When Hendrix opened for the Monkees

Rabs

Do you guys know this one?  

When Hendrix was on the way up and The Monkees were at the top of their game.. Someone had the bright idea of Hendrix opening for them on their tour..   BAD IDEA...  Hendrix quit a short while in and I don't blame him

Heres some interesting old newspaper clips

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r588/Rabs2010/2008 standard/hendrix-monkees_zpsuljxpfyz.jpg

http://i1173.photobucket.com/albums/r588/Rabs2010/2008 standard/428cd35cdcd_zpszp5s7b9k.jpg

Now this is the really interesting and to me amusing part...  A short while back I found this clip and it dawned on me that it was on the Monkees tour cos on the bass drum it says mick (mislabelled video if you ask me,)...   So that audience were there to see a pop band and get Hendrix right in the face...  Hendrix of course pulls out all of the stops, playing with his teeth and behind his back..  and the look on the faces of those kids at the end is classic, they just don't understand whats just happened to them    

starwarsnosebleed

I always thought it was the Monkees management removed him from the tour, as they thought the Monkees main audience (12 year olds) would get freaked out.

DulcetJones

Along with the above scenarios I  also read that parents of the young Monkees fans complained about Hendrix for his lewd stage moves as well as  his loud freaky(to them) show.  Not sure what actually happened but what a strange pairing.

Rabs

Heres an article about it

It sounds like an elaborate joke today: legendary acid rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix working as the warm-up for a teenybopper group like The Monkees? But back in 1967, the pairing actually made a little bit of sense for both acts.

Micky Dolenz was the first Monkee to “discover” Hendrix; while visiting New York in the spring of 1967, a friend advised him to check out this amazing musician in the Village who played the guitar with his teeth. Dolenz was impressed but didn’t remember the guitarist’s name until he saw The Jimi Hendrix Experience onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival several months later. The Monkees were about to embark on a U.S. concert tour and Dolenz strongly recommended hiring Jimi Hendrix and his band as their opening act. Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith supported the choice; both were anxious to be accepted as serious musicians and believed that Hendrix would lend them some credibility among rock critics and older record buyers. “Besides,” Tork would later say, “it would give us the chance to watch Jimi Hendrix perform night after night!”

Jimi, on the other hand, thought The Monkees’ music was “dishwater,” but his manager convinced him to sign on for the tour. Hendrix already had three hits in England but was virtually unknown in America. His manager wanted to capitalize on the buzz generated by his client’s Monterey Pop performance, and The Monkees were just about the biggest act in the country at that time. What could go wrong?

Plenty, as it turned out

The Monkees’ young fans were confused by the overtly sexual stage antics of Hendrix, and when he tried to get them to sing along to “Foxy Lady” they stubbornly screamed “Foxy Davy!” The Jimi Hendrix Experience played just eight of the 29 scheduled tour dates; then, on July 16, 1967, Jimi flipped the Forest Hills, Queens, New York, audience off, threw down his guitar and walked away from Monkeemania.

Rabs

And another just for balance

What do you get when you cross a guitar genius with one of the world’s bestselling pop bands? A frustrated guitarist, a disappointed band and a bewildered and confused audience.

As unlikely as the match-up sounds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience joined the Monkees during the summer of 1967 for a short run of concerts. The rising guitarist joined the tour on its first date in Jacksonville, Fla., on July 8, and stuck it out for six more shows, exiting after a run of three concerts at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York City on July 14, 15 and 16.

Both Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork had attended the Monterey International Pop Festival in June and saw Hendrix’s groundbreaking performance. Like everyone else, they were knocked out. “Micky said, ‘We gotta get this guy,'” recalled Tork in the documentary The Monkees Story. “Micky was just enthusiastic about his music.”

“You can’t imagine what it must have been like for an act like Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees,” Dolenz wrote in his autobiography I’m a Believer. “It was evident from the start that we were witness to a rare and phenomenal talent. I would stand in the wings and watch and listen in awe.”

Tales from the tour reveal that everyone involved got along great. “He was such a sweet guy,” said Tork. “It was really just a pleasure to have him around for company.” But the group’s young audiences, as well as their parents who often accompanied them at shows, didn’t feel the same way.

“[The parents] were probably not too crazy about having to sit through a Monkees concert,” said Dolenz, “much lees see this black guy in a psychedelic Day-Glo blouse, playing music from hell, holding his guitar like he was f—ing it, then lighting it on fire … Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps and break into ‘Purple Haze,’ and the kids in the audience would instantly drown him out with, ‘We Want Davy!!’ God, it was embarrassing.”

Tork said that “it didn’t cross anybody’s mind that it wasn’t gonna fly.” But rumors began to surface that Hendrix was asked to leave the tour after the Daughters of the American Revolution complained about his “lewd and indecent” conduct during his performances.

Legend has it that Hendrix flipped off the audience as he left the stage on the final date of his run. Either way, he decided enough was enough, and asked to be released from his contract and the remaining shows. “I was sorry to see him go,” wrote Dolenz. “We did have some great times, running around the New York City psychedelic scene like kids in a candy store, tripping at the Electric Circus and jamming until all hours of the night in the hotel room.”

Shortly after Hendrix left the tour, both “Purple Haze” and Are You Experienced? started to climb the charts, revolutionizing modern music in the process. And in certain parts of the world, the Monkees were viewed with just as much respect. While they were considered mostly a disposable pop band in the U.S., in the U.K. the Monkees were seen in a different, more kaleidoscopic light. A Melody Maker critic wrote about the band’s tour of England in 1967: “I suddenly realized the Monkees were actually freaking out properly and much better than many of the much vaunted psychedelic groups.”

SNAKEBITE

Good stories!

I think the best part is that both parties seemed to get along without any bitchiness. Obviously they were chalk and cheese, but there was some link there.

jimmyguitar

"black guy in a psychedelic Day-Glo blouse, playing music from hell, holding his guitar like he was f—ing it, then lighting it on fire" - Ha ha!!

Corvus

Jimi with chimps and borrowed Gretsch Annie - note it's strung normally..!

https://northcarolinaroom.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/oaksmoteljul121967.jpg

guitars4you

A nice bit of history that I never knew about so thanks for that

axisus

I thought he left as he wasn't allowed to play guitar himself. There was a bespectacled guy out of shot behind the curtain plugged into his amp.

JezWynd

 A Melody Maker critic wrote about the band’s tour of England in 1967: “I suddenly realized the Monkees were actually freaking out properly and much better than many of the much vaunted psychedelic groups.”

Groovy!

dogload

Ah, I've loved the Monkees since I used to watch them as a little kid (yep, back in the sixties!). If anyone doubts their credibility - or at least their desire to be taken as serious credible artists - just watch their film, 'Head' They have been much-maligned over the years, but as that article says, they acknowledged as being much more than just throwaway manufactured pop - an image that 'Head' both plays on and seeks to overthrow.
Anyway, courtesy of youtube, here's 'Head'. Light up, bliss-out and enjoy

skinfreak

My mother in law saw Hendrix supporting the Walker Brothers on Cardiff and had a similar look on her face to those Monkees fans. Her quote to me was "a funny little man rolling around on the floor with his guitar" .

Jetfire

skinfreak said:

My mother in law saw Hendrix supporting the Walker Brothers on Cardiff and had a similar look on her face to those Monkees fans. Her quote to me was "a funny little man rolling around on the floor with his guitar" .

What date was that?

imalrightjack

He supported Englebert Humperdinck in my home town:

http://jimihendrix.forumactif.org/t195-carlisle-abc-7-avril-1967

@jetfire @skinfreak Same tour as Cardiff, I presume. 

vale

the monkees probably & justifiably felt they were doing jimi a massive favour, as level of national exposure to impressionable middle-class kids would have been huge.
& though they played in a manufactured band themselves, that doesn't inevitably preclude them from having decent insight & taste into the culture they were part of as individuals.
the head film shows they knew what was going on, or at least were prepared to put their names & faces to it, even if the ideas came from elsewhere (anti-vietnam & anti-us-imperialist counterculture nods throughout).

also worth remembering the usa in 1967 was still deep in the midst of widespread & violent civil rights unrest. the panthers kicked off late 1966 & mlk was shot in 1968, so 1967 is right in the thick of it. for the monkees to go into hot spots with jimi on the bill was making a statement.

the music papers probably made jimi's split out to be acrimonious to preserve his rebel image, but i would imagine he appreciated the break, even if he decided it was a bit of a cheesy gig later on.

my favourite monkees song. killer riff times. épater la bourgeoisie!

Samgb

skinfreak said:

My mother in law saw Hendrix supporting the Walker Brothers on Cardiff and had a similar look on her face to those Monkees fans. Her quote to me was "a funny little man rolling around on the floor with his guitar" .

My mum was the biggest Scott Walker fan and often mentions being baffled by Hendrix on this tour - and terrified by the volume . She was only 15 and screamed for the Walker Brothers all the way through Hendrix and Cat Stevens' sets. Decent bill though... 

BigKev

A lot of people seem to over look the fact that until Hendrix had broke in the UK he couldn't fill a phone box back in the US of A.
Any tours he got on were at that point just that, to get him known back home !!!

skinfreak

Jetfire said:

skinfreak said:

My mother in law saw Hendrix supporting the Walker Brothers on Cardiff and had a similar look on her face to those Monkees fans. Her quote to me was "a funny little man rolling around on the floor with his guitar" .

What date was that?

April 1967 apparently according to this.

https://recordmecca.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/IMG_2258.jpg
https://recordmecca.com/item-archives/walker-brothers-concert-program-jimi-hendrix-appearence/