Monday August 16, 2021 “Fresh Air” Quicksilver Messenger Service
On this day in 1969 we, those of us who are old enough to remember, were caught up in one of the defining events in music history, the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, the first one that is. It is worth noting however that this was not the first big music festival nor was it to be the largest or the last, so this week let’s go to some of the other festivals of note, before and after Woodstock and we will start with Monterey Pop.
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was held over three days starting on June 16, 1967 and the attendance was estimated as somewhere between 25,000 and 90,000. The festival was planned in seven weeks by John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, record producer Lou Adler, Alan Pariser manager of Delaney Bonnie & Friends, and Derek Taylor the Beatles publicist...in seven weeks!
The Monterey Festival lineup included Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, all of whom would springboard to international fame following their performances, also the Who, the Animals, the Grateful Dead and others. It would be heralded as the beginning of the “Summer of Love”.
According to legend many other major acts were invited but did not attend for a variety of reasons. Those not in attendance but invited included the Beatles, Bob Dylan, any Motown act (all forbidden to play at the festival by Berry Gordy even though Motown executive/singer/ songwriter/musical legend Smokey Robinson was on the Monterey board).
The Rolling Stones were not invited but their founder Brian Jones was a highly visible audience member, shortly before he would be ‘fired’ from the band that he started.
So let’s go to Monterey, a truly beautiful west coast destination and enjoy one of the lesser known bands at that 1967 festival, Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Stay safe and well...and get out your tie dyed stuff and sing along...yeah I know that tie dye was a (John Sebastian) Woodstock thing.