| Collector's Corner September 2007
 Monterey
PopStarring: The Mamas and the Papas,
Canned Heat, Simon and Garfunkel, Hugh Masekela, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and
the Holding Company, Eric Burdon and the Animals, The Who, Country Joe and the Fish, Otis
Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Al Kooper, The Blues
Project, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Electric Flag
Directed by: D.A. Pennebaker
Theatrical release: 1968
DVD release: 2002
Video: Widescreen
Sound: Original soundtrack, Dolby Digital
2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1
Released by: The Criterion Collection
"What! You haven’t been to a
love-in?"
That’s the opening line of Monterey Pop. In
1967, most of the civilized world, then as now, had only seen pictures and read about
love-ins. Monterey Pop was the ticket to the real hippie underground for most of
America’s youth -- it was both forbidden fruit and a kick in the generation
gap’s ass. Parents and kids were already dividing, culturally and morally, though the
parents hadn’t quite realized it yet. They thought the most popular bands of the day
-- the Monkees, the Beatles, the Beach Boys -- weren’t too scary. But everything was
about to change.
Monterey Pop introduced the youth of the day to a
brave new world of music that was either terrifying or mesmerizing, depending on your
viewpoint. There was the black guitarist who treated his instrument as a sexual object;
the white woman who screamed like a black blues belter; and a band who shouted that they
hoped they died before they got old. Suddenly, the reigning bad boys of rock, such as the
Rolling Stones or Phil Spector, looked like tame, rich white lads.
Monterey Pop delivered the information a good
documentary should, but transcended the genre by making you feel as if you were there.
Director D.A. Pennebaker had already made one of the great rock’n’roll films the
year before in his Bob Dylan documentary, Don’t Look Back. To document the
Monterey Pop Festival, he hired camera people who were musicians first and
photographers second, and instructed them to get into the rhythm of the performances.
Pennebaker also did something no documentary director had done before: He had each camera
operator carry a tape recorder, so that later, in the editing stage, Pennebaker could
exactly match each piece of film to the music happening on screen. That way, he could be
sure to have the people on screen grooving to the same sounds the theater audience was
hearing. As you watch Monterey Pop, you’ll see how this simple but effective
technique pulls you into the story.
While Monterey Pop famously shows all manner of sex,
drugs, and rock’n’roll, Pennebaker was circumspect about depicting at least the
first two. Sex was pre- or postcoital nuzzling. Drugs were in the dazed eyes and confused
grins in the audience. His prudence stemmed from the fact that the documentary was
intended to be an ABC television special. Pennebaker didn’t know it at the time, but
he could have shown all he wanted. A force no one reckoned with was coming to Monterrey.
 Jimi Hendrix had been touring as the
opening act for the No.1 band in the world at that time, the Monkees, whose management was
trying to gain the band some much-needed street cred. But Hendrix tired of pubertal girls
ignoring his music and screaming for the Monkees’ Davy Jones. He felt the Monkees
fans were silly children who didn’t understand his mojo. So when he got in front of
an adult audience at Monterey, he took the liberty of enacting outrageously sexual acts
with his Stratocaster: humping it against his Marshall stack of speaker cabinets, licking
its strings, letting it sprout phallus-like from below his crotch, symbolically peeing
lighter fluid on it, then setting it on fire. The crowd went wild and gave Hendrix the
confidence he needed. He left the Monkees tour shortly after.
Anxious to maintain the Pre-Fab Four’s credibility,
the Monkees’ management spread the story that Hendrix had been kicked off the tour
because of protests from the Daughters of the American Revolution. The story ended up
being good for both the Monkees and Hendrix. As America rapidly divided along the
generation gap, Hendrix seized the high ground as one of the artists you knew your
parents would hate. When Pennebaker showed the Hendrix clip to ABC honcho Thomas Moore,
the latter famously yelled, "Not on my network!" Suddenly, Monterey Pop
was a movie.
The other star-making performance was by a pimply-faced
24-year-old woman from Port Arthur, Texas. Janis Joplin was a relatively new member of a
popular San Francisco band, Big Brother and the Holding Company. They were a fierce act,
the feral James Gurley strangling primitive feedback from his guitar as the rest of the
band banged away in their version of psychedelic blues. But when Joplin stood front and
center, they became stars. Her plaintiff yelps, angry screams, and demanding posture took
over the stage, the festival, and eventually, for a short time, the world. If you’ve
ever wanted to know what was special about Janis Joplin, go no further than her rendition
here of Big Mama Thornton’s "Ball and Chain." She stomps to focus her
anger, pleads with God to stop the pain, shrieks her rage, and finally resigns herself to
her fate. It’s a performance guaranteed to raise goose bumps on any
rock’n’roll lover.
Pennebaker’s most controversial decision was to devote
the film’s final 18 minutes to an Indian playing an instrument (the sitar) that most
people had heard only once, on the Beatles’ Revolver, from the year before.
Ravi Shankar took the stage with dignity, acknowledging that his was a classical music
with thousands of years of tradition. His hope was to bring joy to the audience. Watching
Shankar play with and against his tabla player, Ustad Alla Rakha, is like seeing Charlie
Parker and Dizzie Gillespie trade eights. The communication is on the highest spiritual
and cerebral levels as they rip through licks that mesmerized guitar slingers such as Mike
Bloomfield and Hendrix. It’s as perfect an ending as you’ll find in film.
Monterey Pop is available as a single DVD or as part
of a three-disc set called The Complete Monterey Pop Festival. As faultless as Monterey
Pop is, fans have always wished for more, and luckily, this is a Criterion Collection
production. You know any multidisc set from Criterion delivers the goods -- such as, in
this case, a chance to see two bands in the middle of meltdown coming through
professionally. The Byrds tackle "Hey Joe," with David Crosby -- who’d
already threatened to leave the band -- standing front and center, the place he liked
best, as band leader Roger McGuinn plays a truly dreadful lead part, looking distant and
pissed off. The next night, when Buffalo Springfield take the stage to play "For What
It’s Worth," there’s no Neil Young. He’d taken off, pissed about
Stephen Stills getting a hit record. In Young’s place, singing gorgeous third-part
harmony, is David Crosby. He and Stills would soon form a rather popular band with Graham
Nash. Serious rock historians will also enjoy the probable suspense when Al Kooper and the
Blues Project take the stage separately. Ditto for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the
Electric Flag.
We also get more Simon and Garfunkel, Mamas and Papas,
Country Joe and the Fish, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother. And you get the
full Monty for both Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding. It’s a dream collection for anyone
interested in the music of the 1960s.
Wally Heider, the famous live sound engineer, did a great
job of capturing the music. This is raw sound -- no programming, no click tracks, no MIDI,
no synths. The feeds are direct from the boards, and the original soundtrack is how the
artists really sounded to the crowd. Theater audiences loved the sound -- it was vibrant
and alive. Criterion has a little less faith, having added some judicious reverb to make
it sound a bit more like what we’ve since become used to as live sound. While the
sound is exciting, it’s not as savage as the original film’s. This being
Criterion, they offer both options, as well as Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1. Audiophiles
will prefer the DTS for its rounder tones. I prefer my rock undomesticated; I listen to
the original sound.
Most viewers at the time had no idea that Monterey Pop
was a commercialization of everything it said to hold true. Yes, it was about peace, love,
and understanding, but it was also about selling a lifestyle. By the time the film hit the
nation’s hinterlands in early 1969 (it opened in late December 1968, in New York),
the movement it had sought to showcase was dead in its own home. The warm, sharing,
fun-loving Haight-Ashbury had become a magnet for freeloaders, misfits, con artists, and
speed freaks.
But throughout the rest of 1969, the hippie movement
continued to spread around the country. New York Times columnist Renata Adler
covered the opening of Monterey Pop, and she clearly understood the biggest part of
the lifestyle’s allure when she described "the way it captures the pop musical
willingness to hurl yourself into things, without all the What If (What if I can’t?
What if I make a fool of myself?) joy action-stopping self-consciousness of an earlier
generation, a willingness that can somehow co-exist with the idea of cool."
That summer, businessmen smelled a moneymaker. Hundreds of
thousands of young North Americans were eager to try to relive Monterey by hurling
themselves into the psychedelic experience during a summer filled with music festivals.
Many of the same artists slogged from festival to festival, beginning in June with the
Toronto Pop Festival, followed by the Denver Pop Festival, the Atlanta International Pop
Festival, the Atlantic City Pop Festival, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, and ending on
Labor Day in Dallas at the Texas International Pop Festival.
By December, the movement was dead. That’s when the
Rolling Stones, trying to show how cool they were, hired the Hell’s Angels to provide
security at their free concert at the Altamont Speedway in northern California. The Angels
killed an 18-year-old African-American boy who, they claimed, was stoned on meth and about
to shoot someone onstage. The crowd went crazy. Furious over the turmoil, Keith Richards
shouted "Fuck this!" and unslung his guitar, intending to leave the stage. An
Angel aimed a gun at Richards’ stomach and told him to keep playing. No one was
wearing flowers in their hair.
Thankfully, Monterey Pop still gives us a glimpse of
what made the end of the 1960s special.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
