Category Archives: Music et al

Music et al, Music of the 60s

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

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Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

July 17, 1967

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Everyone Loves Hendrix?

Young visitors to the Museum at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (where Woodstock was, not where Woodstock is), often bemoan the fact that they weren’t born for that famous festival. That they would have done anything to attend.

I don’t disagree with their wish, but I will point out that despite his fame today, Jimi Hendrix was not beloved by every young person when he initially appeared on the American scene.

Hendrix first became famous, at least in a small corner of America, at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967 when the next day’s headlines read: Hendrix Sets Monterey Afire.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Of course the Monkees

To say that the Monkees were very popular in 1967 is an understatement. The Colgems label had released their debut album, The Monkees, on October 10, 1966. It became Billboard’s #1 album on November 12. It remained there  until February 10, 1967! 124 days. What replaced it? Their second album, More of the Monkees, which remained the number one album until June 16…126 more days! Those numbers exceed the Beatles’ opening days in 1964.

Mike Jeffery was Hendrix’s manager and wanted to capitalize on that popularity with his emerging star. How better to do that than hitch Hendrix onto Comet Monkees?

While the Monkees may have been an assembled act whose members were actors more than musicians, that didn’t mean those members didn’t like music. Micky Dolenz, the Monkees’ drummer, had first heard about Jimi Hendrix and seen him in the Village before Hendrix even went to the UK under the aegis of Animal bassist Chas Chandler.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

The idea is hatched

Dolenz and fellow Monkee Peter Tork saw Hendrix at Monterey. Tork wasn’t impressed…

…but Dolenz was and he recommended the two groups get together on the Monkees upcoming  28-city tour.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Quit

It didn’t go well because, as I’ve said, not every young person in 1967 was ready for or wanted to experience Jimi Hendrix. Had the Jefferson Airplane, the Who, or Joan Baez opened for the Monkees, the results would have been the same: kids repeatedly yelling “We want the Monkees!”

Hendrix’s presence thrilled the Monkees, but eight shows into the tour, Hendrix left.

Obviously the Experience didn’t make the date announced in the above radio spot.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Festivals, Music of the 60s

1969 Newport Folk Festival

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1969 Newport Folk Festival

July 16 – 20, 1969
1969 festival #27

Newport folk festvial

1969 Newport Folk Festival

Folk counts

The 1969 Newport Folk Festival is the 26th festival I have blogged about for that famous season. I am including a folk festival in what is mainly a rock festival list because the lines between the two genres had blurred.

Remember that day one of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair began mainly with folk. The 1969 Newport Jazz Festival, less than two weeks earlier, had included many rock acts in its line up. Promoters had seen the writing on the wall: many young people’s tastes had expanded from rock to folk, from folk to rock, from rock to jazz and from jazz to rock. Including a diversity of music attracted more guests and these festivals were business ventures. More guests equaled more revenue.

Fear of Rock

At the earlier Newport Jazz Festival, the popularity of rock performers brought an overflow of attendees. Fences fell. Police policed. Residents complained.

As a result, the Newport City Council instituted a “no rock” rule on the folk festival. A heavy wire fence replaced the former smaller wooden one.  Fewer seats. More security. Earlier curfew.

Still the 60s

1969 Newport Folk Festival
photo courtesy of David Marks (thank you)

Despite the locals’ attempt to tame the scene, singers sang of the times. Johnny Cash sang against the Vietnam war; Buffy St-Marie sang about Native American mistreatment; Len Chandler of civil rights; and there was even an anti-interstate highway construction song by Ed Wheeler named “The Interstate is Coming Through My Outhouse.”

YouTube doesn’t seem to have Wheeler’s version, but here’s one by Leroy Pullins.

1969 Newport Folk Festival

Richard Williams

It’s always nice to find a first hand account of an event. Known academically as a primary source, it gives us a better feel for an event than stories written after the event.

Richard Williams attended the 1969 Newport Folk Festival and wrote his impressions about it, particularly the last night on a Facebook comment. Among his observations were hearing an unknown James Taylor participate in a song workshop after which promoters invited Taylor onto the main stage, a rare honor.

On that last night Williams remembers the announcement of Neil Armstrong’s historic steps onto the Moon and leaving the festival while listening to Joan Baez singing “Throw Out the Lifeline” a capella.

That song also is not on YouTube, but here is an Ella Fitzgerald cover of the old spiritual.

Throw Out the Lifeline

1969 Newport Folk Festival

Music Bazaar

A New York Times article headline referred to the 1969 festival as a “music bazaar” and Rolling Stone magazine’s closing paragraph on the festival read: It was the same old shuck. What will happen next year? Who knows but Mr. [organizer George] Wein who closed the Festival by saying: “During the last 16 summers of the Newport Festivals, it’s been the kids who’ve supported us. We’re still concerned with the kids. God Bless You.”

1969 Newport Folk Festival

Next 1969 festival:  Eugene Pop Festival

Anniversary, Cinema, Cultural milestone, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

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Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Byrds, “Ballad of Easy Rider” (Roger McGuinn)
The river flows, it flows to the sea
Wherever that river goes that’s where I want to be
Flow river flow, let your waters wash down
Take me from this road to some other town
All he wanted was to be free
And that’s the way it turned out to be
Flow river flow, let your waters wash down
Take me from this road to some other town
Flow river flow, past the shady trees
Go river go, go to the sea
Flow to the sea
Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Woodstock away

When Michael Lang and the other Woodstock Ventures partners agreed that they’d do not just an outdoor festival, but an outdoor festival in the country, away from the city, back to Nature, away from the Establishment’s concrete lives, they were tapping into an old American view of the freedom of travel.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Premiered July 14, 1969

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Road stories

We humans love stories and we particularly love stories about journeys. Ever since Homer sat down and recited the tale of Odysseus and his attempt to return home to Penelope, multitudes of tales have followed creating variations on that theme.

The list of those variations is far longer than any little blog like this one could delineate, but Mr Chaucer’s 1478  Canterbury Tales comes to mind as does Jack Kerouac’s 1957 On the Road. And of course Mr Tolkien’s tale of Mr B Baggins of Bag End.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Road films

As soon as Americans started to build roads for motorized vehicles, a plethora of films about people and their travels ensued. The movie of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath novel couldn’t have happened without cars and roads. At least not in the same way.

Visit the Federal Highway Commission’s site for its extensive list of road-related films.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Easy Rider

By the summer of 1969 the cultural revolution was in high gear. Rock festivals dotted the summer calendar. War protests continued. The anti-hero reigned. In 1967, The Graduate had shown us the suburban anti-hero. Easy Rider introduced  us to two western hippie anti-heroes.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Captain America & Wyatt

Peter Fonda played Captain America and Dennis Hopper played Billy. Both dress in a counter-cultural style: Fonda in a leather jacket with an American Flag stenciled on it;  Hopper in leather pants and jacket in imitation of some Native American tribal dress.

They leave California with a gas tank filled with drug money, intending to head east to New Orleans and thence to Florida. Such a trip is the opposite direction of what traditional American history books told of Manifest Destiny and going west to explore, settle, displace, and claim the American dream.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Easy Rider Itinerary

Along the way they visit a commune, experience free love, get arrested, introduce a new friend (“George Hanson” played by Jack Nicholson) to marijuana, get beaten by locals, use LSD, and witness death.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider

Ballad of Easy Rider song

From Wikipedia: The star and script writer of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda, had initially intended to use Bob Dylan’s song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” in the film, but after failing to license the track, Fonda asked Roger McGuinn of the Byrds to record a cover version of the song instead. Fonda also wanted Dylan to write the film’s theme song, but Dylan declined, quickly scribbling the lines, “The river flows, it flows to the sea/Wherever that river goes, that’s where I want to be/Flow, river, flow” on a napkin and telling Fonda to “give this to McGuinn. He’ll know what to do with it.” The lyric fragment was dutifully passed on to McGuinn, who took the lines and expanded upon them with his own lyrical and musical contributions to produce the finished song.

Impact

The story reinforced the counterculture’s view of the Establishment’s worthlessness and corruption, and that most Americans saw those who tried to live freely as a threat to their way of life.

The soundtrack’s artists reinforced that view. Included were The Band, The Byrds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf.

Fonda Hopper Easy Rider