Uncommon 2.75 x 1.75 ticket stub for a concert headlined by “Jimi Hendrix” at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden on May 18, 1969, issued for Loge 37C, Row B, and Seat 1. Included with the ticket is an original program for Hendrix's 1969 US tour, entitled 'Electric Church: A Visual Experience,' 12 x 12, 30 pages, which features numerous seldom-seen images of the Experience during downtime and on stage. In overall very good condition, with creasing to both items.
Tickets for the 19,000-seat sold-out show ran from $4.00 to $6.50. This show at Madison Square Garden was the 18th gig of the Experience's 26-concert North American tour and it was about three weeks after Hendrix had been busted for drugs at the Toronto airport. On the day of the show, Hendrix and the band went to the Fillmore East to catch the first set by The Who. But, as bassist Noel Redding records in his diary, midway through the show smoke began to fill the hall. 'A fire started in the grocery store on the comer,' recalled Bill Graham. 'Someone threw a Molotov cocktail in there because the owner refused to pay his protection money.' Police invaded the Fillmore stage and cause a fracas as the crowd was ushered out. Guitarist Larry Coryell escorted The Experience to safety and their show at the Garden.
Six weeks after the May 18, 1969, Madison Square Garden concert, Noel Redding quit the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix recruited his old Army buddy Billy Cox to play bass, and drummer Buddy Miles joined them to form the first successful all black power trio, A Band of Gypsys.
Hendrix embraced the 'electric church' concept as a cosmic, quasi-spiritual belief that music could flow around the world like an electrical force, into bodies and out of souls, enlightening people along the way. On the Dick Cavett show in 1969, Hendrix explained that he designed his music to go 'inside the soul of the person, and awaken some kind of thing inside, because there are so many sleeping people.' It is no coincidence, either, that he literally relied on electricity to create his music in the first place—at its core, the Hendrix sound is the result of an electrical signal passing through a series of wires, magnets, transistors, and vacuum tubes.
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