Phil Lesh says the Grateful Dead "didn't deliver" at the original 1967 Monterey Pop Festival .
Before closing the 50th anniversary concert there two weekends ago with his Terrapin Family Band, the bassist told Rolling Stone that sandwiched between The Who and The Jimi Hendrix Experience at the landmark '67 festival, the Dead "did not play well...Between The Who tearing it up, doing a great set, and then destroying the stage at the end of their set, and then Jimi playing a fantastic set and then lighting his guitar on fire … what are you gonna remember, who came between them? No. It's gonna be just like a big shadow, some murky space."
Lesh says that in some ways Monterey began a Grateful Dead tradition of "blowing the big ones...So no, [Monterey] was not a big career-changing moment for us like it was for so many others. But that was fine. We didn't really care."