By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Wednesday, September 2, 2015
More than 45 years ago, Georgia had its own version of Woodstock called the Atlanta Pop Festival with the late great Jimi Hendrix as the headliner.
Never-seen-before footage from that July 4th weekend in Byron is featured on a new Showtime documentary, “Jimi Hendrix: Electric Church,” debuting 9 p.m. Friday.
More than 350,000 people descended on that tiny town and heard the likes of Grand Funk Railroad, Bob Seger and the Allman Brothers.
There were plans to do a film at the time but TV executives felt like it would simply be a repeat of the popular "Woodstock" movie. This was before VHS or DVD releases. The only networks that could potentially air it - ABC, CBS and NBC - weren't interested. So the footage sat in storage - for decades.
But the Hendrix family, after cooperating in a successful 2013 PBS documentary about the rock legend, decided to help out with this new special focused on the Atlanta Pop Festival and Hendrix's appearance in it.
John McDermott, the documentary director, said, "For a lot of people, the Atlanta Pop Festival was their southern Woodstock."
Before social media, underground FM radio and alternative media like the Great Speckled Bird spread the word. "These kinds of things were not in the Atlanta Journal Constitution," he noted.
Among those interviewed for the documentary included the sheriff at the time in Byron, residents of the small town itself, Atlanta mega-promoter Alex Cooley, Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood and Hendrix's Electric Church bass player Billy Cox.
“The crowd was very receptive,” recalled Cox in an interview earlier this week. “I remember the fireworks behind us as Jimi played the National Anthem. It was one of his better nights. He was smiling and doing his various antics on the guitar. The concert went really well.”
This was the biggest American crowd Hendrix would ever see. (At Woodstock, he played at 9 a.m. and many attendees were long gone.)
Sadly, Hendrix died two months later at age 27.
"Jimi Hendrix as far as I was concerned was a genius," Cox said. "A great composer, writer, player, even in the studio. Like Mozart, Handel, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Gershwin, his music transcends the generations. He's just as relevant in the 21st century as he was in the 20th."
McDermott said Hendrix's connection with young people continues to this day because they could recognize "his purity, his skills, his emoting. It's something very personal."
Although tickets for the Atlanta Pop Festival were only $14 for three days, thousands knocked down the fences and got in for free. But the festival, which drew a comparable crowd to that of Woodstock, went off without any violent crimes. No doubt, there were plenty of drugs and nudity. But overall, it was peace and love, man!
"I think they performed incredibly well under duress," said McDermott. "They didn't have deaths or brawls or fighting that marred virtually all other festivals at that point."
And although the promoters didn't make a profit, they did pay all the bills. "They kept their reputation," McDermott said, and Cooley continued as a major promoter in Atlanta for decades after that.
If you don't get Showtime, there is talk of putting together an Atlanta screening on Sept. 26. I'll update this with details if it ends up working out.
TV PREVIEW
"Jimi Hendirx: Electric Church," 9 p.m., Friday, Sept. 4, 2015
About the Author
