MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL--40 YEARS AGO DOCUMENTARY

[Music] when i got there i was amazed this was the social revolution [Music] it was a real gathering of the tribes the music was new and it was different than anybody had ever heard or seen before the festival was an opening of a door to everybody [Music] you've got almost the entire population of the west coast hippie music scene in one little park in monterey if you sat in the audience at that show you were devastated man [Music] we were all very very high there's a lot of lsd that we can there were some who were so far gone they were standing on their heads and dancing [Music] monterey pop festival changed my life completely [Music] for three days in june 1967 the monterey pop festival showcased groundbreaking musicians heralded a new age of acid-tripping splendor and inspired a cultural revolution this is the story of the weekend when everything changed this is monterey 40. [Music] we'd have dancing in the street [Music] there was a whole confluence to me of things happening at that time some were very dark and some were filled with with beautiful light vietnam was escalating it was getting worse and worse we really felt like things were changing at a very deep level the hippie movement had come out of political confusion desperation fantasy [Music] [Applause] [Music] somewhere around 1965 this culture sprung up around the haight ashbury that began to have this resonance among young people all across the world it was almost like coming out of the dark ages the 50s i grew up in into the renaissance all of this music was so liberating because it was the fuel for these for the idealism the psychedelic scene in san francisco was blossoming there were a number of bands who moved into the area ourselves quicksilver big brother in the holding company jefferson airplane and a bunch more it was just a real hot bit of artistic activity people call them the flower children and the love generation and they laugh at the hippies and the hippies laugh at the people they played music they had all the dope they could smoke all the women that they could be with that was everything they needed their lives were complete down in l.a the record industry was cashing in on the counter culture bands like the buffalo springfield the birds and the mamas and the papas were hollywood hitmakers that's where the record deals were being made that's where records were being recorded the ones that were actually selling at the center of hollywood's pop music zeitgeist was producer and mamas and papa's manager lou adler whether it's johnny rivers mamas and papas or the jan and dean records or the sam cook song there was always an element of taste to his records the subject came up of you know rock and roll and everybody thinks about it as a fad a tran when in fact it should be validated as an art form in the way that jazz is adler along with mamas and papa's front man john phillips had a unifying vision to gather all of rock's emerging artists and showcase them on one stage they'd have jazz festivals certainly folk music had their own festivals why shouldn't rock be treated the same way in april 1967 adler and phillip set out to turn their radical idea into reality the first international pop music festival would be held a hundred miles south of san francisco in monterey california we all kicked in some seed money to fund the thing and they got some offices you know and uh that's how it all started [Music] one daunting challenge remained to convince the san francisco bands to get with the program [Music] the san francisco groups were all about the music all about giving it away the san francisco people absolutely hated the los angeles people they thought that everyone in l.a had sold out adler and phillips had a hippie-friendly solution all proceeds would go to charity with musicians giving something back to their audience it was very important at that time for that to happen it was sort of the climate political climate of the times and the social climate of the times i think that was one of the most important decisions that we made was let's make it a charity the mamas and papa said why don't you give all the money to charity and we work for nothing so we said okay so simon garfunkel agreed to work for nothing as well then everyone followed in a matter of weeks an eclectic build began taking shape from southern soul man otis reddy to new york folky's simon and garfunkel to an obscure london-based guitarist named jimi hendrix [Music] there was this feeling that if you didn't participate you were going to really miss out on something really big it really seemed like oh boy this is going to be one hell of an event we had never all played together before and we thought god doesn't really put their minds through a ringer let's do [Music] this all your luggage when we showed up at the fairgrounds there were crews there literally from all over the world that was the first feel that we had that this was happening and it was big we had an abc tv special he gave us 500 000 to uh to do a tv special of it and then d.a pennybaker was the one who was in charge of all the filming and all that i didn't know what a music film would be i had no idea this was a constant agony of thinking these cameras are going to hook up and it's going to be a disaster the lineup was in flux to the very last second i mean nobody knew who was going to show up hey michelle take this till dion warby comes on me we were going strictly by instinct john was shooting from the hip i had no idea how this festival was going to turn out well this is john phillips of the mamas and poppers thousands of people are in monterey for the festival no one knows for sure how many thousands but predictions have run as high as two hundred thousand police are worried about the use of narcotics if we do get 50 55 000 people we're gonna have a lot of problems southern california was a bunch of greasers low riders where i was coming from but then i'd come up to san francisco with some friends and uh i went to hay ashbury district and i became a stone hippie and uh said well we wouldn't want to buy some acid and some weed too because we're going to go down to monterey park uh we're going to open the doors at 12 45 so let's please be ready walking through the gate really was like a doorway into something else and turned into this wonderland of rock and roll and alternative culture yeah we'll be right inside okay thank you we really didn't know what to expect and walking into it to this day i just remember it as a swirl of color and noise and humanity and smells patchouli and cowbells buffalo bells elephant bells noises never heard before and that was before the music even started once you leave again you may not re-enter but you won't want to leave it [Music] monterey is very groovy man this is this is something man this is this is our generation man all you people we're all together man it's food and dig yourselves the monterey international pop festival was officially underway ironically the first band on stage was a decidedly non-psychedelic l.a group the association things that were really poppish didn't quite work in the association that's what you know san francisco and pete townsend and jimmy were all rebelling against instead the countercultural tone was set by the colorful crowd i remember looking at the crowd you just felt the change was in the air it was not like anything that anybody had ever seen before i saw all these young people and i suddenly sensed there was a kind of a hunger in them collectively and individually everybody's so high and dancing and naked you know putting things in your hair and passing joints around and exchanging drugs you know i mean i do remember that first day walking down the fairway and uh all of a sudden here's brian jones i mean brian jones that was mind-blowing i was like a stalker we saw him you know wow there's brian jones and we just kind of hung everywhere he was we were just kind of vibe sucking ladies and gentlemen nearly every artist who played at monterey embraced the new psychedelic age former animals front man eric burden was among the converts [Music] i always had a lot of admiration for eric burden as coming out of the school of british blues purists when he got to monterey he went so far in the other direction that it was it was funny he bought into the myth of what monterey represented the counter culture the joys of lsd the wonders of the psychedelic world more completely and more earnestly and more naively i think than anybody else burton's acid rock rebirth reflected a staggering generational shift there is an informed estimate that one million american teenagers use drugs the best known brand in san francisco is called ously acid named after augustus housley stanley nicknamed the acid king alice lee was all over the backstage scene he was the grateful dead sound man among other things and the guy made the best lsd of the day and manufactured the most enormous amounts of it owsley brought his potent batch of acid to monterey and he handed it out like candy both on stage and off he called it moderate purple i don't remember what color it was to be honest he was feeding all of us deadly steady supply my cousin who was uh running one of the crews came to us and said they're dancing with their brooms you know you got to do something about this you take a look at the the country joes and and the quicksilvers and uh hendrix certainly and eric burden and you can go down the list and go yep yep yep yep [Music] i've been loving you [Music] too long there was a great sense of love around everybody kind of loved everybody else just sitting there on the ground and some girl comes up and starts you know just hugging me and stuff you know and then she just sits down across me and just starts looking straight my eyes so we sat there and looked at each other in the eye for about two hours i doubt if i could explain to you how good a time i had there because you didn't see the girl i was there with her name was dana we were all flopping in this grange hall or whatever it was and i think you know one of the real tricks of the 60s is learning how to have sex in a sleeping bag [Music] [Applause] let's hear it for big brother in the holding company [Applause] [Music] big brother was a bay area band with a texas-born singer named janice joplin they were virtual unknowns to the monterey crowd former columbia records chief clive davis was in the audience that day we all knew who clive davis was and we all knew columbia records was the desirable destination that we all wanted to get to of course out came janus you know [Music] from the beginning worked up and vibrating and shaking and strutting from one side of the stage to the other in a manner that i had never seen before most people had never seen janice joplin and she was wild and crazy and drinking her wild turkey or whatever was she treated on stage and she was shocking and great [Music] [Applause] [Music] but joplin's electrifying performance almost didn't happen big brother's idealistic manager initially refused to allow the ban to be filmed there was a tremendous amount of distrust and suspicion of the hollywood contingent and the dan's manager insisted that the cameras be pointed to the ground we came to play for free we're going to play for free and that's it but the singer wanted the cameras to roll she yelled she screamed she cried she threw the tantrum of all tantrums so we signed the the release and performed a second time [Music] she put that festival in her pocket and walked off of it [Music] i knew that i had to sign that artist the times were indeed changing [Music] like you kind of have to wait for a new wave to come and then a whole new set of rock and roll bands comes along with it [Music] the saturday afternoon concert definitely announced the future of the music and that was the experimental progressive rock the underground rock thing with quicksilver steve miller country joe you could feel the electricity that there was really something going on here [Music] the monterey paw festival i think more than anything sort of legitimized the san francisco music scene of the san francisco sound to a great degree [Music] i'm surrounded by this what i thought was just unbelievably extraordinary music you know and it all frightened me in a way because it seemed to me to be like a tidal wave i felt engulfed by it i couldn't keep up with it you have to clean all these seats yes you live around here no i came in this morning i'm a champagne i went away how come you have to do this you're a friend of somebody's not really unless we just happen to be lucky i guess they are the gentle hippies their motto music love and flowers 100 extra police are on the alert but relaxed one of my main impressions the motorcycle officers with the flowers in their helmets that was amazing you know that really was amazing lou is talking to one of the policemen and then he kind of playfully kind of hits him and you can see the camaraderie that was built between the establishment and anti-establishment as the mass consumption of monterey purple continued some revelers needed help to get through their acid trips concerned hippies lisa and tom law created the first ever bad trip tent [Music] someone was having a hard time flipping out not not enjoying themselves we'd bring them in and sit them down they would immediately chill out and maybe spend a few minutes maybe spend a few hours and then go on out and have a good time oh yeah a tv a bad trip tp that's a good one a bad trip tp i think every concert hall should have a bad trip tv jimmy and rick spent about four hours in there smoking at you am i supposed to say that [Applause] midway through the festival monterey pop was already an historic musical gathering of international artists and when they weren't performing they were hanging out in a cavernous space below the stage so you get the grateful dead and you get country joe or whoever and ravi shankar and janice and everybody just intermingling and interchanging and talking about you know i love the fourth cut on your record that kind of stuff or just getting loaded after their sets musicians jumped backstage for impromptu jams where a little-known guitar prodigy was at the center of the musical store this black kid with curly hair and a headband came and uh was looking for a place to plug and i said well you know use the b channel there the jam just went on and on endlessly and uh finally this black kid who turned out to be jimi hendrix uh we were climbing around on the amplifier feeding our guitars back and stuff like that took down the hearing of my left ear to this day but we had a lot of fun [Music] i remember going in there and jimi hendrix was playing guitar and i sat down and played drums for a while someone just put a tab of acid in his mouth and he just opened his mouth and and took acid like you know let someone just put that in his mouth like that [Music] when the jefferson airplane took flight on saturday evening they were already the undisputed kings of the san francisco scene [Music] no question the jefferson airplane was the act everybody came to see that weekend they had two hit records that year somebody loved and white rabbit was just blowing up on them we didn't think of ourselves that way i sort of thought about myself as a screw-off we weren't thinking about careers as much as just doing whatever it is we did as best we possibly could and having a good time while doing it grace slick at that time was stunning she was mesmerizing you could watch her and you did go down the rabbit hole with her slick's alluring good looks even distracted the cameraman he focused on her even though marty balon was the one singing you're making me say somehow have changed we're all fixated on grace for a while she was mouthing the words which is the problem for the cameraman and marty has a pretty high voice anyways i'm just not the same [Applause] [Music] i was just sort of singing along but i wasn't miked and nobody knew the voices at the time most exciting act on the festival program running late saturday night show's over audiences on their feet leaving the arena flowing out the arena let's bring on with a big hand mr otis redding this is the love crowd right we all love each other don't we am i right let me hear you otis comes on and he tells the band double time shake so instead of just doing it [Music] he hits that crowd so hard they stop and turn around and go back to their seats [Music] a veteran of the southern chitlin circuit otis redding was a familiar sight to r b fans but to white audiences the georgia born singer was a revelation [Music] oh just ready unbelievable first time any of us little white kitties had ever seen him live oh boy was that a lesson he wore a suit and he did all the stuff and i suppose they expected it not to fit the psychedelic thing but it did it kind of it fit the mood because it was a hippie act [Music] i was stupefied i was very used to you know kind of the laid-back san francisco bands all of a sudden there's otis yeah going so this is the love crowd huh you know with a band that just blew away every other beast [Music] that turned out to be the absolutely perfect choice for that saturday night performance and it not only gave the festival what they needed launched otis redding as the next sole [Music] superstar as the mist rolled in on sunday afternoon the spiritual sitar of ravi shankar filled the festival grounds what i wanted to do was get all the great town from around the world that had never been seen before and here you are there was already a reverence for ravi shankar he had been introduced to the united states through the beatles and george harrison particularly i happen to be with all these hells angels and we're all kind of hunkered down uh in in the rain listening to robbie shack but what a great vibe you know i gave out my soul to the audience [Music] [Applause] later in the day a mod band from england was worried about making a good impression the who was virtually unknown in the u.s and guitarist pete townsend was feeling uneasy about the band's place in the hippie revolution i didn't even think that we would make a mark at monterey i thought we were lost i couldn't work out you know where we were going with all this you know my generation it was a song about mods in west london it was about immigrants you know irish boys you know who had no money it wasn't about california how was it going to work townsend also fretted about the who's placement on the bill he'd seen jimi hendrix in london and had no interest in following the guitar sensation's outrageous i act said to him you know jimmy i've spent four weeks with eric clapton following you around london and coming backstage and getting down and kissing your feet do you really think that i'm gonna let you go on first i can't do it it came down to like a flip of a coin i mean we've worked together on the same builds before but i mean who knew it was they wanted to make a good impression you know as we did who you know who gives a monkey's who who goes first you know just make it hard for the next person really i tossed jimmy lost so jimmy followed the whole which is what i wanted this is where it all ends [Music] who were about fury about evoking and expressing this incredible aggressive drawing we haven't seen a high energy band like that and we certainly never seen anybody as outrageous as them [Music] it took me a while to understand that this was theater this was rock theater i had not been exposed to it before [Music] it was pandemonium people were genuinely shocked and frightened by what was going on on stage never seen anybody you know destroy their equipment at the end of this what the heck was that about smoke bombs went off microphones were being hurled stageheads were coming out from the from the wings trying to rescue microphones the neck of petey townsend's telecaster came flying over my direction one of their roadies came over and said we need to get that back we put we put them back together i could hear the sound the noise from this day as i turn the corner keith moon stands and goes and throws his drum kit down as a half a stick of dynamite or m80s or something explode in a flash and a boom as pete tony was doing his amplifier with the guitar i didn't know who were i didn't know they did this every night i think my god there's a riot going on get down [Music] during the course of the festival other acts would refer to this guy jimi hendrix none of us had knew anything about him none of us had ever heard his music nobody knew who he was it's our first gig so it meant a lot to all of us i mean i can't imagine for the jimmy like going back to america headlining it was strange guitar playing that i saw actually do it left-handed and everything you know i never saw a guitar player that played like that guitar was just part of it there's some hoochie coochie mojo going on here there's a you know my black cat bone is going to put a spell on you and he was definitely up to something i remember people running around the aisles just screaming you know like so excited what is he doing how could he be pretending to be his instrument you know he's down on the stage almost having sex with a guitar and all the musicians are standing on the side going damn i don't think any of us knew that he was going to set his guitar on fire look out in the wings and hendricks hello we're going to follow this are we following this act go to the v spot for exclusive outtakes from monterey 40. [Music] at 10 o'clock sunday evening the mamas and the papas followed jimi hendrix onto the stage closing out the show was a fitting honor for festival organizer john phillips and his bandmates but it might as well have been a death sentence groups like the who were just beginning and hendrix was just beginning you know we were just ending and we knew that you know they didn't play badly but they they weren't at the height of their game put it that way [Music] we didn't have time to rehearse we had not sung together in three months i did very much feel that the end of the group was near i just didn't know how near [Music] people that went into that weekend kings and queens came out without their thrones and people that went in unknown came out the newly crowned heads of state i'm so proud of the fact that we were there that we spent so much time putting it together if we didn't do a fabulous performance so be it after three days 31 bands and countless hours of music and partying monterey pop was finally over amazingly there were no arrests deaths or overdoses [Music] this audience was smoking weed and taken lsd they're peaceful they're at ease they're enjoying themselves [Music] with all the anticipation about it and what would happen you know because this was during the vietnam war and there were protests going on everywhere and stuff you know was that it actually went off without a hitch the record industry moved quickly to cash in there was probably more great talent introduced at that festival than any other event in history i said there's a revolution going on here i will quietly build it i'm going to delve right into it [Music] columbia chief clive davis who had been so moved by janice joplin's performance was determined to sign her he flew her to new york [Music] but janice turned the tables on the buttoned-up exec she said she'd sign if he slept with her she said this is the biggest moment of my life so to think that i'm going to pick up a pen and that will be it is not significant so i said what do you have in mind and whether she used the f word or whether she just said let's go to bed together she was dead serious she loved to do her little magic on men and i can just see her with clive davis saying well if you take your clothes off i might sign with your label that's very [Music] [Applause] jealous [Music] in the weeks after monterey the summer of love became a cultural phenomenon and its top 40 anthem inspired a mass migration to san francisco if you go to san francisco wear flowers in your hair it was a huge commercial success internationally huge those san francisco people can say what they want but it brought in a lot of tourism there was so much san francisco summer of love flower children just billowing up in the culture the fact that there was a record on the top 40 radio just made sense why not there's dopey articles in life and cbs news is on this and we've got the tourist buses going up and down haight ashbury we're going to leave golden gate park to go into the ashbury district when the media found us that was basically the end of it it couldn't it couldn't continue to happen [Music] in spite of its groundbreaking success the monterey pop festival wasn't quite ready for prime time television penny baker somewhere along the way said this is a great film you know we've got a real documentary here we shouldn't waste it on television when they went to show the footage to abc they went out of their way to show them the most provocative footage we didn't show him the association we chose to show him hendrix fornicating with his amp and his guitar and he said not on my network the building became like a fish that got unhooked it was flopping around and nobody quite knew what to do with it so we quickly arranged to release it theatrically which is what from the beginning i thought it should happen i didn't think it was a tv show to begin with [Music] when the movie came out it took this incredible performance of jimi hendrix and janice joplin and gave it to the rest of the world and overnight they were stars the festival garnered worldwide attention and spawned large-scale rock events around the globe but there would be no sequel in monterey [Music] it was that little magical moment that could not be recreated it was just something so in that moment i didn't think we could duplicate what we had done we were lucky the first time around and we weren't going to be lucky the next time around the counterculture scene in this country went on the rocks and became a disaster area after monterey when we went from smoking pot and taking psychedelics occasionally to doing cocaine and heroin it destroyed our little hippie ideals and flower child ethic and all that silly pretty stuff and there were a number of other things that affected that change not just one kennedy but two kennedys and a king these are guys that we believed in and you know nobody that we thought we could believe in lived long enough to do anything [Music] and then in our own community with the manson's langs of our very very good friends in august of 1969 and i have to tell you that that was the end of a certain era it was the end it just didn't seem that [Music] any of those good times survived and that they were going to happen again [Music] so there's a tragic part of monterey because those things stand out as you start going through you know he's not here she's not here and hendricks and joplin jump out at you you know otis and and that's an enormous impact on what could have been who could have been here now and who could have been making music now [Music] monterey was one of those turns of the wheel i mean it's part of the the fabric of the history of america now i got goosebumps in my arms because i was there and i saw it and it changed my life too it's great that after 40 years it's uh it's so meaningful today and it just refreshes your memory about what an important event it was and what a beautiful event it was and you don't catch me crying every day be sure to wear some flowers in your hair [Music] if you're going to [Music] like that [Music]

Channel: K & B ARCHIVES

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Id: OnV34yEby44

Length: 42min 4sec (2524 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020