Released in the UK on May 12, 1967, Are You Experienced spent 33 weeks on the charts, peaking at number two. It was prevented from reaching the top spot by the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . On May 29 Hendrix performed at the Barbeque 67 concert in…
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Blue Öyster Cult was formed in 1967 as Soft White Underbelly (a name the group would occasionally use in the 1970s and 1980s to play small club gigs around the United States and UK) in a communal house at Stony Brook University on Long Island when rock critic Sandy Pearlman…
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which they had begun in 1967 under Barrett’s leadership.
Although popular in Europe at the time, the Experience’s first US single, “Hey Joe”, failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its release on May 1, 1967. Their fortunes improved when McCartney recommended them to the organizers of the Monterey Pop Festival . He insisted that the event…
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Disraeli Gears is often considered to be the band’s defining effort, successfully blending psychedelic British rock with American blues. It also included “Sunshine of Your Love”, which became the group’s highest-charting song, peaking at number five on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 . The album was originally slated for release…
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When the band went to New York to perform the numbers on The Ed Sullivan Show in January, they were ordered to change the lyrics of the refrain of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “let’s spend some time together”.
On June 18, 1967, introduced by Brian Jones as “the most exciting performer [he had] ever heard”, Hendrix opened with a fast arrangement of Howlin’ Wolf’s song “Killing Floor”, wearing what Shadwick described as “clothes as exotic as any on display elsewhere”. Shadwick wrote: “[Hendrix] was not only something utterly…
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In the wake of Sgt. Pepper , the underground and mainstream press widely publicised the Beatles as leaders of youth culture, as well as “lifestyle revolutionaries”. The album was the first major pop/rock LP to include its complete lyrics, which appeared on the back cover. Those lyrics were the subject…
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When Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival he created one of rock’s most perfect moments. Standing in the front row of that concert was a 17-year-old boy named Ed Caraeff . Caraeff had never seen Hendrix before nor heard his music, but he…
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By 1967, the band had begun to make regular road trips to Los Angeles to play shows. They soon renamed themselves Nazz and released the single “Wonder Who’s Lovin’ Her Now”, backed with future Alice Cooper track “Lay Down and Die, Goodbye”. Around this time, drummer John Speer was replaced…
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