Jimi Hendrix / Janis Joplin / The Who – 1967 LARGE Monterey Pop Festival Poster (AOR-3.5)....

Description

JIMI HENDRIX, BABY BELIEVE ME, SET THE WORLD ON FIRE

Jimi Hendrix / Janis Joplin / The Who - 1967 LARGE Monterey Pop Festival Poster (AOR-3.5). Original large-format poster designed by Tom Wilkes and printed on silver foil stock to advertise the seminal three-day festival on June 16-18, 1967. Collectors know that this is the toughie; the smaller format version was a 'merch' poster sold at the show as a souvenir, sometimes doubling as advertising. But this larger version was produced in small quantities and used for advertising only, with most being discarded after the weekend was over; thus its rarity.

Many music fans and historians consider this to be the greatest weekend in rock-music history, even eclipsing Woodstock two years later. Officially kicking off the Summer of Love, the weekend's talent line-up was simply stunning, most notably for launching the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Otis Redding, all of whom put on spellbinding performances. The long weekend also featured performances by the Grateful Dead, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Buffalo Springfield, Simon & Garfunkel, the Butterfield Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Byrds, Laura Nyro and even sitarist extraordinaire Ravi Shankar. And we've left out a good number of others. It was all captured in a theatrical motion picture by D.A. Pennebaker, immortalizing the weekend forever.

This poster measures 19" x 34 5/8" and is graded in Very Good condition, which is an outstanding grade given that most existing examples of this large advertising version are pretty beat-up, faded and otherwise significantly damaged. Seemingly nobody stored one away hot off the press in 1967; there was a big festival to advertise, so all of them got used and, therefore, exposed to the elements and lots of human handling.

Silver foil-like finish is very susceptible to creasing, and there's a few throughout, most noticeably in: the top right edge down through the "1" in "17" to the edge of the green circles; upper left silver border area; lower left corner; on the first "E" in "Monterey"; on the blue border above "office"; scratch on the "O" in "Pop"; and the board gets a little wavy in lower right margin area. Verso has a name, phone number and some prices written on it in blue pen.

Last July, Heritage sold another one of these highly coveted large Monterey Pop posters, in Very Good Minus condition, for $18,750. COA from Heritage Auctions.

Literature: See Grushkin, Paul, The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk, Abbeville Press, New York, 1987, p.258 (illustrated).

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