speaking, Jimi had quickly surpassed The Who; even then he was far more significant artistically than I felt we would ever be.
I also worried that if Jimi went on before us he might smash his guitar, or set it on fire, or pull off some other stunt that would leave our band looking pathetic. We didn’t even have our Sound City and Marshall stacks because our managers had persuaded us to travel light and cheap. Jimi had imported his, and I knew his sound would be superior.
Derek Taylor suggested I speak to Jimi. I tried, but he was already high. He wouldn’t take the question of who would perform first seriously, flamming around on his guitar instead. Although I don’t remember being angry, and I’m certain I wouldn’t have been disrespectful, I knew I had to press Jimi to engage me. At this point John Phillips of The Mamas and Papas intervened, thinking we weren’t being ‘peace and love’ enough. He suggested tossing a coin, and whoever lost the toss would go on last. Jimi lost.
After being introduced by Eric Burdon, The Who blasted through a clumsy set, ending by smashing our gear. The sound technicians tried to intervene as we went into our finale, which only added to the sense of disarray. The crowd cheered, but many seemed a bit bewildered. Ravi Shankar was apparently very upset to see me break my guitar. I towelled myself off and ran out front to catch Jimi’s set.
It was strange seeing Jimi in a big music festival setting after only having seen him in small London clubs. Many of Jimi’s stage moves were hard to read from where I was sitting. In the huge space Jimi’s sound wasn’t so great after all, and I started to think maybe The Who wouldn’t compare too badly. Then he turned up his guitar and really started to let loose: Jimi the magician had made his appearance. What was so great about him was that no matter how much gear he smashed, Jimi never looked angry; he always smiled beatifically, which made everything he did seem OK.
The crowd, softened up by The Who’s antics, responded heartily this time. When Jimi set his guitar on fire, Mama Cass, who was sitting next to me, turned and said, ‘Hey, destroying guitars is your thing!’
I shouted back over the cheering, ‘It used to be. It belongs to Jimi now.’ And I meant every word.
When Karen, Keith Altham (our publicist) and I all gathered at San Francisco airport to fly home, it turned out that Keith had also been working with Jimi, who was allegedly also paying his fees. I made it clear to Keith that I felt he had been duplicitous by not telling us he would be acting for both The Who and Jimi at Monterey. He denied any wrongdoing, and defends himself to this day.
Jimi got wind of our little spat in the airport lobby and started giving me the evil eye. I walked over to him and explained that there was no personal issue involved. He just rolled his head around – he seemed pretty high. Wanting to keep the peace, I said I had watched his performance and loved it, and when we got home would he let me have a piece of the guitar he had broken? He leaned back and looked at me sarcastically: ‘What? And do you want me to autograph it for you?’
Karen pulled me away, fearing I would blow up, but the truth is I was just taken aback. Contrary to what I’d been told, Jimi must have been as ruffled as I was by the reverse jockeying for position before the concert.
As Karen and I boarded the plane in San Francisco, Keith, John and Roger seemed unfazed by what had passed between Jimi and me. We settled into our TWA first-class seats, which in those days faced each other over a table. Keith and John produced large purple pills we’d all been given by Owsley Stanley, the first underground chemist to mass-produce LSD, and Keith popped one. These pills, known as ‘Purple Owsleys’, had been widely used at the festival.
As the plane took off, Karen and I split half a pill. John wisely demurred. Within an hour my life had been turned upside down.
1 This was used as the basis for ‘I Love My Dog’, released in autumn 1966 by Cat Stevens, and an immediate hit. Cat (born Steven Georgiou, later renamed Yusuf Islam) now pays back-royalties to Lateef. I remember him fondly – I spoke to him once in Brewer Street when he was a teenager. His family owned a restaurant around the corner from my Wardour Street flat. He was three years younger than me, but that would have been quite a gap between such young men. He had caught me in my big, blue Lincoln, seemed to know of me and where I lived, and fired a number of questions at me about songwriting and guitars.
10 GOD CHECKS IN TO A HOLIDAY INN
The Owsley LSD trip on the aeroplane was the most disturbing experience I had ever had. The drug worked very quickly, and although Karen and I only took half as much as Keith, the effect was frightening. Seasoned trippers have teased me since about how stupid we were, but Karen and I felt that Keith couldn’t be allowed to trip alone, and that we’d all be able to help each other. In fact Keith seemed to operate in total defiance of the drug’s effects, only occasionally asking how much we had taken to check if he was getting it worse – or bigger and better – than we were.
At one point I tried to console Karen, who was terrified, telling her I loved her. ‘Ah!’ Keith sneered, and John cynically joined in. Roger, sitting across the aisle, may have found the whole thing amusing, but I was reassured by his smile. After thirty minutes the air hostess, whose turned-up nose had made her look a little porcine, transmogrified into a real pig, scurrying up and down the aisle, snorting. The air was full of faint music, and I wondered if I was experiencing my childhood musical visitations again, but I finally traced the sound to the armrest of my seat. After putting on a headset I felt I could hear every outlet on the plane at the same time: rock, jazz, classical, comedy, Broadway tunes and C&W competed for dominance over my brain.
I was on the verge of really losing my mind when I floated up to the ceiling, staying inside the airframe, and watched as everything changed in scale. Karen and Pete sat below me, clutching onto each other; she was slapping his face gently, figuring he had fallen asleep. From my new vantage point the LSD trip was over. Everything was quiet and peaceful. I could see clearly now, my eyes focused, my senses realigned, yet I was completely disembodied.
I looked down at Keith picking his teeth, characteristically preoccupied, and at John reading a magazine. As I took this in I heard a female voice gently saying, You have to go back. You cannot stay here.
But I’m terrified. If I go back, I feel as if I’ll die.
You won’t die. You cannot stay here.
As I drifted back down towards my body, I began to feel the effects of the LSD kicking back in. The worst seemed to be over; as I settled in the experience, though extreme, felt more like my few trips of old: everything saturated by wonderful colour and sound. Karen looked like an angel.
John Entwistle married his school sweetheart, Allison, on 23 June, while the band spent a fortnight in London before returning to America for a ten-week tour supporting Herman’s Hermits, on what was to be their swan song. During this interlude Karen and I decided to look for a flat together, and found a perfect place in Ebury Street, closer to Belgravia. The flat comprised the top three floors of a pretty, though conventional, white Georgian house. The lease was short, and a great bargain, but the flat wouldn’t be available until autumn, which seemed a hundred years away.
Karen didn’t join me on the road – Herman’s managers wouldn’t allow that – but she did go to New York, staying with her friends Zazel and Val; when the band got close to the city I would try to hook up with her. I got a sense at one point that someone had actively and persistently pursued Karen while I was on the road. I heard a rumour that a musician or artist friend of Zazel’s boyfriend had been joining them on dates. At first I was insanely jealous, but I soon realised that this was the way things were. If one of us got swept away, then so be it.
The Who left London in early July 1967 and didn’t return until mid-September. This was our indoctrination into the real America. We touched down in almost every important town or city, and in quite a few places we’d never see again. On this tour we listened to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and not much else. The