prepared for. (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Al Marks (guitarist, among audience) : We watched Jimi's performance and were just blown away. I didn't even want to pick up my guitar again after watching him play. He blew me away.
Sometime after his set, we went backstage and saw him having a conversation with Mitch Mitchell. When he finished, I walked over and said, 'I also play guitar, but as of today I am putting it down.' He laughed in that cool way he had and said, 'Don't put it down. Just practice.' We spoke for about fifteen minutes, talking about guitars and amplifiers.
Jerry Miller (guitarist, Moby Grape) : After his show at Monterey Jimi was signing girls' breasts. They would pull up their sweaters, hand him a tube of lipstick, and he'd sign his autograph. I said to him, 'That looks like a nice job.' (interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Steve Stills : Jimi blew me away so bad at Monterey that, through sheer force of personality I just bullied my way past all the security and sycophants to meet him. And he was delighted to meet a Southern boy who knew all the same people from New York and actually knew something about blues. And he was very intrigued by my acoustic guitar playing. So there was a lot to give and take between us. I wasn't that accomplished a payer on electric yet, but all that Travis picking stuff, he was interested to know how all that went, how I made the guitar sound like that on record. I'd tell him, "Well, first you get a 50 year old Martin."
Noel Redding (bassist, JHE) : Bill Graham offered us a Fillmore stint with Jefferson Airplane. We started into the tons of drink and smoke that appeared for the after-gig party.
Rock Scully (Grateful Dead manager) : I helped arrange impromptu jam sessions at the free campground we organised at Monterey College. We set up a stage and, after the shows, the various bands would put on jam sessions. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burdon, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, the Airplane. We hadn't met Hendrix and we didn't know The Who. We got to know them there. We all took acid together and played all night.
Mickey Dolenz (The Monkees] : After the Hendrix show that night, I ended up somehow as this sort of mascot to Jimi and God knows who else. I had acquired instruments, amps, guitars and a generator for electricity, and long after the show was over, and the event had essentially ended, everybody was so pumped up it was tough to go away. And there wasn't anybody who was forcing anyone out of the area. It was this ongoing kind of buzz that was happening, and people would gather in little groups, corners and tents, and keep going. There were jam sessions. I fell in with Jimi. And I sat there with a lot of other people, I wasn't playing, there was no drum set, and people were playing on their knees. It was like 'Kumbiah' in a psychedelic way. We all sat there for hours until the morning. Somehow, I got the idea, and everyone was hungry and thirsty, maybe it was the Boy Scout in me, but I wanted to contribute to the vibe, and I went out of the tent and somehow finding a case of oranges. I lugged this entire case of oranges back to the camp, the tent, and started giving out oranges, like I was 'Little Johnny Orange Seed.' I think I might have also heard at the time that oranges, or orange juice were helpful after an indulgence of chemicals. I later crashed out at the Carmel Inn. (Interview with Harvey Kubernik, 2007)
Chet Helms (Family Dog Productions) : Virtually everyone who played on the main stage played in some configuration on the free stage. One jam involved Jimi Hendrix on guitar and David Freiberg on bass, and they played for several hours. We were totally out of our minds on acid, and it was wonderful.
Gary Duncan : Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen were playing real loud. Hendrix walked in, looked over at me and said 'Hey' and I said 'Hey' to him. Then he reached in his pocket, took out this little candy tin, popped the lid and offered me some acid. He had about twenty hits in there, so I took about five and he took the rest. He swallowed them all, I swallowed mine. And we stood there for about fifteen minutes. Then he started smiling at me and I smiled at him, and we went over and played for two or three hours. That was fun. Somebody should have gotten that on tape.
Jorma Kaukonen (bassist, Jefferson Airplane) : It was one of the two times I got to play with Hendrix. There was Jimi, John Cippolina, myself and some other musicians. The thing about jams like this is that some of them are probably more memorable in memory than they would be if the tape existed, because we were just wailing and carrying on.
Chris Stamp (co-owner, Track Records) : It was a great moment historically. There was all sorts of things that happened at Monterey that were the real essence of the time. Monterey was the real monument and statement of the era and of rock'n'roll. It had this generosity of creative spirit from the word go. It was just incredible. Woodstock, which gets all the acclaim, was already the commercial idea. They were already trying to make some bucks.
Boz Scaggs (musician) : A big thing happened when the English bands performed at Monterey. It was a wake-up call to all the San Francisco and LA bands. To see the power of Jimi Hendrix and The Who - what those guys were doing was leaps and bounds ahead of anything anybody was doing in San Francisco.
Ravi Shankar : The Monterey Festival I really liked. There was innocence. When they gave you flowers and said, 'Love and peace' they meant it. But, within two years, I went to Woodstock and things did not go the right way. I saw half a million people rolling in mud. Music was incidental. At most there were five people listening to music.
(Observer magazine, 4 July 2004)
Matthew Bellamy (Muse) : When I was growing up, I didn't know that much about rock. I was more into jazz, blues and classical. But when I was 13, I saw a video of Jimi Hendrix setting fire to his guitar at Monterey. It just totally blew my mind. Both in terms of the theatrical side of live performance, but also the chaos and craziness of his guitar playing. The unpredictable elements of that really changed my perception of music. Up until then, my perception was that everything was very formalized and had to be done a certain way and written down. I didn't really understand improvisation. But Hendrix took improvisation to a different level. He took it outside of actual music; he took it to his lifestyle in the way he dressed and the way he moved the guitar.
(Source : http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/H/Hendrix_Jimi/2010/09/17/15387476.html)