Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Move, and Pink Floyd Package Tour Plays Guildhall in Portsmouth

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The Guildhall, originally called the Town Hall, was completed in 1890 in Portsmouth. The Hall was destroyed by German firebombing during World War II, leaving only the walls and tower standing. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1959. Jimi Hendrix and the Experience, The Move and The Pink Floyd tour package tested the Hall’s walls when they took the stage on November 22, 1967.

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Vintage Rock Posters offers a $15,000 reward for original concert posters of the Guildhall show. A British printer produced the 30 x 40 quad poster for advertising the band package in London. If you have an original Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and the Move band package poster, please take pictures of it and send them to rareboard@aol.com.

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All the bands on the tour enjoyed hit singles on the charts in Great Britain that year. They followed the Beatles’ lead in writing their material and treated 3,000 of their fans to great music. But not everyone was pleased with the concert. The Portsmouth Evening News the next day reported, “Pop music is a horrible noise - a cacophony of over-amplified guitars and tone-deaf singers...Last night at Portsmouth Guildhall, four of Britain’s leading groups went a long way to persuading 3,000 youngsters that such an anti-pop opinion could be right after all... Never has a pop show been so deafening and so lacking in variety and good presentations.” However, the newspaper did recognize Hendrix’s genius saying, “The exception was the start of the show Jimmy Hendrix, as loud as any of the others but twice as talented and a superb showman. He crouched, he leapt, he did a somersault - but still he played that guitar with one hand, two hands, his teeth, his forearm, and his hips! The remorseless roar of his guitar, coupled with bass player Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, formed a crude and earthy blues style which made the other groups seem dull.”

The setlist for the first show at 6:30 was:

  • Fire

  • Stone Free

  • Hey Joe

  • Purple Haze

  • Foxy Lady

  • The Wind Cries Mary

  • Wild Thing

Regardless of what the newspaper said, the audience loved the show. An attendee remembers that Hendrix said between songs, “We don’t want no clowning around out there - we’re the only ones allowed to clown around.” Then after playing “Wild Thing” Hendrix threw “the guitar over the top of the Marshall stacks, where it was duly caught by a roadie standing behind.” The attendee adds, “It was a good performance, and it will always remain a treasured memory of my teenage years.”

If you have an original Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and the Move Guildhall package poster, please take pictures of it and send them to rareboard@aol.com.

Andrew Hawley