Around the country, the Monterey County Fairgrounds is most remembered for being the site of the legendary Monterey Pop Festival of 1967.  Two years before Woodstock, it became one of the most iconic events of the decade.  Author and long-time resident John McCleary recounts the time for us.

Music, Entertainment and Icons at The Monterey County Fairgrounds

    The sun was shining on 30,000 music lovers.  Even the morning fog sparkled.  Harmonica notes flowed between the oaks and pines.  Guitar riffs tore through leaves.  Lovers cuddled in their sleeping bags amid the sweet smell of green dreams.

    The Monterey International Pop Festival at The Monterey County Fairgrounds, on June 16, 17, and 18, 1967, was not just a musical event. It was not just an excuse for young people to come together to do frivolous, youthful things.   It was The Summer of Love and the introduction of a new kind of gathering.  It was the beginning of a new form of music and it was also the start of a political and spiritual movement. 

    Everyone who attended Monterey Pop was changed by the experience!   First, we stopped using words like “attended”!  “Made the scene” was more like it.   Secondly, we became Experienced, really experienced, not just for a resume, but spiritually and politically.

    “The Pop Festival” was an event that altered our world from the inside out.  Through our ears, eyes and minds, a new culture redirected the future.

    In each generation there are defining moments.  For some Pearl Harbor may be that point.  To others it could be 9/11.  For mine it was Monterey Pop and Woodstock.   

    If you choose to consider only the music of Monterey Pop, that alone is a story of many dimensions.  That event brought into prominence two of the most memorable performers of the past 100 years and the future 100. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin were both triumphant and tragic. 

    Ravi Shankar and his Eastern soul and music introduced a generation of spiritually-starved people to the possibility of other religions.  Ravi was presented to America at the Pop Festival.  We were now given the opportunity to choose our own religions, not that of our parents.

    In all cultures, music is the fuel for our emotions.  Psychedelic music elevated our awareness of the world around us. Monterey Pop was the convergence of music and Eastern sensibility.   

    Even if you were to observe Monterey Pop and ignore the music, you would have much to consider.  The society that was being born there was soon to enlighten the world on many levels.

    Some people might think that Monterey Pop was just a blip on the heart monitor of this world, but it was much more than that.  I will not paint the hippie counterculture in a “whitewash” of tie-dye.  There were mistakes and tragedies.  A number of the performers on the stage on that June weekend in 1967 have died or self-destructed in the experiment which is the hippie counterculture.

    But we were the guinea pigs, and now it seems we did not die in vain because people are starting to listen.  The flower child has not wilted.  Our idealism was founded in a compassion for this earth and its inhabitants.     

          The Monterey County Fairgrounds could easily be called the finest concert venue on the West Coast of the United States.  When you consider the performances at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Blues Festival, Monterey Pop, Reggae Festivals, and all of the other music events that have happened there in the last fifty years, it is solidly the groovin' capital of California.  Throw in the Monterey County Fair shows, and it becomes the boot-scootin' yard as well.

    Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar on the Arena Stage, and that photo was on the cover of Rolling Stone.   Satchmo, Dizzy Gillespie, Janis Joplin, Brubeck, Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan have all sharpened their ax and cut some wood here.  Billy Holiday sang one of her last, great performances at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958, ten months before she died.

    The Arena Stage is one of the most famous platforms of wood and entertainment in the world.  New musicians bow down when they walk on the Arena Stage and  see the spot where Jimi burned his guitar and look out on the audience and see what Janis Joplin saw smiling back at her. 

    It is no wonder that we all look forward to something happening at the Monterey County Fairgrounds.  The tranquil oak trees under which vendors feed you or send you home with a memory of a beautiful weekend.  The soft grass where you sit and eat your BBQed ribs, oysters, and sweet potato pie, or tear into that big juicy turkey drumstick.  A beer never tasted better than on a bright sunny Arena day, on a folding chair listening to Taj Mahal.

    Entertainment, food and music... sounds almost like those other three joys of life.  The Fairgrounds has them all.  We once saw Chuck Berry duck walk across the stage, fire one drummer from the stage, and shred Johnny Be Good.

    The Hat Lady, God rest her soul!  The fly swatter lady.  Dee Dee Rainbow and J Jackson.

    Have you ever popped your teeth into the sweetest, juiciest, butter-dripping down-your-chin corn-on-the-cob in the world?  Well, I have, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in 1972, and then in ‘74, and I'm sure in ‘75, and every year after that.  There are people who come to “The Grounds” just to get their bean pies for the year.

    Oh, and BBQ and Cajun cookin'?  Yes, the Fairgrounds has that as well as caramel corn, cotton candy, and all of those other temptations.

    I promise you that you will never have a better day on Capri, in Paris, or upon the sands of Baja than I have spent so many times at the Monterey County Fairgrounds.

Article by John McCleary, third-generation Monterey Peninsula resident.  Author of The Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 70s, published by Random House.  40-year attendee of the Monterey Jazz Festival and an usher, aisle captain and media photographer of that event.  Attended The Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and most of the other historic musical events at the Monterey County Fairgrounds.