D.A. Pennebaker Looks Back on Monterey Pop

Film maker D. A. Pennebaker died recently. He's best known for his rock documentaries, especially Monterey Pop and Don't Look Back.

Rolling Stone interviewed him in 2017 but for some reason, the interview was never published. They've now put it up on their web site. If you have any interest in classic rock or great music documentaries, you'll want to read it.

During the talk, he was humble (“Have a nice lifetime,” he said at the end of the call, “I’m in the middle of writing myself, so I know what you’re going through”) and he acknowledged the long road it took for the film to be recognized as a masterpiece of cinema verité. At the time of its release, it got a showing at the Venice Film Festival and was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry in 2018. In between those achievements, Penny made films about Little Richard, David Bowie, John Lennon, Depeche Mode, Bill Clinton, and many others. But it was on Monterey Pop that he radicalized the way music films would be shot in the decades that followed, with tight close-ups and quick cuts.

“I wanted [Monterey Pop] to have that feeling of freedom that you get when you get a lot of really good musicians or good anybodys and let them do what they do well,” he said. “You get a wonderful feeling of freedom that anything could happen and will be good. That’s what I wanted, that feeling. So I just let it happen.”

When he looked back on the era of psychedelia and free love half a century later, it was still with an awe that he got to be a witness to it. “It’s a world that I really didn’t know that well,” he said. “To know that world and the people in it, you have to go out in the gigs. You have to be there, riding shotgun to the concert. And I didn’t do that. But I did just film the people.”