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June 1967: Electric shocks – Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding delight at the “Monterey Pop Festival”
“I would like to introduce you to a very good friend, a fellow countryman of yours,” said Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in 1967 at the Monterey International Pop Festival on the California coast. “He’s the most exciting performer I’ve ever heard. The Jimi Hendrix Experience.”
Hendrix needed the big announcement. Despite his success in England with “Are You Experienced?” He was virtually unknown in his native America. He came on stage in a gypsy vest, headband and bright orange frilly shirt and launched into blistering versions of “Killing Floor” and “Foxy Lady.” Perhaps under the influence of the double dose of acid he had taken earlier in the day, he chattered nervously as he played the intro to the next song: “I want to dedicate this song to everyone with my heart and ears… We want to play a little Bob Dylan number now.”
Redding’s wistful ballad “Try A Little Tenderness” and rockers like the Stones’ “Satisfaction” electrified the audience
A thunderous, bluesy version of “All Along The Watchtower” followed, and the audience was his. “The Who and Jimi Hendrix had the loudest amplifiers I’ve ever come close to,” said Monterey pop documentarian DA Pennebaker. “I was in shock.” To outdo The Who, who had dismantled their equipment during “My Generation,” Henrix left nothing out. He plucked the strings with his teeth, and on the closing “Wild Thing,” he copulated with his amps and ejaculated lighter fluid over his guitar. Then he lit it. “I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of that song, even though I had only finished painting it that day,” Hendrix said.
His performance in Monterey was also a breakthrough for Otis Redding. The soul singer from Georgia “had only ever played for black people in the USA until then,” says director John Landis, who was in Monterey. Redding’s wistful ballad “Try A Little Tenderness” and rockers like the Stones’ “Satisfaction” electrified the audience.
“Otis blew everyone away,” said former Capitol Records president Joe Smith. “If there was one moment that really made everyone jump to their feet, it was the Otis Redding performance.” Years later, when Landis was making “Blues Brothers,” he worked with Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn, who had played in Redding’s band. “I kept telling them how exciting it was to see Otis,” Landis says. “And they said, ‘Exciting, aha. You should have been on stage first.’
