By Harvey Sid Fisher

Hollywood, CA(Hollywood Today)11/30/11/—With writing as descriptively artful as its photographs, this book is both a narrative pictorial and a pictorial narrative of the The Monterey International Pop Festival, June 16,17,18, 1967, which followed the Mt Tam festival in Mill Valley a week later, and preceded Woodstock by two years. The engine for the Monterey machine momentum was  John Phillips and Lou Adler.

A PERFECT HAZE is a front row seat to the back door wheeling, dealing and indefatigable dedication to a passionate dream that materializes into a real living festival thing. We, the outsiders, get a good inside look.

A PERFECT HAZE shows you the blooming imagination and the measured  bit of  fertilizer and  bullshit that makes it  grow. It’s almost a handbook on how to plant your own festival.

A PERFECT HAZE suggests that  the Monterey Int’l Pop Festival may not have been the first ever rock & roll festival, but it could be considered the best to date, by way of organization; first class treatment of the acts, placating the town folks, attending to the needs of  those  happy hippies who might have over-toked, over-speeded, or over-tripped,  maintaining peace and love  with thoughtful touches that helped everyone make it in, make it through, and make it out, alive and happy. Well, almost everyone. Some performers loved playing the gig and then there were those who just wanted the set to end so they could  get back to the party that was raging backstage.

Laura Nyro walked off the stage crying because she thought she was being booed, but later tape analysis showed it was people yelling ‘byoootiful’ and one person yelling ‘I loooove yoooo’.

Michelle Phillips was not happy with her Mamas and Papas performance. She went offstage and cried for two hours but then realized she was pregnant.

The BAND WITH NO NAME felt so bad about their set that they dissolved  before they even got off the stage and never saw each other again.

On the plus side, many struggling careers exploded into fame and glory. Clive Davis, then V.P. for Columbia, was happy to discover he had ears.

Three other successes were;

Janis Joplin, who could not get arrested before Monterey. Janis: “One day everybody is kicking your ass and the next day everyone is kissing it”. Columbia signed her right there.

Otis Redding never played to such a large group of white people and was at first reluctant to sign on. It turned out to be a good mix: his immense talent and an audience who loved him.

Jimi (James Marshal) Hendrix flipped a coin with Peter Townshend of THE WHO to see who would go on to destroy their guitar first. Jimi lost the toss and finished his set by humping his amp and setting his guitar on fire. All three gone within three years.

Because all the profits from this event were  going to charity, all the acts, save one, agreed to play for free. ( Who got paid? See page 147.)

A PERFECT HAZE is a review of all that transpired with the Festival from its conception to its birth and onward to legend. So this article would be a review of a review. Much like life. A review of a review of a review of a…

THE PERFECT HAZE is Rashomonic in its telling of a situation witnessed by a variety of viewers; the producers, the staff, the acts, and the attendees.  They all saw the same thing, but they tell it from their perspective Rashomon and they tell it well. ‘We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.’

There must be millions of coffee tables in millions of homes just waiting for their owners to lay this book on ‘em.

I could almost call A PERFECT HAZE a  perfect ten but I have to give it a 9.9 because there was a questionable typo on page 27.

Harvey Kubernik (Author), Kenneth Kubernik (Author), Michelle Phillips (Afterword), Lou Adler (Foreword)

Published By: http://www.santamonicapress.com

ISBN: 9781595800602
$45.00 ©2011
8 1/2 x 11
256 pages
Hardcover
Hundreds of Color and Black-and-White Photos and Illustrations

Harvey Sid Fisher

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