My Summer of L ve at the pop festival that changed the world
He was an old Etonian and future Cabinet minister who, 50 years ago, found himself smoking pot with Jim Morrison and took part in the birth of flower power . . .
Fifty years ago this week, i was sitting in an ashram in San francisco sharing a joint with Jim Morrison of the Doors, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan of the Grateful Dead. One of them said: ‘Would you like to come with us to Monterey this weekend?’
i had no idea that i was being invited to the founding, iconic, template of pop festivals whose influence was destined to stretch all the way from Woodstock (two years later) to Glastonbury (which launched in 1970 and is still going strong).
in that 1967 Summer of Love, rock was young and cultural revolution was in its infancy.
the first stirrings of discontent consisted of ‘ hippies’ (whoever they were), talking about ‘ flower power’ ( whatever that was) and congregating in a run- down neighbourhood of San francisco called Haight-Ashbury (which insiders called the Haight).
it seemed an improbable location for the new capital of Love. But its attraction was mysteriously growing.
Anyone who reached the Haight seemed to go with its flow. So i, too, flowed with my new best friends, dropped out with them and joined them on the long drive down Highway One along the beautiful North Californian coast until we reached the fairground of Monterey.
its festival weekend turned out to be a seminal event in the history of pop music. it was also a turning point of change in the counter-cultural history of Sixties America.
Being at Monterey and becoming intimately involved backstage with some of the organisers and performers was one of the most remarkable experiences of my early life.
this may sound an unlikely tale from someone who became better known as a tory Cabinet minister, with other uncool incarnations along the way. So perhaps some background is needed to explain how i came to be on the scene in California in such hip company.
Vietnam was my entry ticket to the exotic worlds of flower power and psychedelic rock.
i had spent the first few months of 1967 based in Saigon as a war correspondent for the London Evening Standard. i am embarrassed to say that i loved every moment of my reporting on that chaotic conflict.
At the age of 24, you think you are immortal, so i found it exhilarating to be shot at and missed.
When i came off the battlefields and landed at the U.S. Air force base at Oakland, California, i was bursting with eyewitness stories.
Among the first listeners to these stories was Allen Ginsberg, the bearded sage regarded as one of the leading American literary figures of the 20th century, whom i encountered by chance in San francisco.
He took me under his wing, to Haight- Ashbury, and into his circle of poets, pop stars and antiwar protesters.
the Summer of Love in San francisco at that point consisted of multitudes of young people hanging out on the warm summer evenings in street cafes and makeshift ashrams; wearing multicoloured shirts and flowing kaftans on which they pinned outsize buttons with slogans such as ‘Make Love Not War’, ‘Don’t trust Anyone Over 30’ and ‘ Harass your Congressman About the War’.
there was endless impromptu folk music; the aroma of joss-sticks and marijuana scented the streets; while record players spun the No 1 West Coast single from Scott McKenzie: ‘if you’re going to San francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair ...’ this musical exhortation was followed by just about every pretty girl on the Haight-Ashbury scene.
it’s other mantra was ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’.
This colourful countercultural movement attracted as many as 40,000 to 50,000 people every weekend. But did it mean anything? Was it worth writing about? Mainstream journalism did not think so.
yet, by chance, i was the first overseas reporter to sense that there might be some important and perhaps transformational forces underlying the floral flotsam and jetsam of Haight-Ashbury (indeed, i filed a series of dispatches for the Evening Standard in June of that year).
these forces were the passion of the conversations — soon to become the protests — about the Vietnam War, and the impact of the new pop music on a generation eager to rebel against what they saw as the staid Establishment.
i became a temporary insider at Haight-Ashbury because i could ‘tell it like it was’ about Vietnam.
from that first evening with Jim Morrison, Pigpen and Ginsberg, i can still recall how they grilled me with questions on subjects they had only heard about second-hand, such as napalm raids, KiAs ( Killed in Action), ‘harassment and interdiction’ artillery bombardments, which were effectively random acts of aggression against enemy positions and escalating firefights in the DMZ (demilitarised zone). these and many other such conversations swirled around amid the fog of war and the fog of marijuana.
Nevertheless, a consensus emerged rather faster in HaightAshbury than it did in Washington DC that the Vietnam War was a mess, and getting messier. And the music of the time soon began to reflect this.
there had never been a mass audience pop music festival until 1967 — yet the Monterey international Pop Music festival was planned in less than seven weeks.
the moving spirits behind it were John Phillips of the Mamas And the Papas, Los Angeles record producer Lou Adler and British music publicist Derek taylor, who had been press officer for the Beatles.
this visionary team of promoters saw Monterey as a potentially ground-breaking festival whose objective was to validate rock music as an art form equal to jazz and folk.
i met Derek taylor in — where else? — Haight-Ashbury two weeks before Monterey. He was a fey, endearing figure who introduced me around as ‘a good friend of the Beatles’.
However, this was far from true, although i had at least met the
Fab Four, once with Jeffrey Archer when he brought them to Oxford, and once at Paul McCartney’s home in St John’s Wood in North London.
For all their huge hits, The Beatles were regarded as a conventional rather than revolutionary force on the music scene — until their sensational eighth album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released on June 1, 1967. That was the week I arrived in California from Vietnam.
WITHIN days, it seemed as though all the cafes, ashrams and radio stations in and around The Haight were playing the album on heavy rotation.
The Sgt Pepper lyrics were on everyone’s lips, especially the lines ‘I’d love to turn you on’ from A Day In The Life; ‘With tangerine trees and marmalade skies’ from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds; and ‘I get high with a little help from my friends’.
Such tracks were interpreted not as songs, but as summonses to nirvana in the Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out kingdom. They were electrifying in the build- up to Monterey.
As part of his promotional activities for the festival, Derek Taylor planted many hints that The Beatles might be coming to Monterey as its secret star attraction. It was reported that he had persuaded The Who to join the stellar line-up, which included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Mamas And The Papas, The Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Otis Redding, The Byrds and Ravi Shankar.
The addition of John, Paul, George and Ringo to this heavenly host of stars seemed an almost natural development.
The hype for Monterey grew and grew. L ittle wonder the authorities were totally overwhelmed by the arrival of somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 pop fans — pejoratively described in advance by the local newspaper as ‘ Hell’s Angels’, ‘beatniks’ and ‘drug-takers’.
As this colourful and huge invasion descended, the event was nearly cancelled. Derek Taylor dragged me off to a panic-stricken meeting between the organisers, Monterey’s Mayor Minnie Coyle, and the local police chief. The dialogue was surreal. With a straight face, John Phillips of The Mamas And The Papas solemnly assured: ‘I can promise you there will be absolutely no drugs.’
The police chief asked me what was the British experience of crowd control at festivals? I replied that as a Special Constable in the East Suffolk County Police, I had helped to direct the traffic at the Aldeburgh Festival where there had been no trouble at all.
As the Chief nodded gravely at this information, I thought I could hear the composer Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears (Aldeburgh’s founders, and good friends of my parents in Suffolk) chortling with laughter.
What eventually pacified the authorities was the unscheduled arrival at the meeting of a posse of flower children bearing great garlands of red and white roses — which they festooned around the necks of the policeman and councillors — and chanting ‘Love, Joy and Peace’.
‘Amen to that!’ beamed Mayor Minnie Coyle. The festival was on.
A few hours later on the evening of Friday, June 16, Simon and Garfunkel kicked off with the 59th Street Bridge Song and everyone was Feelin’ Groovy.
Over the next three days, the music and the mood of Monterey seemed unique. Its purpose, as numerous announcements from the stage kept saying, was to create an atmosphere of love, joy and peace.
In that spirit, all the performers appeared for free. Tickets were a nominal $3 with profits going to charity.
Some of the sets were spellbinding in their artistic excellence. To this day, I can remember tingling at The Mamas And The Papas’ California Dreamin’ and Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound Of Silence.
Yet, away from the main auditorium, there were small groups angrily shouting anti-war chants such as ‘ Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, The Viet Cong are going to win’. Or ‘One, Two, Three, Four, We don’t want your ****ing war’.
I spotted some extreme badge slogans on display such as ‘Let’s kill all the Straighties’ or ‘Where is Lee Harvey Oswald now that we need him?’ One of the more widely worn badges carried the message ‘ Take A Trip – Fly LSD’. And there were several well-advertised LSD parties taking place on the grassy areas of the fairground.
The new phenomena of acid politics even appeared on stage when the lead singer of The Byrds portentously announced: ‘One of the most important statements in history has been made by Paul McCartney. In a recent interview with LIFE magazine, he declared: “If the politicians would take LSD, there wouldn’t be any more war.” ’
I remember watching the startling conclusion to the festival, when two of the sets ended in musical violence.
The Who, introduced to the audience by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, gave a rather too exciting performance of their hit My Generation.
Instead of crescendoing with the crashing chords of heavy metal, they ended the number with heavy hitting and violent battering never before seen on the American music scene. The Who’s lead singer, 22- year- old Pete Townshend, suddenly decided his guitar was a crowbar and that he would use it to demolish the stage.
So, in a berserk whirlwind of destructive anarchy, he smashed the floorboards, the drums, the amplifiers and the entire set until every piece of equipment including his guitar was in smithereens.
While some in the crowd were horrified, one enthusiast bawled: ‘Go get ’em, Pete! Do that to all the warmongers in Washington!’
The last big star topping the bill was Jimi Hendrix. He sang a terrific Wild Thing, but then spoilt it — or made it (according to your point of view) — by seeking to out-Who The Who.
In the final moments of his gig, Hendrix poured lighter fluid over his guitar, set it ablaze and then repeated Townshend’s musical smashings and bashings but in pyrotechnic flames.
So what was behind Monterey, Flower Power and the Summer of Love? What did it all mean?
At the time, I felt that my 1967 California experiences might have some deeper significance, but I was far from clear about what it was.
However, with the wisdom of hindsight it is now possible to see the longer-term effects.
ON
THE musical scene, it can be argued that Monterey was the mother of all pop festivals that came afterwards — from peaceful Woodstock to violent Altamont, Glastonbury and the Isle of Wight.
On the wider scene of countercultural revolution, Monterey was a seminal event because it sent ‘soft’ drug-taking towards higher and more worrying new frontiers.
In the early summer of 1967, marijuana was Haight-Ashbury’s drug of choice. ‘Weed’ or ‘grass’ as it was known in its plant form, was usually home- grown and almost the only drug widely used by Californians ‘ making the scene’. It seemed relatively mild and harmless.
But then along came LSD, whose trips could be frightening and whose side- effects, such as an urge to jump out of windows, were dangerous.
Monterey helped to popularise experiments with this drug, with ‘Acid Rock’ high on the agenda of some of the stars who played there, including Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix.
Tragically, they died young, at the same age of 27, of drug overdoses.
Blowing your mind carried the risk of blowing out your life, but this was not recognised until some years later.
Faster reactions to the antiVietnam war songs and sentiments at Monterey were felt on the U.S. political scene.
The teenagers who had been wearing protest badges saying ‘Harass Your Congressmen’ began harassing the President of the United States. A few months later some of them started to chant: ‘Hey Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?’
Though other events also played a part, there is no doubt a crusade by thousands of youngsters against President Lyndon B. Johnson, launched in January 1968, grew to become a mortal threat to his re-election prospects. Indeed, after a shockingly bad result in a primary election, he announced he would not run for a second full term in the White House.
For that reason and many others, I have no doubt 50 years on that something started at Monterey whose ripples are still being felt today.