Various Artists – Monterey Pop Festival

The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert held from June 16 to 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival became known for the first major American performances of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who, Ravi Shankar, as well as the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and Otis Redding appearing to a massive American audience.

The Monterey Pop Festival inspired California to become a counter-culture focal point and is generally regarded as one of the beginnings of the “Summer of Love” in 1967. The first rock festival had been held just a week earlier at Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California, at the KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival. Because Monterey was widely promoted and attended, featuring historic performances and the subject of a popular documentary film, it served as an inspiration and model for many future music festivals, including the Woodstock Festival two years later. Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner stated that “Monterey was the nexus, it sprang from what the Beatles started and from that sprang what followed”.

The festival was planned over seven weeks by John Phillips of the Mamas & Papas, record producers Lou Adler and Alan Pariser and journalist Derek Taylor. Monterey and Big Sur were known for many years as the site of the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Big Sur Folk Festival. Organizers saw the Monterey Pop Festival as a way to validate rock music as an art form the way jazz and folk had, and they succeeded beyond all expectations.

The artists performed for free, with all proceeds going to charity, except for Ravi Shankar, who got $3,000 for his evening-long sitar performance. Country Joe and the Fish collected $5,000, not from the festival, but from the proceeds of Donn Alan Pennebaker’s documentary film. However, the artists had their flights and accommodation paid for by the festival. Except for Shankar, each appearance was given up to 40 minutes. Of course, there were quite a few who ended their performances earlier, such as the Who, who played for just 25 minutes.

The Monterey Pop Festival entries produced a number of established later stars such as the Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel and the Byrds, alongside other pioneering new acts from the UK and US.

Crowd estimates for the festival ranged from 25,000 to 90,000 people, who gathered in and around the festival grounds. The indoor arena, where the festival took place, had a licensed capacity of 7,000, but an estimated 8,500 people crammed into Saturday night’s show, with many additional attendees standing around the sides of the arena. Ticket prices ranged from $3 to $6.50, or $23 to $50 in today’s prices.
 
This legendary festival was attended by:

– Jefferson Airplane
– The Who
– Grateful Dead
– The Jimi Hendrix Experience
– Eric Burdon and the Animals
– Otis Redding
– Ravi Shankar
– Laura Nyro
– The Mamas & the Papas
– Big Brother and the Holding Company feat. Janis Joplin

Monterey Pop was one of Janis Joplin’s first major public appearances, appearing as a member of Big Brother and the Holding Company. Joplin gave an incredible and provocative performance of “Ball and Chain” which I select.