Hear the Last Time the Jimi Hendrix Experience Ever Played Together: The Riotous Denver Pop Festival of 1969

You know it’s got to be bad when you quit the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence just months after the rev­o­lu­tion­ary, expan­sive Elec­tric Lady­land hit num­ber one on US and UK charts, but if you’re Noel Red­ding, you’re plen­ty fed up with the psy­che­del­ic cir­cus. “The record­ing ses­sions were ridicu­lous,” Red­ding told Rolling Stone in a 1969 inter­view, “and on stage, it was get­ting ridicu­lous.” The last straw for Red­ding had come a few months ear­li­er at the Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val in June. After tear gas forced the band off­stage, fired by police at an unruly crowd, “I went up to Jimi that night,” says the bassist, “said good­bye, and caught the next plane back to Lon­don.”

Ten­sions had been build­ing for months. Hen­drix want­ed to expand the band, with­out con­sult­ing Red­ding or Mitch Mitchell. Record­ing ses­sions for the dou­ble Elec­tric Lady­land had been noto­ri­ous­ly riotous. “There were tons of peo­ple in the stu­dio,” Red­ding remem­bered, “you couldn’t move. It was a par­ty, not a ses­sion.” Hen­drix’s per­fec­tion­ism had him push­ing for 40–50 takes per song. But the prob­lems weren’t all under his con­trol. The three-day Den­ver festival—headlined by Three Dog Night, Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival, Joe Cock­er, Frank Zap­pa, Tim Buck­ley, John­ny Win­ter and the Experience—was beset with vio­lence, part of the gen­er­al devo­lu­tion of the decade.

Overzeal­ous cops bat­tled gate­crash­ers who showed up look­ing for a fight. Tear gas waft­ed through the air. Iron But­ter­fly sup­pos­ed­ly encour­aged fans to bring a fence down. Fes­ti­val pro­mot­er Bar­ry Fey remem­bers Joe Cock­er curled up in the bath­room in a fetal posi­tion: “He was scared to death. ‘Is this what America’s all about?’”

But Jimi’s drug use had also tak­en its toll on his rela­tion­ships. Fey’s account of his state that night is sad and sober­ing:

There’s a lot of sto­ries, but the worst one is Hen­drix…. I had Jimi Sep­tem­ber 1, 1968 at Red Rocks. We had become such good friends in a year or so. I mean, I just loved him. He was such a great guy. And then nine months lat­er at the Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val, I get to talk to Noel and Mitch, and they said, ‘We’re not going to play with him any­more, Bar­ry.’ I said, ‘What are you talk­ing about?’ They said, ‘We can’t stand him. Since you’ve seen us last, he’s dis­cov­ered hero­in, and you can’t deal with him.’ And then he showed up, and he hard­ly knew who I was. 

But onstage, Jimi was Jimi, crack­ing eso­teric jokes and shred­ding with aban­don. In the audio at the top, hear the band’s full Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val set, which closed out the chaot­ic pro­ceed­ings on Sun­day night. Hen­drix jokes about the tear gas as the band tunes up, then they launch into Swedish duo Hans­son & Karls­son’s “Tax Free.”

Jimi plays “The Star-Span­gled Banner”—two months before his blis­ter­ing Wood­stock rendition—and the audio cuts out at the end of “Pur­ple Haze,” right before the last song of the night, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” when the police fired off more tear gas and “the wind whipped in the sta­di­um,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, and “blew the tox­ic fumes back toward the stage. With their eyes burn­ing and their lungs choked for air, the Expe­ri­ence set down their instru­ments for the final time and fled for cov­er.”

See the setlist, minus “Voodoo Child,” below:

1. Tax Free
2. Hear My Train A Comin’
3. Fire
4. Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic
5. Red House
6. Foxy Lady
7. Star Span­gled Ban­ner
8. Pur­ple Haze

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (Feb­ru­ary, 1967)

See a Full Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Con­cert on Restored Footage Thought Lost for 35 Years

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness.