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.Thefact that the Monkees audience was largely prepubescent children seemsto have eluded him.Jeffery called Hendrix and his bandmates, who were in Los Ange-les at the time, with what he thought was great news.As drummer Mitch-ell would later recall, the musicians initially thought Jeffery was puttingthem on.When they realized he wasn t, Chas Chandler, who was travel-ing with the group, was irate. Are you out of your [expletive] mind? hescreamed into the phone, by one account.Hendrix, who was sitting nearbyand listening, was aghast.He d tolerated opening for lesser talents before The people who come to hear Engelbert sing Please Release Me maynot dig me, but that s not tragic, he once cheerfully rationalized butthis was the pits.Adding to the embarrassment, he now had to open for agroup he d already reviled as dishwater in an interview with the Britishpublication Melody Maker. I really hate somebody like that for making itbig, Hendrix had complained. You can t knock anybody for making it,but people like the Monkees? There was no time to object.Hendrix and his mates had to hop ona plane and rush back across the country, where the Monkees tour wasabout to embark.Lollipops Versus LSDFor Hendrix, who was accustomed to driving long hours to play insmall clubs, the Monkees life of luxury had to be a shock.The PrefabFour played sports arenas and had their own DC-6 airliner, with theband s name emblazoned across the fuselage, staffed by attendants whoseuniforms also bore the official Monkees logo. UNDERSTAND THE MARKET 133Considering Hendrix s distaste for the Monkees music and resent-ment of what he saw as their undeserved fame, he and his bandmates hitit off fairly well with the Prefab Four.It helped that the Monkees wererefreshingly unpretentious about their humble abilities. Peter Tork couldplay banjo, Mike Nesmith could play guitar, Micky Dolenz was one hellof a nice guy, and Davy Jones was extremely short, Mitchell recalled inhis book.Tork carried a copy of the I Ching with him, and he and Hen-drix had some talks about Eastern mysticism. We had a lot of fun on theplane and between shows with Jimi, Tork recalled in Glenn A.Baker s1986 book, Monkeemania. He taught me how to play guitar vibrato oneday. But the Monkees fans were an insurmountable problem.The touropened at the Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida, where organizers madethe mistake of having another band open the show so that the Jimi Hen-drix Experience came on just before the Monkees were to appear.In hisearly career Hendrix undoubtedly had played for some tough audiencesin seedy roadhouses, but this was something new row after row ofelementary-school-age girls and their parents.Less than halfway throughthe first number, the impatient preteenyboppers were already screamingfor him to yield the stage to their idols. We could have been Tom and Jerry on stage, drummer Mitchellwould recall. They didn t care. It was the first of seven concerts in as many nights, and things onlygot worse.Hendrix s twenty- to twenty-five-minute sets drew crowd re-actions that Hendrix biographer Harry Shapiro describes as from mutedto hostile. When Hendrix launched into Foxy Lady, one of his signa-ture tunes, the Monkees fans mocked him by chanting Foxy Davy! over his singing.The parents were an even bigger problem, Dolenz recalled in hismemoir. They were probably not too crazy about having to sit through a godawful Monkees concert anyway, much less see this black guy in apsychedelic DayGlo blouse, playing music from hell. OOPS 134It all quickly got to Hendrix.Increasingly depressed and sullen, hewould turn his back to the audience and play sloppy, breakneck renditionsof his songs.He complained that his guitar was malfunctioning.Some-times he would refuse to sing, compelling Redding and Mitchell to coverfor him.The band drank and toked themselves into oblivion on the inevi-table red-eye flight to the next show.As Redding recalled in his memoir, This led to some awkward moments, as the tour was very straight. Thebassist once amused himself by giving one of the Monkees a dose of amylnitrite, a heart medication that when snorted causes a brief but intenselydisorienting rush, just before takeoff.Such fun aside, by the time the tour had returned to Forest Hills,New York, on July 14 for the first of three shows, the situation had dete-riorated to a crisis point.Hendrix s producer-adviser Chas Chandler, whoforced himself to attend the first show, saw the Experience strugglethrough a thirty-minute set in which Hendrix not only was subjected tothe usual We want the Monkees! chants, but suffered the additionalindignity of splitting his pants.Hendrix s management quarreled about what to do.In Chandler sversion, he wanted to pull Hendrix off the tour immediately, but Jefferywas concerned about being sued by tour promoter Dick Clark.Chandlerthen decided to take matters in his own hands
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