Synopsis
Featuring performances by popular artists of the 1960s, this concert film highlights the music of the 1967 California festival. Although not all musicians who performed at the Monterey Pop Festival are on film, some of the notable acts include the Mamas and the Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, Otis Redding, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix's post-performance antics -- lighting a guitar on fire, breaking it and tossing a part into the audience -- are captured.
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Cast
- Scott McKenzieSelf
- Denny DohertySelf - Mamas and the Papas
- Cass ElliotSelf - Mamas and the Papas
- John PhillipsSelf - Mamas and the Papas
- Michelle PhillipsSelf - Mamas and the Papas
- Frank CookSelf - Canned Heat
- Bob HiteSelf - Canned Heat
- Larry TaylorSelf - Canned Heat
- Henry VestineSelf - Canned Heat
- Alan WilsonSelf - Canned Heat
Recommendations
- 80
Village Voice
Though there's considerable footage of hippie activity (crafting kites, sleeping) and moments of prelapsarian frisson (a cop warns that "there's talk of the Hell's Angels coming down"), the film is resolutely performance-driven. - 80
The New York Times
It is possible that the way to a new kind of musical—using some of the talent and energy of what is still the most lively contemporary medium—may begin with just this kind of musical performance documentary. - 75
Christian Science Monitor
It captures their magic with a freewheeling spontaneity that became a model for later pop-music movies. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
Compared to D.A. Pennebaker's previous feature DON'T LOOK BACK (1967), the warts-and-all portrait of Bob Dylan, MONTEREY POP seems very much an authorized presentation of its subject.
