The Jimi Hendrix Experience I went to see him play, I thought that was it, the game was up for all of us, we may as well pack it in." The group came to prominence in the US after the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, one of the first major rock music festivals. The band's performance ended with Hendrix famously setting his psychedelically painted Fender Stratocaster on fire. After the festival they toured with the Monkees, but left the tour two weeks later, reportedly due to lack of audience response. With the Experience, Hendrix recorded several hit singles, such as "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze",
Jimi Hendrix the subject of drugs came up one evening in 1966 at Keith's New York apartment; when one of Keith's friends offered Hendrix "acid", a street name for lysergic acid diethylamide, Hendrix asked for LSD instead, showing what Cross described as "his naivete and his complete inexperience with psychedelics". Before that, Hendrix had only sporadically used drugs, with his experimentation limited to cannabis, hashish, amphetamines and occasionally cocaine. After 1967, he regularly smoked cannabis and hashish, and used LSD and amphetamines, particularly while touring. According to Cross, by the time of his death in September 1970, "few stars were as closely