Inside the weird tour with Jimi Hendrix and The Monkees
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Credit: Alamy
Peter Tork remembers Jimi Hendrix touring with The Monkees
On the face of it, Jimi Hendrix and The Monkees could not be further apart. Hendrix was the champion of the counterculture, a guitar-playing pioneer whose visceral sound quite literally blew everyone away. As for The Monkees, they were an industry outfit, a pop culture phenomenon who were one of the biggest acts of the day. In many ways, Hendrix represented rebellion as The Monkees did for conformity.
Whilst they were worlds apart in terms of what they represented, in 1967, The Monkees invited Hendrix to tour the US with them as bandmember Mickey Dolenz was a great fan of the guitarist after being captivated by his now-iconic performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June that year.
Dolenz knew that what he was witnessing was game-changing, and despite protests from his other band members who didn’t quite get what Hendrix was doing at that point, he still managed to get the ‘Purple Haze’ star to sign on for the run of shows.
Famously though, Hendrix only completed a handful of shows with The Monkees before dropping out when after realising that it wasn’t the right audience, as for the most part, Monkees fans had no time for his roaring style of music; all they wanted was frontman Davy Jones and the band’s saccharine harmonies.
When appearing on television in the 1980s, Peter Tork looked back on the first time he came across Hendrix, that surreal tour, and what the guitarist was really like. He recalled: “I first saw Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival. He had the misfortune to follow The Who, who were also a pyrotechnic act. So, I was like not impressed, Jimi put flame to his guitar and I thought, ‘Oh god, one pyrotechnic act after another, and who cares?’ But it was Mickey who knew that this was something special.”
He added: “I didn’t discover it till later – it was Mickey who got him to get on the road with us, and he opened in Florida for us and I think he got as far as Forest Hills Stadium before the conflict between what Monkees fans want and what Jimi Hendrix was prepared to deliver overcame him, or us”, Tork continued. “I’m told that he made an unpleasant and non-public gesture to the fans – I wouldn’t know personally, but that’s what I heard.”
Reflecting on Hendrix’s personality, Tork expressed: “In the meantime, I got to know him. He was the sweetest guy you could ever hope to meet, and I thought here was a guy with his eyes open. He had no problems with who we were or stardom, or lack thereof, or any of that stuff. And we talked guitar playing, and we went early to the shows to watch his act, and I became incredibly impressed – such musicianship.”
