Last Train to Forest Hills
No way.... Way...!
Sometimes something happens so shameful, it adds a brick of anxiety into the pit of my stomach. I recently discovered this past Sunday while perusing the New York Times that Jimi Hendrix -- yes, that Jimi Hendrix -- opened -- yes, opened -- for The Monkees -- yes, THOSE Monkees!
It so happens that in 1967, Jimi Hendrix and the Experience, far more respected then in Europe than here in the U.S., having just burned up the stage and a guitar at the Monterrey Pop Festival, joined, as the opening act, the northern leg of the Monkees' tour, a band far more popular but, product of a television, far less respected.
The book "Oops", which chronicles this and other modern cultural screw-ups, at a show at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, the fans, predominantly young, amourous girls in attende to see the main act, kept drowning out Hendrix's riffs with wails and yelps of "We want Day (Jones)!"
Having exhausted himself of all patience, Hendrix offered a "fine, how-do-you-do!" )if you know what I mean....) with matching sign language, and abruptly left the stage and the rest of the tour.
Publicity creatively blamed the desertion on protest from the pyschedelia-averse Daughters of the American Revolution. Hendrix consequentially decided to tour alone for the most part and the rest is not only history, it's legend....
