Monterey Pop Festival
June 16-18,1967
June 16-18,1967
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Above: Scan of some of my ticket stubs from Monterey Pop Festival plus a scan of my original Monterey Pop Festival program. (Other Monterey Pop images were found on Internet.)
Monterey Pop Festival
June 16-18,1967
June 16-18,1967
Much has been said about the Monterey Pop Festival by "Rock Historians."
The trouble is, most of those who have written about it over the years were never there!
Well I was there, and I feel very lucky to have experienced it. Though young at age 15, in many ways I was at the perfect age - the Beatles had broken out in 1964 when I was 12 years old and they changed my life. Three years later, the Pop Festival took place and it continues to have a HUGE impact on my life. Without getting too "high falutin'" or "academic" remember that this was basically the first "major" rock festival in history. I know that today it is hard for many to think that there was a time where there were no rock festivals at all. But rock (or should I say "Rock" with a capital "R") was so new and just starting to gain a major foothold in the national consciousness as the baby boomers were increasingly having their effect on the cultural landscape. It was soon to be a big big business but Monterey Pop was so innocent - all volunteer musicians together for a non profit foundation (except Ravi Shankar who was the only musician to get paid - in the amount of $3500 (about $30,000 in 2022 dollars). Shanker was initially contracted with Pariser and Shapiro who began the Monterey Pop festival project - and who later handed it over to the Adler/Phillips group who honored Shankar's contract but changed the event to all "all volunteer" event where all artists donated their services on behalf of a so-called non-profit.) Of course the 1969 over-hyped and over-rated (by the New York-based media elite) Woodstock got a lot of press and a massive movie and lots of hippies frolicking in the mud in upstate New York, but Monterey Pop was the original.
Note: I'm hoping to add others' memories of the festival here eventually - anybody who was there who can give some personal experiences - particularly those friends who I grew up with in the Monterey Peninsula who were in attendance - some of whom volunteered at the festival. And I hope that the City of Monterey someday will digitize and put online the excellent Monterey Pop Revisited Symposium of 2001 (see below)
Random Stream Of Consciousness Memories Of Monterey Pop (Part 1)
- Saturday afternoon: "Section 43" by Country Joe & The Fish. The crowd was mesmerized. I was, too. A great song delivered perfectly. And the D.L. Pennebaker film Monterey Pop captures it perfectly. The hypnotic vibe that comes across in the movie is exactly how I felt in the audience during this song. A real high point of the festival for me. The original studio recording of the song is a classic and still holds up as an instrumental psychedelic landmark. Very acidic. Very psychedelic. There were very few memorable psychedelic era instrumentals back then; "Section 43" is by far the best.
- More Saturday afternoon reflections. It oddly took me a surprisingly long time to put this in perspective, but Saturday afternoon shows were really heavily weighted towards blues or blues-oriented bands. I just recently looked at the lineup of the eight bands that played Saturday afternoon and was really surprised. Of the eight acts, five were blues or blues-oriented bands: Canned Heat, Electric Flag, Al Kooper, Steve Miller Blues Band, and Charlie Musselwhite. Only Country Joe & The Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother & The Holding Company (with Janis Joplin) would be considered "rock bands." And even Big Brother had a strong blues element to their music, particularly their widely heralded song Ball and Chain which they performed Saturday and again by popular demand on Sunday Night. That song alone and Janis's performance single-handedly helped put her on the national map when the movie Monterey Pop was released. So I had to put up with a ton of blues on Saturday afternoon! And frankly, I don't like blues music! It bores me to death. But I still have idyllic memories of the Saturday afternoon pop festival shows. Perhaps the three acts I really liked so strongly that afternoon - Quicksilver, Country Joe, and Big Brother overshadowed the five blues bands that I didn't care for to the extent that my memory of that afternoon has been altered.
And remember, that Steve Miller of Monterey Pop of June 1967 was not the Steve Miller of 1968 or 1969. In fact he was billed at the "Steve Miller Blues band" for the Pop Festival. His albums Sailor, Children of The Future, and Brave New World that followed the Pop Festival in 1968 and 1969 all contained some innovative great songs. Yes blues or blues-based songs were in some of those albums album but they took a back seat. And of course in the early 70's, Miller turned to the mainstream "pop-rock" side with The Joker and Fly Like An Eagle and Book of Dreams. I personally prefer Miller's late 60's era music though there were some memorable hits later - along with some horrible songs that (especially "Abracadabra" - yecch! talking about scraping the bottom of the barrel!)
- It just occurred to me that about a year later Jefferson Airplane released the song "Saturday Afternoon" on the album After Bathing At Baxters. I wonder if there is any inspiration from that Saturday afternoon at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Airplane performed in the Saturday night show and were probably in the audience that Saturday afternoon ... I've always assumed that the lyrics were a dreamy reference to tripping on a Saturday in Golden Gate Park - but maybe the Pop Festival also influenced the creation of the song. Here are the Airplane's lyrics to "Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon" (written by the late great Paul Kantner):
Saturday afternoon
Yellow clouds rising in the noon
Acid, incense and balloons
Saturday afternoon
People dancing everywhere
Loudly shouting "I don't care!"
It's a time for growing
And a time for knowing love
- "Somebody To Love" - the opening song that the Jefferson Airplane started their set with on Saturday night. I remember the "intermission" before they played - the stage is dark but if you pay attention you see flashlights and roadieis moving around equipment in the dark preparing for the next band. There was no stage "curtain" and between most bands the stage was typically lighted and you would see roadies and techs moving amps and equipment around - but this time I remember the stage was lighted for a while as equipment was moved around and then the stage went dark for a long time. The crowd got a little excited and nothing happened... so the crowd goes back to talking and milling around mode..... people are going to concession stands etc .... at this point most of the audience is not really very focused on the stage .... but I'm watching everything.... I see some flashlights on the dark stage and then what looks like a reflection of an electric guitar or two or three .... then more of a delay.... FINALLY THE SILENCE IS BROKEN with Grace's voice the just hits the crowd like a lightning bolt: "When The Truth Is Found .... To Be Lies" .... the band starts up powerfully AND THE CROWD GOES WILD! The audience has been taken totally by surprise with a stealth start to the song "Somebody To Love." It was completely thrilling; you had to be there; I still get goosebumps thinking back about this moment.
- Sadly, despite that initial thrill, the Airplane show turned out to be a little disappointing to me; I knew their first two albums backwards and forwards and the sound system could not reproduce their songs adequately. That was the state of 1967 technology. Plus, and I'll never forget this, Jorma's solo was horrible! Now Jorma Kaukonen is a major talent and a very likeable person - I had the chance to hang out with him a bit at the Monterey Pop Revisited event in 2001 - but that is another story. I was disappointed because he did more of a spur of the moment improvised solo that had elements of the original but not nearly enough - it was very disappointing to me because that is such an iconic guitar solo. That was typical of shows in that era - many bands didn't want to reproduce the exact recordings - that was not cool enough for their free spirits. So to me the song fell flat. On the other hand, She Has Funny Cars was awesome and Kantner's Rickenbacker provided that unique sound that I've always loved the Airplane for. Twenty-two years later I saw the Airplane in their "reunion" tour in 1989 at Hollywood Bowl and then they finally delivered! Awesome awesome concert. And the technology was able to convey their sound fully. All the songs I had grown up with delivered perfectly; one of the most thrilling concerts I've ever experienced and I've seen over two hundred major venue shows. Of course on that reunion tour they had the entire original band except for drummer Kenny Aronoff. Spencer Dryden was not in sufficient health at age 50 in 1989 to do a tour; Dryden died in 2005 at age 66.
- The Association on Friday night. It is hard for a six person band/vocal group to pull off a show with all those complex harmonies, especially given the weak sound reinforcement technology / speakers / PA systems of the era, but The Association pulled it off pretty darn well as they opened the evening. I've always love the Association and their harmonies - they did not fit the hippy vibe of the festival at all and looked a little out of place at first in a festival dominated by San Francisco based bands - they all had suits and ties on and were pretty "clean cut." But there was quite a bit of humor and professionalism and tightness in their show and it worked; the audience loved them. They played the hits Windy and Along Comes Mary and Enter The Young - but not Cherish.
- Simon & Garfunkel followed The Association on Friday night. Just the two of them and one guitar of Paul Simon. The audience was very quiet and "respectful" allowing the guitar and their voices to ring out beautifully.
- Moby Grape on Saturday night. I was really into their first album and they played four or five songs from that album so all songs were familiar. Their show didn't seem to rely on the kind of studio technogy and feedback and guitar effects that was hard to reproduce like the Airplane. They were able to recreate the sound of their classic first and essentially only decent album. Could have been a little louder with a clearer separation of the three lead guitarists but still pretty darn good. Too bad they are not at all in the movie or the CD that came out - I blame it on their evil manager who screwed them out of even their band name! He probably was too demanding and the organizers told him to go to hell. Hopefully he is rotting in hell somewhere!
- I remember seeing Brian Jones of the Stones walking around and I remember asking a friend if that was Brian Jones - "it sure looks like him," etc. He was definitely prancing around with supposedly the strange talentless Nico of Velvet Underground (a horribly overrated talentless band fronted by the highly talentless Lou Reed!) with the intention of being seen. We both thought it was Brian Jones and indeed it was... and were thinking that maybe the Stones were going to get on stage at some point. Never happened of course. Rumors of the Beatles showing up were also present ... that never happened either!
- The entire Saturday afternoon, dedicated to San Francisco bands, was unreal. Just an all-star lineup of the great bands of the era. Quicksilver was great but they did not do "The Fool" - maybe because it was too long a song -what a great song that is - would have fit in perfectly since it is so much an instrumental before vocals kick in. It was on Saturday that Janis Joplin first did Ball and Chain that brought the house down. That Saturday performance however wasn't filmed for some reason - I think she and her band got talked into banning filming of their show like the Grateful Dead foolishly decided to do. Anyway, Janis came back Sunday night and did the song again so it could be filmed and it was a big part of the Monterey Pop film. I wasn't there Sunday, but most critics who were there (and what the hell do they know anyway) say that her Saturday afternoon performance was better, but who knows. To be honest, at the time I appreciated Janis Joplin and Big Brother and liked some of their other songs much more - such as Piece of My Heart, and wasn't in to their blues style songs as much as their other material - I'm not a blues fan in general and they all tend to sound alike. In fact, at the time, in hearing it for the first time, "Ball and Chain" just sounded like another three chord blues song and it was a little weakened in that she was backed up by a creative but average group of musicians - Big Brother and The Holding Company. But after watching the performance in the film, I now more appreciate the performance. She was so unique. What a voice.
- Eric Burdon & The Animals played Friday night - "Paint It Black" (the Stones song) was their finale and the crowd went wild - their version is mesmerizing and the pacing and dynamics were phenomenal - Burdon really worked the audience. The original Animals had of course broken up and some historians say this was where Eric Burdon reinvented himself with a totally new band and I must agree. He had a great lead violinist (John Weider) playing solos on an electric violin, trading off licks with the lead guitarist (Vic Briggs).
- "In '67 ... for three days ... Who and Hendrix played Monterey ... Monterey Pop .... I was there."
I've heard that lyric in some song somewhere....
- Eric Burdon's "Down In Monterey" was a classic big hit that Burdon co-wrote and released after the Pop Festival. It was not played at the Pop Festival. I love this song and it tells a great upbeat story of the festival, with band names and instruments associated with that artist - like a sitar for Ravi and screaming guitar for The Who.
- Burdon did actually perform the song "San Franciscan Nights" at the Pop Festival - I just looked up that song on Wikipedia - it is was not formally released as a recording until August of '67 so I guess to us in the audience it was brand new. I remember not liking it that much when I first heard it that night - I felt that it was a bit pandering ... but I've come to accept it since as sort of an accompaniment to the Down In Monterey song - a Brit's tribute to the spirit of SF / Monterey Pop or whatever .... the song could be labeled as another version of "If You're Going To San Francisco" (be sure to wear some flowers in your hair) - which some say was sung by some guy working with John Phillips in LA trying to jump on the emerging San Franciso Hippie trend. But I have to admit I still love that Scott McKenzie song and do not have any cynical attitude towards it - very very uplifting, great melody, great voice. I forgive McKenzie and Phillips - it's a great song and I like it more than anything Mamas and Papas ever did! That was one of the original reasons I did not fork out for tix for Sunday night - I didn't care for the Mamas and Papas who were supposedly "headlining" or closing the show. I'll pass. But McKenzie sang San Francisco Sunday night at Monterey Pop and I would have liked to have heard it in retrospect. Yes, I missed the Sunday night show (see below) and seriously regret it! Bad move! Arrrggghh!
- The Byrds were a little disappointing Saturday night. Their finale "So You Want To Be A Rock n Roll Star" was good, but they didn't play "Turn Turn Turn" or "Mr Tambourine Man" or any of their great early folk rock stuff like "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better" etc. Very disappointing. And big mouth David Crosby must have been high because he was rambling between songs about politics, anti war stuff, Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, etc. Hey David shut up and play the music will you! Please note he was canned shortly after the Pop Festival disaster. I love David and he is a great talent but in that era he was such an arrogant ass ... he later played Sunday Night with Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young had just quit. But to me the Byrds show was a bit of a letdown since I expected so much.
- Regrettably, as a 15 year old kid paying for tickets from my part time junior high jobs as a busboy, mowing lawns, subbing on a friend's newspaper route, even babysitting!, etc, I could only afford Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night tickets. Prices then then were equivalent to about $45 per show today. Mom and dad were not footing the bill for the tickets. They were cool about letting me go as a 15 year old kid, but weren't about to encourage this rock and roll addiction by spending money on it! So I of course skipped Sunday day with Ravi Shankar because I just didn't care, and decided to not go Sunday night because I wasn't that excited about the Mamas and Papas and Johnny Rivers and though I liked The Who they were just emerging and not yet the huge act that they later became. Actually, Hendrix was originally scheduled for Friday night as was Buffalo Springfield - and both later got moved to Sunday night. I was much more disappointed by missing Buffalo Springfield - I was curious about Hendrix but he was so new with only one recently released song out and as revolutionary as the song was nobody knew what a monster guitarist and legend he would become ... he wasn't the world-wide phenom guitar wizard / best guitarist in history of the world ... yet! Anyway, skipping that Sunday show was a bad bad decision on my part! And I continue to beat myself up over it! haha. I missed the two legendary performances of Jimi Hendrix and The Who and missed Buffalo Springfield.
- I can only semi-console myself (not too successfully) and semi-rationalize (again not too successfully) not going Sunday night by the fact that many of my peers living in Monterey at the time did not even go to the Pop Festival at all! And they were right there in Monterey at the center of the music universe for the weekend! WTF!!!
- I remember Friday night after the opening night's shows. I was so excited I didn't sleep that much. And all night I heard music and drums and chanting coming from nearby MPC where people were camping out. I think MPC had opened itself up to camping to handle the hippie hordes descending on the town. It was a hypnotic sound that I'll never forget - I would drift in and out of sleep, only to wake up to more drumming and chanting and what sounded like singing and dancing and laughter around campfires. It seemed like it was taking place almost in my back yard and very well some people could have been camping in an open space between my house and MPC. If they did, I must say that there wasn't any evidence of campers having been back there - the area was clean with zero trash and zero evidence of people camping out there. It really was a very well behaved crowd the entire weekend.
The trouble is, most of those who have written about it over the years were never there!
Well I was there, and I feel very lucky to have experienced it. Though young at age 15, in many ways I was at the perfect age - the Beatles had broken out in 1964 when I was 12 years old and they changed my life. Three years later, the Pop Festival took place and it continues to have a HUGE impact on my life. Without getting too "high falutin'" or "academic" remember that this was basically the first "major" rock festival in history. I know that today it is hard for many to think that there was a time where there were no rock festivals at all. But rock (or should I say "Rock" with a capital "R") was so new and just starting to gain a major foothold in the national consciousness as the baby boomers were increasingly having their effect on the cultural landscape. It was soon to be a big big business but Monterey Pop was so innocent - all volunteer musicians together for a non profit foundation (except Ravi Shankar who was the only musician to get paid - in the amount of $3500 (about $30,000 in 2022 dollars). Shanker was initially contracted with Pariser and Shapiro who began the Monterey Pop festival project - and who later handed it over to the Adler/Phillips group who honored Shankar's contract but changed the event to all "all volunteer" event where all artists donated their services on behalf of a so-called non-profit.) Of course the 1969 over-hyped and over-rated (by the New York-based media elite) Woodstock got a lot of press and a massive movie and lots of hippies frolicking in the mud in upstate New York, but Monterey Pop was the original.
Note: I'm hoping to add others' memories of the festival here eventually - anybody who was there who can give some personal experiences - particularly those friends who I grew up with in the Monterey Peninsula who were in attendance - some of whom volunteered at the festival. And I hope that the City of Monterey someday will digitize and put online the excellent Monterey Pop Revisited Symposium of 2001 (see below)
Random Stream Of Consciousness Memories Of Monterey Pop (Part 1)
- Saturday afternoon: "Section 43" by Country Joe & The Fish. The crowd was mesmerized. I was, too. A great song delivered perfectly. And the D.L. Pennebaker film Monterey Pop captures it perfectly. The hypnotic vibe that comes across in the movie is exactly how I felt in the audience during this song. A real high point of the festival for me. The original studio recording of the song is a classic and still holds up as an instrumental psychedelic landmark. Very acidic. Very psychedelic. There were very few memorable psychedelic era instrumentals back then; "Section 43" is by far the best.
- More Saturday afternoon reflections. It oddly took me a surprisingly long time to put this in perspective, but Saturday afternoon shows were really heavily weighted towards blues or blues-oriented bands. I just recently looked at the lineup of the eight bands that played Saturday afternoon and was really surprised. Of the eight acts, five were blues or blues-oriented bands: Canned Heat, Electric Flag, Al Kooper, Steve Miller Blues Band, and Charlie Musselwhite. Only Country Joe & The Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Big Brother & The Holding Company (with Janis Joplin) would be considered "rock bands." And even Big Brother had a strong blues element to their music, particularly their widely heralded song Ball and Chain which they performed Saturday and again by popular demand on Sunday Night. That song alone and Janis's performance single-handedly helped put her on the national map when the movie Monterey Pop was released. So I had to put up with a ton of blues on Saturday afternoon! And frankly, I don't like blues music! It bores me to death. But I still have idyllic memories of the Saturday afternoon pop festival shows. Perhaps the three acts I really liked so strongly that afternoon - Quicksilver, Country Joe, and Big Brother overshadowed the five blues bands that I didn't care for to the extent that my memory of that afternoon has been altered.
And remember, that Steve Miller of Monterey Pop of June 1967 was not the Steve Miller of 1968 or 1969. In fact he was billed at the "Steve Miller Blues band" for the Pop Festival. His albums Sailor, Children of The Future, and Brave New World that followed the Pop Festival in 1968 and 1969 all contained some innovative great songs. Yes blues or blues-based songs were in some of those albums album but they took a back seat. And of course in the early 70's, Miller turned to the mainstream "pop-rock" side with The Joker and Fly Like An Eagle and Book of Dreams. I personally prefer Miller's late 60's era music though there were some memorable hits later - along with some horrible songs that (especially "Abracadabra" - yecch! talking about scraping the bottom of the barrel!)
- It just occurred to me that about a year later Jefferson Airplane released the song "Saturday Afternoon" on the album After Bathing At Baxters. I wonder if there is any inspiration from that Saturday afternoon at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Airplane performed in the Saturday night show and were probably in the audience that Saturday afternoon ... I've always assumed that the lyrics were a dreamy reference to tripping on a Saturday in Golden Gate Park - but maybe the Pop Festival also influenced the creation of the song. Here are the Airplane's lyrics to "Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon" (written by the late great Paul Kantner):
Saturday afternoon
Yellow clouds rising in the noon
Acid, incense and balloons
Saturday afternoon
People dancing everywhere
Loudly shouting "I don't care!"
It's a time for growing
And a time for knowing love
- "Somebody To Love" - the opening song that the Jefferson Airplane started their set with on Saturday night. I remember the "intermission" before they played - the stage is dark but if you pay attention you see flashlights and roadieis moving around equipment in the dark preparing for the next band. There was no stage "curtain" and between most bands the stage was typically lighted and you would see roadies and techs moving amps and equipment around - but this time I remember the stage was lighted for a while as equipment was moved around and then the stage went dark for a long time. The crowd got a little excited and nothing happened... so the crowd goes back to talking and milling around mode..... people are going to concession stands etc .... at this point most of the audience is not really very focused on the stage .... but I'm watching everything.... I see some flashlights on the dark stage and then what looks like a reflection of an electric guitar or two or three .... then more of a delay.... FINALLY THE SILENCE IS BROKEN with Grace's voice the just hits the crowd like a lightning bolt: "When The Truth Is Found .... To Be Lies" .... the band starts up powerfully AND THE CROWD GOES WILD! The audience has been taken totally by surprise with a stealth start to the song "Somebody To Love." It was completely thrilling; you had to be there; I still get goosebumps thinking back about this moment.
- Sadly, despite that initial thrill, the Airplane show turned out to be a little disappointing to me; I knew their first two albums backwards and forwards and the sound system could not reproduce their songs adequately. That was the state of 1967 technology. Plus, and I'll never forget this, Jorma's solo was horrible! Now Jorma Kaukonen is a major talent and a very likeable person - I had the chance to hang out with him a bit at the Monterey Pop Revisited event in 2001 - but that is another story. I was disappointed because he did more of a spur of the moment improvised solo that had elements of the original but not nearly enough - it was very disappointing to me because that is such an iconic guitar solo. That was typical of shows in that era - many bands didn't want to reproduce the exact recordings - that was not cool enough for their free spirits. So to me the song fell flat. On the other hand, She Has Funny Cars was awesome and Kantner's Rickenbacker provided that unique sound that I've always loved the Airplane for. Twenty-two years later I saw the Airplane in their "reunion" tour in 1989 at Hollywood Bowl and then they finally delivered! Awesome awesome concert. And the technology was able to convey their sound fully. All the songs I had grown up with delivered perfectly; one of the most thrilling concerts I've ever experienced and I've seen over two hundred major venue shows. Of course on that reunion tour they had the entire original band except for drummer Kenny Aronoff. Spencer Dryden was not in sufficient health at age 50 in 1989 to do a tour; Dryden died in 2005 at age 66.
- The Association on Friday night. It is hard for a six person band/vocal group to pull off a show with all those complex harmonies, especially given the weak sound reinforcement technology / speakers / PA systems of the era, but The Association pulled it off pretty darn well as they opened the evening. I've always love the Association and their harmonies - they did not fit the hippy vibe of the festival at all and looked a little out of place at first in a festival dominated by San Francisco based bands - they all had suits and ties on and were pretty "clean cut." But there was quite a bit of humor and professionalism and tightness in their show and it worked; the audience loved them. They played the hits Windy and Along Comes Mary and Enter The Young - but not Cherish.
- Simon & Garfunkel followed The Association on Friday night. Just the two of them and one guitar of Paul Simon. The audience was very quiet and "respectful" allowing the guitar and their voices to ring out beautifully.
- Moby Grape on Saturday night. I was really into their first album and they played four or five songs from that album so all songs were familiar. Their show didn't seem to rely on the kind of studio technogy and feedback and guitar effects that was hard to reproduce like the Airplane. They were able to recreate the sound of their classic first and essentially only decent album. Could have been a little louder with a clearer separation of the three lead guitarists but still pretty darn good. Too bad they are not at all in the movie or the CD that came out - I blame it on their evil manager who screwed them out of even their band name! He probably was too demanding and the organizers told him to go to hell. Hopefully he is rotting in hell somewhere!
- I remember seeing Brian Jones of the Stones walking around and I remember asking a friend if that was Brian Jones - "it sure looks like him," etc. He was definitely prancing around with supposedly the strange talentless Nico of Velvet Underground (a horribly overrated talentless band fronted by the highly talentless Lou Reed!) with the intention of being seen. We both thought it was Brian Jones and indeed it was... and were thinking that maybe the Stones were going to get on stage at some point. Never happened of course. Rumors of the Beatles showing up were also present ... that never happened either!
- The entire Saturday afternoon, dedicated to San Francisco bands, was unreal. Just an all-star lineup of the great bands of the era. Quicksilver was great but they did not do "The Fool" - maybe because it was too long a song -what a great song that is - would have fit in perfectly since it is so much an instrumental before vocals kick in. It was on Saturday that Janis Joplin first did Ball and Chain that brought the house down. That Saturday performance however wasn't filmed for some reason - I think she and her band got talked into banning filming of their show like the Grateful Dead foolishly decided to do. Anyway, Janis came back Sunday night and did the song again so it could be filmed and it was a big part of the Monterey Pop film. I wasn't there Sunday, but most critics who were there (and what the hell do they know anyway) say that her Saturday afternoon performance was better, but who knows. To be honest, at the time I appreciated Janis Joplin and Big Brother and liked some of their other songs much more - such as Piece of My Heart, and wasn't in to their blues style songs as much as their other material - I'm not a blues fan in general and they all tend to sound alike. In fact, at the time, in hearing it for the first time, "Ball and Chain" just sounded like another three chord blues song and it was a little weakened in that she was backed up by a creative but average group of musicians - Big Brother and The Holding Company. But after watching the performance in the film, I now more appreciate the performance. She was so unique. What a voice.
- Eric Burdon & The Animals played Friday night - "Paint It Black" (the Stones song) was their finale and the crowd went wild - their version is mesmerizing and the pacing and dynamics were phenomenal - Burdon really worked the audience. The original Animals had of course broken up and some historians say this was where Eric Burdon reinvented himself with a totally new band and I must agree. He had a great lead violinist (John Weider) playing solos on an electric violin, trading off licks with the lead guitarist (Vic Briggs).
- "In '67 ... for three days ... Who and Hendrix played Monterey ... Monterey Pop .... I was there."
I've heard that lyric in some song somewhere....
- Eric Burdon's "Down In Monterey" was a classic big hit that Burdon co-wrote and released after the Pop Festival. It was not played at the Pop Festival. I love this song and it tells a great upbeat story of the festival, with band names and instruments associated with that artist - like a sitar for Ravi and screaming guitar for The Who.
- Burdon did actually perform the song "San Franciscan Nights" at the Pop Festival - I just looked up that song on Wikipedia - it is was not formally released as a recording until August of '67 so I guess to us in the audience it was brand new. I remember not liking it that much when I first heard it that night - I felt that it was a bit pandering ... but I've come to accept it since as sort of an accompaniment to the Down In Monterey song - a Brit's tribute to the spirit of SF / Monterey Pop or whatever .... the song could be labeled as another version of "If You're Going To San Francisco" (be sure to wear some flowers in your hair) - which some say was sung by some guy working with John Phillips in LA trying to jump on the emerging San Franciso Hippie trend. But I have to admit I still love that Scott McKenzie song and do not have any cynical attitude towards it - very very uplifting, great melody, great voice. I forgive McKenzie and Phillips - it's a great song and I like it more than anything Mamas and Papas ever did! That was one of the original reasons I did not fork out for tix for Sunday night - I didn't care for the Mamas and Papas who were supposedly "headlining" or closing the show. I'll pass. But McKenzie sang San Francisco Sunday night at Monterey Pop and I would have liked to have heard it in retrospect. Yes, I missed the Sunday night show (see below) and seriously regret it! Bad move! Arrrggghh!
- The Byrds were a little disappointing Saturday night. Their finale "So You Want To Be A Rock n Roll Star" was good, but they didn't play "Turn Turn Turn" or "Mr Tambourine Man" or any of their great early folk rock stuff like "I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better" etc. Very disappointing. And big mouth David Crosby must have been high because he was rambling between songs about politics, anti war stuff, Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, etc. Hey David shut up and play the music will you! Please note he was canned shortly after the Pop Festival disaster. I love David and he is a great talent but in that era he was such an arrogant ass ... he later played Sunday Night with Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young had just quit. But to me the Byrds show was a bit of a letdown since I expected so much.
- Regrettably, as a 15 year old kid paying for tickets from my part time junior high jobs as a busboy, mowing lawns, subbing on a friend's newspaper route, even babysitting!, etc, I could only afford Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night tickets. Prices then then were equivalent to about $45 per show today. Mom and dad were not footing the bill for the tickets. They were cool about letting me go as a 15 year old kid, but weren't about to encourage this rock and roll addiction by spending money on it! So I of course skipped Sunday day with Ravi Shankar because I just didn't care, and decided to not go Sunday night because I wasn't that excited about the Mamas and Papas and Johnny Rivers and though I liked The Who they were just emerging and not yet the huge act that they later became. Actually, Hendrix was originally scheduled for Friday night as was Buffalo Springfield - and both later got moved to Sunday night. I was much more disappointed by missing Buffalo Springfield - I was curious about Hendrix but he was so new with only one recently released song out and as revolutionary as the song was nobody knew what a monster guitarist and legend he would become ... he wasn't the world-wide phenom guitar wizard / best guitarist in history of the world ... yet! Anyway, skipping that Sunday show was a bad bad decision on my part! And I continue to beat myself up over it! haha. I missed the two legendary performances of Jimi Hendrix and The Who and missed Buffalo Springfield.
- I can only semi-console myself (not too successfully) and semi-rationalize (again not too successfully) not going Sunday night by the fact that many of my peers living in Monterey at the time did not even go to the Pop Festival at all! And they were right there in Monterey at the center of the music universe for the weekend! WTF!!!
- I remember Friday night after the opening night's shows. I was so excited I didn't sleep that much. And all night I heard music and drums and chanting coming from nearby MPC where people were camping out. I think MPC had opened itself up to camping to handle the hippie hordes descending on the town. It was a hypnotic sound that I'll never forget - I would drift in and out of sleep, only to wake up to more drumming and chanting and what sounded like singing and dancing and laughter around campfires. It seemed like it was taking place almost in my back yard and very well some people could have been camping in an open space between my house and MPC. If they did, I must say that there wasn't any evidence of campers having been back there - the area was clean with zero trash and zero evidence of people camping out there. It really was a very well behaved crowd the entire weekend.
- Yeah somehow Simon managed to get paid for it but the rest did not and it was promoted as benefitting a non-profit etc. I still wonder where the money went - there was some controversy over that - the foundation is being run now by Lou Adler, though money has been given out over the years to small groups - don't know if Michelle Phillips was involved in the foundation - would be curious how much money has been generated over the years from the Pop Festival via broadcast rights, recordings etc... probably not that much
- By the way Buffalo Springfield hardly ever seems to get mentioned by "rock historians" from that Sunday night - and the YouTube clip of them playing (audio only - no video that I have found) sounds very good - "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" and "For What It's Worth" ... still no Neil Young - he had quit and Crosby subbed for him that night .... the Buffalo Springfield performance on Sunday night sure got overwhelmed historically by the Who and Hendrix for sure. When the time machine gets discovered I'm going back to see that show!
- By the way Buffalo Springfield hardly ever seems to get mentioned by "rock historians" from that Sunday night - and the YouTube clip of them playing (audio only - no video that I have found) sounds very good - "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" and "For What It's Worth" ... still no Neil Young - he had quit and Crosby subbed for him that night .... the Buffalo Springfield performance on Sunday night sure got overwhelmed historically by the Who and Hendrix for sure. When the time machine gets discovered I'm going back to see that show!
FRIENDS' COMMENTS & STORIES ABOUT MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL / MEAGHER ELECTRONICS / MONTEREY MUSIC
RE: POP FESTIVAL
"I didn’t know all the musicians volunteered except Simon?!
I do remember Hendrix and Brian Jones hanging out in a Teepee
Bill Sciarrino went up to both of them and got their autographs.
We knew who Hendrix was and were excited to see him perform
Joe Lucido had gotten a hold of an English copy of Are You Experienced
So we had already heard him in advance
We were also huge fans of the Who and knew what was coming
That Sunday night with the Who and Hendrix blew all of our minds
and with NO DRUGS!!
Best natural high ever
It’s been downhill ever since
At least we're alive to reminisce about a once in a lifetime event
Good job on your recollections
Keep the memories flowing…………."
FROM ROBERT STANTON
=========================================
FROM MIKE WELCH:
"Derek,
I was reading thru the Pop Festival section of your website - excellent stuff. I remember that I went to four of the five shows; I skipped Ravi Shankar, blah. All of my seats were near the front since I bought early and the usher was Joe Ferrante's sister. We chatted every day. I was 14 and also needed a ride, even though at the time we were living pretty much across Del Monte Blvd. I missed Otis Redding b/c my brother was waiting outside to pick me up at about 12, but the show went past 1 I believe. The Sunday night show was the best, probably by design. My mother went that night and had better seats than me."
~ MIKE WELCH
RESPONSE FROM DEREK MORRIS:
"I missed Sunday night pop festival and beat myself up daily over that! I blew it. Hated Mamas & Papas then (now really appreciate them) did not know Jimi and Who was scheduled for Fri or Sat and got moved to Sunday. That is my recollection. Or excuse. Again I fucked up. But 3 shows were expensive for a 15 year old kid who didn’t have a busboy job at Shutters yet, let alone a lucrative get-rich-quick union lucky bagger “position” 😂 haha
I saw Otis and backup band Booker T and MG’s. Frankly I was not into it then but appreciate it now when I see the Monterey Pop movie. Curious about your recollection of the Airplane show. And how it started. Blew my mind. “When the truth is found” came out of nowhere and still gives me goosebumps. Surprised crowd from a dark stage." ~ DEREK MORRIS
RESPONSE FROM MIKE WELCH:
"I'm trying to remember what I just had for lunch, so my memories of the Pop Festival are hit and miss. The whole thing was an explosion of sights and sounds, including the psychedelic light show that ran behind almost every act. Not being on drugs it frankly became repetitive and a bit boring for four shows. The acts I remember most include The Association (b/c I think they were the first act on Friday night), Country Joe & The Fish (funny: not so sweet Martha Lorraine & I feel like I'm fixing to die rag), Hendrix and The Who (obviously) and Buffalo Springfield (a band full of superstars and great music).
At one point I had at least one album from every act that had an album, including The Paupers. Sadly, my wife wanted to get rid of them once all my record players died and I sold them all for $1 each.
I did have a busboy job at Angelo's on the wharf, so I could buy my own tickets."
~ MIKE WELCH
RESPONSE FROM DEREK MORRIS
"Wow. Almost forgot about the Paupers! Great pull! Just looked it up - they played on Friday night after The Association opened the evening. The Paupers were a Canadian band that didn't seem to last much longer after the Pop Festival. I looked them up after your email and in fact, they were already half-broken up by the time the Pop Festival happened anyway. It was apparently one of their very last shows. Very strange choice to include them at the Pop Festival. And you even bought their album. Impressive!
Re The Paupers: the next afternoon, on Saturday, for a brief moment Jeff Sumida and I were able to get backstage before being discovered and told to leave. I think we tried to pull this between the horribly boring Canned Heat "performance" and Big Brother, while they were setting up the stage. We got through the first level and even the second level of security just by saying we "were with The Paupers." Nobody had really heard of them so we figured that was the best BS line to use. And it worked for a very short while. Very short. Two 15-year-old kids "with the band." Yeah right!
Here are the lineups for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shows. I had totally forgotten about the Paupers. They were quite a letdown after the Association. I just looked up the Paupers and they were being pushed then by big-time manager (of Dylan and others) Albert Grossman who called them the next Beatles. They really messed up that night - horrible performance, partly due to bad equipment and an amp that crapped out, and also the bassist was stoned on acid and was way out of sync, according to one article I read. They imploded soon thereafter. The Association show was great - they already had a couple of hits out with Windy and Along Comes Mary which they played that night. But they didn't play Cherish which was too bad. Maybe Cherish was too slow and ballad-ish and sentimental and not uptempo enough for a hip Summer of Love 1967 SF Bay Area crowd? Who knows.
BTW, I guess the Grateful Dead followed The Who, after which was Jimi Hendrix. Mike, do you remember the Dead show at all? Nobody seems to. Hard to imagine the Dead between the Who and Hendrix that night. I do know the story that The Who won the coin toss and elected to play before and not to follow Hendrix. The Who did not want to follow Hendrix! But I didn't realize until now that the Dead was sandwiched in between. And the Dead stupidly refused to be taped that night!. What a bonehead move. (As you know Big Brother "management" also refused to be taped for Saturday afternoon and this really upset Janis Joplin. After the great Saturday afternoon show and huge crowd response, Big Brother and Janis were asked to play Sunday night and Janis reportedly had a fit until her "management" agree to have their show recorded with signed releases, etc. And Clive Davis signed the band shortly thereafter to a record deal, which they did not even have at the time they played the Pop Festival.
After Hendrix, there was the "closing" of the show with the Mamas and Papas and Scott McKenzie. I know this not from being there but only by seeing the movie and YouTube videos and reading the history (I'm kicking myself again right now). I wasn't there because I was too dumb and clueless and cheap to go Sunday night (excuse me while I again beat myself up again over this.I try to do this at least once daily.) And I hear from Bob Stanton that people were admitted to the grounds outside the arena on Sunday night and I also read there was a closed-circuit TV feed near the Hunt Club so people could see the show via TV monitors (black and white I'm sure). So I could have been there to at least experience it and hear it! God damnit! But I did not know. Hey, I was a kid. Only 15 years old. That's my excuse. Actually, I feel so lucky to have attended almost the entire festival - Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. Many kids we grew up with - who lived in the same town where rock history was being made - didn't even go at all! And I know at least one person we grew up with who claims to have been there but I know he really wasn't." I'm reminded of the 1968 hit by the one-hit wonders The Castaways "Liar Liar Pants On Fire."
~Derek Morris
RE: POP FESTIVAL
"I didn’t know all the musicians volunteered except Simon?!
I do remember Hendrix and Brian Jones hanging out in a Teepee
Bill Sciarrino went up to both of them and got their autographs.
We knew who Hendrix was and were excited to see him perform
Joe Lucido had gotten a hold of an English copy of Are You Experienced
So we had already heard him in advance
We were also huge fans of the Who and knew what was coming
That Sunday night with the Who and Hendrix blew all of our minds
and with NO DRUGS!!
Best natural high ever
It’s been downhill ever since
At least we're alive to reminisce about a once in a lifetime event
Good job on your recollections
Keep the memories flowing…………."
FROM ROBERT STANTON
=========================================
FROM MIKE WELCH:
"Derek,
I was reading thru the Pop Festival section of your website - excellent stuff. I remember that I went to four of the five shows; I skipped Ravi Shankar, blah. All of my seats were near the front since I bought early and the usher was Joe Ferrante's sister. We chatted every day. I was 14 and also needed a ride, even though at the time we were living pretty much across Del Monte Blvd. I missed Otis Redding b/c my brother was waiting outside to pick me up at about 12, but the show went past 1 I believe. The Sunday night show was the best, probably by design. My mother went that night and had better seats than me."
~ MIKE WELCH
RESPONSE FROM DEREK MORRIS:
"I missed Sunday night pop festival and beat myself up daily over that! I blew it. Hated Mamas & Papas then (now really appreciate them) did not know Jimi and Who was scheduled for Fri or Sat and got moved to Sunday. That is my recollection. Or excuse. Again I fucked up. But 3 shows were expensive for a 15 year old kid who didn’t have a busboy job at Shutters yet, let alone a lucrative get-rich-quick union lucky bagger “position” 😂 haha
I saw Otis and backup band Booker T and MG’s. Frankly I was not into it then but appreciate it now when I see the Monterey Pop movie. Curious about your recollection of the Airplane show. And how it started. Blew my mind. “When the truth is found” came out of nowhere and still gives me goosebumps. Surprised crowd from a dark stage." ~ DEREK MORRIS
RESPONSE FROM MIKE WELCH:
"I'm trying to remember what I just had for lunch, so my memories of the Pop Festival are hit and miss. The whole thing was an explosion of sights and sounds, including the psychedelic light show that ran behind almost every act. Not being on drugs it frankly became repetitive and a bit boring for four shows. The acts I remember most include The Association (b/c I think they were the first act on Friday night), Country Joe & The Fish (funny: not so sweet Martha Lorraine & I feel like I'm fixing to die rag), Hendrix and The Who (obviously) and Buffalo Springfield (a band full of superstars and great music).
At one point I had at least one album from every act that had an album, including The Paupers. Sadly, my wife wanted to get rid of them once all my record players died and I sold them all for $1 each.
I did have a busboy job at Angelo's on the wharf, so I could buy my own tickets."
~ MIKE WELCH
RESPONSE FROM DEREK MORRIS
"Wow. Almost forgot about the Paupers! Great pull! Just looked it up - they played on Friday night after The Association opened the evening. The Paupers were a Canadian band that didn't seem to last much longer after the Pop Festival. I looked them up after your email and in fact, they were already half-broken up by the time the Pop Festival happened anyway. It was apparently one of their very last shows. Very strange choice to include them at the Pop Festival. And you even bought their album. Impressive!
Re The Paupers: the next afternoon, on Saturday, for a brief moment Jeff Sumida and I were able to get backstage before being discovered and told to leave. I think we tried to pull this between the horribly boring Canned Heat "performance" and Big Brother, while they were setting up the stage. We got through the first level and even the second level of security just by saying we "were with The Paupers." Nobody had really heard of them so we figured that was the best BS line to use. And it worked for a very short while. Very short. Two 15-year-old kids "with the band." Yeah right!
Here are the lineups for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday shows. I had totally forgotten about the Paupers. They were quite a letdown after the Association. I just looked up the Paupers and they were being pushed then by big-time manager (of Dylan and others) Albert Grossman who called them the next Beatles. They really messed up that night - horrible performance, partly due to bad equipment and an amp that crapped out, and also the bassist was stoned on acid and was way out of sync, according to one article I read. They imploded soon thereafter. The Association show was great - they already had a couple of hits out with Windy and Along Comes Mary which they played that night. But they didn't play Cherish which was too bad. Maybe Cherish was too slow and ballad-ish and sentimental and not uptempo enough for a hip Summer of Love 1967 SF Bay Area crowd? Who knows.
BTW, I guess the Grateful Dead followed The Who, after which was Jimi Hendrix. Mike, do you remember the Dead show at all? Nobody seems to. Hard to imagine the Dead between the Who and Hendrix that night. I do know the story that The Who won the coin toss and elected to play before and not to follow Hendrix. The Who did not want to follow Hendrix! But I didn't realize until now that the Dead was sandwiched in between. And the Dead stupidly refused to be taped that night!. What a bonehead move. (As you know Big Brother "management" also refused to be taped for Saturday afternoon and this really upset Janis Joplin. After the great Saturday afternoon show and huge crowd response, Big Brother and Janis were asked to play Sunday night and Janis reportedly had a fit until her "management" agree to have their show recorded with signed releases, etc. And Clive Davis signed the band shortly thereafter to a record deal, which they did not even have at the time they played the Pop Festival.
After Hendrix, there was the "closing" of the show with the Mamas and Papas and Scott McKenzie. I know this not from being there but only by seeing the movie and YouTube videos and reading the history (I'm kicking myself again right now). I wasn't there because I was too dumb and clueless and cheap to go Sunday night (excuse me while I again beat myself up again over this.I try to do this at least once daily.) And I hear from Bob Stanton that people were admitted to the grounds outside the arena on Sunday night and I also read there was a closed-circuit TV feed near the Hunt Club so people could see the show via TV monitors (black and white I'm sure). So I could have been there to at least experience it and hear it! God damnit! But I did not know. Hey, I was a kid. Only 15 years old. That's my excuse. Actually, I feel so lucky to have attended almost the entire festival - Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. Many kids we grew up with - who lived in the same town where rock history was being made - didn't even go at all! And I know at least one person we grew up with who claims to have been there but I know he really wasn't." I'm reminded of the 1968 hit by the one-hit wonders The Castaways "Liar Liar Pants On Fire."
~Derek Morris
===================
RE: JIM MEAGHER / MEAGHER ELECTRONICS
"Correct, that (ie 'high-end and professional audio / electronics repair and equipment sales') was the thrust of his business. However, he was one of few who actually knew anything about recording and audio engineering at the time. Yeah, he was a pain sometimes, but he did know much. I was in at least three groups that recorded there. But as I said before, Jim and I had a good relationship, which had no bearing whatsoever on the recordings done there. Yes, he was very opinionated and often terse, but personally, I held much respect for him. I understand other's experiences were not the same as mine, but Jim was someone of a mentor to me. He was happy, encouraging and supportive of my dabblings to modify Hammond organs and gave me great support in experience and hardware. He gave me a keyboard that resides on my Hammond to this day, allowing me to play the bass pedals with my left hand. He was delighted I was pursuing my degree in Electronic Engineering."
"There's a reason he assisted McCune Sound at Monterey Pop, the Jazz Festival, Acme Sound, etc. He was a fountain of knowledge. He was opinionated... if he didn't like something about the music, he wouldn't spend much effort on it. For example, he hated Fleetwood Mac, because of the flat tone of Stevie Nicks, while the rest of us were in awe of them. Truth be known, she is often flat, and it really grated on his nerves."
~FROM DENIS SIMARD
===================
"Hey DMZ
My only experience with Jim Meagher was getting blown speakers fixed
As a slight aside I do remember going to Safeway and testing my amp tubes
They actually had a tube tester and you could buy new tubes
But you’re right,there was no way for small town bands to do multi tracking at all
I remember my first tape recorder had sound on sound* which did not allow you to sync up
but you could layer trax on top of of trax but with no control to really do true multi tracking
You are the only person I know that did a recording there."
~FROM ROBERT STANTON
* ("Les Paul invented "Sound on Sound" recording using an Ampex tape recorder given to him by Bing Crosby. He placed an additional playback head, located before the conventional erase/record/playback heads. This allowed Paul to play along with a previously recorded track, both of which were mixed together on to a new track. This was a destructive process because the original recording was recorded over." - from a Wikipedia Ampex article)
===================
(To Denis Simard): "Thanks for feedback - Sounds like a decent person with some quirks -- I was just wondering who else had recorded there... Ha ha - he probably hated Rusk & McGowan - they were a little smarmy - a little slick and showbizzy but friendly. I'm actually trying to learn more about Meagher and the Wikipedia article is obviously horribly limited - did any label releases result from his studio recordings that you know of?"
~FROM DEREK MORRIS
===================
"Hmmm, not sure about any labels that may have been recorded there. It seems to me there were some minor ones, but I'm not sure. It might be worth me contacting Bob Wence and see what, if anything, he might know."
~FROM DENIS SIMARD
===================
FROM BOB WENCE OF THE E-TYPES (RESPONDING TO DENIS SIMARD INQUIRY)
"Hi Denis, Yes I recorded there* in early 1965. That is where we recorded our first version of “I Can’t Do It” with Larry Hosford playing the harmonica. The song is on Sundazed “Introducing The E-Types” Album. The version that was released in 1965 was recorded a couple of months after the Monterey recording sessions. That was recorded in San Francisco at the Golden State Recording Studio."
~FROM BOB WENCE OF THE E-TYPES (in an email to Denis Simard)
(*NOTE: By "there" Bob Wence is referring to Meagher Electronics Recording Studio. Wow - that is quite a revelation that the great E-Types recorded a demo of their best song at Meagher Electronics in the mid-60's! ~DM)
===================
RE: JIM MEAGHER / MEAGHER ELECTRONICS
"Correct, that (ie 'high-end and professional audio / electronics repair and equipment sales') was the thrust of his business. However, he was one of few who actually knew anything about recording and audio engineering at the time. Yeah, he was a pain sometimes, but he did know much. I was in at least three groups that recorded there. But as I said before, Jim and I had a good relationship, which had no bearing whatsoever on the recordings done there. Yes, he was very opinionated and often terse, but personally, I held much respect for him. I understand other's experiences were not the same as mine, but Jim was someone of a mentor to me. He was happy, encouraging and supportive of my dabblings to modify Hammond organs and gave me great support in experience and hardware. He gave me a keyboard that resides on my Hammond to this day, allowing me to play the bass pedals with my left hand. He was delighted I was pursuing my degree in Electronic Engineering."
"There's a reason he assisted McCune Sound at Monterey Pop, the Jazz Festival, Acme Sound, etc. He was a fountain of knowledge. He was opinionated... if he didn't like something about the music, he wouldn't spend much effort on it. For example, he hated Fleetwood Mac, because of the flat tone of Stevie Nicks, while the rest of us were in awe of them. Truth be known, she is often flat, and it really grated on his nerves."
~FROM DENIS SIMARD
===================
"Hey DMZ
My only experience with Jim Meagher was getting blown speakers fixed
As a slight aside I do remember going to Safeway and testing my amp tubes
They actually had a tube tester and you could buy new tubes
But you’re right,there was no way for small town bands to do multi tracking at all
I remember my first tape recorder had sound on sound* which did not allow you to sync up
but you could layer trax on top of of trax but with no control to really do true multi tracking
You are the only person I know that did a recording there."
~FROM ROBERT STANTON
* ("Les Paul invented "Sound on Sound" recording using an Ampex tape recorder given to him by Bing Crosby. He placed an additional playback head, located before the conventional erase/record/playback heads. This allowed Paul to play along with a previously recorded track, both of which were mixed together on to a new track. This was a destructive process because the original recording was recorded over." - from a Wikipedia Ampex article)
===================
(To Denis Simard): "Thanks for feedback - Sounds like a decent person with some quirks -- I was just wondering who else had recorded there... Ha ha - he probably hated Rusk & McGowan - they were a little smarmy - a little slick and showbizzy but friendly. I'm actually trying to learn more about Meagher and the Wikipedia article is obviously horribly limited - did any label releases result from his studio recordings that you know of?"
~FROM DEREK MORRIS
===================
"Hmmm, not sure about any labels that may have been recorded there. It seems to me there were some minor ones, but I'm not sure. It might be worth me contacting Bob Wence and see what, if anything, he might know."
~FROM DENIS SIMARD
===================
FROM BOB WENCE OF THE E-TYPES (RESPONDING TO DENIS SIMARD INQUIRY)
"Hi Denis, Yes I recorded there* in early 1965. That is where we recorded our first version of “I Can’t Do It” with Larry Hosford playing the harmonica. The song is on Sundazed “Introducing The E-Types” Album. The version that was released in 1965 was recorded a couple of months after the Monterey recording sessions. That was recorded in San Francisco at the Golden State Recording Studio."
~FROM BOB WENCE OF THE E-TYPES (in an email to Denis Simard)
(*NOTE: By "there" Bob Wence is referring to Meagher Electronics Recording Studio. Wow - that is quite a revelation that the great E-Types recorded a demo of their best song at Meagher Electronics in the mid-60's! ~DM)
===================
"Monterey Pop Revisited" Symposium
June 15, 16, & 17, 2001
The "Monterey Pop Revisited" symposium in 2001 was sponsored the Monterey History and Art Association (MHAA). The three-day event included two full days (Saturday and Sunday) of panel discussions at one of the Monterey Fairgrounds buildings, along with a great opening night Friday "gala" upstairs at the very nice Monterey History and Art building at Custom House Plaza in downtown Monterey. Many of the original people involved in organizing, presenting, and performing at the festival were there; the program graphic below is just a partial list of those who actually ended up participating. And some of the best participants were people like legendary local citizen Sam Karas, who contributed a lot to civic affairs in Monterey and who was instrumental in making the Pop Festival happen. His stories alone need to be preserved digitally for all to see. (Mr. Karas passed away two years later in 2003.)
The symposium ran from Friday night through Saturday and Sunday ... just like the Pop Festival thirty-four years earlier. Country Joe McDonald, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Cassady, D.L. Pennebaker, Michelle Phillips, and many others participated in panel discussions and Q&A sessions and even some live performances. There even was a tour of the Monterey Fairgrounds stage where Jimi burned his guitar, etc. Lots of history and anecdotes and remembrances. Everybody mingled for the entire weekend. I surprisingly even got to spend quite a bit of time talking with Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane) and filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker ("Monterey Pop"), both of who were very friendly and accessible.
Unfortunately the Symposium did not get near the attendance they were hoping for so it was not a financial success. Perhaps 150 at most attended when I believe they hoped for perhaps 800-1000. I believe that the lack of financial success of the event spelled the beginning of the end for the existing MHAA management who had created the event. More "proof"sadly in the eyes of some Monterey officials that there was "no money" in remembering and celebrating the Pop Festival as part of Monterey's history. All the video and audio recordings of the symposium were stored in a City of Monterey storage facility and to this day none of that material is available online. Hopefully City officials will see the value of these archives and do the right thing and someday make the entire event accessible on the Internet. The "civic leaders" in Monterey seem to have never ever fully embraced the Monterey Pop Festival and this is just one more example.
Flash forward to the present: last time I checked, the Monterey HIstory and Art Association can't even locate the audio and video records and the still photos in storage! This organization is so dysfunctional it is pathetic. There has been an ongoing turnover in MHAA management over the year that has taken its toll; something like 10 executive directors in the last 15 years, etc.
It is sad that the City of Monterey civic leaders are letting these great Monterey Pop Revisited archives rot in some warehouse. They could get volunteers to help digitize the material and put it online. The technology is there these days to make it happen pretty cheaply. I have volunteered to help out remotely (I don't live in Monterey) but my offers fall on deaf ears. But I'm hoping that someday soon somebody will step forward and lead the effort locally. Perhaps the new Salvador Dali museum will help with stabilizing MHAA finances so other projects like digitizing Monterey Pop Revisited can take place!
June 15, 16, & 17, 2001
The "Monterey Pop Revisited" symposium in 2001 was sponsored the Monterey History and Art Association (MHAA). The three-day event included two full days (Saturday and Sunday) of panel discussions at one of the Monterey Fairgrounds buildings, along with a great opening night Friday "gala" upstairs at the very nice Monterey History and Art building at Custom House Plaza in downtown Monterey. Many of the original people involved in organizing, presenting, and performing at the festival were there; the program graphic below is just a partial list of those who actually ended up participating. And some of the best participants were people like legendary local citizen Sam Karas, who contributed a lot to civic affairs in Monterey and who was instrumental in making the Pop Festival happen. His stories alone need to be preserved digitally for all to see. (Mr. Karas passed away two years later in 2003.)
The symposium ran from Friday night through Saturday and Sunday ... just like the Pop Festival thirty-four years earlier. Country Joe McDonald, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Cassady, D.L. Pennebaker, Michelle Phillips, and many others participated in panel discussions and Q&A sessions and even some live performances. There even was a tour of the Monterey Fairgrounds stage where Jimi burned his guitar, etc. Lots of history and anecdotes and remembrances. Everybody mingled for the entire weekend. I surprisingly even got to spend quite a bit of time talking with Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson Airplane) and filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker ("Monterey Pop"), both of who were very friendly and accessible.
Unfortunately the Symposium did not get near the attendance they were hoping for so it was not a financial success. Perhaps 150 at most attended when I believe they hoped for perhaps 800-1000. I believe that the lack of financial success of the event spelled the beginning of the end for the existing MHAA management who had created the event. More "proof"sadly in the eyes of some Monterey officials that there was "no money" in remembering and celebrating the Pop Festival as part of Monterey's history. All the video and audio recordings of the symposium were stored in a City of Monterey storage facility and to this day none of that material is available online. Hopefully City officials will see the value of these archives and do the right thing and someday make the entire event accessible on the Internet. The "civic leaders" in Monterey seem to have never ever fully embraced the Monterey Pop Festival and this is just one more example.
Flash forward to the present: last time I checked, the Monterey HIstory and Art Association can't even locate the audio and video records and the still photos in storage! This organization is so dysfunctional it is pathetic. There has been an ongoing turnover in MHAA management over the year that has taken its toll; something like 10 executive directors in the last 15 years, etc.
It is sad that the City of Monterey civic leaders are letting these great Monterey Pop Revisited archives rot in some warehouse. They could get volunteers to help digitize the material and put it online. The technology is there these days to make it happen pretty cheaply. I have volunteered to help out remotely (I don't live in Monterey) but my offers fall on deaf ears. But I'm hoping that someday soon somebody will step forward and lead the effort locally. Perhaps the new Salvador Dali museum will help with stabilizing MHAA finances so other projects like digitizing Monterey Pop Revisited can take place!
Monterey Pop Revisited Article
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001
Writer: Chuck Thurman
Marijuana was illegal but LSD was not. The Beatles had just released Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1967, as hordes of hippies poured into the sleepy backwater village that was Monterey, no one really knew how much power they would soon hold. The Monterey International Pop Festival inaugurated the Summer of Love and, for a moment in time, remade the culture in its own image.
Monterey was a strange place for the cultural revolution's launch. The town was still suffering from the after-effects of the sardine bust, and it had yet to establish its identity as a major tourist destination. Urban renewal had not yet transformed Alvarado, which by all accounts was a pretty seedy stretch of tattoo parlors, pool halls and beer joints. Cannery Row was a combination ghost town and giant jungle gym, a rusted labyrinth where kids explored deserted buildings looking for old cannery labels and hobos slept amidst abandoned machinery.
Monterey native John Laughton was an usher at the Pop Festival. He had just finished his freshman year at UC Berkeley, where he caught the tail end of the Free Speech movement and watched the birth of the black-power, flower-power and women's-rights movements. He remembers his hometown as an isolated place. "We were out in the sticks," Laughton recalls. "It was a small town. Everybody knew everybody, but we were removed from the body politic of the larger happenings."
According to Linda Jaffe, executive director of the Monterey History and Art Association, the seeds of the idea for a pop music festival were generated by music promoter Alan Pariser, a regular at the annual Monterey Jazz Festival. If Monterey could host a successful annual jazz celebration, he wondered, why couldn't the city also do a pop festival? Nurtured by music producer Lou Adler, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, and music publicist Derek Taylor, that seed grew into the largest gathering of flower children the world had ever seen.
Attendance estimates vary wildly, but nobody disputes that at the time, the Pop Festival was the biggest event of its kind in history. Somewhere between 100,000 and twice that number of long-haired, paisley-clad, dope-smoking young people converged on this small town of about 20,000 residents. They slept on the football field at Monterey Peninsula College, in their cars and vans on the streets of Monterey, in vacant lots and in the yards of people who lived near the fairgrounds.
National and local press pored over the event, bringing pictures of a new generation to the world. Long after the last wisps of marijuana smoke disappeared into the Monterey fog, young people were traveling to and through Monterey looking for some reminder of the concert that changed everything.
Journey to the Past
This weekend, the Monterey History and Art Association is sponsoring a three-day symposium examining the effects of the First Annual Monterey International Pop Festival. Panelists will include a variety of musicians who played there as well as organizers and artists who were involved. [See schedule below] During the three days, the various speakers will be analyzing and proselytizing about the ways in which the festival defined and changed music in the late ''60s. They have plenty to work with.
In retrospect, we can see a musical roster that included some of the biggest names in rock and pop history: the Byrds, the Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas & the Papas, Lou Rawls, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Simon & Garfunkle, Country Joe & The Fish, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Hugh Masekela, Laura Nyro, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the time, though, many of these were new and emerging bands.
Besides altering the national cultural landscape, Jaffe says, the festival changed the way musicians were viewed. "It was significant in a couple of different ways," she says. "I'm going to quote Lou Adler: ''Prior to that event, musicians were treated as second-class citizens. After the Monterey Pop, the musicians were in the driver''s seat.'' And because of when it happened historically, it was the catalyst for the Summer of Love. Monterey Pop was a catalyst for getting people to come together to hear the music that would be the mouthpiece for what was happening in America."
It was also something of a career-maker for many of the musicians. If there''s any single enduring image of Jimi Hendrix, it may be the one where he''s onstage at the Fairgrounds, prayerfully dousing his guitar with lighter fluid, setting it on fire and watching it burn. Janis Joplin virtually sealed her date with fame during her blistering performance at the festival; The Who found an American audience with "My Generation"; and the Grateful Dead showed their music would appeal to more than just boutique San Francisco audiences.
John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas was instrumental in bringing the Monterey Pop Festival to life.
Of course, that's all hindsight, with 34 years separating fact from analysis. At the time, not everyone was so impressed. In its debut issue of November 1967, Rolling Stone panned the festival as simply a bit of ego-gratification for Adler and Phillips. Billboard said Hendrix''s "chicken choke handling of the guitar doesn''t indicate a strong talent."
But critics aside, the festival''s musical importance might only be important as a corollary to its social significance.
Cool Cops
Woodstock was bigger. But it can be argued--and probably will be argued this weekend--that the Monterey International Pop Festival was more important. Woodstock illustrated the peace-love-dope movement as it reached critical mass. But Monterey Pop showed us a generation bathed in idealism as it was born.
It also showed us a never-repeated example of two generations working in harmony, even if they didn''t understand one another.
Film actor/director Dennis Hopper was one of those in attendance (see "Heavy Photo Mama," page 24.) He's been quoted as saying, "Monterey was the purest, most beautiful moment of the whole '60s trip. It seemed like everything had come to that moment. It was a magical, pure moment in time."
With the publicity power of Adler and Phillips, word of the concert was spread around the country. It soon became obvious that this concert had the potential to be big. Although Monterey city officials were nervous about the anticipated crowds, they overcame their anxiety and not only allowed the show to go on, but supported it.
While the police in Berkeley and elsewhere took confrontational measures to control crowds, the police in Monterey took a more hands-off approach. Sam Karas, who would later rise to prominence as a Monterey County supervisor and who had been previously involved as an organizer with the Monterey Jazz Festival, had been hired by festival promoters to "put together everything but the performers--ushers, vendors, security and the whole bit." He says an understanding had been worked out with Monterey Police Chief Frank Marinello "to work with the crowd, not against them." That included turning a blind eye to the rampant smoking of marijuana that was going on inside and near the fairgrounds.
According to Karas, cops were instructed not to make arrests for smoking pot. Many of the cops even went beyond passive acceptance of the flood of strangers in their midst, wearing flowers in their caps and helmets, if not exactly in their hair.
It was an approach to security that seemed to work: Despite the huge numbers of stoned hippies outnumbering the entire population of Monterey - never mind the police - there were no instances of violence throughout the three-day festival. It was as peaceful an event as could have been imagined.
But even with the success of the festival behind them, city officials freaked out at the thought of a repeat concert.
According to historians, Adler and Phillips had already reached an agreement with the Monterey Fairgrounds for a second pop festival in 1968. City officials balked at the idea, fearful that the second concert might not be as peaceful. They ultimately demanded such a high security deposit that the promoters gave up on their plan.
Monterey Police Chief Marinello was one of those who never quite comprehended the reasons behind the city's reluctance to host the second festival.
According to Tim Thomas, the History and Art Association's historian, "[Marinello] said he couldn't understand why they didn't want to do it again. He said it was the easiest festival ever, that Monterey Jazz Festival was 10 times more of a powder keg."
It's interesting to ponder what kind of musical legacy the Monterey Pop Festival would have had if it could have become an annual event. But instead, the one-and only-Monterey International Pop Festival left us with visions of almost everything that was good about the ''60s: An innocent and true belief that peace and love could conquer the world''s problems, that even The Establishment''s intolerance would melt under the power of music.
"I would just say it captured and epitomized what it meant to be under 30 and living in the '60s: Young, vital, fresh," Laughton says. "You still had the enthusiasm that you could make a difference and change the world. You could change American culture in a positive way. All the energy was extremely positive.
(End of article written by Chuck Thurman from MontereyCountyWeekly.com June 14, 2001)
(Note: I recently discovered this phenomenal article by Chuck Thurman, Associate Editor of Monterey County Weekly. I looked up the author in order to email and thank him for his comprehensive and insightful article. I soon learned that Chuck Thurman is no longer with us; he passed away in 2008 at the age of 53. ~ DM)
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001
Writer: Chuck Thurman
Marijuana was illegal but LSD was not. The Beatles had just released Sergeant Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 1967, as hordes of hippies poured into the sleepy backwater village that was Monterey, no one really knew how much power they would soon hold. The Monterey International Pop Festival inaugurated the Summer of Love and, for a moment in time, remade the culture in its own image.
Monterey was a strange place for the cultural revolution's launch. The town was still suffering from the after-effects of the sardine bust, and it had yet to establish its identity as a major tourist destination. Urban renewal had not yet transformed Alvarado, which by all accounts was a pretty seedy stretch of tattoo parlors, pool halls and beer joints. Cannery Row was a combination ghost town and giant jungle gym, a rusted labyrinth where kids explored deserted buildings looking for old cannery labels and hobos slept amidst abandoned machinery.
Monterey native John Laughton was an usher at the Pop Festival. He had just finished his freshman year at UC Berkeley, where he caught the tail end of the Free Speech movement and watched the birth of the black-power, flower-power and women's-rights movements. He remembers his hometown as an isolated place. "We were out in the sticks," Laughton recalls. "It was a small town. Everybody knew everybody, but we were removed from the body politic of the larger happenings."
According to Linda Jaffe, executive director of the Monterey History and Art Association, the seeds of the idea for a pop music festival were generated by music promoter Alan Pariser, a regular at the annual Monterey Jazz Festival. If Monterey could host a successful annual jazz celebration, he wondered, why couldn't the city also do a pop festival? Nurtured by music producer Lou Adler, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, and music publicist Derek Taylor, that seed grew into the largest gathering of flower children the world had ever seen.
Attendance estimates vary wildly, but nobody disputes that at the time, the Pop Festival was the biggest event of its kind in history. Somewhere between 100,000 and twice that number of long-haired, paisley-clad, dope-smoking young people converged on this small town of about 20,000 residents. They slept on the football field at Monterey Peninsula College, in their cars and vans on the streets of Monterey, in vacant lots and in the yards of people who lived near the fairgrounds.
National and local press pored over the event, bringing pictures of a new generation to the world. Long after the last wisps of marijuana smoke disappeared into the Monterey fog, young people were traveling to and through Monterey looking for some reminder of the concert that changed everything.
Journey to the Past
This weekend, the Monterey History and Art Association is sponsoring a three-day symposium examining the effects of the First Annual Monterey International Pop Festival. Panelists will include a variety of musicians who played there as well as organizers and artists who were involved. [See schedule below] During the three days, the various speakers will be analyzing and proselytizing about the ways in which the festival defined and changed music in the late ''60s. They have plenty to work with.
In retrospect, we can see a musical roster that included some of the biggest names in rock and pop history: the Byrds, the Who, the Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas & the Papas, Lou Rawls, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Simon & Garfunkle, Country Joe & The Fish, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Hugh Masekela, Laura Nyro, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the time, though, many of these were new and emerging bands.
Besides altering the national cultural landscape, Jaffe says, the festival changed the way musicians were viewed. "It was significant in a couple of different ways," she says. "I'm going to quote Lou Adler: ''Prior to that event, musicians were treated as second-class citizens. After the Monterey Pop, the musicians were in the driver''s seat.'' And because of when it happened historically, it was the catalyst for the Summer of Love. Monterey Pop was a catalyst for getting people to come together to hear the music that would be the mouthpiece for what was happening in America."
It was also something of a career-maker for many of the musicians. If there''s any single enduring image of Jimi Hendrix, it may be the one where he''s onstage at the Fairgrounds, prayerfully dousing his guitar with lighter fluid, setting it on fire and watching it burn. Janis Joplin virtually sealed her date with fame during her blistering performance at the festival; The Who found an American audience with "My Generation"; and the Grateful Dead showed their music would appeal to more than just boutique San Francisco audiences.
John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas was instrumental in bringing the Monterey Pop Festival to life.
Of course, that's all hindsight, with 34 years separating fact from analysis. At the time, not everyone was so impressed. In its debut issue of November 1967, Rolling Stone panned the festival as simply a bit of ego-gratification for Adler and Phillips. Billboard said Hendrix''s "chicken choke handling of the guitar doesn''t indicate a strong talent."
But critics aside, the festival''s musical importance might only be important as a corollary to its social significance.
Cool Cops
Woodstock was bigger. But it can be argued--and probably will be argued this weekend--that the Monterey International Pop Festival was more important. Woodstock illustrated the peace-love-dope movement as it reached critical mass. But Monterey Pop showed us a generation bathed in idealism as it was born.
It also showed us a never-repeated example of two generations working in harmony, even if they didn''t understand one another.
Film actor/director Dennis Hopper was one of those in attendance (see "Heavy Photo Mama," page 24.) He's been quoted as saying, "Monterey was the purest, most beautiful moment of the whole '60s trip. It seemed like everything had come to that moment. It was a magical, pure moment in time."
With the publicity power of Adler and Phillips, word of the concert was spread around the country. It soon became obvious that this concert had the potential to be big. Although Monterey city officials were nervous about the anticipated crowds, they overcame their anxiety and not only allowed the show to go on, but supported it.
While the police in Berkeley and elsewhere took confrontational measures to control crowds, the police in Monterey took a more hands-off approach. Sam Karas, who would later rise to prominence as a Monterey County supervisor and who had been previously involved as an organizer with the Monterey Jazz Festival, had been hired by festival promoters to "put together everything but the performers--ushers, vendors, security and the whole bit." He says an understanding had been worked out with Monterey Police Chief Frank Marinello "to work with the crowd, not against them." That included turning a blind eye to the rampant smoking of marijuana that was going on inside and near the fairgrounds.
According to Karas, cops were instructed not to make arrests for smoking pot. Many of the cops even went beyond passive acceptance of the flood of strangers in their midst, wearing flowers in their caps and helmets, if not exactly in their hair.
It was an approach to security that seemed to work: Despite the huge numbers of stoned hippies outnumbering the entire population of Monterey - never mind the police - there were no instances of violence throughout the three-day festival. It was as peaceful an event as could have been imagined.
But even with the success of the festival behind them, city officials freaked out at the thought of a repeat concert.
According to historians, Adler and Phillips had already reached an agreement with the Monterey Fairgrounds for a second pop festival in 1968. City officials balked at the idea, fearful that the second concert might not be as peaceful. They ultimately demanded such a high security deposit that the promoters gave up on their plan.
Monterey Police Chief Marinello was one of those who never quite comprehended the reasons behind the city's reluctance to host the second festival.
According to Tim Thomas, the History and Art Association's historian, "[Marinello] said he couldn't understand why they didn't want to do it again. He said it was the easiest festival ever, that Monterey Jazz Festival was 10 times more of a powder keg."
It's interesting to ponder what kind of musical legacy the Monterey Pop Festival would have had if it could have become an annual event. But instead, the one-and only-Monterey International Pop Festival left us with visions of almost everything that was good about the ''60s: An innocent and true belief that peace and love could conquer the world''s problems, that even The Establishment''s intolerance would melt under the power of music.
"I would just say it captured and epitomized what it meant to be under 30 and living in the '60s: Young, vital, fresh," Laughton says. "You still had the enthusiasm that you could make a difference and change the world. You could change American culture in a positive way. All the energy was extremely positive.
(End of article written by Chuck Thurman from MontereyCountyWeekly.com June 14, 2001)
(Note: I recently discovered this phenomenal article by Chuck Thurman, Associate Editor of Monterey County Weekly. I looked up the author in order to email and thank him for his comprehensive and insightful article. I soon learned that Chuck Thurman is no longer with us; he passed away in 2008 at the age of 53. ~ DM)
Monterey Pop Revisited Article
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001
Writer: Chuck Thurman
From MontereyCountyWeekly.com
Published June 14, 2001
Writer: Chuck Thurman
MY DILEMMA:
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
MY DILEMMA:
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
Well, this was 1967, the "Summer of Love," and Monterey was the center of the world for a weekend with the Monterey Pop Festival on June 16-18. As a huge music fan and youthful musician myself, attending the Pop Festival was VERY important to me; it was a great opportunity to see some of the best bands in the world at the world's first major rock festival. Performers that Saturday afternoon included Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe & The Fish, Big Brother & The Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Steve Miller Band, Electric Flag, Al Kooper, Paul Butterfield, and Canned Heat. The Friday night before I had just seen Simon & Garfunkel, The Association, Eric Burdon & The Animals, and even 60's pop star Johnny Rivers.
But there was a conflict. I was supposed to pitch in a Babe Ruth League game that Saturday, June 17, beginning at Noon at El Estero Park with my team, Monterey Merchants, against the Kiwanis Pirates, the best team in the league. The Pop Festival was scheduled to start at 1:30. I didn't want to let my team down but there was no way I was going to miss the Pop Festival either. So I told my manager that I'd pitch through the top of the 4th inning but then had to leave for the show. He didn't like it but said "OK." (I figured that if each full inning lasted say 20 minutes, then I could get to the Monterey Fairgrounds [via my father, who was my "ride" - I was 15 and not yet driving yet!] in time for the first band scheduled at 1:30.)
Well, I did finish pitching the first 4 innings and our team actually was doing very well against the undefeated Kiwanis team that ended up winning the league championship. I don't remember feeling like I was throwing anything special - a few strikeouts but not that many; a bunch of hanging curves that they probably would have eventually adjusted to and then started drilling the ball. But for whatever reason they weren't effectively hitting me (yet!). So after keeping Kiwanis to one run after their four innings at-bat, I left right away after the top of the 4th; we were ahead 4-1 and our team was about to go to bat at the bottom of the 4th.
As I found out later, the rest of that game did not turn out well. We didn't score in the bottom of the 4th, and starting in the top of the 5th, Kiwanis proceeded to totally blow the game wide open. They scored five runs in the top of the 5th off the new pitcher. It got uglier and uglier; our team didn't hit and also made a bunch of fielding errors; Kiwanis continued to run up the score and ended up winning 12-5.
To their credit, Kiwanis was an explosive team with some very good singles hitters who got on base a lot; they also had some hitters with power. And I was surprised that I had pitched so well up to that point; it probably would not have lasted but who knows. Maybe I left at the perfect time, with my dignity still intact! Kiwanis had four all-star 15-year-old players including Curtis Monar, Sal Rombi, Tim DiMaggio, and John Pira along with some strong younger players like Fermin Sanchez and Jeff Millington. Kiwanis had good depth at most positions, and people with the ability to get on base and steal bases. They also had probably the best hitter and pitcher in the league - Curtis Monar. Luckily Curtis was not pitching that day - don't recall who it was. Anyway, maybe I was so amped up about the Pop Festival and so eager to end each inning as quickly as possible that my pitching somehow got better? I don't remember it that way at all but who knows.
I arrived at the Pop Festival maybe twenty minutes after the first band started playing and only missed a couple of songs by the opening act Canned Heat - which I couldn't have cared less about! Overrated,boring blues band (boring and blues are synonymous to me). I frankly never understood why they were invited to the Pop Festival to begin with.
After Canned Heat left the stage, the rest of the afternoon was phenomenal; maybe "miraculous" and "life-changing" might be a better description. I still remember Country Joe & The Fish's trippy and mesmerizing "Section 43" - the highlight of a great day along with great performances by Quicksilver Messenger Service and John Cippolina, along with Janis Joplin/Big Brother & The Holding Company. Janis sang the legendary "Ball and Chain;" that song got such an ovation that Janis was brought back to perform it again on Sunday night. (This is indeed a blues style song and I don't care for blues, but her performance here was off-the-charts brilliant and totally compelling; jaw dropping is a good description. She was on fire. Her whole performance was transcendent and she took that one song far beyond the three-chord predictable boring typical blues form - even with a pretty "average" band backing her up!)
That Saturday afternoon show that I saw with Janis / Big Brother wasn't filmed because of some sort of "rights dispute" over eventual use of the footage and recording; it somehow later got resolved before Sunday night; her filmed Sunday night performance of "Ball and Chain" is the one that is in the D.A. Pennebaker "Monterey Pop" movie.
Babe Ruth Baseball vs. Monterey Pop Festival - June 17, 1967
Well, this was 1967, the "Summer of Love," and Monterey was the center of the world for a weekend with the Monterey Pop Festival on June 16-18. As a huge music fan and youthful musician myself, attending the Pop Festival was VERY important to me; it was a great opportunity to see some of the best bands in the world at the world's first major rock festival. Performers that Saturday afternoon included Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe & The Fish, Big Brother & The Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Steve Miller Band, Electric Flag, Al Kooper, Paul Butterfield, and Canned Heat. The Friday night before I had just seen Simon & Garfunkel, The Association, Eric Burdon & The Animals, and even 60's pop star Johnny Rivers.
But there was a conflict. I was supposed to pitch in a Babe Ruth League game that Saturday, June 17, beginning at Noon at El Estero Park with my team, Monterey Merchants, against the Kiwanis Pirates, the best team in the league. The Pop Festival was scheduled to start at 1:30. I didn't want to let my team down but there was no way I was going to miss the Pop Festival either. So I told my manager that I'd pitch through the top of the 4th inning but then had to leave for the show. He didn't like it but said "OK." (I figured that if each full inning lasted say 20 minutes, then I could get to the Monterey Fairgrounds [via my father, who was my "ride" - I was 15 and not yet driving yet!] in time for the first band scheduled at 1:30.)
Well, I did finish pitching the first 4 innings and our team actually was doing very well against the undefeated Kiwanis team that ended up winning the league championship. I don't remember feeling like I was throwing anything special - a few strikeouts but not that many; a bunch of hanging curves that they probably would have eventually adjusted to and then started drilling the ball. But for whatever reason they weren't effectively hitting me (yet!). So after keeping Kiwanis to one run after their four innings at-bat, I left right away after the top of the 4th; we were ahead 4-1 and our team was about to go to bat at the bottom of the 4th.
As I found out later, the rest of that game did not turn out well. We didn't score in the bottom of the 4th, and starting in the top of the 5th, Kiwanis proceeded to totally blow the game wide open. They scored five runs in the top of the 5th off the new pitcher. It got uglier and uglier; our team didn't hit and also made a bunch of fielding errors; Kiwanis continued to run up the score and ended up winning 12-5.
To their credit, Kiwanis was an explosive team with some very good singles hitters who got on base a lot; they also had some hitters with power. And I was surprised that I had pitched so well up to that point; it probably would not have lasted but who knows. Maybe I left at the perfect time, with my dignity still intact! Kiwanis had four all-star 15-year-old players including Curtis Monar, Sal Rombi, Tim DiMaggio, and John Pira along with some strong younger players like Fermin Sanchez and Jeff Millington. Kiwanis had good depth at most positions, and people with the ability to get on base and steal bases. They also had probably the best hitter and pitcher in the league - Curtis Monar. Luckily Curtis was not pitching that day - don't recall who it was. Anyway, maybe I was so amped up about the Pop Festival and so eager to end each inning as quickly as possible that my pitching somehow got better? I don't remember it that way at all but who knows.
I arrived at the Pop Festival maybe twenty minutes after the first band started playing and only missed a couple of songs by the opening act Canned Heat - which I couldn't have cared less about! Overrated,boring blues band (boring and blues are synonymous to me). I frankly never understood why they were invited to the Pop Festival to begin with.
After Canned Heat left the stage, the rest of the afternoon was phenomenal; maybe "miraculous" and "life-changing" might be a better description. I still remember Country Joe & The Fish's trippy and mesmerizing "Section 43" - the highlight of a great day along with great performances by Quicksilver Messenger Service and John Cippolina, along with Janis Joplin/Big Brother & The Holding Company. Janis sang the legendary "Ball and Chain;" that song got such an ovation that Janis was brought back to perform it again on Sunday night. (This is indeed a blues style song and I don't care for blues, but her performance here was off-the-charts brilliant and totally compelling; jaw dropping is a good description. She was on fire. Her whole performance was transcendent and she took that one song far beyond the three-chord predictable boring typical blues form - even with a pretty "average" band backing her up!)
That Saturday afternoon show that I saw with Janis / Big Brother wasn't filmed because of some sort of "rights dispute" over eventual use of the footage and recording; it somehow later got resolved before Sunday night; her filmed Sunday night performance of "Ball and Chain" is the one that is in the D.A. Pennebaker "Monterey Pop" movie.
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And then there was the unsuccesful attempt to get approval from the City of Monterey in 1968 for a "second" Monterey Pop Festival. Article below was written by Rolling Stone Magazine founder Jann Wenner. Rolling Stone, founded in 1967, was based in San Francisco at the time.
A Bloody Battle over Monterey Pop Festival
By Jann Wenner
April 6, 1968
Rolling Stone Magazine
MONTEREY—A second Monterey International Pop Festival has for the past month been put in jeopardy by a vicious handful of citizens, cops, and city officials in a small-town drama straight from Peyton Place and The Invaders.
Fighting an ugly collection of voyeuristic “taxpayers”—who have charged that last year’s Pop Festival resulted in [the] sale of pornographic literature, trafficking in narcotics, an invasion of “undesirables,” and “open fornication” (with photographs to prove it)—is an uneasy alliance of normally conservative businessmen, a forthright but nearly powerless group of volunteer citizens, and the two co-producers of last year’s Festival, Lou Adler and John Phillips.
The struggle centers on the Board of Directors of California’s Seventh Agricultural District which rents the Monterey Fairgrounds to various groups, including horse shows, rodeos, fairs, a jazz festival, and, last year, a pop festival. Caught in the middle is George Wise, a quiet and honest man who has managed the Fairgrounds for twelve years, who wants very much to have another Pop Festival, but who is now helpless, caught in a fatal trap originally laid for Phillips and Adler.
The City and County of Monterey (whose Mayor, Sheriff and District Attorney are fighting the Festival) have no legal voice in renting the Fairgrounds, but they can bring to bear enough pressure, and physical force if necessary, to make a bloody corpse out of what they don’t want. (What they have at the very least done is enough to guarantee that if there is a second Festival, at least the first days of it, will be under heavy inspection in a highly suspicious atmosphere.)
The Fairground Board voted at the end of February to begin negotiations with Adler and Phillips for the dates of June 21-22-23, the contract subject to a nominal final approval of the Board before it was finally signed, ordinarily a routine matter. The Board—too weak from the intense pressure to make a final decision and with three members up for re-appointment—reports directly to Sacramento, and is chosen by the Governor’s office, an office now run by Ronald Reagan on whom the ultimate fate of the Pop Festival may depend.
The status of the Festival is up in the air and its chances keep changing, as frightened men are pushed one way one day and another way the next day by forces of hate they cannot withstand. Settlements, compromises, and arrangements are made only to fall apart.
This political science casebook story would appear ridiculous at first, but the issue is not dope or “open fornication,” but has become an inhumane fight of a vestigial collection of public officials—numbering in the dozens—against a citizenry which never really elected them (over 10,000 Monterey residents have signed pro-Festival petitions) that stands with at least the music—if not the ethic—of youth. Phillips characterized it as the “showdown of Monterey.”
One of the City Council members who is for the Festival—in reply to the anti-Festival attacks of Monterey’s mayor—best summarized the illogical outcry: “The real problem is that the young people it attracts have long hair and funny clothes and are somehow different and we don’t understand them so we don’t want them. Isn’t that right?”
The local newspaper—the Monterey Peninsula Herald—carried two stories last February 19, one with the news that the Festival would probably happen again, and another next to it which began: “Almost like Horatio at the Bridge, Monterey Mayor Minnie D. Coyle symbolically stood at the city gates last night ready to protect the citizenry from the ‘flower children.’”
And so it began to happen in Monterey: a bizarre enactment of the entire American tragedy. And the absurdity of it is that this spiteful collection of “officials” of an ordinarily insignificant community has, by an accident of geography, been able to so far prevent the Festival, intimidate honest men, and involve themselves and their petty bourgeois hatreds in an event of worldwide importance and stature.
* * *
One can best understand the significance of this through the eyes of John Phillips—until recently, living off the fat of the land in the Virgin Islands and Greenwich Village—who has, in Monterey, been playing the part of the congenial, eager to please, compromising and reassuring, and smiling-smiling-smiling “ambassador of pop.”
Phillips and Lou Adler, along with various members of The Mamas and the Papas including his wife, Michelle, spent the previous six months traveling around the world. According to him, wherever they went, people wanted to know about the Monterey Pop Festival. (“They don’t ask about the group anymore; they just want to know about Monterey.”)
He and Adler had been undecided about getting involved in another festival: other cities had asked them to come, there were just too many hassles to face, a number of imitators were trying to put on festivals, none of them with any hope of matching Monterey. But that trip brought home the nature of what had taken place last June; like everyone else who was there or who knew about it, the Monterey Pop Festival was just so “beautiful” that it had to happen again.
On March 1, Phillips and Adler returned to Monterey for the first time since the Pop Festival. To Adler, “it was a fact finding trip. We came to see what the opposition was about and what they wanted.” Somehow the anxiety of Fairground manager Wise, the passion of Sam Karas—a local businessman who had helped the Festival last year and was now running a petition and lobbying campaign for another Festival—and the local radio, television and newspaper reporters awaiting them, seemed unnecessarily worried. It was, after all, just a few people to see, a few hands to shake, a few plans to make, and back to Los Angeles to begin the real work for another Pop Festival.
The first stop was a noontime rally at Monterey Peninsula College where several hundred students were waiting to hear Phillips. He really didn’t want to go—and someone even told him that the paper would say that he was starting demonstrations like Mario Savio—but he did go.
At the college he was greeted by Bob Siler, a student who was an usher at last year’s Festival. Siler told Phillips: “We already have over a thousand signatures on our petition. They’re not just students, they are businessmen and older people, too. My Mom, I told her we were starting a ‘People for Pop’ campaign and she told me I better not. She’s on the ‘Stop the Pop’ committee. She wasn’t even there last year. That’s the kind of people we’re up against, like my Mom.”
The most important stop was at the executive offices of Del Monte Properties (the company which has the most substantial holdings on the Monterey Peninsula other than the government, including the Seventeen Mile Drive, the Del Monte Country Club, and several million dollars worth of real estate and influence.) Phillips and Adler had come to talk with Tim Michaud, the president of the company and the chairman of the Pop Festival’s Monterey Citizens Committee.
If it could be said that there is one man without whom it would be impossible to return the Festival to Monterey, it is Tim Michaud, a socially well-connected Republican, and apparently the only person in that whole section of California who has the emotional remove from the piddling nature of the local scene to put the politics, pressures, and positions in the perspective required to make the right move.
* * *
Monterey Mayor Minnie Coyle is a heavy-set spinster with tinted hair whose attacks against the Festival do not seem to be from fear of the unknown but from a curiously personal motive. Last year she asked to be put on the Pop Festival’s all-star Board of Governors. Phillips turned her down. This year she seems to want her revenge on Phillips and all the beautiful people who left her behind. Around her rallied the opponents of the Festival.
On Monday afternoon the Fairground Board met. Michaud was not there. On one side of the open meeting sat three rows of police officers, mayors, a Sheriff, and what seemed like a majority—but in fact was not one—of the local government. One by one they spoke, alternating with speakers from the other side of the room where sat Sam Karas, Bob Siler, and other students and some parents gathered around Adler and Phillips.
Within the hour an open hearing had turned into a debate. Control of the meeting was taken over by a man who flung down photographs of “open fornication,” a District Attorney who lost control of himself after reading a quotation from Lincoln, a police chief who threatened the Board with refusal to provide any men if they allowed the fair, the head of the local Motel Association who said that most of his members would have no rooms available for the Pop Festival, and Pete Arthur, a squat, swarthy man who carries himself like a butcher, the editor of the local newspaper. His editorials and the attitude of his publication had done as much as anything to inflame the community.
Phillips was scheduled to be [the] last speaker. He began a soft-spoken account of last year’s Festival and this year’s objections. Almost at once he was bombarded, not with questions, but accusations, personal attacks, name-calling and an unmistakable form of bitterness. (Later he called it an “inquisition.”)
Neither Phillips nor the President of the Board could control the audience. Phillips made the mistake of fighting back, and he was called a “liar.” The big city celebrity stood before them like a pack of sharks, they tasted Phillips’ blood. And they went for the kill.
(The only reasonable voice at the meeting was that of a man who had heard about the meeting on the radio while driving home. He just wanted to say that the objections to the Festival on the grounds of lack of sanitation facilities were ridiculous. He ran the local “portable toilet” business and could “line up sanitary toilets from Fort Ord to Big Sur.”)
* * *
Lou Adler and John Phillips have in the last weeks transcended show biz. They are not at all sure what they will do next. They do not want to have the Festival outside of California and, for many reasons, do not want to have it in the state’s big cities. They have not really begun to consider the alternatives suggested to them if Monterey is closed: use of private land nearby and even the call for a “Human Be-In” at Monterey on the weekend that had been allotted to the Pop Festival. That part of the immediate future is still uncertain.
Although it seemed like it was just the petty politics of a small town, the fight against the return of the Monterey International Pop Festival has taken on far greater dimensions. For one, the fate of the Festival–which is, after all, a musical event—was moved to a more powerful political arena.
And perhaps it took on a dimension even greater than that: the handful of Monterey citizens who are fighting the Festival—some of them perhaps genuinely sick people, some of them afraid, and some of them just spiteful—in their act of hatred may have started the bloodbath that the new music had hoped to avoid with love.
Jann S. Wenner founded Rolling Stone magazine in 1967. This article appeared in its April 6, 1968 issue. © 1968 Rolling Stone LLC All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/233-a-bloody-battle-over-monterey-pop-festival
By Jann Wenner
April 6, 1968
Rolling Stone Magazine
MONTEREY—A second Monterey International Pop Festival has for the past month been put in jeopardy by a vicious handful of citizens, cops, and city officials in a small-town drama straight from Peyton Place and The Invaders.
Fighting an ugly collection of voyeuristic “taxpayers”—who have charged that last year’s Pop Festival resulted in [the] sale of pornographic literature, trafficking in narcotics, an invasion of “undesirables,” and “open fornication” (with photographs to prove it)—is an uneasy alliance of normally conservative businessmen, a forthright but nearly powerless group of volunteer citizens, and the two co-producers of last year’s Festival, Lou Adler and John Phillips.
The struggle centers on the Board of Directors of California’s Seventh Agricultural District which rents the Monterey Fairgrounds to various groups, including horse shows, rodeos, fairs, a jazz festival, and, last year, a pop festival. Caught in the middle is George Wise, a quiet and honest man who has managed the Fairgrounds for twelve years, who wants very much to have another Pop Festival, but who is now helpless, caught in a fatal trap originally laid for Phillips and Adler.
The City and County of Monterey (whose Mayor, Sheriff and District Attorney are fighting the Festival) have no legal voice in renting the Fairgrounds, but they can bring to bear enough pressure, and physical force if necessary, to make a bloody corpse out of what they don’t want. (What they have at the very least done is enough to guarantee that if there is a second Festival, at least the first days of it, will be under heavy inspection in a highly suspicious atmosphere.)
The Fairground Board voted at the end of February to begin negotiations with Adler and Phillips for the dates of June 21-22-23, the contract subject to a nominal final approval of the Board before it was finally signed, ordinarily a routine matter. The Board—too weak from the intense pressure to make a final decision and with three members up for re-appointment—reports directly to Sacramento, and is chosen by the Governor’s office, an office now run by Ronald Reagan on whom the ultimate fate of the Pop Festival may depend.
The status of the Festival is up in the air and its chances keep changing, as frightened men are pushed one way one day and another way the next day by forces of hate they cannot withstand. Settlements, compromises, and arrangements are made only to fall apart.
This political science casebook story would appear ridiculous at first, but the issue is not dope or “open fornication,” but has become an inhumane fight of a vestigial collection of public officials—numbering in the dozens—against a citizenry which never really elected them (over 10,000 Monterey residents have signed pro-Festival petitions) that stands with at least the music—if not the ethic—of youth. Phillips characterized it as the “showdown of Monterey.”
One of the City Council members who is for the Festival—in reply to the anti-Festival attacks of Monterey’s mayor—best summarized the illogical outcry: “The real problem is that the young people it attracts have long hair and funny clothes and are somehow different and we don’t understand them so we don’t want them. Isn’t that right?”
The local newspaper—the Monterey Peninsula Herald—carried two stories last February 19, one with the news that the Festival would probably happen again, and another next to it which began: “Almost like Horatio at the Bridge, Monterey Mayor Minnie D. Coyle symbolically stood at the city gates last night ready to protect the citizenry from the ‘flower children.’”
And so it began to happen in Monterey: a bizarre enactment of the entire American tragedy. And the absurdity of it is that this spiteful collection of “officials” of an ordinarily insignificant community has, by an accident of geography, been able to so far prevent the Festival, intimidate honest men, and involve themselves and their petty bourgeois hatreds in an event of worldwide importance and stature.
* * *
One can best understand the significance of this through the eyes of John Phillips—until recently, living off the fat of the land in the Virgin Islands and Greenwich Village—who has, in Monterey, been playing the part of the congenial, eager to please, compromising and reassuring, and smiling-smiling-smiling “ambassador of pop.”
Phillips and Lou Adler, along with various members of The Mamas and the Papas including his wife, Michelle, spent the previous six months traveling around the world. According to him, wherever they went, people wanted to know about the Monterey Pop Festival. (“They don’t ask about the group anymore; they just want to know about Monterey.”)
He and Adler had been undecided about getting involved in another festival: other cities had asked them to come, there were just too many hassles to face, a number of imitators were trying to put on festivals, none of them with any hope of matching Monterey. But that trip brought home the nature of what had taken place last June; like everyone else who was there or who knew about it, the Monterey Pop Festival was just so “beautiful” that it had to happen again.
On March 1, Phillips and Adler returned to Monterey for the first time since the Pop Festival. To Adler, “it was a fact finding trip. We came to see what the opposition was about and what they wanted.” Somehow the anxiety of Fairground manager Wise, the passion of Sam Karas—a local businessman who had helped the Festival last year and was now running a petition and lobbying campaign for another Festival—and the local radio, television and newspaper reporters awaiting them, seemed unnecessarily worried. It was, after all, just a few people to see, a few hands to shake, a few plans to make, and back to Los Angeles to begin the real work for another Pop Festival.
The first stop was a noontime rally at Monterey Peninsula College where several hundred students were waiting to hear Phillips. He really didn’t want to go—and someone even told him that the paper would say that he was starting demonstrations like Mario Savio—but he did go.
At the college he was greeted by Bob Siler, a student who was an usher at last year’s Festival. Siler told Phillips: “We already have over a thousand signatures on our petition. They’re not just students, they are businessmen and older people, too. My Mom, I told her we were starting a ‘People for Pop’ campaign and she told me I better not. She’s on the ‘Stop the Pop’ committee. She wasn’t even there last year. That’s the kind of people we’re up against, like my Mom.”
The most important stop was at the executive offices of Del Monte Properties (the company which has the most substantial holdings on the Monterey Peninsula other than the government, including the Seventeen Mile Drive, the Del Monte Country Club, and several million dollars worth of real estate and influence.) Phillips and Adler had come to talk with Tim Michaud, the president of the company and the chairman of the Pop Festival’s Monterey Citizens Committee.
If it could be said that there is one man without whom it would be impossible to return the Festival to Monterey, it is Tim Michaud, a socially well-connected Republican, and apparently the only person in that whole section of California who has the emotional remove from the piddling nature of the local scene to put the politics, pressures, and positions in the perspective required to make the right move.
* * *
Monterey Mayor Minnie Coyle is a heavy-set spinster with tinted hair whose attacks against the Festival do not seem to be from fear of the unknown but from a curiously personal motive. Last year she asked to be put on the Pop Festival’s all-star Board of Governors. Phillips turned her down. This year she seems to want her revenge on Phillips and all the beautiful people who left her behind. Around her rallied the opponents of the Festival.
On Monday afternoon the Fairground Board met. Michaud was not there. On one side of the open meeting sat three rows of police officers, mayors, a Sheriff, and what seemed like a majority—but in fact was not one—of the local government. One by one they spoke, alternating with speakers from the other side of the room where sat Sam Karas, Bob Siler, and other students and some parents gathered around Adler and Phillips.
Within the hour an open hearing had turned into a debate. Control of the meeting was taken over by a man who flung down photographs of “open fornication,” a District Attorney who lost control of himself after reading a quotation from Lincoln, a police chief who threatened the Board with refusal to provide any men if they allowed the fair, the head of the local Motel Association who said that most of his members would have no rooms available for the Pop Festival, and Pete Arthur, a squat, swarthy man who carries himself like a butcher, the editor of the local newspaper. His editorials and the attitude of his publication had done as much as anything to inflame the community.
Phillips was scheduled to be [the] last speaker. He began a soft-spoken account of last year’s Festival and this year’s objections. Almost at once he was bombarded, not with questions, but accusations, personal attacks, name-calling and an unmistakable form of bitterness. (Later he called it an “inquisition.”)
Neither Phillips nor the President of the Board could control the audience. Phillips made the mistake of fighting back, and he was called a “liar.” The big city celebrity stood before them like a pack of sharks, they tasted Phillips’ blood. And they went for the kill.
(The only reasonable voice at the meeting was that of a man who had heard about the meeting on the radio while driving home. He just wanted to say that the objections to the Festival on the grounds of lack of sanitation facilities were ridiculous. He ran the local “portable toilet” business and could “line up sanitary toilets from Fort Ord to Big Sur.”)
* * *
Lou Adler and John Phillips have in the last weeks transcended show biz. They are not at all sure what they will do next. They do not want to have the Festival outside of California and, for many reasons, do not want to have it in the state’s big cities. They have not really begun to consider the alternatives suggested to them if Monterey is closed: use of private land nearby and even the call for a “Human Be-In” at Monterey on the weekend that had been allotted to the Pop Festival. That part of the immediate future is still uncertain.
Although it seemed like it was just the petty politics of a small town, the fight against the return of the Monterey International Pop Festival has taken on far greater dimensions. For one, the fate of the Festival–which is, after all, a musical event—was moved to a more powerful political arena.
And perhaps it took on a dimension even greater than that: the handful of Monterey citizens who are fighting the Festival—some of them perhaps genuinely sick people, some of them afraid, and some of them just spiteful—in their act of hatred may have started the bloodbath that the new music had hoped to avoid with love.
Jann S. Wenner founded Rolling Stone magazine in 1967. This article appeared in its April 6, 1968 issue. © 1968 Rolling Stone LLC All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/233-a-bloody-battle-over-monterey-pop-festival
Naming names: the unnamed elected officials referenced in the above Rolling Stone article who strongly lobbied against a second 1968 Monterey Pop Festival: Monterey County Sheriff William "Jack" Davenport and Monterey County District Attorney William Curtis.
In retrospect, the Monterey Pop Festival was a singularly unique event that perhaps was destined to never be repeated. Especially in the backasswards political climate dominated by restaurants and hotels and other tourist-oriented businesses that was Monterey in the Minnie Coyle-dominated late 1960's.
And because it only happened once and had such a unique mix of now legendary artists, the Pop Festival has taken on a fabled historical legendary status. But realistically, given the meteoric growth of Rock in this era, a 1968 festival could have overwhelmed Monterey. Monterey did not have (and still doesn't have) a venue that could accomodate large crowds. Woodstock two years later in 1969 didn't have any better selection of artists than Monterey Pop. But Woodstock drew over 500,000 people in a massive open field with miles of traffic jams and chaos surrounding the venue. Still, it is interesting to speculate how the Monterey Pop Festival would have evolved if it were allowed to continue in 1968 and perhaps on into future years. ~DM
In retrospect, the Monterey Pop Festival was a singularly unique event that perhaps was destined to never be repeated. Especially in the backasswards political climate dominated by restaurants and hotels and other tourist-oriented businesses that was Monterey in the Minnie Coyle-dominated late 1960's.
And because it only happened once and had such a unique mix of now legendary artists, the Pop Festival has taken on a fabled historical legendary status. But realistically, given the meteoric growth of Rock in this era, a 1968 festival could have overwhelmed Monterey. Monterey did not have (and still doesn't have) a venue that could accomodate large crowds. Woodstock two years later in 1969 didn't have any better selection of artists than Monterey Pop. But Woodstock drew over 500,000 people in a massive open field with miles of traffic jams and chaos surrounding the venue. Still, it is interesting to speculate how the Monterey Pop Festival would have evolved if it were allowed to continue in 1968 and perhaps on into future years. ~DM
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to those who have contributed to this site so far: Robert Stanton, Jeanne Stanton, Annamarie Della Sala Stanton, Don Davison, Mark Smith, Joan Chapin, Kyle Wyatt, Martin Bradley, Marla Martin Anderson, Debbie Langdon Bradford, Lilly Hespen Menezes, Alan Herren, Mike Welch, Mary Jane Porter Perna, Susan Turner Pohlmann, Mark Bibler, Joe Cutrufelli, Jeff Sumida, Alice Valdez Gerschler, Jon Wren, Christopher DuBois, Duke Quinones, Susie Rochon Henderson, Patrick Duffy, Gerald Armstrong, Carl Becker, Dennis Taylor, Mike Ventimiglia, Jack Frost, Steve Martin, Mike Ivers, Tom Russo Sr., Chuck Della Sala, Mel Hagio, Rick Hattori, Ellie Hattori, Randall Harris, Eddie Van Houtte, Anthony Della Sala, Pat Hathaway, Jack Pearson, Marie Pearson, Victor Henry, Dennis Copeland, Ron Chesshire, Keith Beard Trinity, Linda Kadani, Steve Hubbard, and John Greenwald. We expect to be hearing from others soon!
Special thanks to those who have contributed to this site so far: Robert Stanton, Jeanne Stanton, Annamarie Della Sala Stanton, Don Davison, Mark Smith, Joan Chapin, Kyle Wyatt, Martin Bradley, Marla Martin Anderson, Debbie Langdon Bradford, Lilly Hespen Menezes, Alan Herren, Mike Welch, Mary Jane Porter Perna, Susan Turner Pohlmann, Mark Bibler, Joe Cutrufelli, Jeff Sumida, Alice Valdez Gerschler, Jon Wren, Christopher DuBois, Duke Quinones, Susie Rochon Henderson, Patrick Duffy, Gerald Armstrong, Carl Becker, Dennis Taylor, Mike Ventimiglia, Jack Frost, Steve Martin, Mike Ivers, Tom Russo Sr., Chuck Della Sala, Mel Hagio, Rick Hattori, Ellie Hattori, Randall Harris, Eddie Van Houtte, Anthony Della Sala, Pat Hathaway, Jack Pearson, Marie Pearson, Victor Henry, Dennis Copeland, Ron Chesshire, Keith Beard Trinity, Linda Kadani, Steve Hubbard, and John Greenwald. We expect to be hearing from others soon!
