The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Monterey

[Jas O]

Here's a minute-by-minute account of a seismic event in rock guitar history: The Jimi Hendrix Experience making its American debut at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. To help convey the magnitude of Jimi's performance, I've done a deep dive into the research and embedded film and audio of his set. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Monterey

#jimihendrix #jimihendrixexperience #thewho #rockguitar #likearollingstone #wildthing #talkingguitar #jasobrecht

 

[StillWannaRock]

Here's a minute-by-minute account of a seismic event in rock guitar history: The Jimi Hendrix Experience making its American debut at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. To help convey the magnitude of Jimi's performance, I've done a deep dive into the research and embedded film and audio of his set. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Monterey

#jimihendrix #jimihendrixexperience #thewho #rockguitar #likearollingstone #wildthing #talkingguitar #jasobrecht

Thank you for that!!

 

[Elmore]

Thanks very much for posting this. It had some things I did not know. Hendrix has been my favorite since I started playing guitar in the seventies. Sill reigning, still dreaming.

 

[LeonC]

Fantastic. One of the most important stories in the pantheon of rock music. I've read a few brief descriptions in one biography or another...but I've not seen this event laid out in this detail before.

Thanks very much for writing this story Jas, and for posting here!

 

[jb_abides]

Fil Under: Things You Don't Know You Need Until You Have Them

thanks

 

[seafood]

i just love that tone.......still sounds great!!!!!!! Go Jimi.....!!!!!!!

 

[ourmaninthenorth]

Terrific piece of work Jas.

I enjoyed that tremendously.

 

[yladrd61]

The Zen Master ...... there is none higher ......

 

[zacknorton]

👍👍👍

 

[charliechitlins]

Nice.
Here's a question I've posed before and it remains a question.
When and how did Jimi become an electronic conjurer?
It seems like one day he was playing chink chink rhythm on the Chitlin Circuit and the next, he had harnessed the howling beast that is a dimed Marshall.
Could he do this before he left for England?
Could he play anything like Machine Gun at Cafe Wha?
Did he discover the Marshall in England, figure out how to conjure and control electronic angel and demons one day and play Love or Confusion the next?
It couldnt have been a long process...more like an Ol' Scratch situation.
Any insights, Jas?

 

[Jas O]

Nice.
Here's a question I've posed before and it remains a question.
When and how did Jimi become an electronic conjurer?
It seems like one day he was playing chink chink rhythm on the Chitlin Circuit and the next, he had harnessed the howling beast that is a dimed Marshall.
Could he do this before he left for England?
Could he play anything like Machine Gun at Cafe Wha?
Did he discover the Marshall in England, figure out how to conjure and control electronic angel and demons one day and play Love or Confusion the next?
It couldnt have been a long process...more like an Ol' Scratch situation.
Any insights, Jas?

Hi Charlie --

Jimi was already heading that way before he arrived in England. Here's what Mike Bloomfield, who’d played electric guitar on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, remembered of the first time he watched Jimi in NYC: “The first time I saw Hendrix play, he was Jimmy James with the Blue Flames. I was performing with Paul Butterfield, and I was the hot-shot guitarist on the block – I thought I was it. I’d never heard of Hendrix. Then someone said, ‘You got to see the guitar player with John Hammond.’ I went right across the street and saw him. Hendrix knew who I was, and that day, in front of my eyes, he burned me to death. I didn’t even get my guitar out. H-bombs were going off, guided missiles were flying – I can’t tell you the sounds he was getting out of his instrument. He was getting every sound I was ever to hear him get right there in that room with a Stratocaster, a Twin amp, a Maestro Fuzz-Tone, and that was all – he was doing it mainly through extreme volume. How he did this, I wish I understood. He just got right up in my face with that axe, and I didn’t even want to pick up a guitar for the next year.

“I was awed. I’d never heard anything like it. I didn’t even know where he was coming from musically, because he wasn’t playing any of his own tunes. He was doing things like ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ but in the most unusual way. He wasn’t a singer, he wasn’t even particularly a player. That day, Jimmy Hendrix was laying things on me that were more sounds than they were licks. But I found, after hearing him two or three more times, that he was into pure melodic playing and lyricism as much as he was into sounds. In fact, he had melded them into a perfect blend.”

During Jimi's first week in London, which happened maybe a month or two after Bloomfield saw him, he encountered Marshalls for the first time.

 

[charliechitlins]

Awesome.
Thanks for that.
I can just HEAR Bloomfield's voice there.
I love listening to him speak.
I was just a boy when Jimi passed, and our lives never really intersected (which doesn't stop me from having a borderline-embarrassing schoolboy worship of him), but Bloomfield...I cried when he went.

 

[doctorvmusic]

that's a great read...thanks

 

[LeonC]

Here's a minute-by-minute account of a seismic event in rock guitar history: The Jimi Hendrix Experience making its American debut at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. To help convey the magnitude of Jimi's performance, I've done a deep dive into the research and embedded film and audio of his set. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Monterey

#jimihendrix #jimihendrixexperience #thewho #rockguitar #likearollingstone #wildthing #talkingguitar #jasobrecht

Jas - I really appreciated the way you described Hendrix' cover of Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone. If one is thinking about what it must have been like for many Dylan fans who were undoubtedly in attendance, your description helps one recognize that Jimi's version represented a radical departure from what they were accustomed to, yet, Jimi's take on the Bloomfield riff acted as a tip of the hat to the original version. No one (in the US at least) had heard a Dylan song covered that way. While Jimi was known to be a huge fan--a Dylan freak--he sure put his own spin on it and I can imagine people's minds just being blown by the amazing playing youthful sincerity in his version.

Speaking of which...the singer in my band, Gerald, has been friends with Johnny Rivers--another one of the performers at Monterey--for many years. Gerald wound up in the hospital two weeks ago and while my wife and I were visiting on Sunday, Johnny walked into the room to see Gerald, which was really great. G and I are both Hendrix freaks and we were talking about Monterey when Johnny walked in. He jumped right in and told us about the scene backstage when Jimi did Wild Thing. Johnny said that people were totally blown away, as you can imagine. He was...and so was the Fire Marshall who had to be talked out of storming the stage when Hendrix set his guitar on fire! Johnny said that someone (I think he said the "stage manager" or one of the event managers) had to convince the Fire Marshall that it was "just part of the act" and that everything was under control. But Johnny said he got to watch the whole thing from stage right. Man...what an experience that must have been!

 

[seafood]

really great stuff.....thanks!!!!!

 

[Wilko]

Thanks for sharing.
I've been on a Hendrix jag recently. This sorta topped it off.
Cheers!