BOUNTIFUL SUMMER

I was delighted to read Lou Adler’s account of the Monterey International Pop Festival (“Flash Back to the Real Pop Mart,” July 6). The Los Angeles Free Clinic was one of the very first charities to benefit from the festival. The clinic, which opened its doors during the 1967 Summer of Love, was out of money and dangerously close to closing when a $10,000 donation from the Monterey International Pop Festival Foundation gave the “hippie clinic” a new life. At the time, it was the biggest donation the clinic had ever received.

Twenty years later, Adler and the foundation came through again, this time with a pledge of $250,000 for our new building. In addition to the money, Adler donated a wall-size mural of the 1967 pop festival and photos of the artists who performed. They decorate our patient waiting room, which is named in honor of the foundation.

We are proud to share this 30th anniversary with the festival, and proud that we are still here, still free and still providing health care and social services to 60,000 people a year, in no small part due to Lou Adler and the Monterey International Pop Festival.

JOHN C. LAW

Board President

Los Angeles Free Clinic

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The concise article by Lou Adler about the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival begs for a book by him about the Los Angeles music scene. Monterey Pop brought together legendary disc jockeys Tom Donahue, B. Mitchell Reed and Les Carter to create the spark that spread “underground radio” to L.A. and throughout America.

TED ALVY

Van Nuys

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Enough already! After reading Adler’s piece and Robert Hilburn’s item on “Who’s Next” into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Pop Eye, July 6), isn’t it finally time to induct the musical force, the “main man” behind the very first rock music fest, John Phillips and his group the Mamas & the Papas? It’s way past time to finally give them the historical due that they so richly deserve.

GREG RICE

Studio City