Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a look back at the festival’s history, career-launching performances and lasting legacy
It has been 50 years since the Monterey International Pop
Festival took over the Monterey County Fairgrounds, bringing together more than
30 bands and artists for three days of “music, love and flowers.” The event,
which ran from June 16 through June 18, 1967, would become one of the most influential
and iconic cultural events in history, kicking off what would be deemed the “summer
of love” and laying the groundwork for countless music festivals to be created
in its wake.
Spearheaded by Mamas
and the Papas singer John Phillips and producer Lou Adler, Monterey Pop was
created to give validity to the emerging rock scene of the time. Phillips and
Adler, along with the help of Alan Pariser and Derek Taylor, saw the way the
Monterey Jazz Festival succeeded in bringing together the jazz community and
decided that such an event could do the same for rock. In just seven weeks, the
team put together a massive, three-day festival that attracted nearly 8,500
people.
The event would lead to some very iconic, career-launching
performances. A then-unknown Janis
Joplin would rocket to fame after her performance with Big
Brother and the Holding Company led to the band getting signed to Columbia
Records. Ravi Shankar made his US debut at the festival, playing for four hours
and introducing the US to the sitar and raga music. Otis
Redding’s performance, one of his first outside of the black community,
opened his music and appeal up to a wider audience. The
Who, bringing their wild UK stage show to the US, stunned everyone when
Pete Townshend infamously smashed his guitar on stage during “My Generation.” The
destruction didn’t end there as Jimi
Hendrix, who was still relatively unknown in the US, ended his Sunday set
with a performance of “Wild Thing” in which he lit his guitar on fire.
The festival also resulted in a critically acclaimed concert
film. Directed by D.A. Pennebaker, ‘Monterey Pop’ documented the event for the
world to see, capturing every iconic moment for posterity. Released a year-and-a-half
after the festival, the film reignited the appeal and excitement of the
concert. ‘Monterey Pop’ ended up becoming the standard by which concert
documentaries would be compared going forward.
In its wake, the Monterey Pop Festival set the framework for
other music festivals to take place. Two years after Monterey, the Woodstock
Music and Arts Festival would bring the large-scale music festival concept to
the east coast, with the disastrous Altamont Festival following shortly after. Today,
the large-scale multi-day festival has become commonplace with several occurring
annually and new ones springing up every year.
There are two official ways fans and revelers can celebrate
the 50th anniversary of this groundbreaking festival. In an effort
to preserve the legacy of the Monterey Pop Festival and further extend its
message of music and peace to a new generation, the ‘Monterey
International Pop Festival - Celebrates 50 Years’ festival is happening
this weekend. The event features current artists who embody the same spirit
that the festival was founded on, as well as a few artists who played the
original festival. Revelers not looking to spend hundreds of dollars on tickets
to go to California can celebrate the festival’s anniversary by seeing the ‘Monterey
Pop’ film on the big screen. For one-week-only, the film, which was recently
given a 4K restoration, is back in select theaters around the country (including
the IFC Center in
New York City).
The Monterey International Pop Festival has remained a
stunning example of the power of music for five decades. It launched the
careers of some of rock’s most influential artists and gave rise to a new
counterculture based on the tenets of music, peace and love. As the first
large-scale multi-day festival of its kind, it paved the way for the massive
festival culture we know today. After 50 years, the festival continues to hold
a special place in music culture that can and will never be replicated.
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Find music from Monterey Pop Festival’s most iconic artists
and more at Vinyl Bay 777 and vinylbay777.com. As Long Island’s top new
independent record shop, we have thousands of titles from classic and new rock
and pop artists, as well as heavy-hitters and newcomers from the worlds of
jazz, hip-hop, R&B, classical, dance and more. Browse our wide selection of
new and used vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, music DVDs and memorabilia in store
and online. More titles are being added all the time, so it’s always a great
time to see what’s new.
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