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1
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Hendrix was a major part
of my background.
2
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Jimi Hendrix grew on me very quickly.
3
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- Who?
- I don't think I'd ever heard of him.
4
00:02:17,737 --> 00:02:19,204
I like his first album the best.
5
00:02:19,272 --> 00:02:22,574
Oh, yeah. I remember him.
6
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He used to play on a broom.
7
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He could just make the guitar talk.
8
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There was something different about him.
9
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I was pretty good at it,
but I wasn't as good at it as he was.
10
00:02:32,218 --> 00:02:35,420
This guy is just unbelievable.
11
00:02:35,488 --> 00:02:36,989
It was a sight to behold.
12
00:02:37,056 --> 00:02:38,423
He's just so cool.
13
00:02:38,491 --> 00:02:40,025
Jimi Hendrix was outstanding.
14
00:02:40,093 --> 00:02:42,027
Because he could blow you offthe stage.
15
00:02:42,095 --> 00:02:46,899
It was Jimi in front of
a sort of mediocre rhythm section.
16
00:02:46,966 --> 00:02:48,467
He didn't need much.
17
00:02:48,535 --> 00:02:51,003
He who plays loudest gets noticed.
18
00:02:51,070 --> 00:02:52,604
No one could follow Hendrix.
19
00:02:59,712 --> 00:03:02,581
Chas Chandler, right,
English guy in New York
20
00:03:02,649 --> 00:03:05,517
runs into a black guitar player in a bar
21
00:03:05,585 --> 00:03:09,454
and there's this whole electric-guitar
explosion going on in London,
22
00:03:09,522 --> 00:03:12,691
so he flies this guy back to London
where he's treated like a god
23
00:03:12,759 --> 00:03:14,993
because he can play guitar
and he's black,
24
00:03:15,061 --> 00:03:17,229
which all the white English guys
wanted to be.
25
00:03:17,297 --> 00:03:22,034
Chas was offto New York.
Met Linda Keith.
26
00:03:22,101 --> 00:03:25,304
Linda Keith said there's this guy
27
00:03:25,371 --> 00:03:29,141
who really deserves to be heard
more than he is,
28
00:03:29,209 --> 00:03:30,809
and I think you should see him.
29
00:03:30,877 --> 00:03:33,512
He said, ''There's this guy
called Chas Chandler.''
30
00:03:33,580 --> 00:03:35,247
''He wants to take me to England.''
31
00:03:35,315 --> 00:03:38,717
England was probably the first time
he'd ever been abroad.
32
00:03:38,785 --> 00:03:40,452
Actually, that's not quite true.
33
00:03:40,520 --> 00:03:44,957
He was in the Paratroop Regiment
in Vietnam.
34
00:03:45,024 --> 00:03:48,160
But that was a completely
different experience.
35
00:03:48,228 --> 00:03:52,598
Offto London with Terry McVay,
my road manager,
36
00:03:52,665 --> 00:03:58,770
and my old friend carrying Hendrix's
guitar through customs and immigration,
37
00:03:58,838 --> 00:04:03,141
so that they wouldn't suspect him
of coming in to work,
38
00:04:03,209 --> 00:04:08,614
and he was immediately taken
to Zoot Money's house,
39
00:04:08,681 --> 00:04:11,250
because that's where we all hung out,
40
00:04:11,317 --> 00:04:15,320
and we felt that he would be
most comfortable there.
41
00:04:15,388 --> 00:04:18,023
And, by the way,
did I have a guitar in the house?
42
00:04:18,091 --> 00:04:23,161
He was going to take him
to the Bag O'Nails or one ofthe clubs
43
00:04:23,229 --> 00:04:24,863
and have him sit in.
44
00:04:24,931 --> 00:04:28,734
So minutes later
or half an hour later,
45
00:04:28,801 --> 00:04:31,103
they turned up
and that's where I met Jimi.
46
00:04:31,170 --> 00:04:33,672
And the first I knew
that there was something going on
47
00:04:33,740 --> 00:04:36,875
was when they started a jam session
right underneath my bedroom.
48
00:04:36,943 --> 00:04:40,379
There was this banging and crashing
going on.
49
00:04:40,446 --> 00:04:43,348
Ronnie, Zoot's wife, came up and said,
50
00:04:43,416 --> 00:04:46,885
''God, you should see this guy that
Chas has brought back from America.''
51
00:04:46,953 --> 00:04:49,288
''He looks like the Wild Man of Borneo!''
52
00:04:49,355 --> 00:04:56,028
''They want to change my name to Jimi.
J-I-M-I instead of J-I-M-M-Y.''
53
00:04:56,095 --> 00:04:58,764
''Jimi Hendrix.
It sounds more English.''
54
00:05:22,488 --> 00:05:26,658
Jimi had been in England for ten days
when he jammed with Eric Clapton.
55
00:05:26,726 --> 00:05:28,527
What kind of courage would that take?
56
00:05:28,594 --> 00:05:33,632
It was the Students' Union
at the London Polytechnic.
57
00:05:33,700 --> 00:05:35,500
Chas brought him to see us play.
58
00:05:35,568 --> 00:05:40,072
And Chas said to me, ''Can you
ask the band if Jimi can sit in?''
59
00:05:40,139 --> 00:05:42,107
Well, nobody had ever sat in with Cream.
60
00:05:42,175 --> 00:05:44,009
No one had ever asked to jam with them.
61
00:05:44,077 --> 00:05:46,378
They were shocked
that someone had asked.
62
00:05:46,446 --> 00:05:50,549
This guy shows up, you know,
and asked to play.
63
00:05:50,616 --> 00:05:54,353
And he looks like
he might know what he's on about.
64
00:05:54,420 --> 00:05:57,789
Ginger Baker didn't seem...
The other two didn't seem so keen.
65
00:05:57,857 --> 00:06:03,161
But because Chas was one ofthe guys,
they reluctantly agreed.
66
00:06:03,229 --> 00:06:05,464
He went on stage,
I plugged him into Eric's amp.
67
00:06:05,531 --> 00:06:08,333
He did the Howlin' Wolf song,
Killing Floor,
68
00:06:08,401 --> 00:06:10,502
which is very difficult to play.
69
00:06:10,570 --> 00:06:13,872
It's got a very tricky bass line.
You need to know what you're doing.
70
00:06:13,940 --> 00:06:16,174
And I thought,
''This guy's a player!''
71
00:06:18,344 --> 00:06:19,845
Everyone was speechless!
72
00:06:22,248 --> 00:06:24,783
They were all sort of...
Chas was grinning.
73
00:06:26,519 --> 00:06:28,854
And it left them reeling a bit.
74
00:06:28,921 --> 00:06:31,923
They thought they were going
to get some two-bitjunior up there
75
00:06:31,991 --> 00:06:33,925
who was going to spoil their first gig,
76
00:06:33,993 --> 00:06:37,562
who's a sort of amateur guitar player.
77
00:06:37,630 --> 00:06:40,932
But he was a fully developed
musical personality already.
78
00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:43,969
The balls and courage that it took...
Jimi was in the audience.
79
00:06:44,036 --> 00:06:46,772
It wasn't like he was backstage
and anyone knew who he was.
80
00:06:46,839 --> 00:06:50,475
He was literally an audience member.
They said, ''Can this guyjam with you?''
81
00:06:50,543 --> 00:06:54,045
And partially because of his race,
they said, ''OK, I guess.''
82
00:06:54,113 --> 00:06:57,349
And he plugs in
and he wipes Cream offthe stage!
83
00:06:57,417 --> 00:07:01,453
Probably the only one... I've seen
Buddy Guy, I've seen Little Walter,
84
00:07:01,521 --> 00:07:04,556
I've seen Matt Murphy with Memphis Slim,
85
00:07:04,624 --> 00:07:06,691
I've seen Muddy Waters, I've seen...
86
00:07:06,759 --> 00:07:10,695
But this is a young guy
doing what they do,
87
00:07:10,763 --> 00:07:13,832
but he's kind of somehow
brought it into this decade.
88
00:07:13,900 --> 00:07:18,270
Suddenly appearing fully fledged,
ready to take over,
89
00:07:18,337 --> 00:07:21,640
I think people began to take themselves
a bit more seriously
90
00:07:21,707 --> 00:07:24,976
and not take anything
for granted any more,
91
00:07:25,044 --> 00:07:27,712
because he could blow you offthe stage,
Hendrix.
92
00:07:28,648 --> 00:07:30,916
They got the show oftheir lives,
I'll tell you.
93
00:07:30,983 --> 00:07:36,421
It made them sit up and take notice,
that's for sure.
94
00:07:36,489 --> 00:07:40,425
One ofthe reasons why he was embraced
in England the way that he was
95
00:07:40,493 --> 00:07:43,228
was because all the great
rock 'n' roll guitar players
96
00:07:43,296 --> 00:07:44,729
were coming out of England.
97
00:07:44,797 --> 00:07:47,299
And he knew about every one ofthem.
98
00:07:47,366 --> 00:07:50,735
He was very well versed on his peers.
99
00:07:51,504 --> 00:07:56,007
One time I met him
which has always stuck in my mind
100
00:07:56,075 --> 00:07:57,342
and is a very vivid memory
101
00:07:57,410 --> 00:08:02,113
was him coming down to the Speakeasy
in Margaret Street,
102
00:08:02,181 --> 00:08:06,485
where all the musicians used to go
and hang out and play.
103
00:08:06,552 --> 00:08:11,122
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers,
including me at the time, obviously,
104
00:08:11,190 --> 00:08:13,525
were playing down there
and he came down.
105
00:08:13,593 --> 00:08:17,762
He decided he wanted to sit in
and have a play.
106
00:08:17,830 --> 00:08:22,200
There was...
I was the only guitar player.
107
00:08:22,268 --> 00:08:25,770
So instead of him sitting in,
I just gave him my Les Paul.
108
00:08:25,838 --> 00:08:31,443
And he turned my Les Paul upside down,
because he's left-handed,
109
00:08:31,511 --> 00:08:35,714
and fiddled around
with the toggle switch a little bit
110
00:08:35,781 --> 00:08:42,287
and he just starting playing the most
incredible blues guitar I've ever heard.
111
00:08:42,355 --> 00:08:46,758
It was just soaring and singing.
112
00:08:46,826 --> 00:08:51,229
And I was just absolutely amazed
by this.
113
00:08:51,297 --> 00:08:53,365
No one knew who he was.
Word just passed.
114
00:08:53,432 --> 00:08:56,501
''There's this great African-American guy
playing at the club.''
115
00:08:56,569 --> 00:08:59,604
''You've got go see him.''
It was word of mouth.
116
00:08:59,672 --> 00:09:02,007
It wasn't notices in the newspaper
at that point.
117
00:09:02,074 --> 00:09:05,176
It was mostly musicians too,
who were going to these clubs.
118
00:09:05,244 --> 00:09:09,047
When people think about that scene,
yes, London was a happening place,
119
00:09:09,115 --> 00:09:11,616
but most ofthese clubs
held 200-300 people.
120
00:09:11,684 --> 00:09:14,920
It wasn't like thousands of people
were seeing these performances.
121
00:09:14,987 --> 00:09:18,256
It was a dozen musicians,
but they all knew somebody else.
122
00:09:18,324 --> 00:09:21,860
I was in the Scotch of St James's
one night.
123
00:09:25,631 --> 00:09:28,266
Chas Chandler was there
124
00:09:28,334 --> 00:09:33,305
with this guy with this
freaked-out hairdo and some Levi's on.
125
00:09:33,372 --> 00:09:35,507
Chas, as it turned out,
126
00:09:35,575 --> 00:09:40,779
was taking him around these clubs
that there were in London.
127
00:09:40,846 --> 00:09:45,684
There were some semi-private clubs
in the '60s that everybody frequented.
128
00:09:45,751 --> 00:09:47,452
Everybody would hang out together.
129
00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:53,792
It was great how musicians
from that era all joined hands,
130
00:09:53,859 --> 00:09:56,027
and all kinds of bands came out of it.
131
00:09:56,095 --> 00:10:01,066
London specifically was quite,
as they say, happening.
132
00:10:02,635 --> 00:10:05,837
But here and there,among the conformist fatcat crowds,
133
00:10:05,905 --> 00:10:10,308
is a lean cat or two, looking like itmight swing, given some encouragement.
134
00:10:16,582 --> 00:10:19,351
And in among the chain storesand supermarkets,
135
00:10:19,418 --> 00:10:23,822
is here and there a shop thatmay have something all its own to say
136
00:10:23,889 --> 00:10:27,392
to the character who can send upa mass-production car,
137
00:10:27,460 --> 00:10:30,395
to people who can put ''living''before ''a living''.
138
00:10:32,431 --> 00:10:34,899
World's End meanswhere the King's Road ends,
139
00:10:34,967 --> 00:10:37,902
which shows what the King's Roadersthink of themselves.
140
00:10:37,970 --> 00:10:41,873
Many different types of art forms
were all intermingling together,
141
00:10:41,941 --> 00:10:44,376
and the same thing
was happening with music.
142
00:10:44,443 --> 00:10:47,445
A lot oftimes, you'd stop by
other people's sessions,
143
00:10:47,513 --> 00:10:51,750
and just through other people,
you kind of got to know each other.
144
00:10:51,817 --> 00:10:55,186
It was a real small community in a way.
145
00:10:55,254 --> 00:10:58,256
There were only a certain number
of clubs everybody went to.
146
00:10:58,324 --> 00:11:02,794
You could go into the Scotch
of St James's or the Bag O'Nails,
147
00:11:02,862 --> 00:11:08,299
but you'd walk in there
and there could be McCartney and Lennon
148
00:11:08,367 --> 00:11:10,902
or Jagger and somebody else,
149
00:11:10,970 --> 00:11:13,538
and this band or that band,
whatever was going on.
150
00:11:13,606 --> 00:11:17,208
At that time, every week
there was a new act coming up.
151
00:11:18,177 --> 00:11:21,312
We were just thrown together.
We weren't friends, we'd never met.
152
00:11:21,380 --> 00:11:24,282
It was one ofthose things,
three guys being thrown together.
153
00:11:24,350 --> 00:11:26,951
''You're a group now,
see what you can sort out.''
154
00:11:27,019 --> 00:11:29,954
They had to get them together
pretty quickly.
155
00:11:30,022 --> 00:11:34,659
And I remember going to see
the auditions, going...
156
00:11:34,727 --> 00:11:39,831
There was Aynsley Dunbar,
Mitch Mitchell.
157
00:11:39,899 --> 00:11:42,734
With Aynsley and Mitch,
they couldn't decide which one,
158
00:11:42,802 --> 00:11:47,272
so they tossed a coin in the back
of a taxi and it fell for Mitch.
159
00:11:47,339 --> 00:11:50,742
Noel, I was there for Noel
at the Birdland.
160
00:11:50,810 --> 00:11:53,645
He'd gone for an audition
with the New Animals,
161
00:11:53,713 --> 00:11:55,146
and ended up with a job.
162
00:11:55,214 --> 00:11:57,716
And I remember Chas saying,
''Can you play the bass?''
163
00:11:57,783 --> 00:12:01,920
And he went, ''Well, I'm not really
a bass player. I could try.''
164
00:12:01,987 --> 00:12:04,355
He said, ''Well, here, try!''
And that was it.
165
00:12:04,423 --> 00:12:05,990
He said, ''OK, got the job.''
166
00:12:06,058 --> 00:12:09,994
''As long as you can play a steady
bass line,'' that's what he said.
167
00:12:12,465 --> 00:12:15,567
As luck would have it,
Jimi was spotted at one of his gigs
168
00:12:15,634 --> 00:12:19,137
by the Elvis of France,
AKA Johnny Hallyday.
169
00:12:19,205 --> 00:12:20,772
Johnny was extremely impressed
170
00:12:20,840 --> 00:12:24,175
and insisted Jimi support him
on his French tour.
171
00:12:25,578 --> 00:12:27,378
Chas quickly threw a group together,
172
00:12:27,446 --> 00:12:31,249
and after being a group for only a week
and barely knowing each other,
173
00:12:31,317 --> 00:12:34,552
the trio were carted off
by Chas Chandler to France.
174
00:12:36,922 --> 00:12:40,792
The tour hit Paris
for a sold-out show at the Olympia.
175
00:12:40,860 --> 00:12:43,561
The audience was there
to see the Elvis of France.
176
00:12:44,864 --> 00:12:48,533
They got the shock oftheir lives
with Jimi's cover of Wild Thiig.
177
00:12:48,601 --> 00:12:51,836
Everybody sing, alright?
You, yeah, that's right.
178
00:13:19,732 --> 00:13:23,735
High on success, the Experience
headed back to England for more.
179
00:13:24,770 --> 00:13:28,339
They started to manage to book them
into sort of small gigs,
180
00:13:28,407 --> 00:13:31,142
pubs and small venues,
181
00:13:31,210 --> 00:13:35,013
until the first record
came out, HeyJoe.
182
00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:36,714
And then that got to number six,
183
00:13:36,782 --> 00:13:40,218
because they all ran around
buying them up in all the shops.
184
00:13:40,286 --> 00:13:43,721
Once he had that hit record,
they could push the price up
185
00:13:43,789 --> 00:13:46,024
and get better gigs,
and so on and so forth.
186
00:13:46,091 --> 00:13:48,059
And that's how it really got started.
187
00:13:48,127 --> 00:13:53,932
But young people were just beginning
to break out ofthe 1940s after the war
188
00:13:53,999 --> 00:13:55,266
and do their own thing,
189
00:13:55,334 --> 00:13:59,704
and it was a burgeoning musical scene.
190
00:13:59,772 --> 00:14:02,173
And it was very small.
191
00:14:02,241 --> 00:14:04,943
Everybody knew each other,
everybody knew everybody,
192
00:14:05,010 --> 00:14:06,778
everyone went to the same clubs,
193
00:14:06,846 --> 00:14:11,249
for example, the Scotch of St James's,
which is where Jimi first played,
194
00:14:11,317 --> 00:14:12,884
went the first night.
195
00:14:12,952 --> 00:14:17,088
They had acts there like Sonny & Cher.
196
00:14:17,156 --> 00:14:21,893
You had the American groups
and bands and whatever coming in.
197
00:14:21,961 --> 00:14:25,864
They met all the English ones
and they all got on very well together,
198
00:14:25,931 --> 00:14:29,400
so there were lots of parties
and things were going on.
199
00:14:29,468 --> 00:14:33,271
But whether here at Tilesor here at the Bag O'Nails
200
00:14:33,339 --> 00:14:36,174
or at Samantha's or George'sor the Saddle Room,
201
00:14:36,242 --> 00:14:39,110
or any of the in gaffs where they go,
202
00:14:39,178 --> 00:14:43,081
just don't take any of it too seriouslyor you'll miss the whole point.
203
00:14:44,149 --> 00:14:50,021
At that time, everyone
was very conscious of fashion.
204
00:14:52,625 --> 00:14:56,761
The music industry,
which was sort of forming at that time,
205
00:14:56,829 --> 00:14:59,931
were sort of hanging out
at the Speakeasy,
206
00:14:59,999 --> 00:15:05,103
and we used to go down during the day
to the Chelsea Market.
207
00:15:05,170 --> 00:15:11,109
And everyone was buying Edwardian,
Victorian clothes, male and female,
208
00:15:11,176 --> 00:15:13,878
and basically dressing up,
meeting at the Speakeasy.
209
00:15:13,946 --> 00:15:16,981
There was this shop
called Granny Takes a Trip
210
00:15:17,049 --> 00:15:21,386
and that was the meeting point
for a lot ofthose artists
211
00:15:21,453 --> 00:15:23,288
that lived around the Chelsea area.
212
00:15:23,355 --> 00:15:26,758
Granny Takes a Tripthe shop behind the face calls itself,
213
00:15:26,825 --> 00:15:28,927
and it's typical of the non-typical,
214
00:15:28,994 --> 00:15:31,896
conforming tothe non-conformist image of the in,
215
00:15:31,964 --> 00:15:33,531
what they used to call ''way out''.
216
00:15:33,599 --> 00:15:36,200
And before that, ''with it'',and before that, ''groovy'',
217
00:15:36,268 --> 00:15:37,402
and before that, ''hep'',
218
00:15:37,469 --> 00:15:41,072
and what Granny herselfwould havecalled ''the very latest thing, my dear''.
219
00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:50,715
There was this shop
called Lord Kitchener's Valet,
220
00:15:50,783 --> 00:15:53,451
that started in the Portobello Road,
221
00:15:53,519 --> 00:15:56,087
and Mick Jagger bought a jacket,
222
00:15:56,155 --> 00:16:01,592
and, of course, Jimi bought a jacket
and I in fact bought a jacket.
223
00:16:40,099 --> 00:16:43,434
The first time I saw Jimi Hendrix
was at the Seven and a Half Club.
224
00:16:43,502 --> 00:16:46,037
It was the opening night for the club,
225
00:16:46,105 --> 00:16:49,540
and he'd agreed,
for a small sum of£40 a night,
226
00:16:49,608 --> 00:16:52,377
to play there as long
as he could rehearse his band.
227
00:16:52,444 --> 00:16:54,545
I'm sitting there
in the Seven and a Half Club
228
00:16:54,613 --> 00:16:58,816
next to Paul McCartney,
Brian Jones, the Beatles.
229
00:16:58,884 --> 00:17:02,754
I was just absolutely amazed
at the turnout.
230
00:17:02,821 --> 00:17:09,360
And suddenly,
the atmosphere was just electric,
231
00:17:09,428 --> 00:17:14,766
and lights dimmed and Jimi
literallyjumped on this small stage
232
00:17:14,833 --> 00:17:18,136
wearing this fantastic
hussar's militaryjacket
233
00:17:18,203 --> 00:17:20,605
and went straight into Wild Thiig.
234
00:17:36,955 --> 00:17:39,290
I showed up at the Marquee one day
235
00:17:39,358 --> 00:17:41,692
to support Cliff Bennett
and the Rebel Rousers,
236
00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:49,067
and there was this band rehearsing
on the stage and trying to learn a song.
237
00:17:49,134 --> 00:17:51,636
And the guitarist was black,
238
00:17:51,703 --> 00:17:54,906
and there was a couple
of other scruffy looking guys,
239
00:17:54,973 --> 00:17:56,574
and they were trying to learn...
240
00:18:00,612 --> 00:18:02,980
And Noel Redding just couldn't get it.
241
00:18:03,048 --> 00:18:05,817
I thought, ''Oh, God.
Give me the fucking bass.''
242
00:18:05,884 --> 00:18:10,154
Noel was relatively unknown.
He'd never even played bass before.
243
00:18:10,222 --> 00:18:12,256
He says the first time
he ever played bass
244
00:18:12,324 --> 00:18:14,025
was the audition with Jimi Hendrix.
245
00:18:14,093 --> 00:18:17,562
So I went out to the front and
saw Jack Barry, the assistant manager.
246
00:18:17,629 --> 00:18:22,366
I said, ''Why is this band...
You don't have bands rehearsing here.''
247
00:18:22,434 --> 00:18:26,504
He said, ''They're supposed to be here.
In fact, they're the headliners.''
248
00:18:26,572 --> 00:18:28,506
And so I went, ''Oh, dear.''
249
00:18:29,741 --> 00:18:34,645
And there's Jack Barry taking ten-bob
notes hand over fist from people.
250
00:18:34,713 --> 00:18:38,449
And there was a sea of people
trying to get in there,
251
00:18:38,517 --> 00:18:41,519
and as I passed,
I said, ''Jack, what's going on?''
252
00:18:41,587 --> 00:18:43,087
He goes, ''I don't know!''
253
00:18:44,656 --> 00:18:46,824
''It seems a lot of people
are coming here.''
254
00:18:46,892 --> 00:18:50,228
I said, ''I saw them rehearsing
and they couldn't learn five notes.''
255
00:18:50,295 --> 00:18:54,332
''It took them 15 minutes and then
they dropped it from the set tonight.''
256
00:18:54,399 --> 00:18:59,604
And I looked there
at the fucking 60 people sitting there.
257
00:18:59,671 --> 00:19:01,772
All ofthe Beatles.
258
00:19:03,208 --> 00:19:04,976
Most ofthe Stones.
259
00:19:08,981 --> 00:19:14,952
Keith Moon, Pete Townshend,
Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton.
260
00:19:15,020 --> 00:19:20,958
Every one of my heroes
was sitting down in the first row.
261
00:19:21,026 --> 00:19:25,096
The first floor is chock-a-block.
All the Beatles.
262
00:19:25,164 --> 00:19:30,468
All my heroes were watching my band
open for a black guy who can't play.
263
00:19:30,536 --> 00:19:37,775
And Hendrix came on and I have never
in my life witnessed so much power.
264
00:19:37,843 --> 00:19:42,813
That's the power
that I think Jimi Hendrix had.
265
00:19:44,283 --> 00:19:47,952
Notjust over musicians and fans
and people who buy his records,
266
00:19:48,020 --> 00:19:51,322
but over the guitar gods and the icons
267
00:19:51,390 --> 00:19:55,760
who were going, ''Hey, man,
this guy's burning us in our backyard.''
268
00:19:55,827 --> 00:19:57,528
''We better go check him out.''
269
00:19:57,596 --> 00:20:00,498
They were in awe of his feedback,
of course, immediately.
270
00:20:00,566 --> 00:20:05,336
You could see the look on Clapton's
face was, ''This changes everything!''
271
00:20:05,737 --> 00:20:11,375
I thought, ''What was that band I saw
rehearsing? This is not that band.''
272
00:20:12,077 --> 00:20:15,313
''This is some guy
who's like from heaven,
273
00:20:15,380 --> 00:20:17,148
who's just come down here,
274
00:20:17,216 --> 00:20:20,418
and the drummer and the bass player
seem to know the notes.''
275
00:20:20,485 --> 00:20:23,754
And, of course, it was quite incredible.
276
00:20:23,822 --> 00:20:26,924
I think guitar players
were overwhelmed by him.
277
00:20:26,992 --> 00:20:32,697
Eric Clapton was,
Jeff Beck was, Pete Townshend was.
278
00:20:32,764 --> 00:20:36,300
All ofthe guitarists from my generation
279
00:20:36,368 --> 00:20:41,239
who, you know, thought we were
pretty good blues guitar players,
280
00:20:41,306 --> 00:20:43,808
were immediately impressed.
281
00:20:43,875 --> 00:20:46,811
The reason they all were there
was to steal.
282
00:20:46,878 --> 00:20:49,981
I know that Lennon did.
283
00:20:50,048 --> 00:20:53,017
He stole sounds,
guitar sounds and things.
284
00:20:53,085 --> 00:20:57,021
You can hear it on the albums.
285
00:20:57,089 --> 00:21:00,458
Mark it off on your counter
when Jimi arrived in town,
286
00:21:00,525 --> 00:21:05,229
and then the next recording that was
being done by the Beatles at that time,
287
00:21:05,297 --> 00:21:07,865
and then you would hear
a certain kind of guitar sound.
288
00:21:55,681 --> 00:21:58,649
That's how it started,
and so he played in the nightclubs.
289
00:21:58,717 --> 00:22:01,952
All ofthese other rock stars
were in these nightclubs.
290
00:22:02,020 --> 00:22:05,690
''Wow, what's this?
We've got competition.''
291
00:22:06,158 --> 00:22:09,994
Ring, ring. ''Hey, phone me up, man.
We've got a problem.''
292
00:22:10,062 --> 00:22:12,129
Townshend said, ''What's that?''
293
00:22:12,197 --> 00:22:14,865
Clapton said, ''We've got this guy
in our backyard.''
294
00:22:14,933 --> 00:22:16,767
And Townshend went, ''Who's this?''
295
00:22:16,835 --> 00:22:19,770
He says, ''It's this black guy
named Jimi Hendrix.''
296
00:22:19,838 --> 00:22:22,873
''He's, like, filling up the clubs.''
297
00:22:22,941 --> 00:22:26,043
''Well, we better go check him out, man,
if he's in our backyard.''
298
00:22:26,111 --> 00:22:29,647
So they get together,
they go see Hendrix.
299
00:22:29,715 --> 00:22:30,881
Can you imagine this?
300
00:22:30,949 --> 00:22:35,519
The two ofthem go to watch Jimi Hendrix
and they're both just transfixed.
301
00:22:35,587 --> 00:22:37,488
I'll tell you what bothered me.
302
00:22:37,556 --> 00:22:41,826
That was just before
we went offto America, I think,
303
00:22:41,893 --> 00:22:46,997
and Hendrix had completely taken over,
with a trio.
304
00:22:47,065 --> 00:22:50,134
What a surprise, you know.
And I thought, ''This seems a bit...''
305
00:22:50,202 --> 00:22:52,069
And that's all anyone could talk about.
306
00:22:52,137 --> 00:22:54,939
Clapton and Townshend,
307
00:22:55,006 --> 00:22:59,043
they actually clutch hands
as they're watching Jimi Hendrix.
308
00:22:59,111 --> 00:23:03,414
It's like they're watching their
entire careers change at that moment.
309
00:23:03,482 --> 00:23:07,351
And we were suddenly
yesterday's newspapers.
310
00:23:07,419 --> 00:23:13,491
Noel Redding isn't anywhere near
the standard of Jack or Mitch Mitchell
311
00:23:13,558 --> 00:23:16,627
or anywhere near the standard of me.
312
00:23:18,163 --> 00:23:21,966
He doesn't cope, in my opinion.
313
00:23:22,734 --> 00:23:28,706
It always has been that Eric's
far the superior guitar player.
314
00:23:28,774 --> 00:23:31,842
Jimi was a fantastic showman,
315
00:23:31,910 --> 00:23:36,947
but, you know,
Jimi was more in awe of Eric.
316
00:23:37,015 --> 00:23:40,084
Eric was in awe of Jimi too
to a certain extent.
317
00:23:40,152 --> 00:23:43,921
Everybody was in a sort of
friendly competition in a way,
318
00:23:43,989 --> 00:23:48,793
rather than the sort of
cut-throat horrible thing
319
00:23:48,860 --> 00:23:50,928
it became only ten years later.
320
00:23:51,396 --> 00:23:55,466
The Brits were really
the pioneers,
321
00:23:55,534 --> 00:23:58,569
as my dad put it,
of making rock 'n' roll interesting.
322
00:24:22,394 --> 00:24:25,463
A lot of people thought Hendrix
was like this English guy,
323
00:24:25,530 --> 00:24:27,965
this black English guy,
which he wasn't.
324
00:24:28,033 --> 00:24:32,303
But he had two English players with him
and that's kind ofwhere it started.
325
00:24:32,370 --> 00:24:35,840
In a way, race in America
had defined Jimi.
326
00:24:35,907 --> 00:24:40,778
White radio stations wouldn't play music
by African-American acts and vice versa.
327
00:24:40,846 --> 00:24:44,949
Jimi tried to straddle both worlds
and couldn't find success in the US.
328
00:24:45,016 --> 00:24:48,752
He ended up going to England where
his race was not the defining thing.
329
00:24:48,820 --> 00:24:53,257
It was never an issue about being black
in Britain at that time.
330
00:24:53,325 --> 00:24:55,993
People just welcomed black people.
331
00:24:56,061 --> 00:25:01,232
It was part ofthe community
and Jimi was part ofthat.
332
00:25:01,299 --> 00:25:05,536
So there was never a question
about segregation and stuff like that.
333
00:25:05,604 --> 00:25:07,137
No, not at all.
334
00:25:07,205 --> 00:25:09,773
Especially when somebody plays
like he does.
335
00:25:09,841 --> 00:25:12,676
I mean, he made a point straight away,
you know?
336
00:25:12,744 --> 00:25:16,347
It was like,
''Whoa, this guy's so talented.''
337
00:25:17,115 --> 00:25:22,686
To see the man play,
you just thought of him as guitar.
338
00:25:22,754 --> 00:25:26,490
But the fact that he was black
was exotic for a lot British chicks
339
00:25:26,558 --> 00:25:29,894
because they'd never seen a black guy
play that kind of music,
340
00:25:29,961 --> 00:25:32,062
and they haven't seen one since, really.
341
00:25:32,130 --> 00:25:36,000
He came to London
with a completely unique character
342
00:25:36,067 --> 00:25:39,336
relative to what was going on
in that scene at the time.
343
00:25:39,938 --> 00:25:42,773
And so, with his musical experience,
344
00:25:42,841 --> 00:25:46,110
with his talent,
with his background and so on,
345
00:25:46,177 --> 00:25:50,414
he was completely apart and different
from the other guitar players.
346
00:25:50,482 --> 00:25:55,252
He was first black guy in my life
I'd ever had a conversation with at all.
347
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:59,924
Guitarists were God and they didn't ever
talk to bass players.
348
00:25:59,991 --> 00:26:01,358
So this black guy says to me,
349
00:26:01,426 --> 00:26:04,962
''A friend of mine
has got a bass like that.''
350
00:26:05,030 --> 00:26:08,632
I was, ''Whoa, I'm a bass player.
You're not supposed to talk to me.''
351
00:26:08,700 --> 00:26:13,771
And then I had a half-an-hour
conversation with Jimi
352
00:26:13,838 --> 00:26:19,543
before I had any clue who he was
or what he was capable of.
353
00:26:19,611 --> 00:26:20,978
I saw him on the TV.
354
00:26:21,046 --> 00:26:24,848
It was on Sceie at 6.30
and there was a DJ called Pete Murray.
355
00:26:25,617 --> 00:26:28,652
He didn't know who Hendrix was.
Nobody knew who Hendrix was.
356
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:31,155
''Ladies and gentlemen,
all the way from America,
357
00:26:31,222 --> 00:26:33,357
here they are, Jimi Hendrix.''
358
00:26:33,425 --> 00:26:35,192
And he was like this,
359
00:26:35,260 --> 00:26:37,995
and you could see his face
go like that. It dropped.
360
00:26:38,063 --> 00:26:40,965
Hendrix came on with his hair
and he played HeyJoe,
361
00:26:41,032 --> 00:26:44,568
and it's absolutely fantastic
because it was blues,
362
00:26:44,636 --> 00:26:47,204
and the way he played the guitar,
it had everything.
363
00:26:47,272 --> 00:26:51,575
It had John Lee Hooker in there,
it had the old blues story,
364
00:26:51,643 --> 00:26:55,012
and then he had the image,
which was wild, it looked great.
365
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:57,081
And to cap it all,
in the middle ofthe song,
366
00:26:57,148 --> 00:26:59,583
he picked his guitar up
and played it with his teeth.
367
00:27:00,018 --> 00:27:03,220
I mean... You died right there.
368
00:27:03,288 --> 00:27:04,989
And he finished the song
369
00:27:05,056 --> 00:27:07,992
and they cut the camera back
to Pete Murray, the DJ,
370
00:27:08,059 --> 00:27:10,527
and Pete Murray
was still standing there going...
371
00:27:12,297 --> 00:27:17,635
Bless him! He was still there...
''Oh, and that was Jimi Hendrix.''
372
00:27:17,702 --> 00:27:19,637
The whole country
was just blown away.
373
00:27:19,704 --> 00:27:21,639
Anybody that was into music anyway.
374
00:27:21,706 --> 00:27:25,242
It's strange in a way that Jimi Hendrix
had to come to England
375
00:27:25,310 --> 00:27:29,480
to get the recognition
that he really needed.
376
00:27:29,547 --> 00:27:34,451
I feel that that's because
he was so far ahead of his time
377
00:27:34,519 --> 00:27:38,689
compared to other black musicians
in America.
378
00:27:38,757 --> 00:27:42,960
That's why everybody in England
seemed to embrace him.
379
00:27:45,030 --> 00:27:48,365
Some people have said
he was one of us, you know?
380
00:27:48,433 --> 00:27:52,636
I don't know whether he was one of us.
I think he was from another planet.
381
00:27:52,704 --> 00:27:56,040
Most ofthe guys growing up in England
loved these blues records,
382
00:27:56,107 --> 00:27:58,976
but hadn't had a chance
to see many ofthese acts
383
00:27:59,044 --> 00:28:02,112
until Chas finally took a tour
through England that people saw
384
00:28:02,180 --> 00:28:03,414
and it changed the world.
385
00:28:03,481 --> 00:28:08,152
I walked into Chess Records
one afternoon and I says, ''Hey!''
386
00:28:08,219 --> 00:28:11,755
Dude working there named Sonny.
I said, ''Hey, Sonny baby!''
387
00:28:14,859 --> 00:28:16,493
''Y'all make records in here?''
388
00:28:16,561 --> 00:28:21,231
He say, ''I ain't the one you want
to see. You want to see Mr Chess.''
389
00:28:21,299 --> 00:28:24,134
I say, ''Well, he's the right dude
if he's the big dude.''
390
00:28:25,403 --> 00:28:27,771
He say, ''Yeah, well,
he's the one you want.''
391
00:28:27,839 --> 00:28:32,276
In England, Jimi could take
that African-American soul tradition
392
00:28:32,343 --> 00:28:36,980
and mix it with rock,
and it was incendiary.
393
00:28:37,048 --> 00:28:41,652
The irony is that Jimi then takes that
same music that he's been playing there
394
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:44,455
and goes back to America
and is finally embraced.
395
00:28:44,522 --> 00:28:47,691
It's the exact same stuff
he'd been doing in America before,
396
00:28:47,759 --> 00:28:49,660
but once he became famous in England,
397
00:28:49,728 --> 00:28:51,895
people in America
began to listen to him.
398
00:28:51,963 --> 00:28:55,466
I never saw Jimi Hendrix as a black guy.
399
00:28:55,533 --> 00:28:59,770
I just saw him
as a psychedelic, colourful man,
400
00:28:59,838 --> 00:29:03,974
that could do tricks with his guitars
that nobody else could do.
401
00:29:17,722 --> 00:29:21,258
I think he probably had
a bigger issue in the States
402
00:29:21,326 --> 00:29:24,194
where it was torn between
white music and black music
403
00:29:24,262 --> 00:29:26,530
and everything
that went along with that.
404
00:29:26,598 --> 00:29:29,299
You know, most ofthat music
was written by black people,
405
00:29:29,367 --> 00:29:32,936
but they had to sell it to the white
people to get it on the radio.
406
00:29:33,404 --> 00:29:37,674
In America, because he was an African-
American and music was so segregated;
407
00:29:37,742 --> 00:29:40,944
literally, segregation was still
going on when Jimi was coming up.
408
00:29:41,012 --> 00:29:45,849
He couldn't stay in the same hotel
with white musicians in the South.
409
00:29:45,917 --> 00:29:49,553
He couldn't eat at the same restaurants.
410
00:29:49,621 --> 00:29:51,789
There are several stories
people told me;
411
00:29:51,856 --> 00:29:55,159
one was just heartbreaking,
of a time the bus that Jimi is in...
412
00:29:55,226 --> 00:29:57,961
He might have been
with the Little Richard Band.
413
00:29:58,029 --> 00:30:00,330
But they stopped at a restaurant.
414
00:30:00,398 --> 00:30:03,200
They had one white guy
in the entire group.
415
00:30:03,268 --> 00:30:05,969
They sent that guy in
to buy all the food.
416
00:30:06,037 --> 00:30:11,008
He bought all the food and was carrying
all these big boxes of food to the bus.
417
00:30:11,075 --> 00:30:14,678
He got to the bus and
an African-American member ofthe band
418
00:30:14,746 --> 00:30:17,247
came out to help him carry the stuff
that was falling.
419
00:30:17,315 --> 00:30:20,918
The guys in the restaurant came, took
all the food and threw it on the ground.
420
00:30:20,985 --> 00:30:24,755
We couldn't play with the black kids,
we couldn't play with the white kids.
421
00:30:24,823 --> 00:30:27,758
We were kind of in the middle.
We're, like, off.
422
00:30:27,826 --> 00:30:30,127
Look at me and Jimi.
We're different.
423
00:30:30,195 --> 00:30:31,829
That's the world Jimi grew up in.
424
00:30:31,896 --> 00:30:34,598
It greatly affected his music
and who he was.
425
00:30:35,166 --> 00:30:39,002
We were kind of poor.
We lived in a government complex
426
00:30:39,070 --> 00:30:41,572
that they had built for the navy
427
00:30:41,639 --> 00:30:45,108
because they thought that Japan
was going invade the United States,
428
00:30:45,176 --> 00:30:47,744
so they built these navy barracks,
429
00:30:47,812 --> 00:30:50,781
which after a while
they called it the projects.
430
00:30:50,849 --> 00:30:55,452
They essentially lived on welfare for
a significant part of Jimi's early life.
431
00:30:55,520 --> 00:31:00,624
His mother struggled with alcoholism,
his dad struggled with alcoholism.
432
00:31:00,692 --> 00:31:02,426
They would always drink and argue,
433
00:31:02,493 --> 00:31:06,363
and Mom would leave or my dad would
leave, and me and Jimi would be there.
434
00:31:06,431 --> 00:31:10,467
Like many great poets and musicians,
Jimi wrote about his troubled childhood
435
00:31:10,535 --> 00:31:13,237
and expressed himself
through the lyrics in his songs.
436
00:31:13,304 --> 00:31:16,974
The most autobiographical song to date
is Castles Made of Sand.
437
00:31:17,041 --> 00:31:20,878
The first verse
is about my mom and dad arguing,
438
00:31:20,945 --> 00:31:24,248
and he goes,
''Oh, girl, you must be mad.''
439
00:31:24,315 --> 00:31:28,185
''What happened to the sweet love
me and you had?'' You know?
440
00:31:28,253 --> 00:31:33,757
And then Momma... We could see Momma
right now, walking down the...
441
00:31:33,825 --> 00:31:39,096
My dad arguing and my momma leaving,
you know? That's the first verse.
442
00:31:39,163 --> 00:31:41,531
The second verse is about me,
443
00:31:41,599 --> 00:31:44,234
the little Indian boy
who, before he was ten,
444
00:31:44,302 --> 00:31:47,704
played war games in the woods
with his Indian friends.
445
00:31:47,772 --> 00:31:50,374
And he built a dream
that when he grew up,
446
00:31:50,441 --> 00:31:53,410
he'd be a fierce warrior Indian chief.
447
00:31:53,478 --> 00:31:56,146
But a surprise attack
killed him in his sleep that night.
448
00:31:56,214 --> 00:31:58,115
That's when the welfare people took me.
449
00:31:58,182 --> 00:32:02,586
When his parents divorced,
he lived primarily with his father,
450
00:32:02,654 --> 00:32:05,355
and there were a number of families
in the neighbourhood
451
00:32:05,423 --> 00:32:07,424
who liked Jimi
and took an interest in him.
452
00:32:07,492 --> 00:32:12,062
They would come over and take us
to their house across the street
453
00:32:12,130 --> 00:32:14,765
and feed us,
and me and Jimi would love it.
454
00:32:14,832 --> 00:32:17,067
Truly, the neighbourhood
raised these kids.
455
00:32:17,135 --> 00:32:20,203
He didn't really consider
that he had a family,
456
00:32:20,271 --> 00:32:24,241
but he did talk about his brother Leon
with some affection.
457
00:32:24,309 --> 00:32:29,279
He just didn't like his dad,
and didn't think that he was his dad.
458
00:32:29,347 --> 00:32:31,982
As a little kid,
I think I'm three years old,
459
00:32:32,050 --> 00:32:36,086
I think that Jimi's my dad
because he's the only one I know.
460
00:32:36,154 --> 00:32:39,089
He takes care of me,
he makes my little cheese sandwiches,
461
00:32:39,157 --> 00:32:41,391
he'd scramble some eggs.
462
00:32:41,459 --> 00:32:46,663
Jimi, though, was the kind of kid
that was a great adapter.
463
00:32:46,731 --> 00:32:49,533
Just like he, to a degree,
adapted to the guitar,
464
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:51,301
he adapted to that environment.
465
00:32:51,369 --> 00:32:54,671
He was not sad in this kind of life.
466
00:32:54,739 --> 00:32:58,775
We thought that life was just fantastic,
because I didn't know we were poor.
467
00:32:59,610 --> 00:33:02,079
Jimi was only 15 when his mother died,
468
00:33:02,146 --> 00:33:05,949
and the impact of her death affected him
for the rest of his short life.
469
00:33:06,818 --> 00:33:10,053
He thought she was beautiful
and he used to talk about her beauty
470
00:33:10,121 --> 00:33:14,858
and how light-skinned she was
and, you know, pretty she was.
471
00:33:14,926 --> 00:33:19,329
Nobody that met Lucille
ever had a bad word to say about her.
472
00:33:19,397 --> 00:33:22,332
He was always looking
for somebody like his mother.
473
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:27,504
Really I think he had a completely
romantic idea of his mother.
474
00:33:27,572 --> 00:33:30,407
Unfortunately,
he ended up having a series
475
00:33:30,475 --> 00:33:34,244
ofvery short relationships
with women, primarily,
476
00:33:34,312 --> 00:33:39,016
rather than someone that would nurture
him the way his mother did.
477
00:33:39,083 --> 00:33:43,387
He wrote several songs that are
so clearly a reference to his mother,
478
00:33:43,454 --> 00:33:47,524
and there's very little in his music
that are references to his father.
479
00:33:47,592 --> 00:33:50,127
Al refused to go to her funeral,
480
00:33:50,194 --> 00:33:52,329
and the funeral was being held
481
00:33:52,397 --> 00:33:58,602
and they held it up for almost two hours
waiting for Al, Jimi or Leon to show up.
482
00:33:58,669 --> 00:34:00,971
Al told Jimi,
according to what Leon told me,
483
00:34:01,039 --> 00:34:02,672
''You can take the bus down there.''
484
00:34:02,740 --> 00:34:06,543
I think he regretted it,
because he told me later that he did.
485
00:34:06,611 --> 00:34:08,545
He felt bad about it,
he said he was sorry.
486
00:34:08,613 --> 00:34:11,214
And they never got a chance
to say goodbye to her.
487
00:34:11,282 --> 00:34:14,484
Jimi had said, ''When I get big,
I'm going away from here.''
488
00:34:14,552 --> 00:34:16,219
''I'm not going to stay here.''
489
00:34:16,287 --> 00:34:18,955
''I'm going to leave Seattle.
I don't like it here.''
490
00:34:23,995 --> 00:34:25,695
He said, ''Tell Dad
491
00:34:26,230 --> 00:34:28,465
that I got drummed out ofthe army
on a medical.''
492
00:34:28,533 --> 00:34:30,333
Or something, I don't know what it was.
493
00:34:30,401 --> 00:34:35,839
''But I'm going to New York from here.
I'm not coming home.''
494
00:34:35,907 --> 00:34:39,009
Because Jimi left home
because he didn't like it in Seattle
495
00:34:39,077 --> 00:34:42,212
because my dad was on him
constantly about playing music
496
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:45,649
and yelling at him and screaming at him
about he'll never make it.
497
00:34:45,716 --> 00:34:48,018
''You need to start working
with your hands.''
498
00:34:48,086 --> 00:34:50,053
Jimi said,
''I am working with my hands.''
499
00:34:50,121 --> 00:34:53,190
''Did you ever notice that when
I play guitar, I use both my hands?''
500
00:34:53,257 --> 00:34:56,960
And my dad said,
''Don't talk back to me!''
501
00:34:57,028 --> 00:34:58,328
But Ray Charles loved him
502
00:34:58,396 --> 00:35:01,531
because he was the best guitar player
in Seattle at the time.
503
00:35:01,599 --> 00:35:03,200
And then all the bands loved him.
504
00:35:03,267 --> 00:35:06,303
He played with James Thomas
and the Tom Cats,
505
00:35:06,370 --> 00:35:08,038
he played with the Rocking Kings,
506
00:35:08,106 --> 00:35:10,240
he played with
Luther Rabb and the Stags.
507
00:35:10,308 --> 00:35:13,610
They would hire him on Friday
for the gig and fire him on Sunday,
508
00:35:13,678 --> 00:35:15,278
and Jimi was very happy with that.
509
00:35:15,346 --> 00:35:18,381
So he could play at home
and do his crazy shit,
510
00:35:18,449 --> 00:35:21,818
experiment and do all the stuff
he wanted to do by himself,
511
00:35:21,886 --> 00:35:25,155
because he was still the greatest
guitar player in Seattle at 15.
512
00:35:26,757 --> 00:35:28,658
He'd been playing for almost four years
513
00:35:28,726 --> 00:35:31,094
without anybody giving him
any attention.
514
00:35:31,162 --> 00:35:34,030
Jimi started going to New York City
and hanging out in Harlem
515
00:35:34,098 --> 00:35:36,133
and being exposed to different sources.
516
00:35:41,372 --> 00:35:43,573
He was happy.
He was laughing all the time.
517
00:35:43,641 --> 00:35:46,977
He said, ''I'm playing at the Cafe Wha?,
I've got a girlfriend and a car,
518
00:35:47,044 --> 00:35:49,846
I'm making $100 a week
and I'm loving it!''
519
00:35:49,914 --> 00:35:53,550
He said, ''Leon, I'm on tour
with Little Richard!''
520
00:35:53,618 --> 00:35:55,852
I'm going, ''Wow!''
521
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:59,623
And then the next week he said,
''OK, I'm on tour with Tina Turner now.''
522
00:35:59,690 --> 00:36:01,424
I'm going, ''Wow!''
523
00:36:01,492 --> 00:36:03,960
He said, ''Yeah, you know,
Little Richard fired me.''
524
00:36:13,204 --> 00:36:16,873
''Your brother was just too pretty.
Too pretty!''
525
00:36:16,941 --> 00:36:20,410
You know? He said, ''I'd like to...''
Because he was gay.
526
00:36:20,478 --> 00:36:22,312
He wouldn't always wear the uniform
527
00:36:22,380 --> 00:36:24,781
and Richard would get mad
and he'd fine the people.
528
00:36:24,849 --> 00:36:27,717
Jimi was making
something like $25 a gig.
529
00:36:27,785 --> 00:36:31,454
When Little Richard gave him a $25 fine,
he'd make nothing for the gig.
530
00:36:31,522 --> 00:36:34,391
Solomon Burke, the great soul singer,
531
00:36:34,458 --> 00:36:37,961
claimed that Jimi
was traded among these bands,
532
00:36:38,029 --> 00:36:41,965
almost like you'd swap baseball players
in Major League baseball.
533
00:36:42,033 --> 00:36:45,101
One band would trade Jimi.
''We can't work with him any more.''
534
00:36:45,169 --> 00:36:50,173
''We'll trade you for a horn player
and a drummer to be named later.''
535
00:36:50,241 --> 00:36:53,310
But Jimi played with everybody,
but nobody for very long.
536
00:36:53,377 --> 00:36:58,014
It wasn't the success that Jimi found
in England that made him a great player.
537
00:36:58,082 --> 00:37:02,018
Instead, it was the lack of success
538
00:37:02,086 --> 00:37:05,589
that gave him a purpose
to explore his own muse.
539
00:37:05,656 --> 00:37:09,593
Across 110th Street was black New York
and below that was white New York
540
00:37:09,660 --> 00:37:11,795
and the musicians did not interact.
541
00:37:11,862 --> 00:37:13,730
And there's four clubs
542
00:37:14,632 --> 00:37:17,767
on Bleecker Street in New York.
543
00:37:17,835 --> 00:37:21,371
Jimi, however, was the only African-
American guy playing in the Village,
544
00:37:21,439 --> 00:37:23,974
and then he'd go up to Harlem
and play there, too.
545
00:37:24,041 --> 00:37:29,346
But one day he went up to Harlem
to an African-American club,
546
00:37:29,413 --> 00:37:33,483
went up to the DJ booth and said, ''I got
a great new single I want to play.''
547
00:37:33,551 --> 00:37:36,686
He goes and he puts on
Bob Dylan's Blowii'ii the Wiid.
548
00:37:36,754 --> 00:37:39,756
Jimi loved Bob Dylan.
549
00:37:39,824 --> 00:37:43,660
He would say, ''Listen to this, Leon.''
Because he was such a poet.
550
00:37:43,728 --> 00:37:45,595
They probably would have killed him
551
00:37:45,663 --> 00:37:48,398
ifthey didn't think
he was crazy for doing this.
552
00:37:48,466 --> 00:37:51,968
He was encouraged by Dylan. Thinking
he had a terrible singing voice,
553
00:37:52,036 --> 00:37:54,904
he found out what you could do
with a terrible singing voice.
554
00:37:54,972 --> 00:37:59,643
He admired Bob Dylan as a songwriter
and that's why he did some of his songs.
555
00:37:59,710 --> 00:38:02,879
And he loved soul music
and, to a degree,
556
00:38:02,947 --> 00:38:05,315
what he created
with the Jimi Hendrix Experience
557
00:38:05,383 --> 00:38:08,318
was a combination ofthose two things.
558
00:38:08,386 --> 00:38:10,754
It was like the punk thing
in a way, Dylan.
559
00:38:10,821 --> 00:38:14,391
He demonstrated that you could make
great records and sing great songs
560
00:38:14,458 --> 00:38:16,926
without being a master singer.
561
00:38:16,994 --> 00:38:19,629
Jimi's deep admiration for Dylan
562
00:38:19,697 --> 00:38:22,899
inspired him to record
All Along the Watchtower.
563
00:38:22,967 --> 00:38:26,236
The finished version was released
on the album Electric Ladylaid
564
00:38:26,304 --> 00:38:28,138
in September 1968.
565
00:38:28,205 --> 00:38:33,977
The Johi Wesley Hardiig album, I think
he brought that back from the States,
566
00:38:34,045 --> 00:38:35,545
and he loved it.
567
00:38:35,613 --> 00:38:37,047
Absolutely loved it.
568
00:38:37,114 --> 00:38:39,716
That was played and played.
And I liked it as well.
569
00:38:39,784 --> 00:38:44,921
After a while, even I sort of
was into it, so he played it a lot.
570
00:38:44,989 --> 00:38:48,858
And he wanted to do a Bob Dylan cover.
571
00:38:50,027 --> 00:38:53,563
Nobody else except for Bob Dylan
does he want to do this with,
572
00:38:53,631 --> 00:38:56,966
and he wanted to do
I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine.
573
00:38:57,034 --> 00:39:00,837
For some reason,
he just loved that track,
574
00:39:00,905 --> 00:39:03,640
but he thought that was too personal
to Bob Dylan.
575
00:39:03,708 --> 00:39:06,209
So I said, ''What about
All Along the Watchtower?''
576
00:39:06,277 --> 00:39:09,879
I played the acoustic guitar on it,
577
00:39:09,947 --> 00:39:13,483
with Jimi sitting opposite me
kind of doing all that...
578
00:39:13,551 --> 00:39:16,820
All that kind of accent stuff.
579
00:39:16,887 --> 00:39:19,222
But pretty much, it was...
580
00:39:32,536 --> 00:39:35,238
That's pretty much
what I play underneath it.
581
00:39:37,208 --> 00:39:38,842
And it's sort of...
582
00:39:38,909 --> 00:39:42,779
Dave Mason was in this little studio
with Brian Jones
583
00:39:42,847 --> 00:39:45,615
and Jimi was in the main studio.
584
00:39:45,683 --> 00:39:49,052
And anyway, they did it
and when he'd finished,
585
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:53,056
everybody behind the console
just stood up and went, ''Wow!''
586
00:39:53,124 --> 00:39:54,758
''Can we believe that?''
587
00:39:54,825 --> 00:39:56,159
It was me and him and Mitch.
588
00:39:57,695 --> 00:39:59,696
The first time
I heard Jimi Hendrix play,
589
00:39:59,764 --> 00:40:03,833
I figured, ''I should probably go find
another instrument to play.''
590
00:40:05,703 --> 00:40:07,036
But...
591
00:40:09,740 --> 00:40:13,576
So anyway, I think you know
what this tune is.
592
00:41:30,721 --> 00:41:34,190
It was a period oftime
when we were hanging together.
593
00:41:34,258 --> 00:41:41,364
Like I said, we were sort of hinting
at maybe playing bass with him.
594
00:41:41,932 --> 00:41:44,734
So that's kind of how that came about.
595
00:41:46,136 --> 00:41:48,771
The solo's actually
three different solos, really.
596
00:41:50,241 --> 00:41:52,175
The slide part,
597
00:41:52,243 --> 00:41:56,779
he played it with it sitting
on his lap with a cigarette lighter.
598
00:41:59,617 --> 00:42:01,851
And then the last part of it
is a different tone.
599
00:42:01,919 --> 00:42:05,622
There's really three different sections
to that solo
600
00:42:05,689 --> 00:42:09,392
in the middle of Watchtower,
if you listen to it.
601
00:42:09,460 --> 00:42:12,228
Most ofthat track
was pretty much done in...
602
00:42:15,299 --> 00:42:19,269
I don't know.
A lot of it was done in a day.
603
00:42:19,336 --> 00:42:21,771
But he still wasn't happy with it.
604
00:42:21,839 --> 00:42:23,273
No, no, no. Not Jimi.
605
00:42:23,340 --> 00:42:26,309
He had to do it
over and over and over again.
606
00:42:26,377 --> 00:42:28,177
He had to take it to the States
and do it.
607
00:42:28,245 --> 00:42:30,280
See, that's the thing with Jimi.
608
00:42:30,347 --> 00:42:32,715
He needed someone
to stop him from doing this.
609
00:42:32,783 --> 00:42:36,352
This is the trouble, the problems
that he had with Chas Chandler.
610
00:42:36,420 --> 00:42:41,090
Chas Chandler was ofthe old school
of a four-minute pop song, see?
611
00:42:41,158 --> 00:42:47,697
Whereas Jimi wanted to go on for hours!
612
00:42:47,765 --> 00:42:49,432
It was really tedious.
613
00:42:50,367 --> 00:42:53,169
Because only he could hear
what he needed.
614
00:42:53,237 --> 00:42:57,540
To you or me, it sounded just like
he had it right anyway.
615
00:42:57,608 --> 00:43:00,610
And then he would go on
for another six hours.
616
00:43:00,678 --> 00:43:03,646
He was creating new things
that weren't even there to invent.
617
00:43:03,714 --> 00:43:05,982
They had to come up with stuff
at Olympic for him
618
00:43:06,050 --> 00:43:08,484
to get things that he wanted to do.
619
00:43:10,054 --> 00:43:12,589
- Like guitar sounds, you mean?
- Sounds and...
620
00:43:12,656 --> 00:43:17,427
I think they actually built a couple
of limiters and stuff in there for him.
621
00:43:17,494 --> 00:43:24,000
In those days, I think the restrictions
upon you to make any different sounds
622
00:43:24,068 --> 00:43:28,671
inspired you instead of
discouraging you, for some reason.
623
00:43:28,739 --> 00:43:34,043
But we were all fucking optimists in
those days anyway, you know what I mean?
624
00:43:34,578 --> 00:43:38,348
He had nobody there helping,
supervising in the studio,
625
00:43:38,415 --> 00:43:44,354
and so consequently he was doing
take after take after take after take,
626
00:43:44,421 --> 00:43:46,322
and running through tapes,
627
00:43:46,390 --> 00:43:53,830
and everybody was a little bit afraid
to erase anything,
628
00:43:53,897 --> 00:43:56,933
and so consequently the tapes
were just piling up in the studio
629
00:43:57,001 --> 00:44:00,336
with no usable material on it.
630
00:44:00,404 --> 00:44:04,707
And so I just started to help
from a production point ofview.
631
00:44:07,811 --> 00:44:09,946
I think that...
632
00:44:10,014 --> 00:44:12,882
I've been criticised for saying
what I'm going to tell you,
633
00:44:12,950 --> 00:44:15,251
but it's the truth
as far as I'm concerned.
634
00:44:15,319 --> 00:44:19,589
You couldn't produce Jimi Hendrix,
you could only help him produce himself.
635
00:44:20,324 --> 00:44:25,862
He knew what he wanted to do but he
didn't know how to get there or why.
636
00:44:25,929 --> 00:44:31,634
So you could only try to help
the situation with the musicians,
637
00:44:31,702 --> 00:44:34,871
with the studio,
with the production part of it.
638
00:44:34,938 --> 00:44:38,508
It was all about work.
No goofing off, no messing around.
639
00:44:38,575 --> 00:44:40,910
People come in there
and start to goof off,
640
00:44:40,978 --> 00:44:44,180
he'd just tell them to get out,
leave, get out of here.
641
00:44:44,248 --> 00:44:46,916
He was very serious
about what he was doing.
642
00:44:47,384 --> 00:44:51,087
In early June, 1967,
the Beatles' Sgt Pepperalbum
643
00:44:51,155 --> 00:44:54,424
was released in England
and was a massive phenomenon.
644
00:44:54,491 --> 00:44:57,193
Everyone in England
was listening to the album.
645
00:44:57,261 --> 00:45:01,197
Two days later, the Experience were
playing at London's Saville Theatre,
646
00:45:01,265 --> 00:45:04,400
Brian Epstein's place
and obviously the Beatles' home turf.
647
00:45:04,468 --> 00:45:07,570
Jimi insisted on opening the show
with his own rendition
648
00:45:07,638 --> 00:45:10,106
of Sgt Pepper'sLonely hearts Club Band.
649
00:45:10,174 --> 00:45:12,341
Members ofthe Beatles
and the Rolling Stones
650
00:45:12,409 --> 00:45:16,746
and many others were in the audience.
It was obvious the guy had balls.
651
00:45:16,814 --> 00:45:21,384
If Jimi would have fucked that up, his
career would have been over that moment.
652
00:45:21,452 --> 00:45:24,454
Paul McCartney apparently was there
653
00:45:24,521 --> 00:45:27,990
and went straight out
and bought a guitar the next day
654
00:45:28,058 --> 00:45:32,061
and thought, ''You know,
this guy is something special.''
655
00:45:32,129 --> 00:45:36,065
''I'm going to learn
how to play blues guitar.''
656
00:45:36,133 --> 00:45:40,703
Afterwards, Paul McCartney says, ''You
need to play the Monterey Pop Festival.''
657
00:46:13,971 --> 00:46:18,608
It was at Monterey
the first time I heard him play.
658
00:46:18,675 --> 00:46:20,343
That was the day that I met him.
659
00:46:21,512 --> 00:46:26,215
He was kind of new to all of us
here on the West Coast.
660
00:46:28,819 --> 00:46:34,023
I'm there in my full-blown
Indian headdress.
661
00:46:41,565 --> 00:46:45,368
This whole Monterey scene was
not as friendly as everybody thought.
662
00:46:45,435 --> 00:46:47,637
Everybody wanted to be a big star
663
00:46:47,704 --> 00:46:50,406
and everyone saw this
as their launching pad,
664
00:46:50,474 --> 00:46:53,509
so they flipped a coin
to see who was going to go first.
665
00:46:53,577 --> 00:46:55,611
Hendrix loses and he's pissed about it.
666
00:46:58,582 --> 00:47:01,984
But he's going to top them somehow,
and vice versa.
667
00:47:03,520 --> 00:47:07,557
He's backstage and says, ''Get me lighter
fluid. I've got to top these guys!''
668
00:47:07,624 --> 00:47:09,692
And it was absolutely amazing,
669
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:12,662
and I was all day with
a crush of people photographing him
670
00:47:12,729 --> 00:47:16,065
setting his guitar on fire
and all that voodoo stuff.
671
00:47:22,139 --> 00:47:27,210
When Jimi started smashing his stuff,
Mama Cass turned to Pete Townshend
672
00:47:27,277 --> 00:47:30,246
and said, ''That guy,
he's stealing your act!''
673
00:47:30,314 --> 00:47:33,449
And Townshend's response is,
''No, he's doing my act!''
674
00:47:36,353 --> 00:47:41,023
I mean, he came out there all colourful,
and the way he made it talk.
675
00:47:41,091 --> 00:47:43,426
He could just make the guitar talk!
676
00:47:43,493 --> 00:47:47,029
And it was coming from
an African-American performer
677
00:47:47,097 --> 00:47:51,200
who had been in that blues tradition,
who had known the chitlin' circuit,
678
00:47:51,268 --> 00:47:54,837
who had known the degradation
and segregation ofthe American South,
679
00:47:54,905 --> 00:47:58,241
and who brought his own angle
and take to the music.
680
00:48:02,779 --> 00:48:06,482
Hendrix playing guitar with his teeth,
picking the guitar with his teeth,
681
00:48:06,550 --> 00:48:07,950
it was just mind-blowing.
682
00:48:08,018 --> 00:48:13,389
He did his 20-, 30-minute set
and people were just gobsmacked.
683
00:48:13,457 --> 00:48:16,692
The day that performance was over,
the moment it was over,
684
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:20,663
he was the biggest star in America
that moment.
685
00:48:20,731 --> 00:48:24,600
He was unheard of 45 minutes before.
No one knew who he was!
686
00:48:27,838 --> 00:48:30,573
I think I had heard HeyJoe
a couple oftimes,
687
00:48:30,641 --> 00:48:32,341
which is a folk tune that I knew.
688
00:48:32,409 --> 00:48:36,646
I just loved the energy of it
and the anarchy ofthe whole thing.
689
00:48:36,713 --> 00:48:40,149
The only part I disagreed with
was burning the guitar,
690
00:48:40,217 --> 00:48:44,453
because we'd all been poor
not very long before.
691
00:48:46,056 --> 00:48:51,861
So the idea of destroying
an instrument was appalling.
692
00:48:52,829 --> 00:48:55,798
The only thing was is I remember
how hard guitars were to get
693
00:48:55,866 --> 00:49:00,002
so I've only broken, on purpose,
a couple of guitars in my career.
694
00:49:00,470 --> 00:49:03,539
Some say the sound ofthe wind
rushing past his ears
695
00:49:03,607 --> 00:49:07,209
and the roaring of a drop plane
heard during his time in the army,
696
00:49:07,277 --> 00:49:09,011
might have influenced his desire
697
00:49:09,079 --> 00:49:12,214
to subconsciously recreate those sounds
on his guitar.
698
00:49:12,282 --> 00:49:16,118
We happened to clean out
this lady's garage,
699
00:49:16,186 --> 00:49:18,888
and there was a ukulele there
with one string on it.
700
00:49:19,990 --> 00:49:22,358
One old raggedy ukulele.
701
00:49:22,426 --> 00:49:24,894
And the first song he played
was Peter Gunn.
702
00:49:27,864 --> 00:49:32,268
Remember? OK. Because it was simple;
you can play it one string.
703
00:49:33,971 --> 00:49:35,871
So he kind of figured out that,
704
00:49:35,939 --> 00:49:41,410
''If I tighten the string,
I can go to another key note, right?''
705
00:49:41,478 --> 00:49:46,716
That's what he did to the music
that night when the Top 40 came on.
706
00:49:46,783 --> 00:49:49,652
He'd figured out that...
He only had one string, right?
707
00:49:49,720 --> 00:49:54,490
But he knew that if he lowered it,
he could lower the key,
708
00:49:54,558 --> 00:49:56,993
and if he tightened it
he can higher the key.
709
00:49:57,060 --> 00:50:03,566
He finally got to where he was playing
songs on one string on a ukulele.
710
00:50:03,633 --> 00:50:05,668
Not only could he
virtually play anything,
711
00:50:05,736 --> 00:50:07,937
somebody could say,
''This song's in this key,''
712
00:50:08,005 --> 00:50:10,206
and he could pick it up immediately.
713
00:50:10,273 --> 00:50:12,441
He had an intuition about music.
714
00:50:12,509 --> 00:50:14,043
I guess he could feel the music.
715
00:50:14,111 --> 00:50:16,612
He could feel the notes,
he can do all that shit.
716
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:19,048
Al didn't like Jimi
playing the guitar anyways,
717
00:50:19,116 --> 00:50:22,551
but if Jimi was playing left-handed
and Al came in the room,
718
00:50:22,619 --> 00:50:26,389
Jimi would just simply
flip it over immediately.
719
00:50:26,456 --> 00:50:30,826
But the fact that he could continue
mid-song doing that is the amazing part.
720
00:50:30,894 --> 00:50:34,497
When my dad found out he was playing
left-handed, my dad gave him a whupping.
721
00:50:34,564 --> 00:50:38,734
I mean, he's a great lead player.
Hands down, everybody knows that.
722
00:50:38,802 --> 00:50:41,337
But he was a phenomenal rhythm player.
723
00:50:41,405 --> 00:50:47,543
He was a phenomenal picker
for arpeggios and that kind of stuff.
724
00:50:47,611 --> 00:50:53,749
But he also did amazing
two-note sort of riff kind ofthings.
725
00:50:53,817 --> 00:50:56,052
He really had it all going on.
726
00:50:56,119 --> 00:51:03,092
I mean, you can be
of any style of guitar player,
727
00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:07,229
from jazz to rock, blues, whatever,
and appreciate Jimi's playing,
728
00:51:07,297 --> 00:51:12,268
because he was really tapped
into so many different things.
729
00:51:12,335 --> 00:51:16,138
And all delivered
with this unique style.
730
00:51:16,206 --> 00:51:19,975
It really made him
just a fascinating fucking musician.
731
00:51:20,043 --> 00:51:22,745
The fingers on his right hand,
when he played leftie,
732
00:51:22,813 --> 00:51:27,917
were so strong that it almost sounded
like he was playing bottleneck.
733
00:51:27,984 --> 00:51:30,886
So that's why...
734
00:51:30,954 --> 00:51:35,991
I think Jeff Beck is almost as strong,
735
00:51:36,059 --> 00:51:38,260
and Eric on occasion.
736
00:51:39,296 --> 00:51:41,564
Stevie Ray Vaughan had that, too,
737
00:51:41,631 --> 00:51:45,501
where they're digging in so hard,
it almost sounds like bottleneck.
738
00:51:45,569 --> 00:51:47,670
He had really big hands, right?
739
00:51:47,737 --> 00:51:51,974
And he had just a way of knowing
where these notes were.
740
00:51:52,042 --> 00:51:55,411
He'd drape his fingers
over the strings in such a way
741
00:51:55,479 --> 00:51:59,148
that he knew exactly what he was hitting
and what he shouldn't be hitting.
742
00:51:59,216 --> 00:52:01,584
But if you look at the way
that he formed chords,
743
00:52:01,651 --> 00:52:05,354
they were unique to him.
744
00:52:05,422 --> 00:52:08,691
He was the guy
that in rock guitar, I think,
745
00:52:08,758 --> 00:52:12,328
made draping your thumb
over for the bass note
746
00:52:12,395 --> 00:52:19,101
and doing the other four fingers
for the high notes as a bar chord.
747
00:52:19,169 --> 00:52:22,805
I don't recall too many guitar players
doing that before he came along.
748
00:52:22,873 --> 00:52:26,775
- Hands like tarantulas.
- And he used his thumb a lot, right?
749
00:52:26,843 --> 00:52:30,946
I used to say to him, ''You should have
been a fucking pickpocket.''
750
00:52:32,649 --> 00:52:38,521
He made a lot of chords
with his thumb over.
751
00:52:38,588 --> 00:52:42,057
That would be halfthe chord.
Then he could play lead underneath it.
752
00:52:42,125 --> 00:52:44,927
I can't bend this finger back, right?
753
00:52:44,995 --> 00:52:47,496
But he could definitely
bend it back.
754
00:52:47,564 --> 00:52:55,104
He had the flat 9,
the minor 7 flat 9 chord,
755
00:52:55,172 --> 00:52:58,641
which is in Purple Haze
and Foxy Lady, and he used it a lot,
756
00:52:58,708 --> 00:53:03,145
where he could drape his ring finger
over all the strings
757
00:53:03,213 --> 00:53:06,815
and not hit them
with the bottom of his finger.
758
00:53:07,884 --> 00:53:10,619
He could bend this to lay it down
over three strings.
759
00:53:10,687 --> 00:53:15,491
He had a unique way of forming chords.
It was very natural to him.
760
00:53:15,559 --> 00:53:19,028
He liked the fact
of having a Strat upside down,
761
00:53:19,095 --> 00:53:23,232
because the pick-ups came in
at a certain angle.
762
00:53:23,300 --> 00:53:24,700
The only thing it affected
763
00:53:24,768 --> 00:53:27,736
was that he had the whammy bar
under his arm, at the top.
764
00:53:27,804 --> 00:53:31,340
So he could use the whammy bar
without taking his hand offthe strings.
765
00:53:31,408 --> 00:53:34,743
That was the only advantage it gave him,
but it's a big advantage.
766
00:53:34,811 --> 00:53:40,049
He played upside down backwards.
He was like a dyslexic genius.
767
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:53,229
He used to play on a broom.
768
00:53:53,296 --> 00:53:58,767
Do air guitar to Chuck Berry
and Mickey & Sylvia,
769
00:53:58,835 --> 00:54:03,339
and black artists like Muddy Waters
and stuff like that.
770
00:54:11,147 --> 00:54:15,918
Jimi was wah-wah man.
That guy could use a wah-wah pedal.
771
00:54:15,986 --> 00:54:19,321
I've seen the rigs
that these new guitar players have.
772
00:54:19,389 --> 00:54:26,028
There's $20,000 worth of pedals
in an Anvil case, man.
773
00:54:26,096 --> 00:54:29,565
They're dancing and pushing pedals
and they're trying to play chords.
774
00:54:29,633 --> 00:54:32,134
They're so busy technologically.
775
00:54:33,703 --> 00:54:36,105
Jimi took a wah-wah pedal and feedback
776
00:54:36,172 --> 00:54:39,308
and did what these guys are doing
with $20,000 rigs.
777
00:54:39,376 --> 00:54:45,781
When it came to performing live,
he had a pretty limited pedal board,
778
00:54:45,849 --> 00:54:51,220
which was a Fuzz Face
and the octave thing, the octaver,
779
00:54:51,288 --> 00:54:55,324
and the wah-wah pedal,
and it was pretty simple.
780
00:54:55,392 --> 00:54:56,925
And that's all he had, really.
781
00:54:56,993 --> 00:54:59,328
He didn't have any effects
apart from that.
782
00:54:59,396 --> 00:55:03,532
And the things he used to do with
that guitar was just beyond all reason.
783
00:55:03,600 --> 00:55:06,602
He just holds it up in front of him
784
00:55:06,670 --> 00:55:10,005
and it's going all over the place
but he's not moving it, hardly.
785
00:55:10,073 --> 00:55:13,876
It's like, ''Wow, man, where do you
come up with that?''
786
00:55:13,943 --> 00:55:15,811
It's a clever thing.
787
00:55:15,879 --> 00:55:18,080
You can do a lot of
different speeds with it,
788
00:55:18,148 --> 00:55:20,082
you can do a lot of different stuff.
789
00:55:20,150 --> 00:55:22,885
You can use a long one
right through half a verse.
790
00:55:22,952 --> 00:55:24,420
It's only been pushed once,
791
00:55:24,487 --> 00:55:27,656
and you can do it really fast
and get that ''wah-wah-wah''.
792
00:55:27,724 --> 00:55:30,926
So he was constantly experimenting
with shit like that.
793
00:55:31,761 --> 00:55:33,595
You listen to some ofthe stuff live.
794
00:55:33,663 --> 00:55:38,400
We always used to go see him
at Winterland, the Fillmore East,
795
00:55:38,468 --> 00:55:43,339
the Avalon Ballroom.
796
00:55:43,406 --> 00:55:45,774
I'd stand behind the amps
and I'd go,
797
00:55:45,842 --> 00:55:48,811
''Look at this guy.
This guy's controlling his feedback.''
798
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:00,723
Like, most guys hit a chord,
799
00:56:00,790 --> 00:56:03,959
and when it dissolves,
it doesn't dissolve into a melody.
800
00:56:04,027 --> 00:56:08,897
It dissolves into white noise
and it don't go anywhere.
801
00:56:08,965 --> 00:56:12,735
Jimi could make his guitar
sound like a race car.
802
00:56:20,944 --> 00:56:23,645
I'd look at that guy and go,
''Wow, how's he doing that?''
803
00:56:23,713 --> 00:56:25,781
Nobody's ever done that
before or since.
804
00:56:25,849 --> 00:56:29,017
Nobody's ever had that much control
over it. You know what I mean?
805
00:56:29,085 --> 00:56:32,187
He'd have a pause in the song
and he'd hit a thing.
806
00:56:32,255 --> 00:56:36,925
It would be feedback out of control,
but in the right note and controlled.
807
00:56:36,993 --> 00:56:40,929
I don't think
that he was controlled at all.
808
00:56:40,997 --> 00:56:46,535
I think that when he pushed
the human button,
809
00:56:46,603 --> 00:56:49,671
he was just totally out of control.
810
00:56:49,739 --> 00:56:53,675
Jimi used to have an expression.
He always used the word ''sounds''.
811
00:56:53,743 --> 00:56:57,346
He would use it at the end
of his sentence, and so on.
812
00:56:59,716 --> 00:57:03,285
All sounds fascinated him,
you know?
813
00:57:03,353 --> 00:57:05,254
Whenever he heard a sound, he thought,
814
00:57:05,321 --> 00:57:08,023
what could he do with it
or how could he play with it
815
00:57:08,091 --> 00:57:09,691
or how could he manipulate it?
816
00:57:09,759 --> 00:57:12,694
And so feedback and wah-wah
and all those things
817
00:57:12,762 --> 00:57:18,033
were just some additional methods
for him to get at some more sounds.
818
00:57:18,101 --> 00:57:23,038
Jimi told me one time, ''Leon, I wish
the guitar was a bigger instrument,
819
00:57:23,106 --> 00:57:26,241
because I have so much music to play
but I'm limited.''
820
00:57:26,309 --> 00:57:31,547
''I've got six strings
and I have to deal with six strings.''
821
00:57:31,614 --> 00:57:35,284
So he was very smart, so he said,
822
00:57:35,351 --> 00:57:39,922
''I think I'll tune to E flat,
give myself an extra fret.''
823
00:57:40,590 --> 00:57:43,792
He knew what he wanted to do
and he knew what he wanted to hear,
824
00:57:43,860 --> 00:57:50,466
and he knew the sounds he was trying
to create that he heard in his head.
825
00:57:50,533 --> 00:57:54,069
He just went for it.
He tried to create those sounds.
826
00:57:54,137 --> 00:57:59,975
If he heard something that was right
by moving closer to his amplifier,
827
00:58:00,043 --> 00:58:01,810
he would.
828
00:58:01,878 --> 00:58:03,378
He was just fearless.
829
00:58:03,446 --> 00:58:09,485
He was very experimental with a lot of
electronic gadgets that he used to use.
830
00:58:09,552 --> 00:58:11,653
And he said, ''Make me this little box
831
00:58:11,721 --> 00:58:17,226
that makes my chords
and my notes and tones sound fuzzy.''
832
00:58:17,293 --> 00:58:20,696
So this... Now they call them nerds.
833
00:58:20,763 --> 00:58:23,465
Before we called them
very intellectual engineers.
834
00:58:23,533 --> 00:58:26,802
They invented this little box
that he could plug his guitar into
835
00:58:26,870 --> 00:58:28,804
and then go into the amp.
836
00:58:28,872 --> 00:58:33,275
And he got this fuzz... warm fuzz tone.
837
00:58:33,343 --> 00:58:40,582
The fuzz box basically
comes out of Jimi's stuff, really,
838
00:58:40,650 --> 00:58:46,088
but what he was doing in the studio
with what he was laying down
839
00:58:46,155 --> 00:58:50,592
was very different, too,
and the way he was approaching it.
840
00:58:50,660 --> 00:58:56,665
I think he's the most innovative
electric guitar player.
841
00:58:56,733 --> 00:58:58,901
I've sat with him...
842
00:58:58,968 --> 00:59:02,104
I sat with him a couple of nights
and he'd just always have a guitar.
843
00:59:02,171 --> 00:59:06,408
He'd just sit and play,
and just play and play
844
00:59:06,476 --> 00:59:09,311
and never repeat himself
and come up with something.
845
00:59:09,379 --> 00:59:12,814
He had a little arsenal of gear
and he was, from what I'm told,
846
00:59:12,882 --> 00:59:18,921
really fascinated with different
little pieces of electronic wizardry
847
00:59:18,988 --> 00:59:25,661
that he used to emphasise whatever
it was he was trying to communicate.
848
00:59:25,728 --> 00:59:30,666
But as just a straight-ahead guitar
player with his most basic approach,
849
00:59:30,733 --> 00:59:34,570
it was a Marshall turned all the way up,
the guitar and a wah-wah pedal.
850
00:59:34,637 --> 00:59:38,140
He didn't need much.
Just a loud amp and a guitar!
851
00:59:39,542 --> 00:59:42,377
He came to me and said,
''I like that gear.''
852
00:59:43,546 --> 00:59:48,216
So I said,
''Well, come to my shop in Hanwell.''
853
00:59:49,619 --> 00:59:53,755
''Mitch'll bring you,
and we'll talk about it.''
854
00:59:53,823 --> 00:59:59,261
So he came and he said,
''I just want to play Marshall.''
855
00:59:59,329 --> 01:00:03,899
He said, ''I will need
probably three ofthose stacks.''
856
01:00:03,967 --> 01:00:07,903
And almost in the next breath, he said,
''I don't want anything given to me.''
857
01:00:07,971 --> 01:00:10,706
''I want to pay the full retail price.''
858
01:00:10,773 --> 01:00:13,642
He said, ''What I want is service
wherever I am in the world.''
859
01:00:13,710 --> 01:00:16,945
And we were never called out once.
860
01:00:17,013 --> 01:00:20,382
But then Jimi bought
four complete stage setups
861
01:00:20,450 --> 01:00:22,584
to have them
in different parts ofthe world
862
01:00:22,652 --> 01:00:26,855
so he wouldn't have to transport them
too far, wherever he was playing.
863
01:00:26,923 --> 01:00:29,591
Marshalls are really good.
864
01:00:29,659 --> 01:00:32,661
Naturally I wanted the loudest,
the biggest amp possible.
865
01:00:32,729 --> 01:00:35,030
As long as you have
the loudest and biggest,
866
01:00:35,098 --> 01:00:38,700
then you can bring it down to whatever
level you want, or keep it there.
867
01:00:38,768 --> 01:00:42,371
A double stack of Marshalls
is by definition super-loud.
868
01:00:42,438 --> 01:00:48,310
That's 16 speakers
and two 100-watt heads,
869
01:00:48,378 --> 01:00:53,682
but in series, so already, the voltage
was taken down a little bit.
870
01:00:53,750 --> 01:00:57,819
But it was very warm and fuzzy
and all-embracing
871
01:00:57,887 --> 01:01:00,222
and was plenty loud for us.
872
01:01:00,289 --> 01:01:05,661
I don't think you could have turned
any other amp up
873
01:01:05,728 --> 01:01:09,398
to the volume that Hendrix did
with a Stratocaster
874
01:01:09,465 --> 01:01:11,033
and got it to sound like that.
875
01:01:11,100 --> 01:01:16,938
I remember seeing bands since
where I had to leave the stage
876
01:01:17,006 --> 01:01:19,074
where I was standing
alongside ofthe stage
877
01:01:19,142 --> 01:01:23,945
because my molars hurt so bad
from just being overwhelmed.
878
01:01:24,013 --> 01:01:27,315
And Jimi was never that loud.
879
01:01:27,383 --> 01:01:31,253
He was just a regular stack of Marshalls
loud, which was plenty enough.
880
01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:34,890
It's more the player,
who that person is.
881
01:01:34,957 --> 01:01:37,859
You find something
that you identify with,
882
01:01:37,927 --> 01:01:41,496
be it an amplifier, a guitar
or a pedal or whatever it is,
883
01:01:41,564 --> 01:01:45,834
and if you like it, if it appeals
to you, it becomes part of your thing,
884
01:01:45,902 --> 01:01:49,438
and that's part ofthat individual.
885
01:01:50,840 --> 01:01:53,575
Jeff Beck was another guy
that took a Strat with a Marshall
886
01:01:53,643 --> 01:01:55,043
and cranked it all the way up.
887
01:01:55,111 --> 01:01:58,947
Then there's a myriad of guys
that it doesn't work with.
888
01:01:59,015 --> 01:02:01,950
For me, a Strat
and a Marshall never worked.
889
01:02:02,018 --> 01:02:03,785
A Les Paul and a Marshall worked.
890
01:02:03,853 --> 01:02:08,390
Each individual has how they communicate
what they want to sound like.
891
01:02:08,458 --> 01:02:13,328
Believe me, those of us
that kept using that kind of amplifier
892
01:02:13,396 --> 01:02:16,765
are paying by having to wear these.
893
01:02:18,601 --> 01:02:24,673
He has moments of being
in your standard blues kind ofthing,
894
01:02:24,741 --> 01:02:28,877
but he'll use some unorthodox notes,
895
01:02:28,945 --> 01:02:32,647
which is probably one ofthe key things
that I picked up from him.
896
01:02:32,715 --> 01:02:37,319
He exposed a chord that he could feed
back, use his wah-wah, hit a chord,
897
01:02:37,386 --> 01:02:41,223
it would come out ofthat dimension,
that thing he hit where it was like...
898
01:02:43,860 --> 01:02:47,329
There are certain key notes
that make rock sound like rock,
899
01:02:47,396 --> 01:02:52,968
and there's other notes that you can use
and get outside ofthat box
900
01:02:53,035 --> 01:02:56,905
and go back to certain key notes.
901
01:02:56,973 --> 01:03:00,408
He was really good at doing that.
I always wanted to be able to do that.
902
01:03:00,476 --> 01:03:03,278
Jeff Beck is actually
one ofthe masters of doing it,
903
01:03:03,346 --> 01:03:09,184
ofjust using unconventional phrasing
but still getting a rock sound.
904
01:03:10,920 --> 01:03:13,522
But he'd tune up while he was playing,
905
01:03:13,589 --> 01:03:16,224
which I've never seen
anybody else do either.
906
01:03:16,292 --> 01:03:17,526
He'd go...
907
01:03:20,129 --> 01:03:22,230
Every time I listen to a Hendrix album,
908
01:03:22,298 --> 01:03:26,501
I always walk out ofthat room
feeling like a warm puppy.
909
01:03:26,569 --> 01:03:28,537
It was very warm.
910
01:03:28,604 --> 01:03:34,643
He used the lead pickup on a Strat,
the one that's all the way up,
911
01:03:34,710 --> 01:03:36,978
and he stayed that way most ofthe time.
912
01:03:37,046 --> 01:03:38,914
Actually it would be all the way down.
913
01:03:38,981 --> 01:03:42,984
A great tone, it was very round.
914
01:03:43,052 --> 01:03:48,690
Even when he was screaming,
it still had some weight to it.
915
01:03:48,758 --> 01:03:53,228
Probably one ofthe biggest gifts
that he had was he was insanely fluid.
916
01:03:54,130 --> 01:03:59,134
It was like Jimi flowed
through the music.
917
01:03:59,202 --> 01:04:00,602
He never thought about it.
918
01:04:00,670 --> 01:04:03,438
It was back in the day
when spontaneity was the thing,
919
01:04:03,506 --> 01:04:08,844
and you'd go up there and say
what you had to say that given evening,
920
01:04:08,911 --> 01:04:12,914
as opposed to it being like a rehearsed,
choreographed show every single night.
921
01:04:12,982 --> 01:04:15,116
So you'd go up there
on the spur ofthe moment
922
01:04:15,184 --> 01:04:18,153
and play your songs
the way that you felt them that day,
923
01:04:18,221 --> 01:04:22,224
and even then, he just had
amazing tone and amazing control.
924
01:04:23,092 --> 01:04:26,828
As great a guitar player as Jimi was,
he was also a phenomenal showman
925
01:04:26,896 --> 01:04:31,333
and knew how to rise to the occasion
926
01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:35,871
when needed to get past the barriers
to make a performance happen.
927
01:04:52,221 --> 01:04:55,824
When we're on stage, it's all the world.
That's your whole life.
928
01:04:59,762 --> 01:05:03,164
All the flashy stuffthat you think
about when you think of Jimi Hendrix,
929
01:05:03,232 --> 01:05:04,766
lighting the guitar on fire,
930
01:05:04,834 --> 01:05:07,569
playing with your teeth,
playing behind your back,
931
01:05:07,637 --> 01:05:10,639
every one had been done by somebody else
before Jimi Hendrix.
932
01:05:10,706 --> 01:05:14,776
He didn't invent any ofthem, but
he managed to put them into this show
933
01:05:14,844 --> 01:05:16,778
and to play it to a different audience.
934
01:05:16,846 --> 01:05:19,180
To a degree, he was brilliant marketer.
935
01:05:19,248 --> 01:05:24,119
The idea ofthe show was a big deal
in African-American culture and in R&B.
936
01:05:24,186 --> 01:05:26,621
It was not a deal in white rock.
937
01:05:26,689 --> 01:05:32,060
Jimi took the African-American R&B show
and integrated it into rock.
938
01:05:32,128 --> 01:05:35,397
That was a touch
that no one had been able to do before.
939
01:05:35,464 --> 01:05:37,399
Freddie King, Albert King,
940
01:05:37,466 --> 01:05:42,370
those two guys were guys that Jimi stole
the big part oftheir routine.
941
01:05:42,438 --> 01:05:47,208
T-Bone Walker had done a lot of
the stuffthat Jimi had done beforehand,
942
01:05:47,276 --> 01:05:52,113
but within the blues and in
that circuit, nothing's patented.
943
01:05:52,181 --> 01:05:56,084
Every performer is constantly stealing
and learning from other people.
944
01:05:56,152 --> 01:05:59,287
No one had patented the idea
of playing the guitar with your teeth,
945
01:05:59,355 --> 01:06:00,255
and you couldn't,
946
01:06:00,323 --> 01:06:03,358
but when people thought of it,
they soon thought of Jimi Hendrix
947
01:06:03,426 --> 01:06:05,560
and not the 20 guys
who'd done it beforehand.
948
01:06:05,628 --> 01:06:08,730
So many musicians right now
are playing 20 times better
949
01:06:08,798 --> 01:06:11,666
than any Chuck Berry
or any Fats Domino.
950
01:06:11,734 --> 01:06:13,401
I'm not putting these people down.
951
01:06:13,469 --> 01:06:15,603
I'm just saying
that music is better now.
952
01:06:15,671 --> 01:06:18,640
People don't know it.
It's right in their faces.
953
01:06:18,708 --> 01:06:20,108
It's so much better.
954
01:06:20,176 --> 01:06:22,410
They have to have gimmicks
and imagery to go by.
955
01:06:22,478 --> 01:06:25,513
Ifthey don't have these things,
they know nothing about music.
956
01:06:25,581 --> 01:06:28,583
That's how some people think,
which is a big fat drag sometimes.
957
01:06:28,651 --> 01:06:33,221
I've just actually remembered
another show I did with Jimi Hendrix
958
01:06:33,289 --> 01:06:35,757
in Zurich in Switzerland.
959
01:06:35,825 --> 01:06:39,828
It was in one ofthose
indoor cycling arenas.
960
01:06:39,895 --> 01:06:41,563
Three reasons I remember it.
961
01:06:41,630 --> 01:06:45,033
One is that when I was doing the show
with John Mayall,
962
01:06:45,101 --> 01:06:49,471
somebody ran up the cycle track and
stole one of John Mayall's harmonicas
963
01:06:49,538 --> 01:06:53,641
and started running around
the cycle track with it.
964
01:06:53,709 --> 01:06:56,244
There were people chasing after him.
965
01:06:56,312 --> 01:07:01,416
I remember standing at the side of
the stage for Jimi Hendrix's show.
966
01:07:01,484 --> 01:07:07,188
I was standing there with Jon Hiseman,
John Mayall and a few other people.
967
01:07:07,256 --> 01:07:09,657
And it was phenomenal.
968
01:07:09,725 --> 01:07:17,265
The power and the intensity and his
sense oftiming were just so good.
969
01:07:17,333 --> 01:07:20,735
He was a great performer as well.
970
01:07:20,803 --> 01:07:25,173
What a player.
Just phenomenal stage presence.
971
01:07:25,241 --> 01:07:28,610
He was this completely wild thing
on stage.
972
01:07:30,112 --> 01:07:35,583
Setting fire to his guitar
and changing songs midway through,
973
01:07:35,651 --> 01:07:37,485
having sort of like no respect,
974
01:07:37,553 --> 01:07:43,024
but, like, ''I am the man
and just look at me and listen to me.''
975
01:07:43,092 --> 01:07:44,993
Then he'd come off stage
976
01:07:45,061 --> 01:07:51,132
and be this incredibly mild mannered,
very well mannered...
977
01:07:51,200 --> 01:07:54,335
If a lady came in, he'd always
stand up and he'd shake hands.
978
01:07:54,403 --> 01:07:55,770
Very polite, well spoken.
979
01:07:55,838 --> 01:07:58,206
He was this complete
Jekyll and Hyde character.
980
01:07:58,274 --> 01:08:01,109
There was a sort of dichotomy
981
01:08:01,177 --> 01:08:06,247
between his off-stage persona
and his on-stage persona.
982
01:08:06,315 --> 01:08:11,052
He was very extrovert
and explosive on stage,
983
01:08:11,120 --> 01:08:17,192
but off stage, he was very quiet
and gentle and almost shy in a way.
984
01:08:17,259 --> 01:08:20,929
He was incredibly well mannered
off stage. He was really quiet.
985
01:08:20,996 --> 01:08:23,331
But on stage, he was this howling demon.
986
01:08:23,399 --> 01:08:26,701
Chicks used to like a bad guy
a lot better in those days.
987
01:08:26,769 --> 01:08:30,371
There was certainly a persona
that he put on.
988
01:08:30,439 --> 01:08:35,376
And I'm not saying
that it was like Alice Cooper,
989
01:08:35,444 --> 01:08:40,248
but Alice is a good example of
someone who had created a persona.
990
01:08:40,316 --> 01:08:43,485
He only felt comfortable
when he was playing the guitar.
991
01:09:05,474 --> 01:09:09,444
He was trying to create this character,
Jimi Hendrix,
992
01:09:09,512 --> 01:09:13,982
but he was trying to combine
the lyricism of Bob Dylan
993
01:09:14,049 --> 01:09:16,951
with the show of
the African-American R&B review,
994
01:09:17,019 --> 01:09:19,787
with the calypso look on stage.
995
01:09:19,855 --> 01:09:21,923
It was a mix ofthese
disparate elements,
996
01:09:21,991 --> 01:09:25,093
and he did it and put it all together
and made it magic.
997
01:09:25,161 --> 01:09:26,861
If you look at Jimi then
998
01:09:26,929 --> 01:09:30,665
and you go, ''This guy's wearing
these pirate shirts, these puffy shirts,
999
01:09:30,733 --> 01:09:33,067
these slick things;
that looks like calypso.''
1000
01:09:33,135 --> 01:09:36,638
So, to a degree, Jimi takes
all these different elements around him.
1001
01:09:36,705 --> 01:09:40,341
He combines the calypso shirt
with what he calls Bob Dylan hair.
1002
01:09:40,409 --> 01:09:43,411
That's what Jimi was trying to do,
give himself Bob Dylan hair.
1003
01:09:43,479 --> 01:09:45,880
He loved Dylan so much
he wanted to look like Dylan.
1004
01:09:45,948 --> 01:09:48,049
He was African-American.
He couldn't.
1005
01:09:48,117 --> 01:09:51,619
The later thing like Madonna, wearing
all her clothes at the same time.
1006
01:09:51,687 --> 01:09:54,322
Sometimes it was like that, a bit.
1007
01:09:54,390 --> 01:09:56,991
He was really lanky,
1008
01:09:57,059 --> 01:10:01,296
and he moved like a spider
on greased rollers.
1009
01:10:01,363 --> 01:10:03,631
He sort of made it all work.
1010
01:10:03,699 --> 01:10:05,767
He was a good-looking guy.
1011
01:10:05,834 --> 01:10:08,836
We used to call him the Bird.
1012
01:10:08,904 --> 01:10:12,740
And I said, ''Why?''
He said because he had such skinny legs.
1013
01:10:12,808 --> 01:10:16,311
You'd never seen anything like him
for women either.
1014
01:10:16,378 --> 01:10:19,847
Women would just go fucking nuts
the minute he walked on stage.
1015
01:10:19,915 --> 01:10:22,183
Boyfriend forgotten.
1016
01:10:22,251 --> 01:10:26,154
Down the front,
bras on the stage, the whole thing.
1017
01:10:26,222 --> 01:10:31,559
He was just a snake for chicks, and
it was anything remotely approaching...
1018
01:10:31,627 --> 01:10:34,162
It was like the Elvis thing:
take a number and wait.
1019
01:10:34,230 --> 01:10:38,366
If I get up at seven o'clock
in the morning and I'm really sleepy,
1020
01:10:38,434 --> 01:10:42,670
but then I open the door and see
somebody that appeals to me,
1021
01:10:42,738 --> 01:10:45,306
or like, first of all,
thinking of all...
1022
01:10:45,374 --> 01:10:48,209
First of all, I say,
''What in the world is she doing here?''
1023
01:10:48,277 --> 01:10:50,545
''What does she want?''
or something like that.
1024
01:10:50,613 --> 01:10:53,114
She says, ''Can I come in?''
1025
01:10:53,182 --> 01:10:55,883
And I'm standing there
and really digging her.
1026
01:10:55,951 --> 01:10:57,418
She's really nice-looking.
1027
01:10:57,486 --> 01:10:59,520
To tell you the honest-to-God truth,
1028
01:10:59,588 --> 01:11:03,324
she's about 19, 20,
or beyond the age of so-and-so.
1029
01:11:03,392 --> 01:11:05,526
And so I'll probably stand there,
1030
01:11:05,594 --> 01:11:10,064
and then, they're inviting me
to a nightclub maybe or something.
1031
01:11:10,132 --> 01:11:13,434
That's the truth.
That's the way I am because I...
1032
01:11:14,803 --> 01:11:16,437
When it comes to that, you know...
1033
01:11:16,505 --> 01:11:20,375
The prime-most idea
in all our heads then,
1034
01:11:20,442 --> 01:11:24,612
and I think I can speak
for more than just myself at that time,
1035
01:11:24,680 --> 01:11:28,016
was that we just wanted to ball
every chick in sight, basically.
1036
01:11:28,083 --> 01:11:31,519
That was the prime moving object.
1037
01:11:31,587 --> 01:11:36,691
We just used to have a continual party.
1038
01:11:48,771 --> 01:11:52,507
Like most human beings,
he liked to have somebody, some company,
1039
01:11:52,574 --> 01:11:57,011
and he liked to have a girlfriend,
somebody with him,
1040
01:11:57,079 --> 01:11:58,980
until he got his confidence.
1041
01:11:59,048 --> 01:12:02,517
It took a while for him
to build up enough confidence.
1042
01:12:02,584 --> 01:12:06,454
He was quite shy and reserved.
1043
01:12:06,522 --> 01:12:09,157
He wasn't the sort of person
that would walk into a place
1044
01:12:09,224 --> 01:12:13,594
and start making conversation
with everybody who was around.
1045
01:12:14,430 --> 01:12:17,765
The new group with the Monkees
is called the Jimi Hendrix Experience,
1046
01:12:18,233 --> 01:12:20,568
and theyjoin
the Monkees' concert tour ofthe US.
1047
01:12:20,636 --> 01:12:23,871
They weren't in there in the beginning,
just the past couple of days.
1048
01:12:23,939 --> 01:12:26,774
We're keen to bring you
the Monkees in Detroit on July 29th.
1049
01:12:26,842 --> 01:12:29,410
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
will be with the Monkees.
1050
01:12:29,478 --> 01:12:33,414
I was in New York doing a press junket
I think for the Monkees.
1051
01:12:33,482 --> 01:12:37,985
Somebody said, ''You've got to come down
to the Village, so-and-so's playing.''
1052
01:12:38,053 --> 01:12:42,390
''There's this guy playing tonight
that plays guitar with his teeth.''
1053
01:12:42,458 --> 01:12:46,527
That was what he was known as, the guy
that plays guitar with his teeth.
1054
01:12:46,595 --> 01:12:50,832
I was like, ''Cool, man.
That would be cool. Alright, yeah.''
1055
01:12:50,899 --> 01:12:54,035
I just remember going down
to the Village, ending up in this club,
1056
01:12:54,103 --> 01:12:58,005
sitting there, and sure enough there's
this guy playing guitar with his teeth.
1057
01:12:58,073 --> 01:13:02,310
So, fast forward,
'67 Monterey Pop Festival.
1058
01:13:02,378 --> 01:13:06,948
On come these three guys,
and I look up and I go,
1059
01:13:07,015 --> 01:13:10,618
''Wait! That's the guy
that plays guitar with his teeth!''
1060
01:13:10,686 --> 01:13:13,321
We happened to be looking
for an opening act at the time.
1061
01:13:13,389 --> 01:13:18,059
I thought, ''Well, he's very theatrical.
He'd be a great opening act!''
1062
01:13:18,127 --> 01:13:20,395
Can you imagine,
especially in the South?
1063
01:13:20,462 --> 01:13:23,097
One ofthe first dates
was in the deep South somewhere,
1064
01:13:23,165 --> 01:13:25,466
and all of a sudden,
this black guy comes on
1065
01:13:25,534 --> 01:13:29,804
dressed like a cross between
Ronald McDonald and Charlie Manson.
1066
01:13:29,872 --> 01:13:31,372
And he's like...
1067
01:13:36,645 --> 01:13:38,346
I don't think it was so much the fans.
1068
01:13:38,414 --> 01:13:40,481
They wanted to see the Monkees.
1069
01:13:40,549 --> 01:13:45,853
But it was probably more the parents
that were like, ''What? Jesus!''
1070
01:13:45,921 --> 01:13:50,024
It was tough for him
because nobody knew who he was,
1071
01:13:50,092 --> 01:13:53,161
certainly not
in the Monkees' demographic,
1072
01:13:53,228 --> 01:13:59,100
which was essentially
ten-year-old girls, 12-year-old girls.
1073
01:13:59,168 --> 01:14:01,002
But he ran into the same problem
1074
01:14:01,069 --> 01:14:05,506
that a lot of acts have
opening for any other big act.
1075
01:14:05,574 --> 01:14:10,511
You've heard the classic stories of
Guns N' Roses opening for the Stones,
1076
01:14:10,579 --> 01:14:13,247
and it's like, ''Hey, where's Mick?''
1077
01:14:13,315 --> 01:14:15,483
Well, exactly the same thing happened,
1078
01:14:15,551 --> 01:14:18,419
and I tell the story on stage
all the time. It's like...
1079
01:14:21,123 --> 01:14:24,659
''We want Davy! We want the Monkees!''
1080
01:14:26,428 --> 01:14:30,398
''Micky, Mike and Monkees!''
1081
01:14:30,466 --> 01:14:32,934
So I could see how that
could frustrate anybody.
1082
01:14:33,001 --> 01:14:36,671
I mean, I'd like to think
that maybe it helped a little bit.
1083
01:14:36,738 --> 01:14:38,072
But I have no doubt
1084
01:14:38,140 --> 01:14:42,376
that Jimi Hendrix would have
done just fine without the Monkees.
1085
01:14:42,444 --> 01:14:47,448
That was a publicity stunt
because they knew they'd fire him.
1086
01:14:47,516 --> 01:14:51,219
They couldn't keep Hendrix on the bill
with the Monkees. It was impossible.
1087
01:14:51,286 --> 01:14:54,188
He'd just wipe them out every night,
1088
01:14:54,256 --> 01:14:56,824
or alienate the audience altogether.
1089
01:14:56,892 --> 01:15:01,329
So that was a plot to get him fired
and get his name out in America.
1090
01:15:01,396 --> 01:15:04,632
I was hired by TigerBeat
to go on the tour.
1091
01:15:05,234 --> 01:15:09,203
But they didn't hire me until about
a week after the tour started.
1092
01:15:09,271 --> 01:15:12,240
So when I actuallyjoined the tour,
the afternoon,
1093
01:15:12,307 --> 01:15:15,243
I walked into
the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium
1094
01:15:15,310 --> 01:15:20,515
just as Jimi Hendrix
was exiting the stage for the last time.
1095
01:15:20,582 --> 01:15:24,318
So I didn't actually get to see him play
any ofthose concerts.
1096
01:15:24,386 --> 01:15:28,322
However, we all went back
to the Warwick Hotel in New York City
1097
01:15:28,390 --> 01:15:31,826
where the Monkees had the whole floor
to themselves and their entourage
1098
01:15:31,894 --> 01:15:33,561
and security at the elevators,
1099
01:15:33,629 --> 01:15:36,797
because they were as popular
as the Beatles at that point.
1100
01:15:36,865 --> 01:15:39,700
So we were all in the hallway
and Jimi Hendrix was there
1101
01:15:39,768 --> 01:15:41,636
and Micky and Davy and all my friends,
1102
01:15:41,703 --> 01:15:46,440
and somebody was passing out
these little white pills.
1103
01:15:46,508 --> 01:15:49,677
This was the '60s, you know...
1104
01:15:49,745 --> 01:15:52,980
We were free, and so I took one,
everybody took one.
1105
01:15:53,048 --> 01:15:57,518
It was psilocybin,
which is quite a powerful psychedelic.
1106
01:15:59,187 --> 01:16:02,189
We all went off
on our ways into the evening,
1107
01:16:02,257 --> 01:16:04,926
and I went down to Greenwich Village
1108
01:16:04,993 --> 01:16:08,763
where I had lived for a while,
and knew my way around,
1109
01:16:08,830 --> 01:16:11,699
and I went into
a little hamburger place there,
1110
01:16:11,767 --> 01:16:14,201
right near Bleecker and MacDougal.
1111
01:16:14,269 --> 01:16:16,971
I'm sitting there
trying to get it together to order
1112
01:16:17,039 --> 01:16:19,974
and I look up and in the doorway
comes Jimi Hendrix.
1113
01:16:20,042 --> 01:16:22,743
And he sees me sitting across the room
1114
01:16:22,811 --> 01:16:25,580
and he comes
and he sits down next to me.
1115
01:16:25,647 --> 01:16:29,083
So we're both like little boys
with these big wide eyes,
1116
01:16:29,151 --> 01:16:30,585
watching these people,
1117
01:16:30,652 --> 01:16:33,788
He would say,
''What is that guy doing?''
1118
01:16:33,855 --> 01:16:37,058
And I would say, ''I think
he's eating a hamburger.''
1119
01:16:37,125 --> 01:16:39,961
And then you'd see some guy like...
1120
01:16:40,028 --> 01:16:41,562
It was like being at the zoo.
1121
01:16:41,630 --> 01:16:45,633
We were like two little boys at the zoo
at feeding time.
1122
01:16:45,701 --> 01:16:50,171
He had some kind of capacity
to take more drugs than anybody else.
1123
01:16:50,238 --> 01:16:55,610
People tell stories of being backstage
where everyone else took half an acid,
1124
01:16:55,677 --> 01:16:58,546
he took 20 and still managed
to play the way that he did.
1125
01:16:58,614 --> 01:17:02,583
It probably helped that
he was always cataclysmically stoned.
1126
01:17:04,252 --> 01:17:09,256
We all were then. It was what
everybody was doing: acid, lots of acid.
1127
01:17:09,324 --> 01:17:13,661
If it showed any signs ofwearing off,
you'd take another five.
1128
01:17:13,729 --> 01:17:16,530
In the end,
we were eating them like Dolly Mixtures.
1129
01:17:16,598 --> 01:17:20,468
Because they said that acid
doesn't work two days in a row.
1130
01:17:20,535 --> 01:17:22,737
We found out
if you double the dose, it does.
1131
01:17:23,705 --> 01:17:25,406
So we were doing all that stuff.
1132
01:17:25,474 --> 01:17:28,142
That's not what made
Jimi Hendrix a great guitar player.
1133
01:17:28,210 --> 01:17:30,411
I don't think drugs
had anything to do with it,
1134
01:17:30,479 --> 01:17:32,980
but I think some of
the experimenting that he did
1135
01:17:33,048 --> 01:17:38,019
and some ofthe crazy sort of
sonic things that he got away with
1136
01:17:38,086 --> 01:17:39,687
had a lot to do with drugs.
1137
01:17:40,789 --> 01:17:43,090
Made it a little bit more colourful.
1138
01:17:43,992 --> 01:17:46,994
It affected everything.
Acid affected you completely.
1139
01:17:47,062 --> 01:17:51,065
It wasn'tjust get high and doze off.
1140
01:17:51,133 --> 01:17:56,070
I mean, acid was a roller coaster.
1141
01:17:59,107 --> 01:18:03,444
The original pure stuff
was a great drug.
1142
01:18:03,512 --> 01:18:08,549
But it sent a lot of people
to the basket-weaving factory.
1143
01:18:09,618 --> 01:18:15,656
He felt that drugs opened up his mind to
colours, to a variety of other things.
1144
01:18:15,724 --> 01:18:19,326
He used colours,
colours corresponding with notes.
1145
01:18:19,394 --> 01:18:22,897
He developed this thing called
energy-sound-colour-dynamics
1146
01:18:22,964 --> 01:18:25,566
that he thought that...
1147
01:18:25,634 --> 01:18:30,004
See, he wanted to hold music
but he never could,
1148
01:18:30,072 --> 01:18:33,274
because music is a spirit,
music has no body.
1149
01:18:33,341 --> 01:18:36,644
So that's why he wrote that song
that music drops through my fingers.
1150
01:18:36,712 --> 01:18:41,482
Soft music is blues and greens
and purples.
1151
01:18:41,550 --> 01:18:45,252
Hard rock 'n' roll like Foxy Lady
is like red and orange.
1152
01:18:45,320 --> 01:18:50,791
Well, that's kind of
a contemporary view.
1153
01:18:50,859 --> 01:18:52,526
You had to be there for that one.
1154
01:18:52,594 --> 01:18:57,832
He simply couldn't have accomplished
all he did in the four years of fame.
1155
01:18:57,899 --> 01:19:01,836
He played over 600 concerts,
he recorded four albums,
1156
01:19:01,903 --> 01:19:04,939
he recorded countless other things
that were never released.
1157
01:19:05,006 --> 01:19:08,442
He couldn't have done that all if he was
as fucked up as everybody says.
1158
01:19:10,011 --> 01:19:12,046
Noel was getting
more and more frustrated
1159
01:19:12,114 --> 01:19:16,117
by the fact that he was not playing
the guitar, his favourite instrument.
1160
01:19:16,184 --> 01:19:18,319
They were seeing
less and less of each other.
1161
01:19:18,386 --> 01:19:21,622
Jimi ended up playing
many ofthe bass parts in the studio
1162
01:19:21,690 --> 01:19:23,257
on Electric Ladyland.
1163
01:19:23,325 --> 01:19:27,194
Jimi was also toying with the idea
of having different bass players
1164
01:19:27,262 --> 01:19:29,663
and wanted to form his own band.
1165
01:19:29,731 --> 01:19:32,433
He flew his army buddy, Billy Cox,
up to New York
1166
01:19:32,501 --> 01:19:36,370
and started recording and rehearsing
with him as a replacement for Noel.
1167
01:19:43,879 --> 01:19:49,250
When I moved to Britain,
and started making the solo albums,
1168
01:19:49,317 --> 01:19:52,052
and I started it and Jimi was around.
1169
01:19:52,120 --> 01:19:57,992
He ended playing on a song from that
album called Old Times Good Times,
1170
01:19:58,059 --> 01:20:00,361
and then he shocked the hell out of me
by saying,
1171
01:20:00,428 --> 01:20:02,763
''That should be the first one
for our record.''
1172
01:20:02,831 --> 01:20:08,435
We fit together really nicely because
I had a good, strong sense of rhythm.
1173
01:20:08,503 --> 01:20:11,705
I would have put down the guitar
and picked up the bass for him.
1174
01:20:11,773 --> 01:20:13,274
He liked the way I played bass.
1175
01:20:13,341 --> 01:20:16,143
That was the first I heard
that we were going to have a band.
1176
01:20:16,211 --> 01:20:23,184
At the time, there was a little rift
going on within the Experience,
1177
01:20:23,251 --> 01:20:26,120
and there was talk of Noel leaving.
1178
01:20:26,188 --> 01:20:29,490
And Jimi and I had actually talked
about me joining on bass.
1179
01:20:31,026 --> 01:20:34,295
There's some tracks hidden somewhere
1180
01:20:34,362 --> 01:20:39,033
of me playing bass and sitar
and stuffthat we did together.
1181
01:20:39,100 --> 01:20:43,504
But Jimi played bass on
pretty much all of Electric Ladylaid.
1182
01:20:43,572 --> 01:20:47,408
But Noel really hated playing bass.
He wanted to be a guitar player.
1183
01:20:47,475 --> 01:20:50,444
''That fucking Hendrix,
stealing all the limelight.''
1184
01:20:50,512 --> 01:20:53,814
''I was the best guitarist in Kent,
you know,'' he'd say.
1185
01:20:54,983 --> 01:20:59,286
Imagine. But then Noel
started making demands.
1186
01:20:59,354 --> 01:21:03,290
He brought his own band
on the tour in '69.
1187
01:21:03,358 --> 01:21:07,828
Fat Mattress, they were called.
What an inspiring name.
1188
01:21:08,697 --> 01:21:11,031
They had two ofthe Flowerpot Men,
1189
01:21:11,099 --> 01:21:14,401
a British band who were
cashing in on the flower thing.
1190
01:21:14,469 --> 01:21:17,972
And they were really, really awful.
1191
01:21:18,039 --> 01:21:19,673
I'm afraid so.
1192
01:21:20,976 --> 01:21:24,778
That Little Miss Strange,
that song on Electric Laidlady,
1193
01:21:24,846 --> 01:21:28,115
that's Noel's first composition,
1194
01:21:28,183 --> 01:21:31,085
which will give you a good idea
of his later compositions.
1195
01:21:31,152 --> 01:21:34,421
Mitchell was a fantastic drummer.
He was like Keith Moon.
1196
01:21:34,489 --> 01:21:35,723
They wouldn't have fit,
1197
01:21:35,790 --> 01:21:41,161
except there's certain people, like Moon
fitted with Entwistle and Townshend,
1198
01:21:41,229 --> 01:21:43,998
and Mitch fitted with Hendrix perfectly,
1199
01:21:44,065 --> 01:21:46,934
because he could fill in
or drop it down.
1200
01:21:47,002 --> 01:21:50,838
He was a great drummer.
A jazz drummer.
1201
01:21:51,306 --> 01:21:53,874
Jimi's problems seemed to get worse.
1202
01:21:53,942 --> 01:21:55,576
The Experience was breaking up,
1203
01:21:55,644 --> 01:21:58,579
he was arrested for drug possession
at the Toronto Airport,
1204
01:21:58,647 --> 01:22:01,815
and his loyal girlfriend
was leaving him for good.
1205
01:22:01,883 --> 01:22:05,986
There were all these hangers-on
that started to fly into London,
1206
01:22:06,054 --> 01:22:09,123
and just turn up at the door
and invite themselves in,
1207
01:22:09,190 --> 01:22:12,126
or Jimi would invite them in
and we couldn't shake them off.
1208
01:22:12,193 --> 01:22:15,195
And everyone was always on him
and wanting something,
1209
01:22:15,263 --> 01:22:19,199
and he was constantly
being followed around by people.
1210
01:22:19,267 --> 01:22:21,368
And he would come
in the middle ofthe night,
1211
01:22:21,436 --> 01:22:29,243
and ditch his crowd and come and talk to
me and Dan about life in general a lot.
1212
01:22:29,311 --> 01:22:35,816
I went to New York
and we stayed in this suite.
1213
01:22:35,884 --> 01:22:37,017
And there was this guy
1214
01:22:37,085 --> 01:22:41,889
and he had a sports bag
which he put down on the floor,
1215
01:22:41,957 --> 01:22:44,291
and it gaped open at the top.
1216
01:22:44,359 --> 01:22:51,832
I looked down and there was a gun
on the top of all these bags of powder.
1217
01:22:54,102 --> 01:22:55,703
Jimi headlined Woodstock
1218
01:22:55,770 --> 01:22:59,039
with a hired five-piece band
named Gypsy Sun and Rainbows
1219
01:22:59,107 --> 01:23:01,141
which he threw together without Noel.
1220
01:23:01,209 --> 01:23:05,346
This band didn't last long. They only
played a couple more gigs together.
1221
01:23:10,652 --> 01:23:12,386
Along with Billy Cox,
1222
01:23:12,454 --> 01:23:16,023
Jimi lured in another one of his
friends, drummer Buddy Miles,
1223
01:23:16,091 --> 01:23:18,092
and formed the Band of Gypsys.
1224
01:23:18,159 --> 01:23:20,594
But Jimi's performances
were starting to slip
1225
01:23:20,662 --> 01:23:23,697
and Buddy Miles claimed
that his manager, Michael Jeffery,
1226
01:23:23,765 --> 01:23:27,368
dosed Hendrix with LSD
to sabotage the band
1227
01:23:27,435 --> 01:23:29,737
and bring back the Experience line-up.
1228
01:24:11,279 --> 01:24:13,480
Let me tell you something about Jimi.
1229
01:24:13,548 --> 01:24:15,682
He used to call us up
when he was playing.
1230
01:24:15,750 --> 01:24:21,321
Jimmy James and the Blue Flames,
or Maurice James.
1231
01:24:21,389 --> 01:24:25,859
He had these names that he would
make up and he would want to do it.
1232
01:24:25,927 --> 01:24:27,895
That's the happiest time he ever was.
1233
01:24:27,962 --> 01:24:33,801
He'd call up laughing, saying, ''Leon,
I got a car, I got a '57 Plymouth.''
1234
01:24:33,868 --> 01:24:37,838
''I have to turn it a hundred times
before it turns.''
1235
01:24:37,906 --> 01:24:41,842
''It don't run good,
but I'm rolling in Manhattan.''
1236
01:24:41,910 --> 01:24:44,545
''I got an apartment,
I got a girlfriend.''
1237
01:24:44,612 --> 01:24:48,048
He was making $100 a week.
He said, ''I'm making $100 a week, Leon!''
1238
01:24:48,116 --> 01:24:50,484
''And I'm happy.''
1239
01:24:50,552 --> 01:24:55,122
But when he got famous,
thatjoy was never there again.
1240
01:24:55,190 --> 01:24:57,591
He didn't like being a star much.
1241
01:24:57,659 --> 01:25:02,162
Because at the Isle of Wight,
which I was at, that last show,
1242
01:25:02,230 --> 01:25:04,164
he was really, really bad.
1243
01:25:04,232 --> 01:25:07,234
He wouldn't do his hits
for halfthe show.
1244
01:25:07,302 --> 01:25:12,406
He was doing all his weird squiggly
stuff he'd been doing at home
1245
01:25:12,474 --> 01:25:14,174
in the basement recording studio.
1246
01:25:14,242 --> 01:25:17,311
I think he went offthe rails
in about mid-'68.
1247
01:25:17,378 --> 01:25:19,580
He started listening
to people around him.
1248
01:25:19,647 --> 01:25:22,015
''Everything's great,
do what you like.''
1249
01:25:22,083 --> 01:25:23,951
You couldn't order Jimi about,
1250
01:25:24,018 --> 01:25:27,354
and that was one ofthe problems
that his management had with him.
1251
01:25:27,422 --> 01:25:29,823
Jimi was going to do
what he wanted to do.
1252
01:25:29,891 --> 01:25:34,328
The biggest problem in life
from a musical point ofview
1253
01:25:34,395 --> 01:25:36,997
is that he wanted to stay in the studio
and record,
1254
01:25:37,065 --> 01:25:40,968
and his business people were constantly
trying to push him on the road
1255
01:25:41,035 --> 01:25:42,903
to earn more money.
1256
01:25:42,971 --> 01:25:44,905
They were spending a lot of money.
1257
01:25:44,973 --> 01:25:47,941
They took a lot of money
from Warner Brothers to build a studio,
1258
01:25:48,009 --> 01:25:52,279
and they owed money back, and so
there were a lot of financial problems.
1259
01:25:52,347 --> 01:25:57,184
And the only way to solve those problems
was to keep Jimi out on the road
1260
01:25:57,252 --> 01:26:00,220
earning, you know, the cash.
1261
01:26:00,288 --> 01:26:03,056
I didn't care for Michael Jeffery,
for one thing,
1262
01:26:03,124 --> 01:26:06,293
because I heard
that he was giving Jimi dope.
1263
01:26:06,361 --> 01:26:09,496
That's what I had heard.
I don't know how that was.
1264
01:26:09,564 --> 01:26:13,600
Next thing I know, a few months later
or years, he was dead.
1265
01:26:13,668 --> 01:26:18,071
Jim Morrison said when the music stops,
turn out the lights,
1266
01:26:18,139 --> 01:26:21,608
and that's what
kind of happened backstage.
1267
01:26:21,676 --> 01:26:24,545
Putting the guitar into the case
1268
01:26:24,612 --> 01:26:27,848
and a couple of girls
popped their heads round the corner,
1269
01:26:27,916 --> 01:26:31,151
''Come on, man, let's go.''
1270
01:26:31,219 --> 01:26:33,320
''See you, Jimi.'' ''Yeah, bye.''
1271
01:26:33,388 --> 01:26:38,058
He was dead two nights later.
He was gone.
1272
01:26:38,126 --> 01:26:44,631
Jimi took me to the airport in a taxi,
said goodbye.
1273
01:26:46,467 --> 01:26:50,704
I went back to New York,
went to sleep,
1274
01:26:50,772 --> 01:26:53,340
and woke up in the morning
1275
01:26:53,408 --> 01:26:56,877
and got a telephone call
that he had died on that Friday.
1276
01:27:04,619 --> 01:27:07,588
He died because ofthe incompetence
ofthe ambulance crew
1277
01:27:07,655 --> 01:27:09,289
that was sent to save him.
1278
01:27:09,357 --> 01:27:11,692
Because he was alive
when he got to the hospital,
1279
01:27:11,759 --> 01:27:14,194
against every fact that you get told.
1280
01:27:14,262 --> 01:27:17,030
He was still alive
when he got to St Mary Abbots.
1281
01:27:17,098 --> 01:27:20,500
He died while they were trying
to revive him.
1282
01:27:20,568 --> 01:27:25,906
I received a phone call.
That's how I found out.
1283
01:27:25,974 --> 01:27:32,613
And it was sort of, I don't know,
one ofthose panic calls.
1284
01:27:32,680 --> 01:27:35,782
''Should I do anything?
What should I do?''
1285
01:27:35,850 --> 01:27:38,685
So I didn't advise as such.
1286
01:27:38,753 --> 01:27:41,088
I just took in the information
1287
01:27:41,155 --> 01:27:47,661
and said, ''Well, your only bet is to
let people know who need to know.''
1288
01:27:47,729 --> 01:27:51,765
If he's not with us any more, that's it.
1289
01:27:52,700 --> 01:27:57,204
I had a phone call from Madeline Bell,
1290
01:27:57,272 --> 01:28:01,975
and she said, ''Are you sitting down?''
1291
01:28:02,043 --> 01:28:04,645
I said, ''No. What's the matter?''
1292
01:28:04,712 --> 01:28:07,247
She said, ''Get a chair.''
1293
01:28:07,315 --> 01:28:10,117
I said, ''Stop it, Madeline.
What's the matter?''
1294
01:28:10,184 --> 01:28:12,019
She said, ''Get a chair, get a chair.''
1295
01:28:12,086 --> 01:28:14,221
So I got a chair.
I said, ''I've got a chair.''
1296
01:28:14,289 --> 01:28:15,989
She said, ''Are you sitting down?''
1297
01:28:16,057 --> 01:28:18,258
I said, ''Yes.''
She said, ''Jimi's dead.''
1298
01:28:18,326 --> 01:28:23,063
I got the telephone call. Why I got
the telephone call, I'll never know.
1299
01:28:25,066 --> 01:28:28,902
And I went over to the house
and I found this note by the bedside
1300
01:28:28,970 --> 01:28:30,604
which he'd obviously written,
1301
01:28:30,672 --> 01:28:34,775
and to me, it was obviously
like a suicide note.
1302
01:28:34,842 --> 01:28:36,777
It was a farewell note.
1303
01:28:36,844 --> 01:28:43,850
It finished with, ''The story of life
is quicker than the winking of an eye.''
1304
01:28:43,918 --> 01:28:48,822
''The story of life is hello, goodbye,
until we meet again.''
1305
01:28:48,890 --> 01:28:52,392
And I looked at this thing
and went ''wow''.
1306
01:28:52,460 --> 01:28:55,095
I folded it up,
put it in my pocket and went home.
1307
01:28:55,163 --> 01:28:58,765
I copied it and then I gave it
to his girlfriend,
1308
01:28:58,833 --> 01:29:02,169
because I thought it was her property,
1309
01:29:02,236 --> 01:29:04,971
because I thought they were a real item.
1310
01:29:05,039 --> 01:29:07,808
I didn't realise until later
that they'd just met.
1311
01:29:07,875 --> 01:29:09,776
That stupid Monika.
1312
01:29:09,844 --> 01:29:15,649
Of course, the way she tells it is
that he was drinking wine and stuff
1313
01:29:15,717 --> 01:29:18,652
and they had had an argument
and they had been fighting
1314
01:29:18,720 --> 01:29:22,022
and this and that and the other,
and so when they went home,
1315
01:29:22,090 --> 01:29:25,058
he couldn't sleep,
he had a headache, he was feeling bad,
1316
01:29:25,126 --> 01:29:26,727
but he had stomach problems.
1317
01:29:26,794 --> 01:29:30,997
''He seems to be vomiting
and he's lying on his back.''
1318
01:29:31,065 --> 01:29:33,567
''I'll just leave him,
see if he wakes up soon.''
1319
01:29:33,634 --> 01:29:37,637
If she'd just turned him over
on his side or something.
1320
01:29:37,705 --> 01:29:40,474
But she says she didn't know that.
1321
01:29:40,541 --> 01:29:44,044
Great. Brilliant.
1322
01:29:44,112 --> 01:29:49,549
It wasn't until years later
that I met a friend in New York
1323
01:29:49,617 --> 01:29:51,985
who was doing a documentary on Jimi
1324
01:29:52,053 --> 01:29:57,224
and he had tons of interviews
with Monika Dannemann,
1325
01:29:57,291 --> 01:30:00,394
and I said,
''I'll do an interview for you
1326
01:30:00,461 --> 01:30:03,430
if you let me look
at the Monika Dannemann interviews.''
1327
01:30:03,498 --> 01:30:05,198
So I watched all these interviews
1328
01:30:05,266 --> 01:30:08,502
and every time she talked on camera,
it was a different story.
1329
01:30:08,569 --> 01:30:13,507
Her storyjust did notjive
with what I saw on the ground
1330
01:30:13,574 --> 01:30:16,843
when I was there in his room
when they were carting out the body,
1331
01:30:16,911 --> 01:30:20,947
and the coroner's report
and what everybody else said.
1332
01:30:21,015 --> 01:30:25,986
Unfortunately, it seemed that he'd died
1333
01:30:26,053 --> 01:30:31,892
due to lack of interest from anybody.
Nobody was there.
1334
01:30:31,959 --> 01:30:35,929
Two days later, I was supposed
to be auditioning for bass player.
1335
01:30:35,997 --> 01:30:38,031
Which really pissed me off.
1336
01:30:40,067 --> 01:30:43,003
Inconsiderate bastard,
dying when it was my audition.
1337
01:30:44,439 --> 01:30:47,240
I heard the news and I cried.
1338
01:30:47,308 --> 01:30:50,577
And I just thought to myself,
''We lost a great one.''
1339
01:30:50,645 --> 01:30:53,480
American blues guitarist
Johnny Winter said,
1340
01:30:53,548 --> 01:30:57,083
''When I saw him backstage
before the show, it gave me the chills.''
1341
01:30:57,151 --> 01:30:59,553
''It was the most horrible thing
I'd ever seen.''
1342
01:30:59,620 --> 01:31:01,655
''He came in
with this entourage of people
1343
01:31:01,722 --> 01:31:03,557
and it was like he was already dead.''
1344
01:31:03,624 --> 01:31:06,460
''He came in with his head down
and sat on the couch alone
1345
01:31:06,527 --> 01:31:08,028
and put his head in his hands.''
1346
01:31:08,095 --> 01:31:11,465
The night that he died,
1347
01:31:11,532 --> 01:31:16,336
I was supposed to meet him at the Lyceum
to see Sly Stone play,
1348
01:31:16,404 --> 01:31:19,439
and I'd brought with me
a left-handed Stratocaster.
1349
01:31:19,507 --> 01:31:21,341
I'd just found it.
1350
01:31:21,409 --> 01:31:23,743
I think I bought it at Orange Music.
1351
01:31:23,811 --> 01:31:27,481
I'd never seen one before
and I was going to give it to him.
1352
01:31:27,548 --> 01:31:31,351
And he was in a box over there
and I was in a box over here.
1353
01:31:31,419 --> 01:31:36,056
I could see him,
but we never got together,
1354
01:31:36,123 --> 01:31:37,991
and the next day, whack, he was gone,
1355
01:31:38,059 --> 01:31:40,827
and I was left
with that left-handed Stratocaster.
1356
01:31:50,438 --> 01:31:54,641
To say that I wasn't surprised
is really an overstatement.
1357
01:31:54,709 --> 01:31:57,244
It's not right at all.
1358
01:31:57,311 --> 01:31:59,212
Unfair.
1359
01:32:00,081 --> 01:32:02,349
Yeah, I thought it was pretty unfair.
1360
01:33:20,661 --> 01:33:23,163
And the aftermath is really sad.
1361
01:33:23,230 --> 01:33:30,704
Not when you know and understand
that Jimi was very much part Indian
1362
01:33:30,771 --> 01:33:36,810
in his genes, in his DNA,
and in his head, certainly.
1363
01:33:36,877 --> 01:33:38,945
They've moved his body twice.
1364
01:33:39,013 --> 01:33:42,749
I mean, you don't do that to an Indian.
This is sacred stuff.
1365
01:33:42,817 --> 01:33:48,755
You can't hold down the coat tails
of a whirlwind, as it were.
1366
01:33:50,758 --> 01:33:55,061
You can hang on for a while,
but you can't tame that.
1367
01:33:56,931 --> 01:33:59,766
It's taken me years to get over it,
1368
01:33:59,834 --> 01:34:03,670
and I don't think that, still,
there's a day goes by
1369
01:34:03,738 --> 01:34:05,805
where Hendrix doesn't enter my life.
1370
01:34:58,325 --> 01:35:01,628
It would have been interesting
to know where Hendrix was going to go
1371
01:35:01,696 --> 01:35:03,763
if he hadn't passed away when he did.
1372
01:35:03,831 --> 01:35:07,167
Well, he never would have been
a quiet, retired old man.
1373
01:35:07,234 --> 01:35:09,269
I can tell you what he wouldn't do,
1374
01:35:09,336 --> 01:35:12,806
but what he would do
is probably too difficult to say
1375
01:35:12,873 --> 01:35:16,776
because I don't think he ever knew
what he would have done himself.
1376
01:35:16,844 --> 01:35:21,681
I mean, I think he would have continued
to explore and experiment
1377
01:35:21,749 --> 01:35:27,587
and make all kinds of discoveries.
1378
01:35:27,655 --> 01:35:30,790
Jimi was a very unique musician.
1379
01:35:30,858 --> 01:35:34,060
Of course, you know,
that goes without saying,
1380
01:35:34,128 --> 01:35:36,696
but he was also a very unique person.
1381
01:35:37,031 --> 01:35:38,765
For him, there were no boundaries.
1382
01:35:38,833 --> 01:35:41,601
He got this electric orchestra
into his head
1383
01:35:41,669 --> 01:35:45,972
that he was going to do with 20 guitar
players or something, five drummers.
1384
01:35:46,040 --> 01:35:48,475
It would have been fucking horrendous.
1385
01:35:48,542 --> 01:35:52,712
Imagine that many guitar players
trying to figure out who does the solo.
1386
01:35:52,780 --> 01:35:54,914
The big things
that Hendrix was trying to do
1387
01:35:54,982 --> 01:35:58,418
was he'd established a certain thing
and he'd done it,
1388
01:35:58,486 --> 01:36:02,655
and before he died, what he was
grasping for was to go somewhere else,
1389
01:36:02,723 --> 01:36:07,427
and he was frustrated
in that he was famous
1390
01:36:07,495 --> 01:36:10,663
and accepted for doing
more or less one thing.
1391
01:36:10,731 --> 01:36:14,667
And he wanted to break out ofthat
and reach another plateau,
1392
01:36:14,735 --> 01:36:17,737
and people weren't accepting that.
1393
01:36:17,805 --> 01:36:19,405
He wanted to write symphonies.
1394
01:36:19,473 --> 01:36:23,143
He said, ''Leon,
I want a thousand violins over here
1395
01:36:23,210 --> 01:36:27,380
and a thousand cellos and French horns.''
1396
01:36:27,448 --> 01:36:29,816
He wanted to write like Beethoven.
1397
01:36:29,884 --> 01:36:33,353
He wanted to write symphony music
and he wanted to be a conductor
1398
01:36:33,420 --> 01:36:36,589
and they wouldn't allow him.
They said, ''You've lost your mind!''
1399
01:36:36,657 --> 01:36:39,559
''You need to play Purple Haze
and Foxy Ladyto get paid!''
1400
01:36:39,627 --> 01:36:42,028
And Jimi said
he hated to play Purple Haze.
1401
01:36:42,096 --> 01:36:44,297
We've been together
for about two solid years,
1402
01:36:44,365 --> 01:36:47,267
and we've been playing
Purple haze, The Wind Cries Mary,
1403
01:36:47,334 --> 01:36:50,370
hey Joe, Foxy Lady,
we've been playing all these songs,
1404
01:36:50,437 --> 01:36:52,005
which I think are groovy songs,
1405
01:36:52,072 --> 01:36:54,474
but we've been playing these songs
for two years,
1406
01:36:54,542 --> 01:36:56,576
so we started improvising
here and there.
1407
01:36:56,644 --> 01:36:59,312
There's other things
we want to turn on to the people.
1408
01:36:59,380 --> 01:37:02,282
As long as they're aware
that we're trying to be a music group.
1409
01:37:02,349 --> 01:37:07,520
And I didn't realise until I saw
Dick Cavett's show a few years later
1410
01:37:07,588 --> 01:37:13,426
when he was out ofthe Experience,
it was all over, that he had actually...
1411
01:37:13,494 --> 01:37:18,131
Dick Cavett says, ''Well, Jimi,
what are you going to do now?''
1412
01:37:18,199 --> 01:37:22,168
And Jimi goes, ''Well, man,
I'm going back to my roots
1413
01:37:22,236 --> 01:37:24,070
and I'm going to play the blues.''
1414
01:37:24,138 --> 01:37:25,805
20 times in Jimi's career,
1415
01:37:25,873 --> 01:37:28,541
whenever anybody said,
''What do you want to do next?''
1416
01:37:28,609 --> 01:37:30,443
he said, ''I want a big band.''
1417
01:37:30,511 --> 01:37:32,278
In some ways he only got it...
1418
01:37:32,346 --> 01:37:36,649
People remember that when
Jimi Hendrix was on stage at Woodstock,
1419
01:37:36,717 --> 01:37:38,918
there were half a dozen other players
with him.
1420
01:37:38,986 --> 01:37:43,056
It wasn't the Jimi Hendrix Experience
at that point with two other players.
1421
01:37:43,123 --> 01:37:47,560
He kept making a bigger and bigger band,
but that big band was not embraced.
1422
01:37:48,896 --> 01:37:52,131
With the Band of Gypsys,
he wanted that to be a big band again
1423
01:37:52,199 --> 01:37:55,101
and he ended up with a very small band,
of course, once again.
1424
01:37:55,169 --> 01:37:58,972
I think he would have
really screwed up, actually.
1425
01:37:59,039 --> 01:38:00,940
He was on his way to that when he died.
1426
01:38:01,008 --> 01:38:05,178
He had all these plans, grandiose
orchestras of guitars and things.
1427
01:38:05,246 --> 01:38:09,349
I mean, I don't know.
I don't think it would have worked
1428
01:38:09,416 --> 01:38:12,685
and I don't think people
would have wanted to hear it either.
1429
01:38:12,753 --> 01:38:15,154
He would have gone into fusion.
1430
01:38:17,825 --> 01:38:22,862
But it still would have been
R&B blues-rooted music.
1431
01:38:22,930 --> 01:38:24,731
Jimi, to me, was a searcher.
1432
01:38:24,798 --> 01:38:28,167
He was always looking to, like,
do something different,
1433
01:38:28,235 --> 01:38:33,106
even though whatever he was doing
at the time was working.
1434
01:38:33,173 --> 01:38:36,976
It still sounds great.
It still... It's Hendrix.
1435
01:38:37,044 --> 01:38:41,581
It's, you know... It holds up.
1436
01:38:41,649 --> 01:38:46,386
Nobody's topped him. It's just so...
You know, he's still the guy.
1437
01:38:46,453 --> 01:38:47,887
He is the greatest guitarist
1438
01:38:47,955 --> 01:38:52,825
because he was able to make those sounds
that guitar players emulate to this day.
1439
01:38:52,893 --> 01:38:59,265
You go to any guitar player now
and who do they listen to? Jimi Hendrix.
1440
01:38:59,333 --> 01:39:05,805
And to this day, Sony,
all these fantastic Microsoft companies,
1441
01:39:05,873 --> 01:39:08,808
still cannot produce Jimi's sound.
1442
01:39:08,876 --> 01:39:11,210
But you can buy it.
1443
01:39:11,278 --> 01:39:14,647
You can buy a wah-wah pedal
and say, ''Jimi Hendrix, right on it!''
1444
01:39:14,715 --> 01:39:19,686
But, listen, I bought so many wah-wah
pedals searching for Jimi's shit,
1445
01:39:19,753 --> 01:39:21,387
it don't work good.
1446
01:39:21,455 --> 01:39:26,626
It's the individual person
who is spinning those notes
1447
01:39:26,694 --> 01:39:28,094
and plucking that guitar.
1448
01:39:28,162 --> 01:39:32,699
And they can never duplicate that
because Jimi's gone.
1449
01:39:32,766 --> 01:39:36,169
To me, his style
was so indicative of his personality
1450
01:39:36,236 --> 01:39:40,506
because him and the guitar, probably
more than any ofthe rock musicians
1451
01:39:40,574 --> 01:39:45,378
that I heard that came from that same
period, were sort of one.
1452
01:39:45,446 --> 01:39:50,550
The guitar was just
a real extension ofthe man himself.
1453
01:40:31,759 --> 01:40:34,660
First of all, he was egoless,
1454
01:40:34,728 --> 01:40:38,498
which made him into somebody special
as far as I was concerned,
1455
01:40:38,565 --> 01:40:42,902
because all my life, I have been
working with, quote, superstars,
1456
01:40:42,970 --> 01:40:46,172
and successful musicians.
1457
01:40:48,909 --> 01:40:52,045
He wasn't challenged by competition.
1458
01:40:52,112 --> 01:40:55,214
The biggest frustration
for most musicians
1459
01:40:55,282 --> 01:40:57,150
is their head works faster
1460
01:40:57,217 --> 01:41:00,653
than their physical capacity
to play their instrument.
1461
01:41:00,721 --> 01:41:03,723
I mean, that's the big frustration.
1462
01:41:03,791 --> 01:41:10,029
Your head is moving so fast,
and your hands just can't deal with it.
1463
01:41:10,097 --> 01:41:11,564
Jimi never had that problem.
1464
01:41:11,632 --> 01:41:15,334
Jimi could play everything,
anything he could think of,
1465
01:41:15,402 --> 01:41:21,407
and that gives you a capacity
and a dimension
1466
01:41:21,475 --> 01:41:25,311
that I would say
most musicians don't have.
1467
01:41:25,379 --> 01:41:31,417
I think you spend years and years
trying to hear something in your head
1468
01:41:31,485 --> 01:41:36,456
and transmit it through the guitar
as instantaneously as possible.
1469
01:41:36,523 --> 01:41:41,461
In other words, being able to express
your thoughts with the instrument.
1470
01:41:41,528 --> 01:41:44,197
And it's something
that takes years and years to master,
1471
01:41:44,264 --> 01:41:45,932
and he was just such a natural.
1472
01:41:45,999 --> 01:41:48,000
Maybe he was born that way.
1473
01:41:48,068 --> 01:41:50,937
Maybe he learned it on those years
on the chitlin' circuit.
1474
01:41:51,004 --> 01:41:54,507
Maybe a bolt of lightning
struck him at one point,
1475
01:41:54,575 --> 01:41:58,811
but somehow, that brain was wired
and music was his gift.
1476
01:41:58,879 --> 01:42:00,713
He could do anything with music.
1477
01:42:00,781 --> 01:42:03,616
He was in cahoots
with some kind of knowledge.
1478
01:42:03,684 --> 01:42:05,318
He was touched.
1479
01:42:05,385 --> 01:42:09,388
I think he was touched by God
to do that music.
1480
01:42:09,456 --> 01:42:13,659
He touched into that ether
that lies in between dimensions.
1481
01:42:13,727 --> 01:42:20,266
You ride it and it rides you,
and it's from beyond.
1482
01:42:21,301 --> 01:42:23,503
There's no explaining it. I felt it.
1483
01:42:23,570 --> 01:42:25,505
Sometimes when you really get going,
1484
01:42:25,572 --> 01:42:29,509
just suddenly everything
gets really easy.
1485
01:42:29,576 --> 01:42:32,178
He was like that most ofthe time,
1486
01:42:32,246 --> 01:42:35,481
because he was finally safe
in front ofthose amps.
1487
01:42:35,549 --> 01:42:37,884
I think Jimi did things with guitars.
1488
01:42:37,951 --> 01:42:43,623
He took them
simply into the ionosphere.
1489
01:42:44,391 --> 01:42:49,729
He did things with a guitar
that not before or since,
1490
01:42:49,796 --> 01:42:53,733
to this day, in 2009,
1491
01:42:53,800 --> 01:42:58,804
that no guitar player has ever matched.
I don't think they ever will.
1492
01:42:58,872 --> 01:43:02,808
For me, he set the standard.
1493
01:43:02,876 --> 01:43:07,980
I mean, he was the standard.
He is the standard still to this day.
1494
01:43:08,048 --> 01:43:10,616
I don't know any guitar players
that would deny that.
1495
01:43:10,684 --> 01:43:14,020
Hendrix was like a one-off.
1496
01:43:14,087 --> 01:43:16,689
You'll never see
anything like him again.
1497
01:43:16,757 --> 01:43:21,093
You'll never see anybody have
that much control of his instrument.
1498
01:43:21,161 --> 01:43:23,763
You'll never see anybody
with that pure spirit, never,
1499
01:43:23,830 --> 01:43:25,631
because nowadays it's all for money.
1500
01:43:25,699 --> 01:43:28,201
Hendrix never thought about money
a day in his life.
1501
01:43:28,268 --> 01:43:30,970
Everything that came out
of Hendrix's guitar
1502
01:43:31,038 --> 01:43:36,642
was insanely melodic
and totally human and emotional.
1503
01:43:39,346 --> 01:43:43,249
It came from a place
that was very much heartfelt, you know,
1504
01:43:43,317 --> 01:43:50,056
so there's melody, there's song
in just about every note that he hits,
1505
01:43:50,123 --> 01:43:53,326
which is one ofthe things that
people are always trying to emulate,
1506
01:43:53,393 --> 01:43:57,263
but it's something
that comes from within.
1507
01:43:57,331 --> 01:44:01,100
You can learn it, but you
can only learn it to a certain extent.
1508
01:44:01,168 --> 01:44:03,302
Hendrix had the God-given talent
1509
01:44:03,370 --> 01:44:08,774
to be able to express himself completely
with the instrument.
1510
01:44:08,842 --> 01:44:14,580
No individual artist
playing the guitar and singing
1511
01:44:14,648 --> 01:44:18,851
has come along since then
that I have been so impressed by.
1512
01:44:18,919 --> 01:44:22,488
I mean, Stevie Ray Vaughan
came pretty close.
1513
01:44:23,724 --> 01:44:28,794
Eric Clapton I've always loved
as a guitar player and as a person,
1514
01:44:28,862 --> 01:44:32,231
but Jimi Hendrix
was just, well, a one-off.
1515
01:44:32,299 --> 01:44:34,734
If you analyse it, it destroys it.
1516
01:44:34,801 --> 01:44:37,870
He was how he was
because it was how he was, you know?
1517
01:44:37,938 --> 01:44:41,274
The whole becomes greater
than the sum of its parts
1518
01:44:41,341 --> 01:44:43,809
in cases like Jimi Hendrix.
1519
01:44:43,877 --> 01:44:47,213
Yeah, he burnt bright, for a while.
1520
01:44:47,281 --> 01:44:49,081
He warmed the cockles of your heart.
1521
01:44:49,149 --> 01:44:52,184
If I had to tell that to Hendrix today,
that's what I'd say to him.
1522
01:44:52,252 --> 01:44:54,253
''You've warmed the cockles of my heart.''
1523
01:44:54,321 --> 01:44:56,989
Hendrix was just other-worldly.
1524
01:44:59,293 --> 01:45:04,397
The emotional things that
he had to express by way ofthe guitar.
1525
01:45:04,464 --> 01:45:07,066
He said, ''I want to fly.
I want to keep on flying.''
1526
01:45:07,134 --> 01:45:09,201
He said, ''I'll go from star to star.''
1527
01:45:09,269 --> 01:45:10,603
He had altitude.
1528
01:45:10,671 --> 01:45:14,440
He kept climbing and climbing
and climbing until the day he died.
1529
01:45:14,508 --> 01:45:16,942
Funny how that was his vision
and that's what he did.
1530
01:45:17,010 --> 01:45:19,645
He said he was going to kiss the sky,
and I guess he did.
1531
01:45:19,713 --> 01:45:21,814
So he's up there kissing the sky.
1532
01:45:21,882 --> 01:45:26,819
It's absolutely amazing to me what
he achieved in those short 27 years.
1533
01:45:26,887 --> 01:45:29,455
That, to me,
I think is the great legacy,
1534
01:45:29,523 --> 01:45:32,391
the work he created,
those four years of fame.
1535
01:45:32,459 --> 01:45:36,696
He created a body ofwork that
has spanned over 40 years since then,
1536
01:45:36,763 --> 01:45:42,902
and, you know, to me it's a life
that is heroic for that reason.
1537
01:45:42,969 --> 01:45:46,839
He created this incredible body ofwork,
however he died,
1538
01:45:46,907 --> 01:45:51,043
but that work will live on
long past any of our own lives.
1539
01:45:51,111 --> 01:45:56,615
A few more years, a few more
good things could have happened.
1540
01:45:56,683 --> 01:46:00,820
And long-lasting things, too,
for himself personally.
1541
01:46:01,888 --> 01:46:05,458
He didn't have really have too much
that was long-lasting for himself.
1542
01:46:06,793 --> 01:46:11,163
I really think that was his objective,
to go home and be with his mother.
1543
01:46:11,231 --> 01:46:13,199
I think he always wanted to be with her.
1544
01:46:49,403 --> 01:46:51,404
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