Lou Adler was getting together with Alan Pariser and Barry
Feinstein to promote a festival in Monterey, California. Lou and John Phillips planned it. They had a jazz festival there so why not a
folk festival? A poster of a beautiful
woman advertising the event was designed and posted.
Everyone stayed at the Highland Inn. The event would be documented in a Pennebaker
film. The group’s attorney, Abe Somer,
wrote up all of the contracts.
The event in Monterey was three days of total bliss. Leading guru’s who had come out to nearby Big
Sur came to the festival. It was the
gathering of the tribes. There were messages
in the music. Poets Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were there. It was like an extension of Kerouac’s “On the
Road” trip.
Come out to California.
Hitch-hike up and down the coast.
There were a variety of impressions from various life-styles represented
there from Hari-Krishnas to the blessings of Ravi Shankar’s Indian sitar. It was the West Coast happening as compared
to the East Coast Woodstock festival.
A contributing tribe from Hollywood included John Phillip
Law, Tom and Lisa Law, Victor Maymudes and his family, Severn Darden, and Vito and his dancers.
Their message was to the machine, the computers. “You
haven’t trapped anybody yet.”
Thousands of people attended.
In Eric’s words: “It
was colored roses and a beautiful effervescent candlelistic incandescent flower
reunion of the mind in total eclipse of the seventh oriental-like heaven only
known by the Jupiter sign upon the breath of man’s eternal existence. Peace, energy, brilliance, and a lot of
drugs.
It was a new wave of people that the old mold didn’t
fit. There were old people involved
also. No color, no age, no sexism. If you want to realize where you came from,
take some acid. If you want to live the
mundane existence of your doggerel life, then do that. Monterey told everybody that they had a
choice. Right up front.”
For at least those three days they wanted to be beyond the
mundane.
It was a beautiful setting with beautiful people. Whether you were a star or a fan or a
photographer or a set-up man, everyone was on that genuine smile trip.
With Jimmie Hendrix, the Who, the Mamas and Papas, Janis
Joplin and more, it was a total happening.
Eric is behind Michelle.
Doc (Eric) and Michelle
Doc behind Michelle
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