On a beautiful June weekend in 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love, the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade’s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll. Monterey would launch the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, but they were just a few among a wildly diverse cast that included Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas, the Who, Hugh Masekela, and the extraordinary Ravi Shankar. With his characteristic vérité style, D. A. Pennebaker got it all, immortalizing moments that have become legend: Pete Townshend destroying his guitar, Jimi Hendrix burning his. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this timeless document of a landmark event.
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. Monterey was the first widely-promoted and heavily-attended rock festival, attracting an estimated 200,000 total attendees with 55,000 to 90,000 people present at the event's peak at midnight on Sunday. It was notable as hosting the first major American appearances by Jimi Hendrix and The Who, as well as the first major public performances of Janis Joplin and Otis Redding.
The Monterey Pop Festival embodied the themes of San Francisco as a focal point for the counter-culture and is generally regarded as one of the beginnings of the "Summer of Love" in 1967. It also became the template for future music festivals, notably the Woodstock Festival two years later.
The festival was planned in just seven weeks by promoter Lou Adler, John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, producer Alan Pariser, and publicist Derek Taylor. The festival board included members of The Beatles and The Beach Boys. The Monterey location had been known as the site for the long-running Monterey Jazz Festival and Monterey Folk Festival; the promoters saw the Monterey Pop festival as a way to validate rock music as an art form in the way jazz and folk were regarded.
The artists performed for free, with all revenue donated to charity, with the exception of Ravi Shankar, who was paid $3,000 for his afternoon-long performance on the sitar.
The festival was later hailed as a triumph of organization and cooperation, setting a standard that few subsequent festivals have ever matched.
Lou Adler later reflected:
. . .[O]ur idea for Monterey was to provide the best of everything -- sound equipment, sleeping and eating accommodations, transportation -- services that had never been provided for the artist before Monterey ... We set up an on-site first aid clinic, because we knew there would be a need for medical supervision and that we would encounter drug-related problems. We didn't want people who got themselves into trouble and needed medical attention to go untreated. Nor did we want their problems to ruin or in any way disturb other people or disrupt the music. . . Our security worked with the Monterey police. The local law enforcement authorities never expected to like the people they came in contact with as much as they did. They never expected the spirit of 'Music, Love and Flowers' to take over to the point where they'd allow themselves to be festooned with flowers.
Almost every aspect of The Monterey International Pop Festival was a "first". Although the audience was predominantly white, Monterey's bill was truly multi-cultural and crossed all musical boundaries, mixing folk, blues, jazz, soul, R&B, rock, psychedelia, pop and classical genres, boasting a line-up that put established stars like The Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel and The Byrds alongside groundbreaking new acts from the UK, the USA, South Africa and India.
Music writer Rusty DeSoto argues that pop music history tends to downplay the importance of Monterey in favour of the "bigger, higher-profile, more decadent" Woodstock Festival, held two years later. But, as he notes:
"... Monterey Pop was a seminal event: it was the first real rock festival ever held, featuring debut performances of bands that would shape the history of rock and affect popular culture from that day forward. The County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California ... had been home to folk, jazz and blues festivals for many years. But the weekend of June 16 - 18, 1967 was the first time it was used to showcase rock music."
The festival launched the careers of many who played there, making some of them into stars virtually overnight. The Who and Jimi Hendrix had each already been sensations in the UK and Europe but were practically unknown in the USA. Other artists who rose to popularity following their appearances at Monterey included Janis Joplin[6], Laura Nyro, Canned Heat, Otis Redding, Steve Miller and Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar.
Monterey was also the first high-profile event to mix acts from major regional music centres in the U.S.A. -- San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis and New York City -- and it was the first time many of these bands had met each other in person. It was a particularly important meeting place for bands from the Bay Area and L.A., who had tended to regard each other with a degree of suspicion -- Frank Zappa for one made no secret of his low regard for some of the San Francisco bands -- and until that point the two scenes had been developing separately and along fairly distinct lines. Paul Kantner, of Jefferson Airplane, said, “The idea that San Francisco was heralding was a bit of freedom from oppression.”
Monterey also marked a significant changing of the guard in British music. The Who and Eric Burdon & The New Animals represented the UK, with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones conspicuous by their absence. The Beatles had by then retired from touring and The Stones were unable to tour America due the recent drug busts and trials of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The Stone's Brian Jones appeared on his own, wafting through the crowd, resplendent in full psychedelic regalia, and appearing on stage briefly to introduce Jimi Hendrix. As it transpired, it was two more years before The Stones toured again, by which time Jones was dead; The Beatles never toured again. Meanwhile, The Who leaped into the breach and became the top UK touring act of the period.
Also notable was the festival's innovative sound system, designed and built by audio engineer Abe Jacob, who started his career doing live sound for San Francisco bands, and went on to become a leading sound designer for the American theatre. Jacob's groundbreaking Monterey sound system was the progenitor of all the large-scale PA's that followed[citation needed]. It was a key factor in the festival's success and it was greatly appreciated by the artists -- in the Monterey film, David Crosby can clearly be seen saying "Great sound system!" to band-mate Chris Hillman at the start of The Byrds' performance.
Electronic music pioneers Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause set up a booth at Monterey to demonstrate the new electronic music synthesizer developed by Robert Moog.[8] Beaver and Krause had bought one of Moog's first synthesizers in 1966 and had spent a fruitless year trying to get someone in Hollywood interested in using it. Through their demonstration booth at Monterey, they gained the interest of acts including The Doors, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel and others. This quickly built into a steady stream of business and the eccentric Beaver was soon one of the busiest session men in L.A., and he and Krause earned a contract with Warner Brothers.
Eric Burdon and The Animals later that same year sang a song about the festival entitled "Monterey", which quoted a line from the Byrds song "Renaissance Fair" ("I think that maybe I'm dreamin'"). In the song, Burdon mentions Monterey performers The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Ravi Shankar, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Hugh Masekela, The Grateful Dead,and The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones ("Her Majesty's Prince Jones smiled as he moved among the crowd"). The instruments used in the song imitate the styles of these performers.
01. Simon & Garfunkel - Homeward Bound
02. Simon & Garfunkel - Sounds Of Silence
03. Country Joe And The Fish - Not-So-Sweet Martha Lorraine
04. Al Kooper - (I Heard Her Say) Wake Me, Shake Me
05. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Driftin' Blues
06. Quicksilver Messenger Service - All I Ever Wanted To Do
07. The Electric Flag - Drinkin' Wine
08. The Byrds - Chimes Of Freedom
09. The Byrds - He Was A Friend Of Mine
10. The Byrds - Hey Joe
11. Laura Nyro - Wedding Bell Blues
12. Laura Nyro - Poverty Train
13. Jefferson Airplane - Somebody To Love
14. The Blues Project - Flute Thing
15. Big Brother and the Holding Company - Combination of the Two
16. Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth
17. The Who - Substitute
18. The Who - Summertime Blues
19. The Who - A Quick One While He's Away
20. The Mamas And The Papas - Straight Shooter
21. The Mamas And The Papas - Somebody Groovy
22. Scott McKenzie - San Francisco
23. The Mamas And The Papas - Dancing In The Street
24. Flute Thing by Al Kooper played by The Blues Project
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