An argument about definitions
Rock festival origins are disputed: there is no agreed answer to the question of which event was the first, and any single date or name given with confidence should be treated with suspicion. The answer depends on what counts. If a “festival” means a multi-day, outdoor, ticketed event, with a mixed bill of popular acts and a mass audience, then several 1967 events qualify and others from earlier years come close. If “rock” is read narrowly, then even the Monterey International Pop Festival of June 1967, which is the event most often given the title, included soul, folk and Indian classical music. Its role is covered in detail elsewhere on this site, so this article concentrates on what came before it and what the label hides.
Jazz and folk came first
The festival format was not invented for rock. The Newport Jazz Festival, in Rhode Island, began in 1954. The Monterey Jazz Festival followed in 1958 and the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. Britain had its own jazz festivals, including events held at Beaulieu in the 1950s and the National Jazz Festival that began in the early 1960s. These gave later promoters a model: a seasonal gathering with a named brand, a programme of several artists across several days, and a mix of paid ticket-holders and press coverage.
Newport also supplied one of the best-known conflicts in the history of popular music. In 1965 Bob Dylan played an electric set at the folk festival, and the reaction from part of the audience is still discussed as a sign of the moment when folk and rock began to merge. Whether or not the story is told accurately, it shows that a festival audience of the mid-1960s was already contesting the line between genres.
Early rock and roll shows
Large rock and roll shows pre-date the festival boom. A concert often cited in histories, Alan Freed’s Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland in March 1952, is sometimes called the first rock and roll concert. It was reportedly oversold and ended early. Accounts of it vary, so it is best treated as a famous episode and not as a precise template. Package tours and radio-station shows through the late 1950s and 1960s also brought many acts to one stage, but these were typically a single evening in an arena or theatre, not a multi-day outdoor event.
The Bay Area in 1966 and 1967
The more direct precursors arrived in California. The Trips Festival, held in San Francisco in January 1966 and associated with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, mixed music, light shows and the LSD-influenced culture of the time. It was an indoor event, not an outdoor festival, but it is often named as a step toward the later ones, since it paired a rock band with psychedelic light shows and a large, participatory crowd.
In January 1967 came the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. It was free and open-air, with many thousands attending, and it featured Bay Area groups. Whether to call it a rock festival is arguable, since speakers and poets were as central as the bands. Then, in June 1967, two California events followed within a week of each other. The Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival took place on Mount Tamalpais on 10 and 11 June, and the Monterey International Pop Festival ran from 16 to 18 June. Because the Mount Tamalpais event came first by about a week, it is sometimes mentioned by writers who prefer to resist the usual story. It was smaller and less documented, however, and its claim rests on the fact that it came first, not on its influence.
Why Monterey usually gets the label
Monterey tends to be called the first because it was the first to combine several elements at once: a bill of nationally known acts, a three-day schedule, a very large audience, sustained press coverage and a feature film. The film in particular fixed the event in popular memory, whereas other gatherings left fewer records. That is a fair reason for the reputation, but it is a reputation built partly on documentation.
Why it matters little who was first
Looking for a single “first” can obscure the fact that the festival was assembled gradually. Jazz and folk events supplied the structure. Radio shows and package tours supplied the idea of putting many acts together. Bay Area gatherings supplied the open-air, participatory atmosphere and the link to rock as an art form. By the summer of 1967 these strands came together in several places. Historians who stress different features reach different answers, and a reader is better served by knowing why the question is contested than by memorising a date.