James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as the greatest and one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music."
The Animals are an English rock band, formed in Newcastle upon Tyne in the early 1960s. The Animals are known for their deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon and for their gritty, bluesy sound, exemplified by their signature song and transatlantic number-one hit single "The House of the Rising Sun" as well as by hits such as "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", "It's My Life", "Don't Bring Me Down", "I'm Crying", "See See Rider" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood". They balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm-and-blues-oriented album material and were part of the British Invasion of the US.
The year 1967 was an important one for psychedelic rock, and was famous for its "Summer of Love" in San Francisco. It saw major releases from multiple well-known bands including The Beatles, Small Faces, the newly renamed Eric Burdon and the Animals, Jefferson Airplane, Love, The Beach Boys, Cream, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and The Monkees. This year also saw debuts from many upcoming bands such as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Doors, Moby Grape, Procol Harum, Traffic, The Velvet Underground, and Pink Floyd.
The Monterey International Pop Festival was a three-day music festival held June 16 to 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who and Ravi Shankar, the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding to a mass American audience.
Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer and songwriter. He was previously the lead vocalist of the R&B and rock band the Animals and the funk band War. He is regarded as one of the British Invasion's most distinctive singers with his deep, powerful blues-rock voice. Burdon is also known for his intense stage performances.
Bryan James "Chas" Chandler was an English musician, record producer and manager, best known as the original bassist in The Animals, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He also managed the band Slade, and Jimi Hendrix, about whom he was regularly interviewed until Chandler's death in 1996.
Edwin H. Kramer is a South African-born recording producer and engineer. He has collaborated with several artists now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Kinks, Kiss, John Mellencamp, and Carlos Santana, as well as records for other well-known artists in various genres.
"Little Wing" is a song written by Jimi Hendrix and recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967. It is a slower tempo, rhythm and blues-inspired ballad featuring Hendrix's vocal and guitar with recording studio effects accompanied by bass, drums, and glockenspiel. Lyrically, it is one of several of his songs that reference an idealized feminine or guardian angel-like figure. At about two and a half minutes in length, it is one of his most concise and melodically focused pieces.
"Hey Joe" is an American song from the 1960s that has become a rock standard and has been performed in many musical styles by hundreds of different artists. The lyrics tell of a man who is on the run and planning to head to Mexico after shooting his unfaithful wife. In 1962, Billy Roberts registered "Hey Joe" for copyright in the United States.
Monterey Pop is a 1968 American concert film by D. A. Pennebaker that documents the Monterey International Pop Festival of 1967. Among Pennebaker's several camera operators were fellow documentarians Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles. The painter Brice Marden has an "assistant camera" credit. Titles for the film were by the illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Featured performers include Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, the Mamas & the Papas, the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose namesake set his guitar on fire, broke it on the stage, then threw the neck of his guitar in the crowd at the end of "Wild Thing".
Kiss the Sky is a compilation album by American rock guitarist, singer–songwriter Jimi Hendrix. In the US, it was released by Reprise Records in October 1984 and by Polydor Records in the UK in November 1984. The album's title is taken from the lyrics of "Purple Haze."
"Sky Pilot" is a 1968 song by Eric Burdon & the Animals, released on the album The Twain Shall Meet. When released as a single the song was split across both sides, due to its length (7:27). As "Sky Pilot " it reached number 14 on the U.S. pop charts, number 15 on the Canadian RPM chart, and number 7 on Canada's CHUM Chart.
Victor Harvey Briggs III was a British blues and rock musician, best known as the lead guitarist with Eric Burdon and The Animals during the 1966–1968 period. Briggs, a convert to Sikhism, later played classical Indian and Hawaiian music, and adopted the name Antion Vikram Singh Meredith.
While the sitar had earlier been used in jazz and Indian film music, it was from the 1960s onwards that various pop artists in the Western world began to experiment with incorporating the sitar, a classical Indian stringed instrument, within their compositions.
Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival is a live album recorded at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. A split artist release, it includes some of the performances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience on side one and Otis Redding on side two. It has been supplanted by later more comprehensive releases, Live at Monterey and Captured Live at the Monterey International Pop Festival .
Gary Kellgren was an American audio engineer and co-founder of The Record Plant recording studios, along with businessman Chris Stone.
Winds of Change is the debut album by British-American band Eric Burdon & the Animals, released in October 1967 by MGM Records. The album was recorded following the 1966 dissolution of the original group the Animals and singer Eric Burdon's move to San Francisco, where he and drummer Barry Jenkins formed the new Animals lineup with musicians Vic Briggs, Danny McCulloch and John Weider. The album was produced by Tom Wilson and arranged by Briggs in sessions that spanned several months.
Eric Burdon was a lead vocalist with The Animals, War, and other bands.
The Newport Pop Festival, held in Costa Mesa, California, on August 3–4, 1968, was the first music concert ever to have more than 100,000 paid attendees. Its sequel, billed as Newport 69, was held in Northridge, California, on June 20–22, 1969, and had a total attendance estimated at 200,000.
Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival is a live album by Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, released on the World Pacific record label in November 1967. It consists of part of Shankar's celebrated performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in California on 18 June 1967. Shankar was accompanied throughout by his regular tabla player, Alla Rakha, who performs a frenetic five-minute solo on the recording.
