The Monterey International Pop Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who, and Ravi Shankar, the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding to a mass American audience. The event embodied the theme of California as a focal point for the counterculture and generally is regarded as one of the beginnings of the “Summer of Love” in 1967. Because Monterey was widely promoted and heavily attended, featured historic performances, and was the subject of a popular theatrical documentary film, it became an inspiration and a template for future music festivals, including the Woodstock Festival two years later. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner said “Monterey was the nexus – it sprang from what the Beatles began, and from it sprang what followed.”