Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits
It’s straightforward to dismiss The Monkees. Critics and listeners have been doing it for the reason that sixties, though the band has additionally are available for its share of reappraisals, particularly for his or her psych-rock album Head. (That’s the soundobserve from the 1968 Jack Nicholson-directed artwork movie of the identical identify: “One of many bizarreest and finest rock films ever made.”) However whatever you consider The Monkees’ music, you need to admit: they’d one of the crucial additionalordinary careers of any band in rock and roll.
They started in 1965 as a troupe of actors in a sitcom that Monkee Micky Dolenz described as being about “an imaginary band… that needed to be The Beatles,” however “was never successful.” In a really quick time, the 4 members—Dolenz, Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and Michael Nesmith—had mastered their instruments and realized to jot down their very own original songs.
It appeared that just about in a single day, they’d gone from lip-syncing boy band comedians to genuine pop stars. (Dolenz describes it as “the equivalent of Leonard Nimoy actually becoming a Vulcan.”)
Within the summer of 1967, “on the peak of Monkeemania,” The Monkees Almanac informs us, the band launched into a 28-city tour via the United States and England, opening on the Hollywooden Bowl simply 5 days after their TV present collected two Primetime Emmy Awards. The oddest factor concerning the tour: for eight dates, Jimi Hendrix opened for the band together with his newly fashioned Experience, “one of many strangest pairings in rock and roll history.” However on the time, writes Malestal Floss, “the pairing actually made a little little bit of sense for each acts.” The Monkees needed credibility, and Hendrix wanted a U.S. audience.
He was already an enormous star in England, however, regardless of blowing the gang away at the Monterey Pop Festival that spring, Hendrix was mostly an unknown quantity to U.S. music purchaseers. However Dolenz had seen him play in New York and was swimsuitably impressed. When he suggested Hendrix for the tour, the Experience’s manager Mike Jeffery jumped on the likelihood, supposeing he may leverage The Monkees’ enormous crowds to interrupt Hendrix within the States. Hendrix himself expressed a lot much less enthusiasm, having known as The Monkees’ music “dishwater” in a Melody Maker interview.
So how did it go? Not properly, as you may think—definitely not the “West Coast Success” the pinnacleline on the high of the publish trumpets. Monkees followers—principally younger youngsters dragging alongside parental chaperons—had no thought what to make of Hendrix. “Jimi would amble out onto the stage, hearth up the amps and break into ‘Purple Haze,’ ” wrote Dolenz in his autobiography, “and the youngsters within the audience would promptly drown him out with, ‘We Need Davy!!’ God, it was embarrassing.” Though Peter Tork especially amongst The Monkees’ members was overjoyed to have Hendrix on the tour, he later recalled the pairing as a singularly unhealthy thought: “That is screaming, scaring-your-daddy music compared with The Monkees. It didn’t cross anyphysique’s thoughts that it wasn’t gonna fly. And there’s poor Jimi, and the youngsters go, ‘We wish The Monkees, we wish The Monkees.’ ”
You’ll be able to see Tork describe the ill-fated match-up in a hilariously dated MTV clip above. Regardless of his reservations, Hendrix obtained on very properly with The Monkees. Not a lot with their obnoxious followers. “The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed simply eight of the 29 scheduled tour dates,” writes Malestal Floss, “after which on July 16, 1967, Jimi flipped the Forest Hills, Queens, New York, audience off, threw down his guitar and walked away from Monkeemania.” (Historical past.com provides the date as July 17.) No nice loss for both band. A couple of months later, Melody Maker predespatcheded Hendrix with a “World’s Prime Musician” award, and his music hit the U.S. principalstream as properly. And The Monkees finished the tour and went on to make Head, the movie and album, which, relying on whom you ask, both ruined their rock cred or outlined it forever.
Related Content:
Jimi Hendrix Unplugged: Two Nice Documentings of Hendrix Playing Acoustic Guitar
How the 1968 Psychedelic Movie Head Destroyed the Monkees & Turned a Cult Classic
Watch Frank Zappa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Versa (1967)
How Science Fiction Fashioned Jimi Hendrix
Josh Jones is a author and musician based mostly in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
