Monterey Pop Festival -Art Garfunkel

June 16-17-18  was the  anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival which, more than anything else, crystallized in many people’s minds the Summer of Love in 1967. Besides memorable performances by established hitmakers of the day the Mamas and Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, The Who, Buffalo Springfield, Otis Redding, and the Jefferson Airplane, Monterey Pop was the debutante coming out party for a singer from Beaumont Texas by way of San Francisco named Janis Joplin, and an African-American from Seattle named Jimi Hendrix. The electric guitarist had just arrived back in the States from London prior to the release of their first album with his trio, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and would burn up the Monterey Pop stage- literally. The Monterey Pop Festival was organized by John Phillips (of the Mamas and Papas), their record producer Lou Adler, and by New York City-based Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, the latter of whom fifty years on shared these memories and some illuminating cultural and social observations with me In The Studio. – Redbeard