The Monterey County Fairgrounds
2004 Fairground Road, Monterey, California
The Experience at the fairgrounds
18 June 1967
The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed at the Monterey County Fairgrounds on 18 June 1967. [2]
1967 · performance
Hendrix at Monterey Pop
The Monterey County Fairgrounds stage where the Experience brought its London-developed act to the festival audience.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed at the Monterey County Fairgrounds on 18 June 1967. Hendrix’s official archive traces the route to that stage through the band’s development in Britain. The fairgrounds mark a specific return to an American audience, rather than a generic pin for the whole Summer of Love.
Explore the places
Markers identify buildings or documented location references. They do not mark an exact recording room, stage position or camera angle.
A British-built act reaches Monterey
The Experience’s combination of Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding had developed through work in Britain and Europe before the festival. Monterey gave that act a particular American setting and audience. The location story is consequently more precise than the claim that Hendrix simply became famous in California. It identifies the festival stage as the meeting point between an already developing band and the audience that encountered it there. [2]
The performance in Caraeff’s photographs
Ed Caraeff’s photographic essay identifies its Monterey images with 18 June 1967 and records Hendrix’s burning guitar alongside pictures of Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. The famous image belongs to an ensemble performance in a festival setting, rather than an isolated studio portrait. A sequence of photographs can return attention to the musicians around Hendrix as well as the finale. The fairgrounds connect the live event to that visual record, allowing the place to be read through both performance history and the photographs that carried it into wider memory. [1]
The story in real places
Reading the place today
Treat the fairgrounds as a historical venue reference. Check the current operator’s event and access information; the 1967 stage position is not presented here as a surviving attraction or an exact visitor pin.
Sources
- Jimi Hendrix through the lens of Ed Caraeff — Square Mile: photographer interview. Checked 2026-10-17.
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live at Monterey: 50 years — Experience Hendrix. Checked 2026-10-17.