#ROGER DALTREY 1967 FREE#

The Animals' frontman Eric Burdon, his Newcastle accent now softened by California or drugs or both, introduced The Who as “a group that will destroy you completely in more ways than one”. At one point Hendrix stood on a stool in front of Townshend to show off on the guitar, as if to say, “Don’t fuck with me, you little shit.” In the end, John Phillips suggested they toss a coin. Pete Townshend recalled arguing with Hendrix about who would go on first, as neither wanted to follow the other. He would go from a bit of orchestration, to a vocal part, to a solo – the whole thing on one guitar.” The others stood and watched, accompanying Hendrix by beating out a rhythm on anything close to hand. “But, and this was the amazing thing, he was playing all the parts. Roger Daltrey recalls Jones joining him, Janis Joplin, The Mamas And The Papas' Mama Cass and Jimi Hendrix for a jam session in the dressing room under the stage.

#ROGER DALTREY 1967 FREE#

It was a tablecloth I bought in Shepherd’s Bush.”īackstage, the Grateful Dead's sound engineer turned chemist, Owsley Stanley, was distributing free LSD trips and Rolling Stone Brian Jones was drifting around dressed like a Regency prince, but looking, as Keith Richards once said, “like a ghost about to leave a séance”. The festival had also attracted unprecedented media coverage, with over 1,000 journalists besieging Derek Taylor's press tent. By then, as many 80,000 people had passed through the gates into the fairground or congregated outside, hoping to see and hear something, anything. “The Who paid my fare home,” says Keith Altham, who covered the festival for New Musical Express, “but Jimi Hendrix paid for my flight out.” To add to the frisson, The Who and fellow Track act Hendrix were both due to play on Sunday evening. But they weren’t the only Track Records act on the bill. If ever The Who had the opportunity to, as Townshend put it, “leave a wound” it was now. “The effect of LSD on American music made it crap, with very few exceptions,” he complained. Pete Townshend watched Otis Redding work his magic on Saturday night, but America’s take on psychedelia left him cold. The Who were due to play on Sunday evening and arrived the day before. The stage was wide open for a loud, aggressive group from England. The other acts on the Monterey bill included Country Joe And The Fish, Jefferson Airplane and Scott McKenzie, whose hit San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) was now an anthem for what critics were calling ‘the summer of love’. Stamp had recently permed his hair to look more like his hero Jimi Hendrix, discovered LSD and embraced what he called “love and communication… and all that shit.” But he was still compos mentis enough to know this was a good opportunity for The Who. Mark Blake's Pretend You're In A War, out nowĪs The Who had only just dented the US market, co-manager Chris Stamp agreed to the group playing for nothing. Most accepted, albeit grudgingly, except Indian composer and sitar player Ravi Shankar who pocketed $3,000 for his afternoon performance. The organisers had pledged the festival’s profits to charity, and asked the bands to perform for free. Among the festival’s organisers were John Phillips of the harmony group The Mamas And The Papas and The Beatles’ press officer Derek Taylor. ON JUNE 18 1967, The Who brought what Rolling Stone called their “pulverising music” to the Monterey International Pop Music Festival at the Monterey County fairground, California. To celebrate the new edition of this exhaustive work on Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and co., which includes over 100 interviews with the band and their associates, MOJO has an exclusive extract from the book, as Mark retells the story of The Who’s set at the Monterey festival in 1967, including tales of psychological warfare with Jimi Hendrix, upsetting Ravi Shankar and more. CHARTING THE WHO’S jubilant yet turbulent times in the ’60, Pretend You're In A War by MOJO writer Mark Blake is published in paperback this week (September 3).

Roger daltrey 1967