MICHELLE MARGETTS
I learned so much from Jim about the dark and the light sides of life, living in the moment, taking advantage of what the world presents to you. Just being in his orbit, I saw how instinctual choices can make all the difference and how one never knows where the next person you meet in life will take you.
Nowhere is Jim’s approach to work and life more evident than in the way he chose to document the myriad festivals, across all major musical genres, of the 1960s and early 1970s.
While the precise number of people who came to Monterey Pop will never be known, total attendance for the three-day event was estimated at two hundred thousand with a peak of ninety thousand on Saturday night. A three-day festival held June 16–18 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in northern California, Monterey Pop was organized in seven weeks by some of rock’s L.A. royalty: promoter Lou Adler, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, producer Alan Pariser, and publicist Derek Taylor. The goal was to bring together the most eclectic assortment of musical lights to ever grace a stage and elevate rock music’s standing from pop gimmick to world-class, world-changing art form.
The promoters and organizers behind Monterey had a big vision and the savvy to pull it off. In my opinion, one of the smartest things they did was let Jim have full run of the place. His pictures capture this magnificently. And I bet that if you were somehow able to poll the collectors of Jim’s work, shots made at Monterey would be in the majority of those hanging on walls around the world.
BRIAN JONES and DENNIS HOPPER chatting at the fairgrounds at the Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey, California, 1967
THE WHO, with PETE TOWNSHEND destroying his guitar on stage, at the Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey, California, 1967
MARK NAFTALIN (Butterfield Blues Band), PAUL SIMON, ART GARFUNKEL, and MICHAEL BLOOMFIELD during sound check at the Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey, California, 1967
JANIS JOPLIN on stage with PETER ALBIN (Big Brother and the Holding Company) at the Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey, California, 1967
