red
square
News from the Campus
45 years ago, Jimi Hendrix rocked Atwood
spring 2013
A
clark alumni magazine
8
fter making the guitar gods jealous at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and before electrifying the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969, Jimi Hendrix took the stage in Atwood Hall on March 15, 1968, and left a rock legacy at Clark that reverberates still. The Jimi Hendrix Experience concert marked the pinnacle of what many consider a “golden era” of campus concerts — a time when Clarkies got up close with famous (and almost famous) musicians of the groundbreaking ’60s and ’70s. “It was such a different time,” recalls Robert Marshall ’69, whose photos of Hendrix are among rare artifacts from the evening. “Even very famous celebs traveled so differently. There were no entourages or security, no publicity people, no spin doctors ... There was a freewheeling informality. Jimi, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, they just hung around backstage. People would come and go. There were no ID badges. We ordered out from Notis Pizza.” Clark’s student organizers had gained a reputation for providing a ready and appreciative venue for many major acts on tour between bigger cities and arenas. Getting the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1968 was a coup. Demand for tickets was high, so a second show was added for the same night. By all accounts Hendrix came onstage very late, after the Soft Machine’s opening act. He had spent some time calmly chatting backstage with Clark students as well as a BBC crew who were filming a documentary. (Hendrix had already ignited fans in London.) In Atwood, his microphone didn’t work at first. “He played an entire set, singing, but no one heard anything except the instruments,” recalls Lawrence Breitborde ’71. “And it didn’t matter! It was amazing.” In a review in The Scarlet, David Dronsick ’69 fairly reported the concert’s flaws, but had high praise for the student Social Affairs Board. He wrote, “If you were at Atwood, you saw, and now can tell others you saw, the man who is probably the world’s best guitarist.” Robert Echter ’69 was chair of the SAB and is credited with orchestrating many memorable Clark concerts. “People complained about not getting big-name talent like other colleges, so I put out a referendum voted on by the whole student body,” he recounts. Students OK’d a $10 fee per semester, which they called the Rock & Roll Tax. It bought them first dibs on seating, often at a mere $2.50 per ticket.
The Hendrix concert “was a confluence of factors, people and hard work,” Echter says. “My year and the one ahead of us were at the front of the Baby Boom. We were born at the introduction of television to mass society. There were only three major TV networks and no videotape, so everyone knew what each other had witnessed, in common and in the same time. We were on the cusp of the cultural change. “At a reunion a couple years ago, a lot of people were talking about the concert. I didn’t realize it had that big an impact on my fellow students,” Echter continues. “It was one of, if not the major experience of their time at Clark. It was a creative student enterprise. We were riding the wave of our generation. … We brought a community together. This is a fact.” - Jane Salerno Great musical acts have graced Clark stages long before and long after Hendrix. A feature story in a future CLARK magazine will recall some of those times. Tell us about your favorite concert experience at Clark by emailing jkeogh@clarku.edu. If you missed the show in 1968, you might want to hear “The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live at Clark University,” a CD released in 1999 by Dagger Records that includes parts of the BBC interview with Hendrix and such numbers as “Fire,” “Foxey Lady,” “Purple Haze,” “Wild Thing” and more. Robert Marshall’s pictures grace the CD cover and insert, and above on this page.