Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, and The Move United Kingdom Tour Concert Posters
Vintage Rock Posters Offers $15,000 Reward for Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, and The Move United Kingdom Tour Concert Posters
In 1967, the Beatles came out with "Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Band," and the Rolling Stones recorded their seventh album, "Between the Buttons," which went gold. That summer, Jimi Hendrix blew people away with his performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The Experience's debut album was an immediate critical and commercial success, and many consider it the most significant first albums in rock history. It stayed in the top 20 for 33 weeks. Later that year, the Experience decided to tour Britain and Ireland.
The sixteen date United Kingdom package tour kicked off on November 14, 1967, and featured The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, The Move, Nice, and Amen Corner. All bands were considered top acts because the Experience had three top ten singles' Hey Joe', 'Purple Haze,' and 'The Wind Cries Mary.' Pink Floyd's songs 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play' reached the top 20. The Move's song 'Flowers In The Rain' was popular, and Amen Corner had a top hit, 'Bend Me, Shape Me.'
Vintage Rock Posters offers a $15,000 reward for original concert posters of the venues listed below. A British printer produced the 30 x 40 quad poster for advertising the band package in each city visited. We offer additional rewards for:
$300 for concert flyers
$100 for tour programs
If you have an original 1967 Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and the Move band package poster, please take pictures of it and send them to rareboard@aol.com. Any condition is accepted.
Below are the venues the band package played between November 14 and December 5.
November 14 - London Royal Albert Hall
November 15 - Bournemouth Winter Gardens
November 17 - City (Oval) Hall, Sheffield
November 18 - Empire Theatre Liverpool
November 19 - Coventry Theatre, Coventry
November 22 - Portsmouth Guildhall
November 23 - Sophia Gardens Pavillion, Cardiff
November 24 - Colston Hall, Bristol
November 25 - Opera House, Blackpool
November 26 - Palace Theatre, Manchester
November 27 - Whitla Hall, Queen's College, Belfast
December 1 - Central Hall, Chatham
December 2 - The Dome, Brighton
December 3 - Theatre Royal Nottingham
December 4 - City Hall Newcastle
December 5 - Green's Playhouse Glasgow
The tour was a grind with the bands staying in basic city hotels and driving in small vans across the United Kingdom. They played two shows per night, with each group getting its allotted time on stage. Hendrix got precisely 40 minutes; The Move played 30 minutes with Pink Floyd allowed between 15 and 20 minutes. Tickets cost between 7 to 15 shillings.
Like most tours, there were issues with equipment and band members. Syd Barret of Pink Floyd was not enjoying the tour. The entourage would arrive in a new town, and Syd would go for a walk and not get back until just a few minutes before stage time. He would perform, disappear and come back hours later for the second performance. One night, he did not show up, and Davy O'List of The Nice stood in for him.
The Hendrix-Pink Floyd-Move tour thundered off on its trip around Britain with an earsplitting start in London. The reviews from local newspapers and comments from several attendees focused on the headline act - The Experience.
Royal Albert Hall
14 November. London
On November 18, the Musical Express printed this review, “Hail Jimi Hendrix, the personality, the contortionist, the wise-cracker, the exhibitionist. Hail Noel Redding, and Mitch Mitchell, his traumatic Experience. How they were needed to close the package which opened up at London's Albert Hall... The bill seemed as if it would never get off the ground. Thank goodness for Hendrix the untamed and the unchained swinging down from the trees through Knightbridge and Kensington to set the masses on fire in an ectoplasma of sound.... Most of all it was Hendrix the showman, the king-size personality. And that was just what the rest of the group tour of first-timers lacked - personality... A worthwhile tour for Hendrix fans but lets hope the rest improve a little as it progresses.”
Barry Keane, remembers, “When Jimi came on I was a few yards from him as he played. Bliss! At the end I rushed forward to pat him on the back, thinking, ‘He feels just like a normal person’. I don’t know what I was expecting? Sparks to fly perhaps! I suppose what I mean is he was just a man who happened to be blessed with this incredible ability to play guitar like no one else.
Jimi’s short time in the limelight was akin to a huge firework exploding in the sky, with an incredible display of sound and light. Then the spectacle disappears. And, just like the firework, Jimi was gone….”
Coventry Theatre
November 19, Coventry
The following review was printed in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, “Pop’s new wave splashed into Coventry, and on the crest of it was the Jimi Hendrix Experience, one of the most exciting happenings since the Beatles. More than 3,000 youngsters attended two houses at the Coventry Theatre - and a good proportion rushed the stage and shouted for more at the climax of the group’s act. Jimi mixed pop’s new sounds with the rawest of blues, uninhibited showmanship and a brilliant musical technique. He can play guitar with his teeth, lying on the stage, or behind his back - and do it better than most in a more conventional position. The result was a stunning, completely individual performance which included hits like ‘Hey Joe,’ ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and ‘Purple Haze,’ and the wildest version yet of ‘Wild Thing.’ But the teenagers who stood on their seats for Jimi Hendrix were unmoved - and I guess somewhat bewildered - by the Pink Floyd, a group for whom the new wave is more of a spring tide.”
Guildhall
November 22, Portsmouth
The Portsmouth Evening News published the following review, “Pop music is a horrible noise - a cacophony of over-amplified guitars and tone-deaf singers. So might a critic picked at random say. Last night at Portsmouth Guildhall four of Britain’s leading groups went a long way to persuading 3,000 youngsters that such an anti-pop opinion could be right after all... Never has a pop show been so deafening and so lacking in variety and good presentations. The exception was the start of the show Jimmy Hendrix, as loud as any of the others but twice as talented and a superb showman. He crouched, he leapt, he did a somersault - but still he played that guitar with one hand, two hands, his teeth, his forearm and his hips! The remorseless roar of his guitar, coupled with bass player Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, formed a crude and earthy blues style which made the other groups seem dull.”
Colston Hall
November 24, Bristol
Bristol Evening Post the next day, printed “In the hall, youths hurled abuse at performers, but the trouble died down as officials brought the shouting minority under control. But the incidents did not spoil a triumphant return of Hendrix to the first city to put him into the charts. He paid tribute to Bristol over the microphone and then launched into the wildest, noisiest pop music of all... He received a frenzy of applause.”
Opera House
November 15, Blackpool
A week after the show, the Blackpool Evening Gazette ran this story, “Musical equipment belonging to five top pop groups was damaged by an intruder at the Opera House... After their two performances at the theatre on Saturday night, they left their guitars, amplifiers and electrical equipment on the stage before going to their hotel. When they returned yesterday morning to collect it, they found that leads had been ripped from amplifiers and guitars, amplifiers had been damaged and one guitar had been trampled on and had its strings cut. They estimated the damage as £350.”
Central Hall
December 1, Chatham
The Chatham Standard on 5th December reported, “We had to wait for Hendrix himself for another performance as exciting as this one...He opened his act with the Beatles’ number ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ and the three-piece group made as much of an impression as a studio full of musicians. Once upon a time this sort of noise could not be reproduced outside a studio. He did several of his own numbers, including unfaultable versions of ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘Purple Haze’ and The Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing.’ The Pink Floyd was, for me, the biggest disappointment.”
The Dome
December 2, Brighton
Roy Campbell, a 16 year old lad, said the following, “The package-show at The Dome was very good... Amen Corner who in their movements performed a sort of Irish show band or black ‘soul’ show synchronized routine; Ulster’s Eire Apparent with Henry McCulloch, announced as “Ireland’s most popular act,” though completely unknown in Ireland at that time! Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett on the verge of insanity, but the band holding together excitingly, and topping the bill, the Hendrix Experience. Jimi emerged onto the stage from the darkness of the circular hall, wearing glimmering pale-blue crushed-velvet flared trousers, and his performance that evening completely surpassed the other acts, both in impact and musically...He played really well, forcing the most extraordinary sounds from his guitar... The drummer, Mitch Mitchell, did a very good solo; bass-guitarist Noel Redding wore a top-hat.”
City Hall,
December 4, Newcastle
According to Chas, “It was in Newcastle City Hall and it was one of them nights when everything had gone wrong. No matter what happened, an amp was breaking down, there was crackling coming over, and at one point, half-way through the act, he was getting so uptight because like the world was falling down around him out on the stage, and he took this guitar he was playing, shaped like an arrow, and he threw it at the amp. And this is where the good luck comes into it, the guitar went into the amp like that and stuck, it was just like an enormous arrow sticking out of this amplifier. The audience thought it was part of the act, just went ‘rmmm’, ...It was just one of them little magic seconds. It just altered the whole balance of the act and he went on to just tear the place apart.”
Green’s Playhouse
December 5 1967, Glasgow
Midway during the Hendrix set, theater management pulled the curtains on Jimi thinking his gyrations with his guitar were too sexual. According to Kathy Duffy, “It was a mad rush when the doors opened. When he came on, the crowd went wild. He had an orange silk Sixties-style shirt and looked amazing. I’ve honestly never seen a band so different...his performance was outstanding, playing the guitar behind his back, between his legs and with his teeth. This was unheard of and not been seen before. He was gyrating with the guitar provocatively and Jean decided to leave and wait for us outside. She thought it was disgusting, but Gerard and I were totally entranced.”
If you have a original Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and the Move band package poster for any of the cities listed above, please take pictures of it and send them to rareboard@aol.com.