29 Monterey Pop Festival Photos That Epitomize The “Summer Of Love”
Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images A hippie family, baby in tow, attends the Monterey Pop Festival.
It was the Woodstock before Woodstock.
The Monterey Pop Festival kicked off 1967’s “Summer of Love” with an epic three-day concert for the ages.
Held in Monterey, Calif. between June 16 and 18, this outdoor extravaganza saw legendary performances from a host of musical icons, established the tradition of the modern music festival, and launched many storied careers. Before the Monterey Pop Festival, names like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix hardly registered in the mainstream American consciousness.
Furthermore, Monterey Pop was the first major festival to bring together music acts not just from across the U.S. (Otis Redding, The Grateful Dead, Simon & Garfunkel) but from Britain as well (The Who, The Animals).
And with all this talent onboard, it’s remarkable that the whole festival was organized in a matter of just seven weeks by notable figures like John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, producer Lou Adler, entrepreneur Alan Pariser, and publicist Derek Taylor. They wanted the Monterey Pop festival to help validate rock music as an art form — and they succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
In the words of actor and festival attendee Dennis Hopper, “Monterey was the purest, most beautiful moment of the whole ’60s trip. It seemed like everything had come to that moment. It was a magical, pure moment in time.”
