Monterey Pop, 40 years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_Pop_Festival
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_6157075
Remembering Monterey Pop: How the 1967 festival changed everything
By Shay Quillen
Mercury News
Article Launched: 06/16/2007 01:32:05 AM PDT
Forty years ago today, a bold experiment called the Monterey International Pop Festival kicked off the Summer of Love with good vibes and amazing music.
"There wasn't a festival before," says Lou Adler, the L.A.-based music mogul who co-produced the three-day event with musician John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. "So not having any rules or regulations or standards, nothing was really a barrier. We just jumped in."
An estimated 200,000 people made their way to the Monterey County fairgrounds on June 16-18, 1967, for the world's first rock festival. L.A. and Bay Area hipsters, newly minted Midwestern hippies and curious Monterey High kids alike paid up to $6.50 a show - or just sneaked in - to see 31 acts, including Jimi Hendrix making his incendiary American debut and soul man Otis Redding wowing, for the first time, what he dubbed "the love crowd."
"Everyone came together, enjoyed the music and put politics aside," says Frank Sollecito, now a Monterey city councilman but at the time a clean-cut football star from Monterey High School. "That's a great name, the Summer of Love, and I think it started right here at Monterey Pop."
..............................
Working out of an office on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, Phillips took to the phones to persuade the biggest musicians of the day to perform for free. At the same time, a skeptical Monterey city government and police force had to be talked into letting an army of hippies invade the community.
"It was a crash course in the festival business, I'll tell you that," recalls Michelle Phillips, John Phillips' wife and bandmate in the Mamas and the Papas at the time. "But they were very, very smart."
Adler and Phillips built credibility for the festival by creating a board of directors that included such luminaries as Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson and Smokey Robinson, and quickly signed many of the leading acts from Southern California and London.
............................
With encouragement from concert promoter Bill Graham and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ralph Gleason, Adler says, the major San Francisco bands came on board, including the Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape, the Steve Miller Band, the Grateful Dead, the Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother.
From the time the Association hit the first note on Friday afternoon, the festival went off without a major hitch. The music was first-rate, and thousands of fans camped out in tent cities with virtually no violence or arrests.
-------------------------------------------
http://sfsummeroflove.com/montereypop_storys.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“If your going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
“San Francisco” was actually inspired by Scott’s paranoia about the festival’s potential ‘Gi-normousness’, I mean this gathering could be huge! So my childhood chum had this idea: 'Why don't we write a song - well, why don't you, John, write one - saying something like, "If you go to San Francisco for the Monterey Pop Festival, like, behave yourselves, man, let's not have a big riot up there."
So the first thing that came to my mind was sort of the youth attending the first Olympic games, a Grecian Olympic athlete image with the wreath on the winner's head and flowers in his hair. I thought this would be the proper image for the song. About 20 minutes later I'd finished it and told Scott. He and I played it for Lou (Adler) that night, we recorded it the next night, and it came out the following Monday. And just as fast, it became a worldwide hit. I mean, one week, Scott wasn't even recording and the next week he was internationally known, the High Guru of Flower Power. He's never forgiven me for that.
John Phillips (pictured) on the inspiration and creation of “San Francisco”,
Scott McKenzie’s watershed anthem about the California Hippie movement and it’s introduction to the rest of the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKWiwfOhI6U