Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin' imagine...

Is Jimi Hendrix mixed genealogy included arch American, Irish,

Cherokee Cherokee che key key so there Zenora so there Zenora so

there full-blooded Cherokee from Georgia who married an Irishman

named Moore. They had a son Robert who married an African-American

fanny. In rot sudden nor Nora pat terrible fanny. Overseer. Bertran

philander so there Bertran so Bertran Johnny Allen Hendrix so

there Johnny Allen so there this something Al James Marshall Hendrix

in honour of Al. So and his late reon Marshall. Staged in Alabama at

the time of Hendrix's A friend of mine, he had this

acoustic guitar. He wanted it sell it for dive dollars. Jimi told me

about it, and I said, OK, he used to be working and we had all the time.

He used to be playing all the time on his guitar. After he got good on

that, I went and got him an electric guitar.

When Jimi first started listening to music, he started listening to his

dad's collection. He listened to B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters,

all these great blues guys. Jimi would pick up what he was playing.

And he would practise for hours. We knew he was talented for him to be

able to play the guitar by just listening and picking it up without

having to read music. We knew that. He started coming to my house after

school because I had a piano in my little play room, and I would play

the piano and he would play the guitarist. He said we could be a

band. We started a band. We used to harmonise and play songs together

and play songs together we had heard on the radio.

Rock and roll was starting then, and it was new music, it felt good, and

it was so different than what you're parents would listen to, that it

just suddenly took us over. We loved chuck berry. That was his

love because of the hair, and the flamboyant clothes, and Jimi loved

that kind of stuff. The hair, and the flamboyant

clothes, and Jimi loved that kind of stuff.

Due to our poor economic conditions, we didn't have that many clothes and

things, so we had to makeshift stuff. In his early days, you could

see him sometimes he would have a hat with an ostrich feather coming

out of it. People that you want he was so weird and stuff, but he was

already setting the tone for what he was going to do in the future.

Setting the tone for what he was going to do in the future.

# Go, Johnny, go! Go! I remember him telling his dad one

time we were over there, go he said, "You know, tad, I am going to make

you proud of me one day. I am going to be very famous. I am going to

make it." I bet you didn't wear this in the

paratroops? Not necessarily. What is it a - It's 101st airborne in

Kentucky. Part of the thing that most young black men did at the time

was if you couldn't go to college and get an education, then the next

best thing was to join the service. It was very fortunate that, when

Jimi goes into the service, that he meets almost immediately a fellow

musician that he will have then a life long relationship with, and

that he bas bass player Billy Cox. I went in, introduced myself and

told him I played the bass. So we jammed, and there it was. We

clicked. He didn't have a lot of idle time

where he sat around Did nothing. He sat around and played his guitar.

He walked down the street, go to a movie, he was playing a guitar. He

was on a mission. Who would have known that, on his

25th jump he breaks his ankle, gets booted out of the service on a

medical, honourable medical discharge, but he's out of the

service. Now, what is he going to do?

I remember it's liking get out of the army and then trying to get

himself together, and then I was playing in different groups all

around the States, you know, and Canada, playing behind people most

of the time. He hits the Chitlin' Circuit

circuit. The Chitlin' Circuit circuit is really nothing more than

a series of African-American clubs where you could maybe make a meagre

living but at least enough to survive and call yourself a

professional magician. He does that with Wilson Pickett; he does that

with Little Richard. It was like going to college for him, because

not only did he go on stage and watch how audiences reacted to the

music that was coming off the stage, he also got to basically learn how

to be a performer. Most groups I was with, they didn't

let me do my own thing. When I was with the the Brothers, the Isley

Brothers, they used to make more bucks, I don't know.

You got to remember, he was n Jimi Hendrix at that time. He was still

playing everybody else's stuff because that's what the clubs

wanted. He was real fun, and he was so

painfully shy. He was such a shy baby.

Every time we went out in Harlem, he had that guitar with him, all the

time. Never went anywhere without it.

When he was playing blues, he got my undivided attention, but most people

did mind him to play any blues, so he was reduced to playing top 40

stuff. Do it the dance, baby! I knew a lot

of side men. They were going to be side man. They weren't trying to go

somewhere, but Jimi was trying to do something else.

Many nights, I had to prop my eyes open to listen to him try to do

mm-mmm. He wanted vibrato in his voice like James, like Howlin' Wolf,

he wanted to do the blues, and he wanted to do his special stuff.

In 1966 I was going out with Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones. I

was in New York hanging out, and we ended up in a club.

The guy on guitar completely blew my mind.

I definitely had the impression that he had desires where he wanted to

take his music but was incapable of actually putting those steps

together to attain that. He wanted to be a rock star. He

didn't want to be a blues - a struggling blues artist drinking gin

in these little clubs trying to catch the next greyhound.

He never let on that he was broke, but he certainly was scuffling in

the Village. Just for him to have an apartment would have been a delight

for him at that point. He needed to be looked after, and

that's why he always had one or two, or three women dotted around for his

every need, and he used to go up to Harlem at least once a week. He

would say he to see his auntie Faye but he said it not like a big lie or

something, he said it with a twinkle in his eye.

There were no obligations to me, and there were none to him, but he came

and went as he wanted to. I never knew what was going on until he told

me. He was forming his own band, the Blue Flames, and he had got a gig at

Cafe Wah. Two producers passed me, which I can't believe it. I thought

maybe we were all mad after the second guy passed. I was introduced

to Chas Chandler from the Animals. He was saying how he wanted to get

out the Animals, wanted to get into production and management. I said I

happen to have an artist that you would be very, very interested in.

Come on down to Cafe Wha? And check him out. He had been out about ten

months I think in America at the time. It was very folky, a great

song. He had been out about ten months I

think in America at the time. It was very folky, a great song.

# Hay Joe, where are you going with that money in your hands?

I said at the end I am going to go back to England, find an artist and

record this song. I made arrangements to go down and

see this Jimi Hendrix. The very first song he played was played was

played Hey Jo. # Hey, Jo, where are you going with

that money in your hand? I wanted to take this guy to England. I knew he

was going to be a sensation in England. The universe opened the

doors. You know, it just happened that he got on the path where he

supposed to get on, and did what he was supposed to do.

I wasn't thinking about nothing but the idea of going to England. That's

all I was thinking about, because I like to travel. One place bores me

too long, so I have to I can I can get something together by moving

somewhere else. The idea of England was the idea of England itself, I

said, wow, you know? I had never been there before.

This was actually very smart move on Chas's part, because unlike America

where you had a music scene in New York, a music scene in Nashville, a

music scene in LA, a music scene in San Francisco, in England, everybody

finished up in one place: London. There was this revolution happening

in London. In style, in clothes, in music, so we were all converging on

London. I think if Jimi had arrived on his

own with some manager who was just some guy, there wouldn't have been

the in that Jimi was afforded by Chas because Chas knew all of us.

We all used to go down to a club called the Scotch, the Beatles and

the Stones in St James's. Jimi sat in there with a band by the name of

VIPs, later known as Humble Pie. Jimi sat in there with them. It was

like woah, wait a minute, this guy knows his way around a guitar. There

wasn't hardly anyone in the club. It was like, "Where is everyone?

They've got to see this." He didn't just sit in and play, he

sort of did his act, you know? The teeth, behind the neck, the whole

nine yards. I get very emotional just

remembering it and just thinking I was there. That was the great

Kit Lambert and Chris stamp were the producers of the Who, they were on

the verge of making a deal on a label known as Track Records. Imy

over here with Chas. We said we would love to produce Chas said

said, "I am going to produce him." We looked at each other a said, "Has

he got a record label?" He didn't have a record label so we

immediately created, got into the machinations of creating the record

label because of Jimi. We sat at the table and literally did a deal on a

beermat for Jimi to be on Track Records. I am surprised to get this

call from my Nan, and wondered who that be coming from, here, Jimi said

to me, dad, I think I am on my way to big time. He said, I am over here

in England now, and they're building up a group around me, and I am going

to name it the Jimi Hendrix Experience. # Hey, Jo, where are you

going with that money in your hand? Hey, Jo, I said where are you going

with that gun in your hand? We are going back to, what,

September 1996 when I went to do an audition as a fit tar player for

Eric burden and the Animals. I was handed this bass. We played three

tunes. The American gentleman told me the chords. We went through them,

and the American bloke said, "Do you want to join group?" That was it.

He comes down expect ing to play guitar, you know? He was trying for

the Animals. I dug his hair style, so I asked him to play bass. I got

the phone call from Chas Chandler saying, "I've got this guy coming

over from America, do you fancy having a play with him?

Him? Him?

" was the first person who ever knew how to may that Curtis may field

style Our first gigs were in France on 13

October 1966, and then we started doing

Our first gigs were in France on 13 October 1966, and then we started

doing what we call "the club scene" in London.

I don't want to be right now... You knew people in America, people like

James Brown, but he was a guy, he was in London, and he was now kind

of one of ours, and he was just phenomenal.

-- he was just being phenomenal. It was a ready audience, a lot of

people thought was the source, what people wanted to see, black artists

in Britain, because they were the inspiration for all our young

musicians. People are grown up listening to B. B. King, Muddy

Waters, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddly. When Jimi appeared, he seemed much

younger, cooler, and hipper. People had started off doing chords

like he had. He did Hey Jo, the Stones did, Little Red Rooster,

everyone was coming out of the world. There was a germ in the air,

"We could write this ourselves," you know?

# Things just don't seem the same. Acting funny, but I don't know why.

Excuse me, while I kiss th guy. It was essential that Jimi be there

in London at that particular time to soak it up and create this hybrid

sound of blues, R, rock, and psychedelia all in one. Cleverly, he

made the connection with the English rock and the way English people were

interpreting blues. That was the genius of it.

So Jimi's solo is about to come up. This is amazing, this thing. It

freaked everybody out because this is one of the great classic initial

solos where psychedlia and blues all rolled in together.

He was accepted by the English audience with a reverence that the

Beatles had. He was loved immediately and appreciated as the

great artist that he was. The reason he took off so quickly in

England was because of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. You've got

to go to see Jimi hidden driven. I put another thousand on the door the

next day when Mick Jagger, John Lennon, or Paul McCartney was

saying, "This guy is great." We got Jimi to the theatre. Jimi decided to

come and play Sgt Pepper: that had been released literally that week.

# The man has done to you, better get on, Sgt Pepper.

Jimi had learned Sgt Pepper, and opened with it, so, for me, that is

one of my proud moments. That is, that someone I loved at much as

that, and someone who was destined to be one of the grates, would open

with one of our songs. -- one of the greats.

We had been tipped off actually by John Lennon, said, "You've got to

come and see this guy, and I think we all got li limos about four

o'clock in the morning, which was did he rig Gurth in London at that

time. We had never seen anything like that before or heard anything

like that before what he did with the guitar, and so then began the

negotiations, and we met Jimi, but he didn't get involved in the

business at all, and so we did our deal for North America, but that's

the first time I became really aware of him.

Monterey Park was the first major rock festival and the first major

festival to include pop music from many different many different

genres. Everyone was encouraged to submit names that they thought would

be interesting and a good reflection of the Monterey International Pop

Festival. John from the Mamas and the Papas said, "Would you play with

the Beatles?" We were very involved in the studio saying we wouldn't be

able to come over, but I said, "I tell you who you've got to get -

Jimi Hendrix." They mi Hendrix." They said, "Who?" "Yes, must look

into it." I said, "Yes, you must look into it." And they booked him.

If you're an American, and you play in and around the Village, and you

play a bunch of small clubs, you never really make it, and then you

go to England, and you're starting to become a success, and you've got

a chance to go back to America, and say, "I told you so," I mean, it's

really important. I sat next to him on the plane going

over. He said he was a bit frightened because he didn't really

know whether he would be able to sort of get across what he was

trying to do. This was the summer of love, so you

couldn't do anything that was too outrageous for that crowd.

Long time ago. I should put you in one of those down to Mexico.

But you got me here, that's why, baby, I am feeling low, yea!

It was a thin line-up, just three, but, when the music started, it was

ten. It could have been 20. It was that powerful.

Mitch Mitchell, these tiny frail Englishmen, with this wild man

fronting the act. I went to England, picked up these

two cats, and here we are. Really, to come back here this way, and

really get a chance to really play, you know?

Thing, oh, wild thing. I can't imagine what it was like to

see that first time out. He arrived without a great deal of fanfare,

without a great deal of advance notice, and basically blew that

crowd away. You can say the stars were in

alignment. I would actually say he had everything he needed, he showed

up, and he didn't waste a single bit of it.

When you watch the Penny Baker film and he goes to the audience and

captures the look on a couple of the girls in the audience, it is like

astonishmet. "Is this t. "Is this really happening?" . I was in the

audience, and I was appalled. It wasn't the sexuality of the show

that appalled me, it it was what he did to his instrument. Here he was

throwing lighter fluid on his guitar and setting it on fire.

I had never seen anything like this in my life.

I can imagine somebody coming home from that and trying to describe it

to their friends, he was really loud and he set his guitar on fire. What?

Why? I don't know, but it was amazing.

People take it for granted now because they've seen it, they've

seen the DVD of it, and it's not the same as, well, before that day,

there was nothing like that that ever happened in the world.

There is a kind of contention that Monterey broke Jimi Hendrix. It

didn't t was the foot in the door for Jimi Hendrix. Monterey proved to

all the music critics that were there that this guy was something

special. The reaction to him in Monterey reached the promoters, the

concert promoters around the country, so Jimi started getting

dates. He went straight from Monterey to

play for Bill Graham in San Francisco.

He did the Fulmore and somebody had the brain-storm to put him on tour

with the Monkees. A logic I kind of understand, it's a huge audience,

the Monkees are super popular, but the reality that audience isn't

pre-disposed to liking anything as jarring and as ground-breaking as

that. Dick Clark and I sat down and worked

out a tale that there was objecting to Jimi's obscene act. They played

three or four dates, I guess. We got the call right away fr Atlanta, "Get

him off the tour. Get him out of there."

It was - he was such a sweetheart. He was so conservative, and he was

shy and reserved, and stuff, and they had him out as this wild man

from Borneo or something, and he wasn't any of that.

You only would have seen himming flashy and extrovert when he was

playing. Are there interviews where he is flashy and extrovert? I doubt

it. He was too different characters. When he was playing, he was super

confident. He was in total control. His focus was immaculate.

But when he wasn't playing, he desperately insecure.

I think like a lot of artists, he would be unsure of his own worth.

You know, you never got the feeling that this was something who was

going to show off until he got on stage, and then - but that's like a

lot of artists. They can They can be quite quiet, and then they get on

stage, and now they're let out of jape. Like, yes, boof!

-- let out of jail. When I am on stage, I am a complete natural, more

so than talking to a group of people or something. When I feel like

playing with my teeth, I do it because I feel like it.

The audience that was being exposed to what Jimi was doing had probably

never seen it before, playing guitar with his teeth, back behind his

head. Those were old tricks that had been around since the 1950s. That

was stock-in-trade showmanship of the guitar trade.

The guy used to be an older guy called T Bone Walker who used to

play the guitar on the back of his head. The biting of the guitar and

playing like he was having some sort of love affair was, like, basically,

that was his original. Jimi, how much do you rely on gimmicks? I am

tired of people saying gimmicks. The world is nothing but a big gimmick,

wars, napalm guys, and others. People get burned up on TV, and it's

nothing but a gimmick. He hating referred to as having gimmicks and

all that stuff, but it wasn't a gimmick, it was who he was, period.

He looked like an exotic bird at that point. He had the big hat on,

the feather coming out the back of it, and had the chain, and nobody

else looked like that. He was very clever. I don't think

this is just smoke a little weed and decided that he was going to dress

this way, I think he definitely wanted to look as original as his

music was. He wanted to look like that all of the time because that

was who he was, not somebody who is going to put this on right now and

take this off and go into the street. It was him; he was

expressing who he was, and that didn't sit well with everybody, you

know? I tried to get him on to Ed Sullivan. I got to see them perform

at one point. He said, "That's too far for us. We're not going there."

"Ed won't like that." So imhad to make it without the help

of the Ed Sullivan show, which the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, all

these different people, did their turn on the Ed Sullivan show. Some

people don't need it. A lot of what success is for some people is just

word of mouth. # If you can just get your mind together. Then come on

across to me. Although music was cast in terms of

racial context, you know, R is black music, rock is white music,

but what he didn't see is a black man fronting a rock band. It just

didn't happen before. -- what you didn't see... A month

after Monterey the Jimi Hendrix Experience came out. You had

graphics. You could see what the Jimi Hendrix Experience looked like.

When I saw that cover, I knew I wanted it.

The fact that he was a black guitar player for someone who was into rock

and roll, who knew Motown, who knew soul, for this to be a black

American rock guitarist was really something that I really wanted to

know about. # Have you ever been experienced?

Well, I have... # Have you ever been experienced?

Well, I have... "Experience as the first album blew

people's minds. We tried anything and everything to make the sounds

different, because we could. We were given that freedom to do that. I

think the album represents that. What set it apart was everything.

There was the lyrics, which seemed - they seemed very psychedlic, but

when you look at it now, they're actually very, very rounded and

blues. When he sings about the Wind Cries Mary, that's not like the old

bluesmen saying the blues fell down like rain.

The broken pieces of yesterday's life.

Somewhere, a Queen is weeping. Somewhere, a king has no wife.

You have to wrench your mind back to a time before the social network -

no Twitter, no Facebook. When something new like that would come

along, it was very organic, it was word of mouth, and the people on the

radio, we would hear this, you the West Coast stations starting playing

him, and then it worked its way back across the country. The underground

radio has been so nice, with the stereo, and soforth, so that makes

makes everybody makes better records, meaning music is being

presented to the public in a better way.

Are you experienced? The record was fantastic. The ones

who got it never stopped talking about it. FM radio was starting to

play it. By February of 1968, he is on a major US tour. The 1968 tour

was the best described as complete madness. The gigs were far and wide.

We would do Virginia Beach, and then we would do Quebec, Cleveland, New

York - we were all over the place. The Jimi Hendrix Experience comes to

Tampa. Jimi Hendrix Experience at Rhode Island. Two shows at the

Anaheim Convention Centre. You would listen to him on the

radio, but not see him on TV. If he was going to be at your town, you

had to be at that concert because that was the only chance you would

get to see him. The number one progressive rock act in the world.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience on stage in Britain with the most dynamic

experience of a lifetime. We did 57 in 55 days or something. That's when

we noticed we were playing to bigger things. We were now doing 20,000 to

to 30,000 people. He had come home to Seattle. We went

down to where he was playing, and we went backstage. You must remember I

got out the service, I had got this crew cut, and I am very supervisor

looking, I look at Jimi, I said, "What have they done to you?" He had

this great look at you, we're looking, and he is going,"Bobby,

what have they done to you!" He laughed in 1961, just a Parkhead

from Seattle joining the army so he could serve his time. Though he

contacted my daddy, kept in contact with letters, they really hadn't

seen each other. The meeting, the homecoming, he was so excited to see

him. Jimi was the last person to come off

the plane. He had his big hat. My dad had shaved all the hair off his

face. My dad had never been without a moustache, so here he was, an-

clean-shave, even had a tie on. If you knew my dad, he didn't wear

ties. I can count on one hand how many times he wore a tie. He was so

proud of Jimi and excited to see him. After all, it was seven years.

No longer was he little im, Buster, whatever other names our family had

for him. He didn't do the big limos and the big hotels, he stayed at

dad's house, he drove his dad's car around town. He was always the same

kind of guy. He was very humble, and he was a

gentleman, and he was very caring for his friends and people that

worked for him. The only thing he wanted was to be able to play his

music. He was so concentrated on music.

Really, there wasn't a sport he liked, I never heard him talk about

a sport. He didn't read the papers. He really had no interest for

anything other than music and women. So Jimi had two areas of expertise.

He had his guitar-playing, and then he had an immaculate and intense

sexuality. He was usually pretty polite, and you could see he was a

real player and walk up to a chick and whisper something, and they

would go off. I get up at seven o'clock in the morning, I am really

sleepy, but then I open the door and see somebody that appeals to me, you

know, I am like first of all, thinking about what in the world is

she doing here, you know? What does she want? Then she says, "Can I come

in?" I am standing there and really digging her, she's really

nice-looking, you know. She's about 19, 20, or beyond the age of so and

so, and so I say, "Well, I will probably stand there." And then,

there I go, invite me in, maybe." Acts As Bold Love was out another

six to seven months after Are You Experienced. The album became a lot

more complex, and I think a better sound. The rawness is there, but it

is a much more refined sounding album than we are bringing in the

phasing in the special effects which we had refined between the first

album and the second album. You can hear the changes from Are You

Experienced, loud and brash, and from us traded -- frustrated, you

know? And then, maybe with the axis try and cool everything down a

little bit and bring some beautiful stories together, maybe save certain

things here and there, you know? He would have bits and pieces of paper

like hotel stationary, backs of envelopes, match books, whatever, he

would be always scribbling, have a bag full of bits and pieces of paper

which he would bring out and then start reassembling the lyrics for

the final time and then go into the studio, and then he would sing it.

Mellow in this case is not so mellow. It's frightened like me, and

all of these emotions of mine, giving my life to a Rainbow like

you. We had a constant row in the studio

- when in the studio - when I say "row", with was disagreement, it was

where his voice was in the mix. He always wanted to have his voice

buried, and I wanted to bring it forward. I said, "I've got a

terrible voice." I said you might have a terrible voice but you've got

great rhythm in your voice, your diction, and the way you deliver the

words, and it was always a controversy between us.

It was I always won by pulling his voice forward!

For a guy who really didn't like the sound of his own voice, his voice

was incredible. Absolutely phenomenal on this.

Beautiful soft tones. Phenomenal on this. Beautiful soft

tones. # Well, she's walking through the

clouds. With the circus mind that is running

round. Butterflies and zebras and moon

beams, and a fairy tales, that is all she ever thinks about. Writing

with the wind. He would put his head round the booth because we would

construct this booth for him, but he would say, "How was his booth for

him, but he would say, "How was that?" "That was great, "That was

great, Jimi." "I've got to do another one." There was this desire

to be better, that all great artists have in them, whether you're a

parent or a poet, or a playwright, or a musician, that you are very

rarely satisfied with your work. The whole LP means so much. Every little

thing means something. It's not a game we're playing trying to blow

the public's mind and soforth, it's a thing that we really, really mean,

it's a part of us, another part of us.

During Little Way, there are three rhythm guitars. Here is one of them,

slightly dirty guitar, and not that during the. And then there is this

one, a really clean one. And then in addition to that one,

there is also a Lesley guitar. When you put them all together, you

get this rest of it. He was anything but

that. If I think of Jimi, I think of him with a smile on his face. He was

pull of fun all the time. If you really look at the bunch of

pictures, apart from when he is actually on stage playing, you see

all the players, nine out of ten of them, he's got a smile or a secret

grin on his face somewhere. He was a very funny guy. He was very funny.

He was just so lovable. He was such a sweetheart. His friendliness just

drew people to him like a magnet. He's just likeable, and you wanted

him on your friendship He connected with people, and he connected in his

faith that the guitar could take you someplace you had never been before,

and he made you believe it. He embraced the counter culture. He

dressed like a hippy, he spoke like one. He took the same kind of drugs,

so he infiltrated the counter culture in a way that instantly

brought him attention, mostly from young, whiled kids.

-- white kids. He's like the big star now. He has had two records

out, been touring America, and he is the big cheese. Everybody comes to

see Jimi. In less than a year from the time

that imand Jimi Hendrix Experience came over to do Monterey Pop

Festival to the time he was headlining Miami pop, he became the

biggest concert attraction in the country. That's fast.

His arrival was interesting. We were waiting to show him up. He wasn't

showing up. He was getting late. I said, "Go and find a helicopter. Get

over here." Somebody had slipped him some STP on the way over,

apparently, so they were blasted, but played an unbelievable set. He

literally took off like a rocking. # You know that you are little

heartbreaker. -- he took

# You're a sweet little love maker. I want to take you home. I won't do

you no harm, no. It's going to be all right.

All right. It's going to be all right.

All right. # Oh, Foxy Lady.

There's no question about it, Jimi was tremendously gifted, he was

meant to play guitar, but, by hell, he worked at it, more than anybody

I've ever seen. Thinking about it, I never saw that guy without a guitar

in his hands, in our out the studio. Or sitting around the apartment.

Jimi used to get up in the morning and put a guitar on before he made

breakfast. He had a guitar on eight or nine hours a day.

He was constantly about making music. Whatever else might be said

about the drugs and the ladies, his prime focus was on making music.

Everywhere he went, he had a guitar with him. Everywhere he went.

If music was not happening, then he would go somewhere else to try to

find where music was happening. Whenever he did jams in places like

if we went to clubs after a gig, he would get a bass guitar, turn it

upside-down and play it. He can do that with a guitar as well. A

right-hand, play it backwards. I know a few people who can do that,

but not many people can do that, because you have to think backwards.

He would know someone around a corner that was playing, and, at the

drop of a hat, go and play. His whole life was either playing with a

band he was in, or other people, or going in a studio.

When we record Electric Ladyland, we had to Strachans Kuyt on two -- we

had to do two things. We had to do a good show and then go into the

studio at six o'clock in the morning.

# The night I was born, I swear the moon turned red.

By the time we got into middle of Electric Ladyland songs almost

became written in the studio. It takes an awful long time. It's very

boring for a producer! Jimi was a manager's worse nightmare because he

would live in the studio given half the chance of the either people like

that atmosphere or they don't. Hen driven was into the unthen of

doing 39 takes, and the first one was just as good, by which time we

were all getting a bit, you know, anxious, as they say.

People start picking on us all the time. They say, "Why don't you do

this or that?" Give us a chance. Things happen in time. We are

learning the the studio. We want to learn it ourselves. They listened to

the same song 50 times played in the studio isn't something I want to do.

That's trainspotting. It's not reporting. Chas came from this

school of, we've got to get a three and a half minute or four-minute

song, all these jams are all very well, but where's the bloody songs,

you know? You could really get the sense that Chas and Jimi were

getting further and further apart. I walked, I just says, "Well, you

know, give us a ring when you come back to your senses, you kno?" I

definitely got a sense that Jimi felt now, this is my record, I am

going to do it my way. I definitely got a sense that Jimi

felt now, this is my record, I am going to do it my way.

# The war is here to stay. We decided to take our last walk

through the noise to the see. Not to die, but to be reborn.

The wait between Bold is Love and Electric Ladyland it seemed like

where is this thing? When it showed up, it's like, "You've got home

work." It is four sides. There is all kinds of stuff in there. You've

got studying to do. It went to number one. It was his

first number one album, but that was just part of the story, because

previous two albums were pulled back into the charts, so he had three

albums in the top 20 at the same time.

There must be some way out of here. Said a joker to the thief. There's

too much confusion. I can't get no relief.

He had a hit single. He had a hit single of a Bob Dylan song. It just

showed that he was a fantastic instrumentalist, a much better

singer than anyone ever gave him credit forking, and an interpreter

of other people's music. He checked every box. You've got it.

I think we were like the highest paid act in America at that

particular time. We put tickets on sale, they would

be gone in a couple of hours. People were so tremendously big.

He was aware of how big he was. I just don't think that that mattered

to him. What mattered to him was how good he was, and he wanted to be

better. My friend and I went out, and we

would find a lovely apartment on twelfth Street between fifth and

sixth. It was his first home in New York, and he really, really loved

it. He had dinner parties, he had

friends come up and jam, he loving in the Village. The Village was fun.

The first time I went down there, I said, "WOW, this is nice. I really

like this place." It's big, it's roomy, and he was showing me look at

this, that, the little kitchen stuff, I w like, "Yes, you're going

to cook!" The frustration to his neighbours, he had an apartment, we

used to get an occasional call from the police saying he was playing

guitar at four o'clock in the morning and everybody was on the

street complaining. He was going from room to room,

there were lots of girls there, he was just flush with excitement.

He was still - there was a sweetness to him still. He wasn't crock, he

was just having fun with his fame. He had fame and was recognised. In

those days you could walk around the village without the paparazzi. You

could walk around without body guards and an entourage. He felt

free and it was a good time for him. Those days were a very good time for

him. It was still sweet Jimi, kind, considerate, funny, tremendous sense

of humour. You know, his ego was still the right size. And I don't

think he was really bitten by the serpent of fame.

We have an interesting guest tonight, Jimi Hendrix. I don't think

he has ever been on television like this before. Here is a naive and

innocent Jimi hen driven! What do you like to hear if somebody comes

up after a concert. What kind of compliment do you like? I don't

really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, it has a way of

distracting me. A lot of other musicians and artists out there

today, they hear the compliments, and they forget about being lost,

and they forget about the actual talent they have. The problem of

succeeding is a hard one for you if your basis is say in the blues or

something like that and you make hundreds of thousands of dollars a

year, someone said it's hard to sing the blues when you're making that

kind of money. Yes. This assumes you can't be unhappy and have a lot of

money. Sometimes it gets to be really easy to sing the blues when

you're supposed to be making this much money, you know. You know, like

money is getting to be out of of hand now. Like musicians, especially

young cats, they get a chance to make all this money, and it's

fantastic. They lose themselves, and the feel about the music themselves.

They forget about their talents, the other half of them. Therefore, you

can sing a whole lot of blues. The more money you make, the more blues

you can sing. Freedom

I think he fended off the myth of his vulnerability and that he was

the world's greatest guitarist. This is something he wanted, truly, but

what he really wanted was not to be distracted by that.

You're considered one of the best guitar players in the world. Oh, no!

APPLAUSE Certainly, well, one of the best in

this studio, anyway. How about - How the best sitting in this chair! He

didn't liking flattered. He fended it off. He actually found it

corrosive. He wanted to stay hungry.

We're going to play Purple Haze, Hey Jo. We've been playing these songs,

but we've been playing these r two for two years, so, quite naturally,

we start improvising here and there and there are other things we want

to turn to the people, you know? He really liked playing the blues, but

the audience in an arena arena isn't into listening to the blues that

much. I remember him saying to me, "All I've got to do is smash my

guitar and the crowds are fine with that. All I want to do is play the

guitar." Guitar." He was a consummate blues musician. There

were marketing concerns where he wanted more Jimi Hendrix. He was

getting disgusted with the whole carnival of gimmicks that he was

happy to use in the beginning as part of his stage craft, but he felt

creatively hemmed in by that. He wanted something new.

As you get older, you do want to drop some of the showy things

behind, and get down to the more serious things, so perhaps that was

going on with him. Jimi and myself had discussed about

other people coming into the wanted. There was quite a bit of pressure

from Mike Jefferies as a manager who could probably see the writing on

the wall. Jefferies was still in the back of his mind, I think, trying to

keep the experience as such with Noel and myself together, whereas

Jimi had just other ideas. He reached out to me in 1969 through

a friend, saying Jimi is going to be in Memphis at the concert. After the

gig, we went to his hotel room and discussed some things musically.

There was a really special bond between Billy and Jimi. I think the

fact that they were in the army, really Billy was there at the

beginning. He trusted Billy, he trusted him musically, and he

trusted him as a human being. We were playing in Denver, and prior

to the gig, someone in the hotel h said, "Had you heard that Jimi had

said to the press about extending the band?" I said, "Well, he didn't

tell me." The next time I got on to play, I said, "I couldn't handle it

any longer", Do super groups break up, Big Brother broke up? Probably

because they want to do individual things on their own, or maybe you

might want to get into other things like music. Like he is into more

Harmonic things, when you sing and so forth. He went to England to get

his own group together. Who is this? Noel Redding, the bass player. We

have Billy Cox playing bass this time.

I see that we meet again! Dig! Let me get something straight.

We got tired every once in a while, so we decided to change everything

around, and call it Sun and Raine bows.

At Woodstock, he showed up with one guy from the Experience and a bunch

of other guys, most of whom I had never heard of, but it was movement.

The band that did the Woodstock gig was really a kind of makeshift band

just to see what direction anything could go into.

Woodstock gig was really a kind of makeshift band just to see what

direction anything could go into. # Well, I travel, so I got to give a

message. He was growing musically like all

artists do. He had a concept that he wanted to wanted to present, and

that was with two guitars. I found Larry Lee, Mitch was there.

We were just friends having fun, doing music. # I am what I am. I

said, buy yourself, and then you too. #

We were scheduled to go on at midnight but they were that far

behind schedule and couldn't go on. We went on in the morning. There

were still thousands of people there at the time that we played.

) Banner) What

was the controversy about the National Anthem? I don't know, all I

do is play it. I am American, so I played it. I sang it in school. They

made me sing it in school, so it was a flashback.

The first six, sev, eight notes, I am right with him. And then

something inside me said, wait a minute, you've got - you had better

lay off. Then it was one of the greatest

renditions I've ever heard in my life.

) Banner) That rendition of the star-spangled

banner was so resonant in terms of what our lives had been for that

decade, all those images to mind, about what America was about, what

we were doing in all these wars and those kinds of things and the civil

rights movements and the struggles that were going on. It really was a

soundtrack to the country, a country divided, a country at odds dealing

with an ongoing Vietnam War. He essentially - we scored -- he

essentially rescored the National Anthem.

We don't play it to take away this greatness that America is supposed

to have, we play it the way the air is in America today.

The air is slightly spaddy. That performance has a light to it

that he could never have envisioned and certain no-one would have known.

The great artist of the 1960s in particular had this ability to

reinvent themselves very, very quickly, very effortlessly, and very

much on tune and on track. After Woodstock performs Band of

Gypsys. The Band of Gypsys was a strong

statement from three bothers. Performs Band of Gypsys.

The Band of Gypsys was a strong statement from three bothers. # With

the power of soul, it is possible. With the power of soul, it is

possible. We all this intimacies and love, and we also have a feel for

what we thought was right and what we liked and what we enjoyed

playing. Everyone had contributed in some kind of way, so all experience

we had, everybody threw in something into this pot, and it came out the

Band of Gypsys, and we had a very, very unique sound.

It was short-lived because, right after the album, the band was

dismantled. Unfortunately, that's not what was wanted from the

handlers. Is Eric around anywhere? After doing

the Band of Gypsys with Buddy and Billy, I think there was a band

meeting. The band was going to be reformed with Noel and myself, and

we were going to do like one more tour, you know, that kind of deal.

Jimi put his foot down. He wanted me as bass player, so I guess myself

and Mitch, Jimi got together, and I started touring as with the

Experience. When we were out on the road, we

were on the road, but when we were back at home or in town, we spent

all of our time in the studio. I am sure you're spending about

300,000 a year, which was a hell of a lot of money in those years, and

Jimi is jamming down this club in the Village called the Generation,

and said, "Why don't I just buy this, and I can jam here and have a

tiny studio in the back." I said to the guys, are you crazy, you want to

make a nightclub? Let's build Jimi a recording studio. We will make the

best recording studio in the world. Jimi was very simple. He needed very

little. What he needed was his music, a few friends, his recording

studio was his biggest luxury. And he deserved it.

And so he would leave the apartment and go to the studio every day.

Electric Lady was a safe harbour for him, a place to recover from the

stress of life. It was part of his vision of how he wanted to make

music, without the distractions of the industry and the partying.

For a man like Jimi, who is a creative artist, he had to have a

place like Electric Lady Studio, so it became his and our laboratory.

The time period from when he first entered Electric Lady, which was

roughly May of 1970 to the end of August, there was a tremendous

amount of material that he had recorded.

This is Dolly Dagger that Jimi and I were working on before he left for

Europe in August of 1970. We actually finished mixing this just

before he left for Europe for his tour. Part of the frustration going

to Europe was he was happy with what he was writing.

Before he left for London, he said he was going to die before he - he

just had a premonition. He said, I know I am going to die before I am

30, but that's OK. The only thing I am sorry about is that - there is

much that I want to do. # Drifting

He gets to the Isle of Wight. I don't know Jimi's state of mind at

that time. I would imagine it meant a fair bit, the first time he had

done the concert in England for some years. Obviously, I mean, that was

the starting point for us. The act that everybody wanted to see

impatiently was imand back with Mick and Jimi Cox on bass. He came on

late. At this time, everybody was pretty tired and exhausted.

Are we ready? Tell the MC to go, then. The man with the guitar, Jimi

hen driven. Hello, how are you doing? Glad to see you. We will do a

thing called Freedom. The Isle of Wight, well, you know,

it was a festival. I don't think he was that keen to do it. It was very

disorganised. We did it, and we figured we will do the other shows,

get it over with and go back to New York.

A long tour in Germany, Billy got sick and had to go back to America.

Jimi then went to London and was hanging out there. He didn't really

know what was happening or what he was going to do or what was to, or

where the group was going, and so he hung out in Londonment He called me

from England. He was saying,"Hey, man, can you bring those tapes over

to London? I want to start working on them over here." I said, "Jimi,

we just built you a million-dollar ilt you a million-dollar studio."

"Yes, but, I mean, don't worry about it. I will see you in about a week.

Everything is cool, now know?" Jimi called me. He said, "I need

you. We've got to finish up, get some words and things straightened

up in the studio." Said, "OK, I will make it." He said, "All right,

great." Words and things straightened up in

the studio." I said, "OK, I will make it." He said, "All right,

great." # Gold is the colour of the dream I

had not too long ago. A misty blue a the lilac too, I

never to grow old. The Jimi Hendrix Experience is over.

The acid rock musician died today and a London hospital during his

short career he played his electric guitar into some of the most unusual

sounds in an unusual music. The night before Jimi died, he went to a

club and sat in on guitar with the band, and then went out with his

girlfriend, and they went back to her flat later.

He always had problems sleeping, so she gave him some sleeping tablets

which were actually of stronger than the ones he normally took, so, come

the morning, she woke up and found Jimi was still asleep, he was

unconscious. She couldn't rouse him, so she immediately phoned for an

ambulance. They took him to hospital. They tried to revive him,

but, sadly, Jimi was dead. What a terrible waste, just at the

age of 27. Talk about stars being in alignment

when he shows up at Monterey. Where the hell were the stars in September

1970? Iished I knew. -- I wished I knew.

Well, I waiting on train station. Waiting for the train.

Station. Waiting for the train.

# Waiting for the train, yes. Take me from this lonesomeplace.

-- lone lonesome place. A whole lot of people put in a

train, yeah, my burden called me a disgrace.

I talked about him to my grandkids. I show people the letters and stuff.

I like my letters. I am constantly reminded of him.

A great guy, one of my best friends. I miss him even today 40 years

later. Yes. Like a brother. I lost this wonderful musician

friend, if you will, but the world of music lost a genius. It was

tough. It was really tough. Even today, nobody comes close to

Jimi. He was very, very special.

You think I would do