REMEMBERING MONTEREY POP Locals recall when county was at center of the musical universe
By LESLIE ESCOBAR and DAVE NORDSTRAND The Salinas Californian Originally published June 9, 2007 http://thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070609/NEWS01/706090312/1002 On the third weekend of June 1967, Monterey became the heart of the Summer of Love. >From June 16 to 18, about 200,000 people converged on the Monterey Fairgrounds, where they grooved to the music of the Monterey International Pop Festival in a smoky haze, taking in musicians who were then up-and-coming: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and others. While no one realized it then, the now-famous festival's significance is clear now. The legendary event helped popularize artists such as Hendrix and Joplin and inspire the much-bigger Woodstock music festival in 1969. The festival's mellow mood also remains remarkable - despite a crowd of 200,000 over three days, no one was killed or injured. At Woodstock and music festivals even today, accidental deaths have occured. While plenty of official events are being held to mark Monterey Pop's 40th anniversary - art exhibits, a movie screening and a reunion show, for example - some festival-goers are content to simply reminisce. Below are some of their stories. Back on the night that Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin courted rock star immortality in Monterey, Richard Gourley was a 30-year-old Salinas milkman who also served as an officer with the Salinas Police Department Reserves. Monterey called in police from Salinas and other areas in the county to help with the festival, said Gourley, who's retired and lives near Lake Nacimiento. "They wanted all the police they could get, because they didn't know what they were up against," he said. All the officers wore leather jackets and carried Mace and nightsticks as though preparing for a major riot. "In fact, everybody at that concert turned out to be the most wonderful people with colorful clothes, beads and long hair," he said. "Everyone was giving me the peace sign." The police worked each of eight stations on the festival grounds, rotating every hour. Those eight stations included the men's restroom, where festival-goers who were too high on drugs often decided to curl up and sleep. "So we'd be picking the guys off the floor," Gourley said. The only trouble came when soldiers on Fort Ord, many of them bound for the war in Vietnam, confronted the peaceniks. Scuffles did occur, Gourley said. "Mostly they were outside the gates," he said. Because the crowds were so great, there was an overflow to arena events. "They'd show a video tape of it in one of the buildings, and that was a place you didn't want to be," he said. "After a few minutes indoors, you'd get dizzy" from all the pot smoke afloat. At night, most of the hippie crowd retired to the beach on the bay - some drove "flower-power cars," Gourley said - to sleep under the dancing stars or in makeshift shelters. Gourley picked up a program from the event. He still has it. Page 78 is a picture of a very young Bob Dylan. Page 79 is the lyrics to Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin.'" "Come gather 'round people wherever you roam ..." could have doubled as an anthem for the festival. "I wasn't into all the music," Gourley said. "But after they became famous, I thought, 'I was there when that all happened.' And that was kind of great." 'Pretty special' Then-20-year-old Don Garl was probably trying to stay away from Gourley and his crew the Saturday night of Monterey Pop. He'd snuck in. "I had tickets for Sunday night but I couldn't wait, so I thought, 'If I go up there, maybe I can hear the sound from outside," said Garl, who was a student at Monterey Peninsula College then and lives in Prunedale now. He ended up hanging out near a back entrance, where he decided to pretend to be part of a group moving cameras inside. "I thought, 'What do I have to lose?' All they can say is, 'Get out of here, kid.' I even said, 'Here, this way,' or something like that." Garl then wandered the festival grounds, where the headliner that night was Otis Redding. He got in legitimately the next night with his $5 ticket. "It's funny, but five bucks was a lot of money back then for a guy going to MPC," Garl remembered. And so, he was there when The Who destroyed their equipment on stage after their set. Then he watched as Hendrix set his guitar on fire in an epic performance shortly after. "He took it to whole new levels," Garl said. "He could get different sounds that no one else could. He just did everything to a guitar imaginable." Looking back, Garl said it's surreal to know Monterey Pop happened and that he was one of the lucky ones in attendance. "As you get away from it in time, you start to realize that was pretty special to see all those people come here to little old Monterey and give you your money's worth," he said. Garl, now 60, does wish his memory were a little clearer. "Forty years is a long time," he said. "It was two-thirds of my life ago, and it's kind of hard to remember the things that happened to you then, because at the time you're not saying, 'I've got to remember this; this is really special.'" Garl said he doubts he'll try to rekindle the spirit of 1967 by going to a reunion festival that will be held the last weekend in July. "Re-creating it is not going to come close," he said. "I think Jimi Hendrix is probably the greatest performer I have ever seen, and he's not going to be there. I probably wouldn't even go." 'A turning point' Having just moved to Monterey County from Los Angeles, Pat Smith didn't have many friends here in 1967. However, the 14-year-old convinced her dad to let her go alone. He dropped her off at the front entrance Saturday afternoon, said Smith, who's now 54 and lives in Salinas. "I just remember driving slowly through that area and seeing all these hippies and hippie vans and people with lots and lots of hair," Smith said. "The more we drove through it, my dad was like, 'Um, are you sure this is where you want to go?'" Smith said she remembers being at Monterey Pop from about 1 to 6 p.m. that day, when musicians such as Country Joe & The Fish and Big Brother & The Holding Company were playing. "I was kind of scared when I first got there, because if you didn't buy the seating in the front, you could pretty much sit anywhere," she said. "I ended up meeting a group of people, and they kind of adopted me. I felt like I had known them my whole life. "They were passing joints around, and I had never been exposed to that, and so I had my first try of marijuana. That's why I look back at it as such a turning point in my life. I had made a decision to try something that was an adult decision. It was the time in my life where I was just really starting to grow up." While memories of that afternoon are a bit hazy, Smith said she does remember that she was wearing "a little black mini skirt, and I wore black fishnet stockings and black knee high boots. You didn't need sweaters or coats or anything. You just enjoyed the sun, and it was a beautiful day." Finally, at the end of the afternoon, Smith's dad arrived to pick her up. "My dad was cool, but I was more worried when he picked me up, because I didn't know if I was acting odd," Smith said. "But he didn't say anything; he just asked, 'How was it?' and I said, 'It was the best time, Dad. Can I go back?' "He said, 'Absolutely not - once is enough.'" http://cmsimg.thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=J2&Date=20070609&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=706090312&Ref=AR&Profile=1002&MaxW=600&Q=80 Or - http://shorterlink.org/2494 Jimi Hendrix plays at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival at the Monterey Fairgrounds. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty images http://cmsimg.thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=J2&Date=20070609&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=706090312&Ref=V2&Profile=1002&MaxW=600&Q=80 Or - http://shorterlink.org/2495 Richard Gourley shows a page from the Monterey International Pop Festival program. MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES RICHARD GREEN/T http://cmsimg.thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=J2&Date=20070609&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=706090312&Ref=H3&Profile=1002&MaxW=600&Q=80 Or - http://shorterlink.org/2497 Don Garl plays drums, guitar and harmonica simultaneously Tuesday in his Prunedale home. He attended the Monterey International Pop Festival 40 years ago. SCOTT MACDONALD/THE SALINAS CALIFORNIAN http://cmsimg.thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=J2&Date=20070609&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=706090312&Ref=V4&Profile=1002&MaxW=600&Q=80 Or - http://shorterlink.org/2498 Cass Elliot of The Mamas & The Papas in seen June 18, 1967 in the audience at the Monterey International Pop Festival. MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES AT A GLANCE Original Monterey International Pop Festival lineup # FRIDAY, JUNE 16: The Association, The Paupers, Lou Rawls, Beverly, Johnny Rivers, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Simon & Garfunkel # SATURDAY, JUNE 17: Canned Heat, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Country Joe & The Fish, Al Kooper, The Butterfield Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Steve Miller Band, The Electric Flag, Moby Grape, Hugh Masekela, The Byrds, The Butterfield Blues Band, Laura Nyro, Jefferson Airplane, Booker T. & The M.G.'s with The Mar-Keys, Otis Redding # SUNDAY, JUNE 18: Ravi Shankar, The Blues Project, Big Brother & The Holding Company, The Group With No Name, Buffalo Springfield, The Who, The Grateful Dead, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Scott McKenzie, The Mamas & The Papas -- King Daevid MacKenzie. No brag, just fact. http://myspace.com/kingdaevid http://groups.google.ca/group/hateradioboycott "You're only entitled to your informed opinion." 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