Monterey International Pop Festival: Music, Love, and Flowers, 1967

San Francisco was a hot bed of music innovation in 1967. The proof was heard at Monterey Pop, the first and perhaps greatest of all the rock festivals. Without Monterey, there would have been no Woodstock, no Coachella even. It was both a musical and cultural event that reflected everything good about '60s rock. - Bob Santelli, Founding Executive Director of the GRAMMY Museum Bob Santelli and author of Aquarius Rising (The Rock Festival Years)

On display on the Museum's third floor through Oct. 22, 2017, the exhibit will feature artifacts from the private collection of the Monterey International Pop Festival Foundation, Lou Adler, and items from various artists who performed at the festival, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and Ravi Shankar, among others. Photographs by top photographers Henry Diltz, Tom O'Neil, Ed Caraeff, and others will also be on display.

Monterey Pop was about the music, is about the music, and that's why it remains relevant on this 50th Anniversary. – Lou Adler

ABOUT LOU ADLER

Lou Adler helped to alter world culture and music in 1967 with the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, the first seminal rock festival. It not only helped bring prominence to Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, but popularized a whole new generation of rock performers, kicked off the Summer of Love, and served as the coming out party for the Baby Boomer generation.

A lifelong Angelino, Adler has been honored by the Mayor and City Council of Los Angeles for bringing recognition to the City of Angels. In fact, by popularizing California pop culture, he did as much as anyone to entice the music industry to shift its base in the '60s from New York to Los Angeles. Adler received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006. He produced the music and guided the careers of Jan and Dean, Johnny Rivers, The Mamas & The Papas, Spirit, and Carole King, as well as the comedy of Cheech and Chong. Among his most memorable tracks are The Mamas & Papas' “California Dreamin',” Scott McKenzie's “San Francisco (Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair),” Barry McGuire's “Eve of Destruction,” Sam Cooke’s “(What a) Wonderful World,” and King’s groundbreaking multi-platinum, multi-GRAMMY-winning 1971 Tapestry album, which earned him GRAMMYs for Album Of The Year and Record Of The Year for “It’s Too Late.” In 2004 Adler and his wife Page founded The Painted Turtle, “an innovative camp and family care center for children with life-threatening illnesses.”  The Painted Turtle celebrated its 12th anniversary in 2016, and has served over 47,000 campers and families, at no cost to the families.

Adler has indeed proven himself as a giant of the entertainment industry, a pioneer and an innovator with a flair for combining art and culture, and an entertainment titan with a social conscience.

ABOUT THE MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL

Lou Adler and John Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas undertook an unprecedented and wildly ambitious project when they co-produced the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, held June 16-18, 1967, at the Monterey Fairgrounds. The idea for the festival came from Alan Pariser, who had attended the Monterey Jazz Festival and came to Adler and Phillips looking to book the Mamas & the Papas for a concert at the Monterey Fair Grounds.

With its motto, "Music, Love and Flowers," Monterey Pop drew hundreds of thousands of people to Northern California. It was a celebration of benevolence and cultural change, the key event of the Summer of Love, and one of the chief defining moments of the baby boom generation. It presented rock music as a movement, not just in California, but globally. The lineup featured 32 artists representing nearly every genre of popular music at the time, including The Association, Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Mike Bloomfield’s Electric Flag, Booker T. and the MG’s, The Buffalo Springfield, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas & The Papas, Hugh Masekela, The Steve Miller Band, Moby Grape, Laura Nyro, Lou Rawls, Otis Redding, Johnny Rivers, Ravi Shakar, Simon and Garfunkel, Canned Heat, and The Who.

For one weekend, the harsh realities of Vietnam, student unrest, the Cold War, racism and urban riots, poverty and domestic politics were suspended and even transcended. Preceding Woodstock by two years, it was the first major rock festival and started the rock festival tide. It was multi-racial; it was national and international; it brought together musical talent from diverse genres; it established new rock stars as art and culture leaders; and legitimized and kicked off the rapid expansion of rock music into today’s multi-billion dollar industry. Because all of the artists donated their performances to charity, it resulted in the ongoing nonprofit good works of the first rock charity, (the forerunner to Live AID, Band AID and Farm AID) the Monterey International Pop Festival Foundation.

The festival also yielded the 1968 platinum album, Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival featuring Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding, and the critically acclaimed 1969 D. A. Pennebaker film Monterey Pop, both produced by Lou Adler and John Phillips. It would also ultimately bring forth the GRAMMY-nominated 25th Anniversary Monterey Pop box set. To learn more about the Monterey Pop Festival, visit www.themontereypopfestival.com.