Monterey Pop set the template for festival films

When we think of rock con­cert fes­ti­val films what quick­ly comes to mind are the two huge con­certs from 1969 — Woodstock and Altamont (with the Rolling Stones). But before either of those fes­ti­vals came their inspi­ra­tion. That inspi­ra­tion is today’s Reel Classic — Monterey Pop. 

The Monterey International Pop Festival was held for three days dur­ing the sum­mer of 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in California. More than thir­ty bands/artists per­formed at the fes­ti­val. The plan­ners want­ed to show­case a wide range of musi­cians — blues, folk, rock, soul and even clas­si­cal Indian music. The line-up includ­ed Janis Joplin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Simon & Garfunkel and Ravi Shankar along with a host of oth­ers. One of the bands per­form­ing was The Mamas & The Papas. John Phillips, a mem­ber of that band, was also one of the orga­niz­ers of the event. 

According to Lou Adler, the pro­mot­er and pro­duc­er of the fes­ti­val, the idea start­ed with a group of folks sit­ting around at the home of Mama Cass Elliot and the dis­cus­sion focused on the ques­tion “Why isn’t rock’n’roll con­sid­ered an art form in the way that jazz and folk are?” 

A few weeks lat­er John Phillips of the Mamas & The Papas was con­tact­ed about the band doing a con­cert at the Monterey County Fairgrounds. Adler said he received a call one night at about 3 a.m. from John Phillips, who posed the ques­tion; “Why don’t we do a fes­ti­val, add more days, and get the acts to play for nothing?” 

According to Adler, “This was a chance to ele­vate how rock’n’roll was thought of.” Proceeds from tick­et sales were donat­ed to charity. 

Not all artists approached were agree­able to per­form­ing with­out being paid. However, one can see from the line-up that many were on board with the idea. 

It was decid­ed to film the event, and direc­tor D.A. Pennebaker was brought on. He had a suc­cess­ful doc­u­men­tary in 1967 called Don’t Look Back that focused on Bob Dylan. In an inter­view regard­ing the film Monterey Pop he said, “What made it suc­cess­ful was the deci­sion to throw the big-mon­ey ideas out of the win­dow. People real­ly came to play and hear each oth­er play. They weren’t there to make a lot of money.” 

Pennebaker’s style of doc­u­men­tary mak­ing was dif­fer­ent from what was com­mon at the time. 

“People used to sell doc­u­men­taries by hav­ing some­one like Henry Fonda doing a nar­ra­tion,” Pennebaker said. “It was like hav­ing a celebri­ty watch­ing over the film. We were try­ing to get away from that. I saw this as a kind of film-mak­ing where you found peo­ple who were respon­si­ble for doing some­thing, and you watched them do it, from the begin­ning if you could.” 

One descrip­tion I read of his style was using the per­spec­tive of “the fly on the wall.” 

Funding for the film came from a deal that John Phillips and Lou Adler made with ABC TV. The net­work put up $200,000 in advance with plans to air the film on their ABC Movie of the Week series. However, when they showed some of the clips of Jimi Hendrix from the film to Thomas W. Moore, head of ABC TV, he said “Keep the mon­ey and get out. Not on my network.” 

Hendrix had got­ten a lit­tle sex­u­al with his guitar. 

Other artists per­form­ing in the film include Canned Heat, Hugh Masekela, Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Country Joe & The Fish and Otis Redding with Booker T. & the M.G.s.

Ravi Shankar was on the bill to per­form but almost backed out. After see­ing Pete Townshend and Keith Moon of The Who lit­er­al­ly destroy­ing their instru­ments on stage, Shankar, dis­turbed at the dis­play, con­sid­ered withdrawing. 

Shankar was new to Western music lovers but was an acclaimed sitarist from India. He had been intro­duced to Western cul­ture through George Harrison and the Beatles. After talk­ing with the pro­mot­ers, it was decid­ed to give Ravi Shankar a three-hour after­noon ses­sion with no one before or after him. He agreed, and mes­mer­ized the audi­ence for those three hours with his ragas. Shankar’s 18-minute-long raga clos­es out the film and has been deemed by many as one of the high­lights of the movie. With many crit­ics it ranks along­side the per­for­mances of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding as the most mem­o­rable of the film. 

Critics praised the film. Robert Christgau, a well-known and respect­ed rock crit­ic, described Monterey Pop as the best 1960s con­cert doc­u­men­tary. He stat­ed “The music and its . . . cel­e­brants are like a won­der­ful secret — won­der­ful because even though every­one knows about it, it still deliv­ers the thrill of dis­cov­ery. Unveiled in 1968, Pennebaker’s vision of the 1967 event was instru­men­tal in con­vinc­ing poten­tial orga­niz­ers and par­tic­i­pants that music was the health­i­est way to crys­tal­lize the ener­gy of a coun­ter­cul­ture that by then seemed both bless­ed­ly inevitable and dan­ger­ous­ly embattled.” 

Melissa Anderson wrote in Village Voice “The effect is one of estrang­ing inti­ma­cy, bring­ing us impos­si­bly near to these sub­lime beings onstage and yet some­how ensur­ing that they remain for­ev­er mys­te­ri­ous, mag­i­cal, and untouchable.” 

The NPR radio show All Things Considered ran a sto­ry in June 2017 called “A Look Back At Monterey Pop, 50 Years Later.” The Monterey Pop Festival was described as being the “tem­plate for all the huge rock fes­ti­vals that would fol­low — Woodstock, Coachella, Bonnaroo and all the rest — and its influ­ence would spread even fur­ther via a doc­u­men­tary, Monterey Pop, that was helmed by D.A. Pennebaker and would set a gold stan­dard for con­cert films.” 

The police in Monterey were not excit­ed about hav­ing such an event in their com­mu­ni­ty. The gath­er­ing of thou­sands of “hip­pies” con­cerned them. However, accord­ing to pro­mot­er Lou Adler, the offi­cers did not have the neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence they had anticipated. 

Adler stat­ed, “It didn’t take long for them to have flow­ers in their hair and in their hel­mets and flow­ers on their guns. The changeover from what they were told was going to hap­pen to what actu­al­ly hap­pened in Monterey was very special.” 

Another inter­est­ing part of the sto­ry is see­ing musi­cians out in the audi­ence watch­ing oth­er per­form­ers. We see Mama Cass gap­ing in awe at Janis Joplin’s per­for­mance. We see Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees and oth­ers watch­ing. A quote from Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane sums it up: “We hadn’t seen a lot of these peo­ple. And every­body was just blown away by Jimi Hendrix in par­tic­u­lar, because we hadn’t seen him live. But we were amazed at each other.” 

A sad note to the sto­ry is the fate of Otis Redding. As men­tioned above, many crit­ics and film-goers saw Otis Redding’s per­for­mance as one of the high­lights of the film. The allmusic.com site’s biog­ra­phy of Redding states “. . . he hand­i­ly won over the crowd (which he referred to as the ‘love crowd’) despite being the only deep soul artist on the bill.” 

Unfortunately, Redding nev­er got to see the film as he died in an air­plane crash six months after the fes­ti­val and before the film was released. He was only 26 years old. What is con­sid­ered by many to be his most famous song, “(Sittin’ On The) Dock of the Bay,” was released the month after his death. 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) rates Monterey Pop at 7.9 of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 96% and an Audience Score of 89%. 

I found sev­er­al sites that have free stream­ing of the film, includ­ing Tubi, Plex and Pluto TV. The Clark County Public Library does not have a copy of the DVD but I am sure they will get a copy if you request it. 

I’ll fin­ish with a quote from Lou Adler, the festival’s pro­mot­er: “But we knew exact­ly what we were doing. With the advent of FM radio, Rolling Stone mag­a­zine and the fes­ti­val, rock’n’roll was tru­ly ele­vat­ed. Promoters real­ized they could do fes­ti­vals, which even­tu­al­ly led to Coachella. It’s unfor­tu­nate how many peo­ple who per­formed at Monterey are no longer with us, but they’re with us because of Pennebaker. I’d say we wouldn’t be talk­ing about Monterey today with­out the movie. I play it at uni­ver­si­ties and when Hendrix and Otis and Joplin fin­ish, I hear applause. These peo­ple are there.” 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.