Monterey Pop is a 1968 American concert film by D. A. Pennebaker that documents the Monterey International Pop Festival of 1967. Among Pennebaker's several camera operators were fellow documentarians Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles. The painter Brice Marden has an "assistant camera" credit. Titles for the film were by the illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Featured performers include Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, the Mamas & the Papas, the Who (who also besides Hendrix destroyed equipment on stage), and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose namesake set his guitar on fire, broke it on the stage, then threw the neck of his guitar in the crowd at the end of "Wild Thing".

In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Performers and songs

Songs featured in the film, in order of appearance:

  1. Scott McKenzie"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)"*
  2. The Mamas & the Papas"Creeque Alley" and "California Dreamin'"
  3. Canned Heat"Rollin' and Tumblin'"
  4. Simon & Garfunkel"The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"
  5. Hugh Masekela"Bajabula Bonke (The Healing Song)"
  6. Jefferson Airplane"High Flying Bird" and "Today"
  7. Big Brother and the Holding Company"Ball and Chain"
  8. Eric Burdon & the Animals"Paint It Black"
  9. The Who"My Generation"
  10. Country Joe and the Fish"Section 43"
  11. Otis Redding (backed by Booker T. & the M.G.'s)"Shake" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long"
  12. The Jimi Hendrix Experience"Wild Thing"
  13. The Mamas & the Papas"Got a Feelin'"
  14. Ravi Shankar"Dhun" ("Dadra and Fast Teental") (mistitled as "Raga Bhimpalasi")

- Studio version, played over film footage of pre-concert activity.

The order of performances in the film was rearranged from the order of appearance at the festival. Additionally, many artists who appeared at the festival were not included in the original cut of the film.

Production

The American Broadcasting Company put up a $200,000 advance to get a film made about the Monterey Pop Festival for its new ABC Movie of the Week series. However, Monterey Pop never aired on ABC, a decision made by Thomas W. Moore, the head of ABC at the time and, according to Lou Adler, "a very conservative Southern gentleman". "We showed him Jimi Hendrix fornicating with his amp and we said 'What do you think?' " Adler recalls. "And he said 'Keep the money and get out.' He said 'Not on my network.' "

Monterey Pop was shot on 16mm film blown up to 35mm for theatrical release. Director D. A. Pennebaker said he recorded the audio on a professional 8-channel reel-to-reel recorder borrowed from the Beach Boys.

French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard was so taken with Jefferson Airplane's performance in Monterey Pop that later in 1968 he set out to make a never-finished film titled One A.M. (for "One American Movie") in collaboration with Pennebaker and Leacock. Godard shot a sequence of the Airplane, (included on the 2004 Fly Jefferson Airplane DVD), playing at high noon on a business day on the roof of a New York hotel across the street from the Leacock-Pennebaker offices, with the tower of Rockefeller Center in the background. Attracted by the extremely high volume of the music, the police arrived and put an end to the shooting.

The screening of Monterey Pop in theaters during the spring and summer of 1969 helped raise the festival to mythic status, rapidly swelled the ranks of would-be festival-goers looking for the next festival, and inspired new entrepreneurs to stage more and more of them around the country.

In 1969, Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld pitched an idea for a recording studio in Woodstock, New York, to businessmen John P. Roberts and Joel Rosenman. In the documentary Woodstock: Now and Then, Rosenman said the proposal suggested that the studio would encourage occasional rock concerts in the town. Rosenman had watched Monterey Pop the day before meeting with Lang and Kornfeld and, impressed by the film, agreed, with Roberts to bankroll Lang and Kornfeld in an effort that morphed into the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

See also

  • Summer of Soul (2021)
  • Gimme Shelter (1970)
  • Festival (1967)

References

  • Monterey Pop: The First Rock Festival an essay by Michael Lydon at the Criterion Collection
  • Monterey Pop (35mm and Russian slit-scan photos) on bcx.news