No flaming guitars, but Monterey Pop stirs echoes of 1967
Five decades after the event itself, Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire was still the talk of the Monterey International Pop Festival, which marked its 50th anniversary this weekend in Monterey.
“This is where he did it,” said Eric Burdon, one of the few artists to perform at the 1967 and 2017 editions of the festival, as he pointed at the spot below his feet where he witnessed Hendrix set his instrument ablaze. “This is where he did it!”
Later that same evening, Father John Misty stopped between songs: “This is the moment I light a guitar on fire,” he deadpanned.
Of course, he didn’t dare — even after a roadie
ran from backstage to hand him a lighter. But no one cared. It was enough just being at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, which hosted the 1967 Monterey Pop artists — Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, the Mamas & the Papas, the Who and others — exactly 50 years after the historic outdoor music festival where flower children roamed and a generation’s musical revolution was defined. No need for pyrotechnics, no need for laser light shows, no need for holograms of the departed.
Shohnii Hoffman remembers the Hendrix stunt well. A selfproclaimed “weekend hippie,” the Salinas resident was excited to relive the festival with her son. With a purple streak in her silver hair, she came out to the Saturday’s concert with her 38-yearold son, Kenneth.
Strolling through the exhibit curated by the Morrison Hotel Gallery, co-owned and founded by Monterey Pop photographer Henry Diltz, the official gallery of the Monterey Pop 50th celebration, Hoffman stopped in front of the famed image captured in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary film of Hendrix watching his guitar burn.
“It was nerve-racking,” recalled Hoffman, now 72, who said she sat five or six rows from the stage in ’67. “He started slamming it down … then he picked up the pieces and started throwing it out to the audience, and I was like, ‘Don’t hit me!’ ”
With vivid memories of the 1967 Monterey Pop ingrained in her mind, Hoffman said she’ll always feel like that wide-eyed 22-year-old hearing Joplin live for the first time.
“She sang so hard and so strong with that rusty voice of hers that we were just astonished,” Hoffman said. “When she walked offstage you could just see her gasping for air.”
Monterey Pop’s 50th anniversary celebration was a trip back in time for several generations. Whole families attended the three-day outdoor concert, including parents or grandparents who either attended the watershed 22 hours of music on June 16-18, 1967, or wish they had.
Sydney Endicott said she grew up hearing stories about Monterey Pop like it was a fairy tale. Her parents, Suzie and David, who now live in Carmel, weren’t old enough to attend the ’67 festival themselves, but passed on their love for the music event to their daughter.
“It’s just so rad to be here and know that I’m walking on the same grounds as all those people,” said Sydney Endicott, 21, who came up from Los Angeles to attend this year’s anniversary celebration with her parents.
The original weekend festival took place long before Snapchat and Facebook, instant photos and live streaming, which made it feel exclusive, magical, almost mythological to those who were there.
“It had never happened before, and it was thrilling in the moment,” said Elaine Mayes, who was 30 when she shot the festival as a young photographer. “The whole thing was an invention, which was part of why it was so much fun.”
Now at 80, Mayes was still snapping shots of the festival over the weekend — and she didn’t mince words when asked about this year’s Monterey Pop.
“Then, it was totally about the music,” she said. “This, right now, isn’t about the music. … The kind of music being played here isn’t as diverse. But it comes from the ’60s. The vibe here also reminds me of those days in 1967. People are friendly, and they’re enjoying themselves. Is it as great as it was 50 years ago? No. But that’s OK.”
The weekend’s lineup, which included Leon Bridges, Jackie Greene, the Head and the Heart and others, may not have had the star power of the 1967 festival, but then again, those who attended Monterey Pop five decades ago didn’t quite know they were going to watch rock legends perform either.
“I don’t think any of us really realized what an incredible weekend it was . ... I mean, like, Otis, I ran out of film during his performance and I said, ‘I’ll get him again. He’s a young guy.’ And then six months later he was dead in a plane crash,” said Jerry de Wilde, 79, another original Monterey Pop photographer. “That taught me a big lesson: Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today . ... You always think there’s going to be another, but you just never know. It took 50 years for the second one to happen, and it’s still nothing like it was back then.”
Lou Adler, 83, the original co-producer of Monterey Pop, conceded, “we knew going in, we could celebrate it but we couldn’t replicate it.” Adler collaborated with Another Planet Entertainment, the independent Berkeley promoter that produces Outside Lands in San Francisco, and Goldenvoice, the Southern California company behind the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and Desert Trip, to revive Monterey Pop for the weekend at a time he again feels the country needs it most. Soul singer Charles Bradley shares those sentiments and told fans Friday, “It’s time to come together. America’s in trouble.”
Burdon was just one of four original Monterey Pop performers to play the anniversary festival — Booker T. Jones, Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead were the other three, and Lesh closed out the anniversary celebration Sunday — but the rest of the acts were booked to honor those who paved the way for mega music festivals and pop music as it’s known today.
The crowd was modest Friday and grew over the weekend, though never selling out. Holding their smartphones high, to capture moments they hope to remember years to come, they swooned when Norah Jones (a second-generation Monterey Pop performer whose father, Ravi Shankar, showed off his fastfingered sitar-playing skills on the same stage 50 years earlier) sang with Jack Johnson during a cover of Bob Dylan’s 1967 track “I Shall Be Released” on Saturday night and screamed when the Nicki Bluhm & the Dirty Dozen Brass Band did a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” on Sunday afternoon.
Phillips, the only surviving member of the original Mamas and the Papas, sang her band’s “California Dreamin’ ” with the Head and the Heart on Sunday. After she performed, she sat down next to Adler, who produced her band.
“The weight and the gravity of this festival that we’re able to play on this beautiful evening is unraveling and sinking in over the course of the day,” Jonathan Russell of the Head and the Heart said after performing with Phillips. “It’s hitting me hard right now.”
The few thousand festivalgoers seemed to enjoy pretending they were the hippies of yore, filling the outdoor arena field with a patchwork of blankets and lawn chairs, smoking marijuana and basking in the sun. (That’s another thing that’s changed in recent years: Pot was illegal in ’67. Today, it isn’t, at least in California.) Many wore flowers in their hair this weekend, including the cops like Monterey police Officer Lidio Soriano.
Outside of the fairgrounds, others celebrated in their own way.
Larry Brassfield decided to drive for Uber and Lyft on Saturday night blasting the original hits from the ’67 Monterey Pop. The 65-year-old Monterey native was 15 when he snuck into the fairgrounds after learning about it during a high school field trip to San Francisco. He particularly remembers making his way into the press pit for the Who and being so close to the action that it spooked him.
“They were bashing their instruments and stuff like that, and it was really kind of scary,” he said. “Then Hendrix played, and I didn’t really know what was going to happen . ... so I went up to the seats on the right, and Hendrix just blew my mind.”
Brassfield said he’s been to dozens of music festivals since then, but couldn’t get himself to walk onto the fairgrounds this time around.
“I didn’t go to this one because I didn’t think it could be anywhere near what that one was,” he said. “The Monterey Pop festival, there was nothing like it and nothing that will ever be like it ever again as far as I’m concerned.”