"Kit Lambert, our manager... had just signed Jimi Hendrix to our label... and put him on... backing us up." "And I couldn't really believe it." "I thought, "Jesus Christ, what's gonna happen?"" "So he went on and he did his thing." "He knocked the amplifiers over." "He set his guitar alight." "He practically smashed it up." "He got feedback together and he also played in his own inimitable way." "And I went on afterwards, and I just stood and strummed." "Our manager, the Cream's manager, felt that if we went over... to San Francisco too early, we'd lose our market value." "So he held off." "He said, "No, you must go later on and then be..." ""a big bang at the Fillmore."" "It worked out all right in the end, but I was really upset about it... 'cause we'd been asked to go and I wanted to go." "I felt that they must have thought we were being big-headed... but I'd loved to have seen him play there." "He did that sacrifice thing for the audience with his guitar." "I've seen it so many times on film." "And everybody on that..." "The whole audience on Owsley, right?" "That Owsley acid, fantastic." "Come on, man, sing it with us." "Before the show at Monterey... we were starting to talk about the running order." "But more for Brian Jones, who was introducing us, I think... and Eric Burdon, who was introducing him, or vice versa." "I can't remember." "They wanted to know what was gonna come first and we couldn't really decide." "So I said to Jimi, "Fuck it, we're not gonna follow you on."" "So he said, "I'm not gonna follow you on."" "So I said, "Listen, we are not gonna follow you on and that is it." ""As far as I'm concerned..." ""we're out ready to go on now, our gig's gonna be there, that's the end of it."" "There was a certain look in his eye." "He got on a chair... and played some amazing guitar just standing on a chair in the dressing room." "Janis Joplin was there, Brian Jones..." "Eric and me, and a few other people just standing around." "Then he got down off the chair... and just said..." "Turned around to me and said:" ""If I'm gonna follow you, I'm gonna pull all the stops."" "In the end ofWild Thing... he would go across to the amplifier and grab hold of it... and go through the motions of fucking it." "Vibrate and shake the thing to such a degree... that I used to have to stand behind the columns... holding it up, whilst he fucked it around the front." "I guess out of boredom of doing the same thing..." "There's a lot of routine in those soul bands, the steps and everything." "The guitarist is sort of a sly prank who'd play behind their backs... and play with their teeth." "This is a way of breaking the pattern, breaking the law." "The outrageous." "I've heard things, like from Don Covay... telling stories about Wilson Pickett pulling a gun on a drummer, you know... just gimmicks like that." "Gimmicks." "Here we go again." "I'm tired of people saying we rely on gimmicks." "The world is nothing but a big gimmick." "Wars, napalm bombs and all that." "People getting burned up on TV... and it's nothing but a big gimmick." "Yes, we do." "That isn't all he does." "But he is here tonight, as I say... without his Experience." "So, here is a naive and innocent Jimi Hendrix." "Nice to meet you." "That is not, of course, the only thing you do onstage... for those who've never seen you before, and of course there have to be a few." "But what would you say is the meaning of destruction onstage... when you do it like that?" "It's nothing but a release, I guess." "Bet you didn't wear this in the paratroops." "Not necessarily." "You were a..." "What is it, a paratrooper or a parachutist?" " Or chautist?" " Makes no difference." "101st Airborne, Fort Campbell, Kentucky." "Well, let me see." "Go back." "See, I think I was going to my company... and I had to pass Service Club Number 1 on the way." "I heard this guitar playing inside." "I said, "Wow."" "I said, "The cat's all right." So I stopped in... and I introduced myself to him." "I told him I played bass." "And I went and checked out a bass." "We started jamming right off." "I started a little group as saxophone player." "Two of the people that I had with me... turned out to be Jimi Hendrix and Bill Cox." "We started and played at various service clubs on the post." "But most of the time, we got fired from the gigs... 'cause we played real loud, you know?" "As you know, Jimi was a left-hand player." "That being the case... he would have to string his guitar with the strings backward, upside down... the heavy strings in reverse of what they normally should be." "This was okay within itself... with the one exception:" "Jimi somehow would always manage... to pawn this guitar before a gig... before a dance, and, of course, the band would have to go pawn it... re-pawn it, repossess it." "Nothing else could be used." "He had to have this specific guitar." "And I think he played this particular angle against the band." "It really appeared that Jimi, in many cases... was never really with us." "He did a lot of concentrating on his music." "A lot of the small talk that the typical group of guys would make... sometimes he would not enter into it." "Of course, we'd look over at him occasionally, and there he is, staring." "We wouldn't ask him for his thoughts per se... but this is what I really meant by being on cloud nine." "You didn't really get... to know him that closely as far as the exact line of thinking." "Do you ever run into any of the guys from the old 101st?" "Yeah, I've been to see my friends." "Do they think your life is strange compared to what they're in?" "That wouldn't matter really because... there's so many different things going on now." "You can't take time out to say, "I wonder what they think of me there."" "I can't go through all that." "I've gone through it for three years." "I remember when he got his first guitar." "We used to have a little jam session between the two of us." "I bought a saxophone at that time... one of those old beat-up C-melody saxophones." "We lived in this scrum-dum apartment." "It was in a rough neighborhood." "Noise didn't mean nothing to the upstairs neighbor... or neighbor next door." "So while Jimi was wailing away on his guitar, well, I'd be blowing the sax." "I went and got behind on the payments on the sax... and I let it go, 'cause I knew he'd do more with the guitar than I would with the sax." "I remember getting out of the Army and trying to get something together." "Then I was playing in different groups all around the States and Canada." "Playing behind people most of the time." "A lot of mornings, we were right down here on Jefferson Street." "We lived over top of Joyce's House of Glamour." "A lot of times I'd get him up mornings to go for breakfast." "Knock on his door, door'd be open." "He's lying there in the same clothes... he had on the night before, with his guitar on his stomach." "I started traveling." "I went to New York and won first place in the Apollo amateur contest." "You know, $25." "I played some shows with Ike and Tina Turner." "I played with King Curtis and Joey Dee." "This group came up and brought me back to Atlanta, Georgia... where I met Little Richard and I started playing with him." "He was a star." "When I got him, he was a star!" "Sly told you that everybody is a star." "The problem is some people haven't been put in the dipper... and poured back on the world." "That's what the answer is." "That's the answer." "You got to be placed into the dipper... and poured back down on the world, and then men will see your good works... and glorify God Jehovah." "The little stories and things he used to tell me, I started going for him." "Really digging him and liking him... more than I was liking the fact that he was a cutie-pie with a guitar." "The in thing at that time." "They were just getting to be the thing... like with the processes falling in your face when you're playing, you know." "Well, he wasn't the average process wearer." "We got our own little crib, you know." "It was sardines and crackers on and off." "And our moms would throw in..." "Well, my mom would throw in... a good meal here and there, you know." "She couldn't stand him because she thought he was a bum." "She said, "You ain't gonna have that long-haired nigger in here."" "Then she'd get in front of his face and she says:" ""Well, Jimi, you just don't understand..." ""Fay's just going through a thing." ""It'll just be a minute." "You shouldn't get involved."" "'Cause he talked to her about little things, you know." "We used to go to Palm 's Cafe... and places like Small's, the Spotlight... places around 125th Street, in the Harlem scene, you know." "He'd tell them he wanted to sit in, right?" "And these old fuddy-duddy... rough-dried ain't-never-beens... you know, they ain't gonna give him a break." "So they just act like they don't even know that he's there." "He'd sit there with this kind of look on his face... for a few minutes and he says, "I'm gonna speak to them again."" "I'd say, "Hey, don't say nothing to those cats..." ""'cause it's obvious they don't want you to play."" "I used to have him clean up the bedroom... all the time while I was gone." "When I'd come home, I'd find a lot of... broom straws around the foot of the bed." "I used to ask him, "Didn't you sweep the floor?"" "And he'd say, yeah, he did." "I found out later, he used to be sitting at the foot of the bed there... strumming the broom like he was playing a guitar." "Finally, they would let him come in, you know, and play." "And then they'd get up and really just mess up so bad behind him." "It was incredible, you know." "He'd be looking all disgusted on the stage, and he'd keep looking back at them." "Then the other guys come and tell him he's got to turn it down... and take him through all kinds of changes." "When I was with The Isley Brothers... they used to make me do my thing then... because it made them more bucks, or something." "But I used to like to do it then." "But most groups I was with didn't let me do my own thing... like feedback in Midnight Hours." "He would sign a contract with anybody that came along... that had a dollar, you know, and a pencil." "You know, he'd sign with them, which got him into a lot of trouble... that he got into later with the companies and stuff." "No, reading a contract meant nothing to Jimi." "He just came in and signed it... and I didn't hear from him for months." "We'd get our door plugged at the hotel." "We'd get thrown out, pawn the guitar." "We'd come back." "We'd borrow guitars from people to play, do a gig." "We'd eat good for a minute, you know." "It was just that, you know, on and off all the time." "But Jimi had this perseverance to go on." "He didn't mind looking freaky... like I don't mind it, 'cause I was doing it before he was." "I know when he saw me, it gave him confidence... and great recompense of reward." "My Lord!" "But the twins, by now, were on the set." "I don't know if the twins... mentioned anything about, you know... when Jimi and them first met... but we were all living together." "He thought we was just hustling... and he was really the only musician in the house." "In the beginning, it was almost like a separation-type thing." " He's on one side of the house..." " He didn't know we had anything." "...we're on the other." "Everybody walking by during the day, and looking at..." "Seeing each other, don't really know each other, but peeping... and saying, "Well, damn, what is he doing here?"" ""Do you know him, Arthur?" I used to ask Arthur, "Do you know him?"" "And he used to squinch on by real quick with his guitar." "Washing up real quick... 'cause he was kind of timid himself." "And after he squinches on by, we'd look at him like, "Damn!" Checking him out." "Then Fay would walk out of the room, 'cause Fay was his girlfriend at this time." "You all call her "Fayne," I think, but we call her "Fay."" "And she'd walk on out and switch because she was bad herself." "I mean, in her own way." "I think he was justified in his decisions, you know, to cut on out." "If he had never done that, he might've been..." "I don't think it could've happened, but it's possible." "He could've been poking around for years and years, you know... being a side man and a flunky." "He wasn't any of these things." "He was a star when he was there, and they knew it." "That's why they didn't want him to come out and plunk the guitar with his teeth... shake his long process, come near the edge of the stage... and lick his tongue at the girls, 'cause they'd all scream." "They treated him like he was the star and they were the fucking side men." "You know what I mean?" "So, as often as they could... they would kind of keep this quiet, right?" "And after he left... they figured, "Well, it's just another guitar player gone."" "They had no idea he was gonna do what he did." "Jimi Hendrix could play that rock 'n' roll." "I used to be singing rock 'n' roll, going..." "Be gone!" "He'd have that thing romping and tomping all up under my toes." "At times he used to make my big toe shoot up in my boot." "He did it so good." "He give it all to you." "And that's what you want, you want it all or none." "I don't know why we went to the Cheetah." "It was a place I didn't usually go to... but we went this night, and it was a huge, enormous place like a ballroom." "Very few people there... and a sort of regular band playing." "Not very well." "At least, I didn't take any interest in the band at all." "And then suddenly I saw the guitar player... who was playing really quite discreetly in the back row." "And from that moment, I just became completely involved." "He was very naive and very shy... and nervous." "He didn't look at you when he spoke to you." "And he came back to the apartment... and played a lot of Dylan... who Jimi idolized." "He thought Dylan was the greatest." "I said, "Man, you'd better tell me who you spent our last $5 on."" "He wouldn't tell me nothing." "He just kept flashing the thing." "And then he finally took it out of the bag." "He still wouldn't let me read it... but he was reading some of the things it said off it to me up in the air like this." "I didn't recognize anything he said anyway... so I pretended I didn't give a shit." "I went up to the bedroom, and he came in and told me... it was Bob Dylan, you know." "I said, "Bob who?"" ""Bob Dylan." "You never heard of Bob Dylan?"" "I said, "No, I never heard of Bob Dylan."" "I'm saying, "What's with this weird cat?"" "Because, I mean, Bob Dylan was really a genius... but I just couldn't get ready for it." "I figured Jimi was so heavy into what I was into... he would never like anything like that." "But he just loved it to death." "I wanted to get up and go to the bathroom... he would grab me by my arm, you know... like I'm going to miss this part." ""Listen," you know." "Okay, like I couldn't miss it, you know." "You could hear it to 42nd Street, probably, you know." "We almost got put out of the building behind Bob Dylan." "He'd never realized that most... of the recording stars... like Dylan, don't have... an incredible singing voice." "And he would never, ever let anybody watch him putting vocals on." "He was very shy about his voice." "He thought he had the worst voice in the world." "We used to put a line of screens up and we'd stick him behind there." "He'd poke his head out saying, "All right."" "He was very self-conscious about himself." "Very self-conscious about the things that he wore... because he was kind of different, you know, kind of freaky." "Especially in comparison to a lot of the brothers uptown at that time." "So, he was very sensitive to the places that he liked to be." "He figured that most people would tolerate him... a little more over here, down here... because he'd just blend in with the crowd... which he still didn't, because he always stood out." "I told this record producer there was this fantastic... guitar player, singer, man... playing in the Village, and would he come listen to him... because he's really going to like this." "This is a very materialistic man." "And he thought, "Right, good," and he came down." "He thought I was mad." "He did not see what I was talking about." "When he saw Jimi, he thought, "This is nothing."" "Then, eventually, I bumped into Chas Chandler... who I didn't know, but I knew was one of The Animals." "And I think Jimi was getting quite desperate to record... or to at least make another step." "And so Chas came down to see him and was like..." "It was instantaneous." "I mean, there was no question in his mind." "I'd been on the scene a few times with people who'd say:" ""Hendrix is playing at the so-and-so, down in the Village."" "They said, "Oh, yeah." "That's nice."" "You know, blah-blah, just shine it on like it ain't no big thing." "But they had no idea that he was going to run into Chas Chandler or whoever..." "Linda Keith, or somebody, you know, who was gonna really... put the icing on the fucking cake." "It was just a matter of time." "All he had to do was get out of fucking Harlem and go somewhere... where somebody with some bread, who had an eye for talent, you know... wanted to see somebody sure enough do it, that had it." "The stage was set for Jimi, really." "It could have been anyone, but it had to be him." "Because London was just coming into a kind of really heavy soul thing." "The blues boom was dying and it needed someone... to bring it all back to life and sort of cement it together." "I didn't know nothing." "I thought he'd just come out of nowhere." "We just adopted him, we felt, in England, 'cause he was great." "He wasn't big in America and he'd come here." "He'd come to England, and we were there." "He had his first record in England." "He was ours, you know." "First time I ever saw Jimi was in Blaze's Club." "I just went down for a meal one day." "And as I was going in..." "Jeff Beck was coming out." "He came up to me and said, "Have you heard about this guy..." ""that's playing here tonight, Jimi Hendrix?" ""It's a complete disgrace." "He's ripping off all your things."" "So, I thought I had met him before... in the studio, just said hello." "I'd never seen him play." "And I went in and saw him playing... and was completely floored." "Really, just completely..." "Although I could see what Jeff was talking about..." "I could see that, you know, he was doing a lot of guitar... up against the amp and that sort of stuff... which I had felt were very precious trademarks." "He was taking them and doing something else with them." "He'd just got into England and was with his manager, Chas Chandler... and he brought him to this gig." "A guy comes up to Clapton and asks if he can sit in." "I doubt whether Clapton got many people actually coming up... and asking him if they could sit in, because... being the world's greatest guitar player, all the other guitar players... would be super deferential about him." "Anyway, this guy came up and Clapton said, "Yeah."" "The guy plugs his guitar in... starts to play." "Starts to play amazingly." "No one had ever seen anything like it." "He's playing just the fastest, wailingest blues runs... anyone's ever heard." "I think he did a Howlin' Wolf number or something." "But he did his whole routine." "He did the thing with his teeth, playing the guitar with his teeth... and laying it on the floor and playing it behind his head... doing the splits, the whole thing." "It was incredible." "The first time I ever really got any sort of relationship... together with Eric Clapton was when I was sitting at home... and he rang me up and said, "Hello, this is Eric."" "So I said, "Eric who?" He said, "Eric Clapton."" "Never spoken to me before in my life, ever." "He said, "Do you want to come to the pictures?"" ""Oh, sure."" "And we went and saw some strange Italian film, a really good film." "He was really into movies at the time." "During the movie, we started to talk about Jimi Hendrix." "And we decided that we both really liked him." "Suddenly, out of the blue, we had a very strong sort of bond... of friendship, which I think came about..." "Because it ended as soon as Jimi split England." "I think it came about because Jimi threatened us both, in a way." "But at the same time, he also entertained us both." "Chas Chandler, having found Jimi, seeing his potential as a guitar player... then said to himself, "What do I need to do..." ""to make a practical musical unit around him?"" "And then we had a jam session at one club in England, you know... and that's how Mitch, Noel and I got together." "Noel comes down expecting to play guitar, you know." "He was trying for The Animals." "I dug his hairstyle, so we asked him to play bass." "The opening night of some terrible discotheque, you know." "It was when discotheques were all the rage." "And there were a few people." "I went down with Marianne." "He was just amazing." "I mean, he was just amazing." "Blew me head completely off." "I was surprised to get this call from London, England." "I didn't know who would that be coming from." "And here, Jimi, he said to me:" ""Well, Dad, I think I'm on my way to the big time."" "He said, "I'm over here in England now..." ""and they are building up a group around me."" "And he said, "I'm naming it the Jimi Hendrix Experience."" "So I said, "Good for you." ""Just keep your nose clean and keep in there wailing."" "Hey, fantastic sounds!" "Real psychedelic sounds from the Jimi Hendrix Experience." "The boys have got a new one out on March 17... and this one will really take the market by storm." "So let's hear once again, the Jimi Hendrix Experience." "Thank you, man." "Thank you very much." "Where was he, England?" "Some place in Europe." "He stayed there for a couple of years, and then he got pretty famous, you know." "I still hadn't heard about him." "And then he came back." "Then he came back looking very prosperous." "I said, "Damn, Jimi, where did you go, man?"" "He used to talk a lot about the things." "Like, "All of sudden, here I am, a star now."" "It was new and exciting and fun." "We were really enjoying ourselves." "We were hanging out and getting stoned." "We were dancing seven out of seven nights a week." "We were going to lots of gigs." "It was the beginning of the rock affluence that was shared." "The money began to move out into other areas." "It wasn't just the stars who were spending the money." "We were all spending the money." "He spent his money, yeah." "He spent his money... as carelessly as everybody's supposed to spend it." "Murray the Khad a radio show then, and he said:" ""I'm gonna play the new Jimi Hendrix album. "" "And he played it." "We heard this guitar player... who was doing everything that was possible." "I mean, it was just amazing." "I always figured he would make it." "I always figured that, well... maybe he'd be playing around cabarets here and there." "But I didn't know he was gonna make it... so worldwide like he did." "This child ain't did nothing that great, you know what I mean?" "He said, "No, they really do dig me there." "And I got this really nice album." ""I got two cats that play with me and everything."" "And he said, "And I brought you something, too."" "I said, "Bring it when you bring the album."" "I'm thinking he's brought me some fabulous present back from London." ""Jimi, please tell me what it is." And he said:" ""Acid." "Some acid, you know?"" "And I said, "Acid?" I had no idea what he was talking about." "I thought maybe he had a cauldron of acid or something... that he was gonna drop me in." "He looked over to Arthur and Arthur said, "LSD."" "You know, and I said, "Oh, LSD."" "I was trying not to sound too disappointed, you know." "So he popped a couple of them right away." "So I said, "Well, damn!" "Little as Jimi is, if he can take it, I know I can take it."" "So I popped a half and Fay popped a half." "He said, "Here, try a half first."" "I waited for something to come on." "I didn't feel it... so I said, "Okay, Jimi, give me another half."" "He popped two, you know." "So we wind up getting stoned... about after 30 minutes, half an hour of me complaining about:" ""Where's the high?" "Where's the high?"" "About half an hour later we wind up getting tore up, man." "I knew Jimi could take more of anything than we could... because he was already abnormal." "So whatever he took... just brought him back to normal." "Then he gotta start from there, understand?" "So, we knew if he could take a gallon... we'd better take a pint, right?" "He was always into getting high." "He was a little bit scared of drugs." "He distrusted dealers." "He distrusted taking it from anybody he didn't know." "I would always check it out for him... in front of him, so he would be confident that he wasn't... gonna get a bum trip and things." "He just loved to get high." "It was all part of the whole scene." "Like, he played 24 hours a day." "I mean, he was always playing." "You always knew when Hendrix was in town." "He was jamming here, he was jamming there..." "But he was always playing." "Do you consider yourself a disciplined guy?" "Do you get up every day and work?" "Oh, I try to get up every day." "It was just impossible to get any work done because of the hangers-on." "He could never refuse anybody." "He had people hanging in the control rooms..." "He had plenty of women." "As he got up into stardom, you know, he really moved up... in his money, and in his women, of course." "Because one follows the other." "Sorry about that, girls, but..." "If I get up at 7:00 in the morning... and I'm really sleepy, but then I open the door and see somebody... that appeals to me, you know..." "First of all..." "First I say, "What in the world is she doing here?"" "Or, "What does she want?"" "I stand there, she says, "Oh, maybe, could I come in?"" "And I'm standing there and really digging her." "She's really nice looking." "It's the honest to God truth." "And she's about 19, 20, or beyond the age of so-and-so." "So I say, "Oh."" "I'll probably stand there and then there I go." "I'll be biting into an apple, maybe." "I remember the times in clubs when chicks would come... and obviously they've been preparing for half an hour for this big number." "They've got the lipstick on, their courage up, and out they come... and over to the table." "Boom, boom, boom." "The moment anybody would get up... all places at the table were continually full." "You couldn't get up for a second without eight people charging for your chair." "They'd sit down." "By the time they got there... they were so fucking uptight about going through this massive preparation." "What would they say, how would they say it... how would they make the best impression possible?" "They came on like a bunch of snots." "Jimi would turn and say, "Hi, my name is Jimi." "Who are you?"" "And they go..." "I never saw anything like it." "She's spent five years plotting to meet him... and he says, "Hi, my name is Jimi," and you got an attitude?" "He's always wanted to be this big star, but I never got a chance... to see him after he made it." "They would never let me come back." "I used to say, "Why?" "What did I do?"" "I had something to tell him." "And I never did, so now I have to talk about it and let him know." "It was good." "I just wanted to let him know I knew he'd make it." "Yeah." "Yeah, what I say now..." "Yes, as I said before, it's really groovy." "I'd like to bore you for about six or seven minutes and do a little thing." "Excuse me for a minute." "Just let me play my guitar, all right?" "Now I'm gonna do a little thing by Bob Dylan." "That's his grandma over there." "It's a little thing called Like a Rolling Stone." "He fluctuated so fast and so well... from great joy into intense unhappiness." "I mean, suicidal, not interested in life... completely disinterested in his body." "He wanted to tear off his body, you know." "And he did." "But he glorified bodies and flesh and human beings... and women and children and all that." "Can you tell some nights you're just not making it at all?" " Ever want to just walk off?" " That's why I hate compliments." "Compliments are so embarrassing sometimes, 'cause you know the truth." "Sometimes people don't really try to understand." "It's like a circus that might come to town." ""Wow, watch that."" "Soon as they fade away, they go on to feed upon the next thing." "But it's all right." "It's part of life." "I'm digging it myself." "You're considered one of the best guitar players in the world." "Oh, no." "But Jimi was very, very self-conscious." "He came in and said, "How's my hat?" "How does my hat look?"" "We said, "Your hat look all right."" "He said, "You think they'll mind if I..."" "Yeah, "You think they'll mind?"" "Always worrying about what we..." "When I say "we," what the other black people thought." "About his music." "Yeah, about his music and himself, and propaganda that they heard." "And a lot of it was true, but he was experiencing things." "He was going through a lot of changes." "He was a black man in a white man's world." "I mean, it's an extraordinary sort of uptight, white, hetero set... the rock 'n' roll set." "They're all so aggressively normal... with their wives, children, houses, and Jimi doesn't belong to that." "I think Noel wanted to become a lead guitarist, for a start." "Noel was the first one to leave." "He was the first one ever to leave the band." "And then, well, Mitch stayed." "Mitch was happy." "But then it went in a weird way." "It went like, Jimi started bringing in all these musicians... like his old Army buddy, Billy Cox." "Then he brought up, I don't know... a conga player and another guitarist." "That was when we did Woodstock." "Up at that house, there was all these colored guys." "It was a really strange atmosphere." "If he had a group of people that he didn't have to tell what to play... it'd have been another kind of sound, the kind of sound he was looking for." "Somebody that was thinking for themself." "That's the difference right now between the marketing of commercial music... and music of true expression." "He was trying to spread a little joy and love together, to show the world... that the end is not yet." "That I got to take you higher." "Not over some cocaine... or a piece of grass or some heroin." "But Jimi was gonna take them higher than that!" "All I did was play it." "I'm American, so I played it." "I used to have to sing it in school." "It's a flashback, you know." "I don't know who bought it." "This man was in the 101st Airborne so when you write your nasty letters..." "Nasty letters?" "Why?" "You're really trying hard." "When you mention the National Anthem and playing it in any unorthodox way... you immediately get a guaranteed percentage of hate mail..." " saying, "How dare anyone..."" " That's not unorthodox." " It isn't unorthodox?" " No." "I thought it was beautiful." "But then, there you go." "Don't you find that there's a certain mad beauty in unorthodoxy?" "Yeah!" "Yeah, it was probably the same for him as it is for The Who... because I know Pete gets very frustrated... although he likes to do it." "He knows that the audiences..." "Half of the point they go to see them, as much as the music... is to see him smash his guitar, you know." "I think that must be a terrible sort of expectation to live up to all the time." "I don't know much about it, because I never went that far out in an act." "What hangs performers up, I think, is playing the same numbers." "It's not doing the same act or the same type of act... but playing that number and at that point in the number doing this." "If you don't do it or if you don't smash your amp up at the end... people get disappointed." "I know how that feels." "I don't care, man." "I don't care what they say anymore." "It's up to them." "If they want to mess up the evening... by looking at one thing." "You know, because all that is included, man." "When I feel like playing with my teeth, I do it because I feel like it, you know." "All that is complete..." "When I'm onstage, I'm completely natural... more so than talking to a group of people or something." "Black radio didn't want to play Jimi Hendrix's music because they said... not did only his music not relate, but the people that went... to see Jimi Hendrix was not the crowd that would listen to a black station." "Then, on most of the white pop stations, they said it was too hard... and that he wasn't relating to that audience." "Then you'd go to a concert and it was standing room only." "He wasn't much of a color talker, because..." "The way he lived..." "He grew up down in Seattle." "I remember one time we was walking towards Eighth Street." "I was telling you this the other day." "And, Albert, we was rapping about a few things, you know... that was wrong with the studio." "So, there was this guy selling Black Panther papers." "He said, "Black Panther, brother." You understand?" "So, I was walking by, because my head was somewhere else at the time." "My head was probably involved with my music." "But Jimi picked up on it, picked up on our vibes." "So the first thing he did was he bought the paper." " First thing, right." " So, Albert and I looked at each other." "So the guy said, so the Panther said, "Oh, wow, brothers!" ""Jimi Hendrix buying a paper, Black Panther paper, and y'all are not?"" "So we say, "Yeah, well, Jimi Hendrix bought a paper 'cause he wanted a paper." ""We don't." But then Jimi looked at us..." "He looked at us as though the reason he bought the paper was to impress us." "Mitch and I had left." "We went back to England... and Jimi got that Band of Gypsies thing together." "Buddy Miles, Billy Cox." "And Mitch and I completely missed out on all that." "And we sort of just hung out." "Next thing you knew, we was really close." "I mean super close." "We was running together, you know... going down to the scene in New York... jamming and, you know, seeing everybody... and just having a good time." "And then just all of a sudden just..." "His music, to me, was entertaining, as was his stage act, for that matter." "But the thing was, he was such a bitching guitar player... that, you know, that was enough." "The other thing was distracting from it, and I think he realized that... and wanted to get out of that, and get people to just listen to the music." "There's no way that you can explain to people in the state of Washington... or the guys that Jimi was in the Army with... or the poor black cats trying desperately to get it together... that he was not having a good time." "It wasn't that every day was a misery and a torture." "But in a situation... where it appears as if you've got the best of all possible worlds... in order to get on like you were, the discovery that none of that was true... and to make a tenth of that true, you had to fight all day long... is something that you can't explain." "Most people assume:" ""If I only had $10,000, everything would be cool." ""If I only had this, this, and this, I could get it on really well."" "Another thing that Jimi discovered is that it isn't true." "I mean, he was poor, he was starving... he was fucked-up, he needed a break badly." "He had a really fucking hard time." "Much harder than I even know about or most of us even have a clue." "As it got better and better..." "First you go along on that trip, and begin to get what you want." "You're getting more money, guitars, recognition, your songs recorded." "Then you arrive at this particular position where... ideally, logically and legally you are entitled... to have everything you need in order to get your thing on." "And you begin to discover that that's not true." "That you are expected to produce this under any kind of circumstances... that other people pick and choose for you." "There's no end to what he could have done." "But the situation that he got placed in... through either his record company, the management... the promoters, the publicity men, all those guys you've gotta deal with... who were saying, "Hey, Jimi, we've gotta tour." ""And you're here, here, here." ""X number of people aren't coming in." "You better do this..." ""because your account is at X." ""You invested in Electric Ladyland..." ""and maybe this isn't working or that is working."" "So, I think he had all these pressures on him, you know." "You're not supposed to deal with that." "You're supposed to make music." "Someone said, it's hard to sing the blues when you're making that kind of money." "This assumes that 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 all this money." "'Cause money is getting to be out of hand now, you know." "Musicians, especially young cats, they get a chance... to make all this money and say, "This is fantastic!"" "Like I said, they lose themselves and forget about the music itself." "They forget about their talents, and 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." "A lot of things was going on around him that he didn't like... and he always wondered, "What is the method?" ""How do you straighten out these things going on..." ""without hurting people?" "You know, getting violent."" "I said, "Damn, it's damn near impossible." You know?" "We ciphered it out, if it has to be ciphered out..." " that "might is right."" " Sometimes right." "You know, "might is right," and he was mighty." "He was the king, and his castle was getting fucked up all around him." "But he was the king of the castle." "All he cared about was survival, you know, and peace of mind." "And that was the hardest thing in the world for him to get, man." "The hardest thing in the world." "Because people wouldn't leave him alone." "Those who didn't mean him no good wouldn't leave him alone." "The people that could do him some good, they wouldn't do it... in the manner that it would do him some good." "As far as I'm concerned, the easiest thing to do... is to leave somebody alone." "But they just wouldn't leave him alone, before and after." "No, I'd rather do it again." "Hey, could we just do that one more time?" "Hey, don't waste all that film there." "Stop it for a second." "'Cause I was scared to death." "Can I do it one more time?" " Can I just do it one more time?" " Go ahead." "Can you think I'd do that?" "Whenever I saw him, there was always at least four people... sort of dragging him from one side of the room to the other." "It just seemed as though he couldn't keep up, you know." "I don't know what it was." "I can't see why he couldn't have got away from them at some point... but he was so gullible." "It was so easy for people to take him in... and sort of con him, you know?" "That was the best part of his nature, really." "It was a kind of innocence that he had... but it was the thing that everybody preyed on." "He took on what he wanted to take on." "There's no mistake about that." "No matter whatever went down." ""There's these people and leeches around me."" "And there was a load of lingers-on, a load of leeches." "There always were." "He knew what he was taking on." "He knew what he was letting himself in for... otherwise he wouldn't have got involved, because he wasn't a naive man." "It must be awful to live like that, all by yourself." "You're totally isolated and it wasn't..." "The poor old Beatles were isolated... because thousands would've crushed them to death... ripped their cocks out just so they could take them home... and steal their shoes." "That was something else." "Once that kind of crowd hysteria passes... the actual physical danger begins to pass... you realize what isolationism is." "It means that you have no one to talk to particularly." "You have no one to exchange any ideas with." "And particularly if you see the world... in a particular way that's relevant to you... which other people can identify with... the music and whatever." "I mean, it's a terrible situation to be in because you can't grow." "In a general sort of way, I think I put it down... to the impotence of the community that he played for." "Because we had no way of making him understand how much we loved him... or what he was doing meant to us at all." "He knew what the press said, what the publicity said, what the hype was." "But he didn't know how much we needed him... or what kind of energy he was giving us at all." "There is a space between the artist and the public... once the artist is an established artist." "The public expects the artist... to do something that he saw him do six months or a year ago." "But six months or a year ago is an image... which, if it's still alive in the eye of the public... it's a forgotten image in the memory of the artist." "So there is a space there." "He didn't feel like dressing the same way." "He didn't play the same kind of music." "The effect he had on English musicians, not just guitarists, but all musicians... was just phenomenal." "People, no, everybody liked him." "They liked him probably, but they were jealous." "So, he was very controversial for a long time." "But I think everyone came around in the end." "It sort of changed the music scene completely." "I think in many respects he changed the sound of rock... far more than The Beatles, you know." "They brought songwriting to rock 'n' roll... but Jimi changed the sound of the guitar." "He turned it into an instrument, which..." "All right, people like Buddy Guy and T-Bone Walker... and Chuck Berry had done previous to that." "But none had ever brought it out and sold it to the public... and sold it to people like me, who now believe in it as an instrument." "People like Eric Clapton were too ethnic." "They kept to themselves and they had fixed groups." "But Jimi was unashamedly outward... and wanted to reach as many people as possible." "You can say a million things, you know, and people have done." "I don't want to say no more." "I mean, I just thought Jimi was a great guitar player." "I thought he was the best, or the most original." "I thought he had a really original act, you know, and that's all, man." "I don't know nothing about his business, whether he was a casualty..." "I don't know, I wish he was still here, and that's it." "He always felt he wouldn't live long, like he was burning himself out." "But most black people do, anyway... feel as though they're being burnt out." "Like there's a fuse that's in everybody, you know... and everybody knows the limit of their fuse, or how much... how fast it's going." "But when that fuse..." "Most black people's fuses is fast anyway." "They got a fast fuse because of the things around them." "Believe it or not, even you have a fast fuse." "We all have fast fuses, you know, living in this generation." "And this shit, or those of us who are living in it." "If you're not, I'm not talking to you, but if you are, that's who I'm talking to." "He was getting ready to go on to another phase, you know." "I think a lot of people who were close to him... saw that he was getting ready to go through another phase... that would have been a strong change, and it would've been a different Jimi." "And so, as far as that transition, it happened, you know." "And like... in our discussions about death... in the past..." "You can look at his work, his writings." "Just read them." "Don't even try to sing them, but read what he had to say." "You know that his..." "I was shocked, but it was no surprise." "He was in love with everything, with life, with music, with himself... with the people around him, you know." "Give a lot and take a lot." "He was no more destructive than any other great talent, you know." "And he didn't destroy himself... more than the guy who's in an airplane that explodes." "I mean, who knows how destructive you are when you are part of an accident?" "We don't know that." "So I stopped immediately to call the ambulance." "While I was waiting for the ambulance, I was checking Jimi's pulse... which I had learned because I had a lot of operations... and his pulse was normal." "He was breathing normally, but he was..." "Just that he was sick and I couldn't get him awake." "I tried." "While the other type of sleep, the light sleep is coming upon you... there's two sockets where you can go into." "One socket is death and one socket is the socket to live, you know." "This is how I always felt." "I think they call that an alpha jerk." "You can get an alpha jerk." "An alpha jerk is when..." "Have you ever felt as though:" ""Oh, wow, I'm going into the wrong hole here."" "And you really feel funny." "You feel like that possibly is the hole to die." "And the other side is the side to sleep and get into your subconscious... and sleep, which is what we normally go into." "I believe that Jimi possibly could've... got into his alpha-jerk feel... and it kind of felt groovy to him... because he was high, slightly high, and he said:" ""Damn, you know, I'm Jimi Hendrix." "I wonder if I can die?"" "You know?" "And the alpha jerk came on him and he said:" ""Fuck it, let me try the alpha," and slipped on out." "You know?" "And, another way he could have died..." "I always felt, was... dying out of pure frustration." "Just saying, you know, "Fuck it."" "His music is infinite." "It'll last, you know." "He's a virtuoso, he's a master, he's a great spirit." "You've heard everybody say that." "And what I say, or what two or three or 10 people say don't really matter... because his music is there, alive forever." "Nobody can change that." "We'll get outdated." "He won't." "Thank you for being so patient." "Maybe one of these days we'll join again." "I really hope so." "Thank you very much." "Peace and happiness and all that other bullshit." "English"