The very wild tour of Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd
In the contemporary era, package tours between prominent acts are rare. Yet, in the 1960s, the concept was commonplace. Arguably, the most enthralling the decade produced was in 1967, at the height of the countercultural and the psychedelic rock revolution. Kicking off in November that year, it was a 21-date jaunt of Britain, headlined by The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pink Floyd, supported by Amen Corner, Eire Apparent, The Move, The Nice, and The Outer Limits.
With a miraculous convergence of stars, the tour would see history made, and a whole load of rock ‘n’ roll hijinks would play out. Organised by veteran promoters Tito Burns and Harold Davison, a collection of the era’s most exciting acts played to venues such as the sold-out Royal Albert Hall and more peripheral places such as Chatham and Kent’s Town Hall.
In a show of the era’s essence, the bands were introduced each night by the BBC Radio One DJ Pete Drummond, who would often anger the crowd with his jokes. Yet, by the end of the tour, he and the musicians were laughing at the audience’s expense, with Drummond going on stage with the keywords of incendiary quips scribbled on his arms. According to the DJ himself, one night, even Jimi Hendrix stood in with the punters and jokingly joined in, telling him to “fuck off!”
From the manager of the least prominent band on the bill, The Outer Limits, threatening to break Roger Waters’ legs, to knife-throwing stunts and Hendrix throwing his Flying V at a stack of amps, unsurprisingly, such a concentrated volume of traditional rockstars created chaos. Plus, the sweet scent of marijuana was almost constantly in the air and played a part in much of the tour’s generally carefree atmosphere.
On the more solemn side of the coin, though, this was the period when Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett was starting to show clear signs of severe mental illness, and his eventual departure became certain. Barrett had become increasingly isolated and unreliable, with his errant antics even beginning to seriously affect the group’s reputation. Accordingly, in 1968, he was ejected from the band, which, in many ways, proved to be the making of them.
“Syd had left the universe,” The Move’s Trevor Burton recalled in Louder Sound. “‘Put a mark on stage for him to stand’, you know. ‘Don’t move!’ Henry McCullough used to do parts for him,” he continued. “He’d be standing on the side of the stage doing Syd’s parts while Syd was gazing off into the distance.”
Admittedly, it was a strange time for Pink Floyd in general. They were reportedly social outliers on the tour, voyaging in a different bus than the rest of the musicians and rarely talking to others. Reflecting their own strange dynamic, the quartet often travelled to shows individually.
Of course, Jimi Hendrix brought a lot to the party. Although he was constantly out of tune, his elemental talent was so astounding that he would regularly blow his bandmates – bassist Noel Redding and drummer Chas Chandler – away during their performances. The highlight of the run was in Newcastle when he abruptly flung his Flying V into his stack of Marshall amps after becoming enraged at it being out of tune yet again. The crowd lapped it up, too, and according to Amen Corner sax player Allan Jones, they went “ballistic”.
The Move also had a part to play in the general tone of the touring package. Although they were navigating a similar situation to Pink Floyd with their bassist ‘Ace’ Kefford, experiencing bouts of severe depression due to heavy LSD use, they also had a comical and friendly rivalry with Jimi Hendrix’s outfit.
Although, at the time, The Move had more hits than The Experience, with four top ten successes to his three, this commercial competition would give way to a string of surreal, Monty Python-esque instances. “I remember The Move playing once, and I rode a bicycle across the stage,” Noel Redding recalled. “Another time we put stink bombs in Bev Bevan’s bass drum pedal.”
In a nod to the kind of prog weirdness he would get up to in the coming years, Keith Emerson, The Nice’s keyboard maestro, would catch the eye by throwing knives at speakers. His gimmick would also be helped to another terrifyingly tangible level by Jimi Hendrix roadie and future Motörhead frontman Lemmy. Strangely, the ‘Ace of Spades’ musician had been poached by the American guitarist from The Nice at the start of the tour.
“The thing I remember about Lemmy,” Emerson would say later, “Is that when I started using knives he said: ‘Well if you’re going to use knives, use a real one,’ and he gave me a Hitler Youth dagger.”
Emerson also recalled a perilous moment involving his knife-throwing shtick and Jimi Hendrix. When he hurled the weapons towards two speakers one night, the American guitarist suddenly appeared between them. Armed with his video camera, the ‘Purple Haze’ legend filmed Emerson and was sticking his tongue out, beckoning him to throw his steel at him. Alas, this provocation was too rich for The Nice member, and Emerson did not want to be consigned to history as the fellow who killed one of the 1960s’ biggest stars.
