was the only act to perform twice gains them an extra measure of attention from the fans and the press. In many of the articles about the Pop Festival that bloom in newspapers and magazines across the land, there’s Janis, hair flying, singing her heart out with such conviction that even in a still photograph you can feel her power.
Less noticed, except by some of us who remain connected to Janis through the months and years that follow, is the fortuitous confluence of events that combined here to produce her sudden rise in the popular consciousness. It is not just the fact that a film was being made, but that the filmmaker was Pennebaker, that his reaction to Janis boosted the effort to offer them a second chance, that Penny knew Albert Grossman, and that the need to have Janis in the movie brought Albert and the members of Big Brother to each other’s attention in a way that probably contributes to Albert’s signing to manage Big Brother before the year is out. So many apparently random ripples flow together to create the perfect wave.
My own presence at the festival is in no way related to Janis’s rise to prominence, but if I hadn’t been at Monterey, if I hadn’t known Bob Neuwirth, who knew Pennebaker, if I hadn’t reacted to Janis as everyone who heard her reacted, I wouldn’t be able to tell the tale that follows.
In the elevating afterglow, the Monterey Pop Festival reveals itself as something more than the launching pad for new beginnings. It is the culmination of a movement that began when the first inspired soul of the post–World War II generation—inspired by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Burl Ives, and Josh White, among others—picked up a guitar and strummed out a folk song. In the fifties, teenagers supported the creation of a new kind of pop music. In the sixties, many of those same teens, now in their twenties, are making it. American popular music has become a do-it-yourselfenterprise, and it has extended its appeal to a broader demographic. Assembled at Monterey, the leading lights of the new music, in company with their fans, have demonstrated the magnanimous force of music, love and flowers.
As the Pennebaker crew packs up to head for the airport, those who have found Monterey to their liking have got the Leavin’ California Blues. I sympathize as best I can, but my exploration of the Summer of Love is just beginning. My bluegrass band, the Charles River Valley Boys, is booked for a California tour.
CHAPTER FOUR
More Pretty Girls Than One
O N M ONDAY MORNING, Ralph Gleason reports in the
San Francisco Chronicle
that Monterey’s chief of police, Frank Marinello, now considers hippies his friends. “These people have proved flowers and love are a symbol of what they really believe in,” Gleason quotes the chief. The festival’s ticket director pays the audience a similar tribute: “I’ve never seen a crowd like it. These people are polite and patient and gentle.”
In his own words, adopting a favorite word of the flower children, Gleason sums up the festival in a glowing review. “The first annual Monterey International Pop Festival this weekend was a beautiful, warm, groovy affair which showed the world a very great deal about the younger generation. In the first place, the music was fine, the staging was excellent and the shows were good. You know they are when the audiences stay until well after 1 a.m. But beyond that, it showed something else very important—you can have 35,000 long-haired, buck-skin and beaded hippies in one place without a hassle. . . . Saturday night was the biggest crowd in the arena in the history of the fairground. . . . So much for an inadequate description of oneof the most remarkable scenes in contemporary American history, a giant musical love-in which set a standard of peacefulness and sobriety for the entire country. It was the greatest assembly of contemporary musical talent in history.”
Bob Siggins and Joe Val, my fellow
Less noticed, except by some of us who remain connected to Janis through the months and years that follow, is the fortuitous confluence of events that combined here to produce her sudden rise in the popular consciousness. It is not just the fact that a film was being made, but that the filmmaker was Pennebaker, that his reaction to Janis boosted the effort to offer them a second chance, that Penny knew Albert Grossman, and that the need to have Janis in the movie brought Albert and the members of Big Brother to each other’s attention in a way that probably contributes to Albert’s signing to manage Big Brother before the year is out. So many apparently random ripples flow together to create the perfect wave.
My own presence at the festival is in no way related to Janis’s rise to prominence, but if I hadn’t been at Monterey, if I hadn’t known Bob Neuwirth, who knew Pennebaker, if I hadn’t reacted to Janis as everyone who heard her reacted, I wouldn’t be able to tell the tale that follows.
In the elevating afterglow, the Monterey Pop Festival reveals itself as something more than the launching pad for new beginnings. It is the culmination of a movement that began when the first inspired soul of the post–World War II generation—inspired by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Burl Ives, and Josh White, among others—picked up a guitar and strummed out a folk song. In the fifties, teenagers supported the creation of a new kind of pop music. In the sixties, many of those same teens, now in their twenties, are making it. American popular music has become a do-it-yourselfenterprise, and it has extended its appeal to a broader demographic. Assembled at Monterey, the leading lights of the new music, in company with their fans, have demonstrated the magnanimous force of music, love and flowers.
As the Pennebaker crew packs up to head for the airport, those who have found Monterey to their liking have got the Leavin’ California Blues. I sympathize as best I can, but my exploration of the Summer of Love is just beginning. My bluegrass band, the Charles River Valley Boys, is booked for a California tour.
CHAPTER FOUR
More Pretty Girls Than One
O N M ONDAY MORNING, Ralph Gleason reports in the
San Francisco Chronicle
that Monterey’s chief of police, Frank Marinello, now considers hippies his friends. “These people have proved flowers and love are a symbol of what they really believe in,” Gleason quotes the chief. The festival’s ticket director pays the audience a similar tribute: “I’ve never seen a crowd like it. These people are polite and patient and gentle.”
In his own words, adopting a favorite word of the flower children, Gleason sums up the festival in a glowing review. “The first annual Monterey International Pop Festival this weekend was a beautiful, warm, groovy affair which showed the world a very great deal about the younger generation. In the first place, the music was fine, the staging was excellent and the shows were good. You know they are when the audiences stay until well after 1 a.m. But beyond that, it showed something else very important—you can have 35,000 long-haired, buck-skin and beaded hippies in one place without a hassle. . . . Saturday night was the biggest crowd in the arena in the history of the fairground. . . . So much for an inadequate description of oneof the most remarkable scenes in contemporary American history, a giant musical love-in which set a standard of peacefulness and sobriety for the entire country. It was the greatest assembly of contemporary musical talent in history.”
Bob Siggins and Joe Val, my fellow
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