Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

Jimi said, "We've got this gig here."

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

And he just said it casually, like he did everything else.

I had no idea what Woodstock was.

It was the place to come to.

It was not just a rock 'n' roll show.

It was not just about the music. It was really about

that decade and that culture.

There were 200,000, 300,000 people

that had converged on this...

pasture.

I drove through it in a station wagon

and it was just endless people.

This was the greatest rock 'n' roll concert ever put on.

The Woodstock Festival was being planned

and I guess the guys who were in charge of the festival figured

"Let's get Jimi Hendrix to headline this festival."

Jimi was important...

as a cultural icon

and musically as one of the premier musicians of his day.

I thought that Jimi would likely be the most exciting act on the show.

And I thought he would be an amazing way to end it.

Actually, to be perfectly honest with you,

he was not my first choice for a closing act.

My first choice was Roy Rogers, and I tried to book him.

I wanted him to end the festival with "Happy Trails,"

because we had all grown up with Roy Rogers singing "Happy Trails."

It was when we were little kids at that time

and that, I thought, would be the perfect way to end it,

and I was going to have him follow Jimi.

But that aside, I thought that that would be the high point--

certainly of the day-- and a great way to finish the festival.

Jimi Hendrix was the Beatles in that year.

He was on the same level as the Rolling Stones.

He was rock royalty.

You have to say they were a large act.

Apart from the festivals,

where they obviously played a major part in the festivals,

they could tour arenas,

which there weren't that many acts touring arenas at the time.

Our biggest gig was in a place called Devonshire Downs

in Los Angeles in 1969,

and we played to 100,000 people.

It's a bit weird.

The one thing you have to know about an act

is that they have a direction that they're going musically.

And when they reach the summit of their life,

when they are creatively on the top of the mountain,

they don't know where to go next and start looking around,

and that's what I think happened to Jimi at that point.

The last gig I played at, we were playing in Denver

and we were on with Creedence or something,

and there was 35,000 people there.

We were doing our gig

and prior to the gig someone in the hotel had said,

"Had you heard that Jimi had said to the press about extending the band?"

And I said, "He didn't tell me." So that went to my head.

And then we played this gig-- 35,000 people.

They all tried to get onstage, which-- they wouldn't fit.

Then the police started firing tear gas,

except the wind was coming our way.

So basically we had to get off the stage

and then these 35,000 people are trying to chase these three blokes.

So then they put us in this Avis Rent-A-Truck

and locked the back door. There's no lights in it,

all these people start crawling over the truck

and the roof's buckling.

The guy gets in, drives us back to the hotel

and there's still people on top of the truck.

And we have to go in the back of the hotel--

'cause we couldn't go in the front-- through the kitchen.

So I mean, like-- next day, I got on a plane

and I just said I couldn't handle it any longer.

Jimi went through many struggles to put a new band together.

He was looking for a new sound. He was tired of playing

the same type of music

that he had played. He didn't want to play all the--

he had a whole plethora

of new music that he wanted to present.

He could see the point of having--

of expanding...

a situation outside of a three-piece band.

For heck's sake, there were so many opportunities.

And I think it was just like-- in his mind,

he grabbed hold of...

what he thought would be comfortable.

He knew it would take...

getting away, concentrating

and getting the right people together

in order to form this group that he had a desire in forming.

When Jimi Hendrix first came back from England

he fell in love with Woodstock and he was looking for a place to live,

to practice and to play music.

Woodstock had always been known from the early '20s

as a hotbed for artistic endeavors.

There were painters, sculptors, writers

and then, later on in the '50s and '60s,

entertainers who loved that peace and tranquility of Woodstock

as a place to go to to recharge their batteries.

I know Michael Jeffries had bought a house up there in Woodstock

and Jimi had a house that he had rented up there

to go and rehearse some material.

So Woodstock became a place to hang out.

When I ran into Jimi in Woodstock,

he said-- he invited me to come over and jam.

He was a prolific jammer.

He would love to play with so many different people.

He said, "Billy, your job is to find Larry Lee. Find him." And I found him!

Billy called me.

I guess Jimi had my mother's number,

and Billy called me.

I remember I just--

I think I had just come back from Vietnam.

I think I had been home

about maybe two weeks. I don't know.

I had just come from the unemployment office,

the phone rang

and it was Billy.

I said, "Wow, I hadn't heard from that old cat--"

I said, "Billy, what's going on?" He said, "Everything's fine."

I said, "Where are you?" He said, "I'm in New York."

I said, "What you doing up there?"

He said, "I'm up here with Jimi."

I said, "Wow!"

I said, "Where is Jimi?"

I figured he was in England somewhere,

'cause he was hot then, by the time I got out.

He said, "He's sitting right here," and it kind of scared me.

I said, "Yeah? Can I speak with him?"

And I spoke to Jimi and he was the same Jimi.

I didn't know if he would even remember me--

as much money as I heard he was making--

and he was the same Jimi. Just the same Jimi, no change.

He said, "Yeah, what you doing?

We're going to try a few things up here. We'd like for you to come and join us."

When I first went to Woodstock

to play before this festival,

they'd been playing together for about-- I don't know--

10 days maybe, something like that,

and they finally got that "gel."

And you can work off that conflict,

so there was not, you know,

and this was just not.

I knew the band that he was putting together,

because he was living in Woodstock at that time.

I knew a lot of the guys in the band.

I had spent some time with Jimi and I knew that he was trying

to figure out which direction to take his music

and he was experimenting with different players.

So we knew this wasn't going to be The Experience,

but it was going to be Jimi.

I remember arriving at Woodstock

at about 5:30, 6:00 in the morning, sun coming up over this hill,

and I saw the structure

that was hanging over what was supposedly a stage,

and I'm saying to myself, "Wait a minute.

We're going to be recording here in about four or five hours.

The stage is still being built.

There's a crane hanging up over the stage

and there are these pieces of wood that are just hanging out there."

It looked like fingers above the stage.

This was going to support a canvas top,

which was going to supposedly protect people--

the artists.

And I'm thinking to myself, "What kind of craziness am I into?"

We realized early on Friday that the shows were going to go late

because we were having big gaps in our performance schedule.

We had to wait for the rains to stop,

we had to wait for the bands to get in.

Everything was running late. Roads were obviously--

there were no roads. Roads were solid masses of people and humanity.

We started flying people in, but everything was sort of backing up

and it continued that way through the weekend,

so we knew we were into major overlaps in time.

The band was supposed to go on at 12:00 midnight.

We arrived there after a long delay

and that was pretty disheartening,

because we just had to camp up in some little shack

and just wait and wait our time.

This was like military warfare.

I mean, you know, helicopters coming in,

dropping people in, dropping out.

We didn't get a chance to get a helicopter.

It just took forever to get in.

I remember we were all loaded up

in some old station wagons--

the whole band and whoever was going--

and we were headed for the helipad.

We finally got there and the helicopters weren't running,

so we had to go on in the station wagon.

It had rained and as we pulled up, I saw people laying--

I thought they were dead, man-- covered with mud.

Got in there, naked people--

I had never seen that.

I figure I'd been gone too long in Vietnam.

He'd just come back from Vietnam

and he made a statement about that.

Jimi thought that was really funny.

He said, "That girl don't have no clothes on."

I think Jimi was originally scheduled to finish the show on Sunday night,

but because of the backup of artists

over the two-, three-day period,

there was just no way he was going to go on Sunday night.

And it forced him to go on Monday morning,

which was really a shame, because after all the rain and the mud,

there's Jimi going on at 9:00 in the morning.

Jimi arrived with Michael and Jerry Morrison, I think--

there was a bunch of people that I'd met backstage.

I had a house for him to stay in

and I tried to talk him into going on at midnight.

And I said to Michael, "I know you're contracted to close the show,

and you can if you want to, but I think it's a mistake.

The show's running late. The best moment of the night would be at midnight."

And for whatever reason,

they chose to stay with their principle

and close the show.

In some ways it was unfortunate,

in that a lot of the audience didn't get to see his performance.

- Good morning. - Good morning!

Very shortly, we'll continue.

Thank you...

for making all this possible.

It's been a long one, but it's been delightful.

As the sun rose

and we were getting ready to go on,

all of the people who had been there-- even for three days--

they were revitalized

and they also knew that Jimi was going to come and play.

And the energy level--

just everything-- the karma...

was all there in spades. It was great.

We were the last act to go on.

We followed Sha Na Na.

It was my first time seeing or hearing about them.

Maybe the world was just meeting them,

but we went on right after they did.

We were down around the back

and you couldn't see a lot of what was going on out in the front.

So the lift carried you up to the main stage and Jimi said,

"Oh, look at all those people." Mitch said, "Hell, I'm not going out there."

So Mitch had a bottle of Blue Nun wine

and when he got through-- between me, Jimi and Mitch,

the wine went down to there, so we went out.

After this short intermission, we'll continue.

I had bought a little scarf that had fringes on

and I folded it so when I tied it round like a headband,

it kind of-- I thought it was nice.

Everybody was doing their own thing. I hadn't seen nobody do that, but...

it came down. I thought it looked nice.

Nobody cared no way who was under there.

So I just started doing my own thing.

So many people as far as the eye could see.

It was nothing but a big field of people.

Most of us, except for Jimi, had not had that particular experience.

When you see how much power he puts into his show,

it's so amazing that he was fresh,

up, you know, intense, right from the get-go.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

We love you!

I see we are here again. Hmm.

Yeah, whatever.

Dig, we'd like to get something straight.

We got tired of The Experience,

and every once in a while we were just blowing our minds too much,

so we decided to change the whole thing around

and to call it Gypsy Sun and Rainbows.

For sure, it's nothing but a band of gypsies.

We're sorry for the tune-up-between time,

but hell, cowboys are the only ones who stay in tune anyway.

Yeah, there's a lot of girlfriends that we try to sing about sometimes.

We're gonna sing about this one over there in the "amen section" over there--

the one with the yellow underpants on. Yeah. Yeah, you.

I remember you. Last night, huh, baby?

Before we go any further, we'd like to say you all really have

a lot of patience-- three day's worth.

You've proved to the world what can happen

with a little bit of love, understanding and sounds.

Thank you very much.

Before we leave, I'll just say the name of the group one more time.

This is our first little gig. We'd like to say thank you very much

for letting us in your ears and your hearts.

The name of our group is the Sun and Rainbows.

Yeah, you can call it Band of Gypsies, anything you want.

Let me call it again. The cat with the purple pants on

playing congas over there, that's Juma.

We have Larry Lee with the head scarf around his face.

And we got Billy Cox playing bass over there.

And Mitch Mitchell and we have Jerry Velez.

We want to say thank you very much and good night.

I'll just say peace, yeah, and happiness.

Happiness. Yeah, happiness.

Thank you again. You can leave if you want to. We're just jamming, that's all.

You can leave or you can clap.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so very much.

I had been listening to Jimi, of course,

since he was recording--

"Hey, Joe" and that era especially--

so that was the group that I expected to see onstage.

But I thought that the expansion of the group,

the increased ability

to have different modes of music

was just perfect, especially for Woodstock.

Most artists-- whether from Van Gogh to Beethoven

to Hendrix-- they have to grow,

and Jimi was in the growing period of his time and he wanted to grow.

He felt the need. In order to survive, he had to grow musically.

Now, to the chagrin of the management at that time,

they didn't want him to change a thing,

because they had their formula.

It's like, once you have a formula, you don't want to change it,

because this is what people-- even to today in the music world--

that's what they want you to stick to,

to what is a sellable item.

I don't know how much pressure

the management put on Jimi, to be honest.

I just know it was a conflict, and that was the reason I told Jimi

that I would leave. I was seeing

that he was fighting a battle

that maybe if I was gone, he would be more likely--

they wanted three pieces as far as I can gather,

just to-- it was a moneymaker, it was a hit,

you know, how The Experience hit.

So I just told him, "I'll just go on and leave." And he said,

"We'll get a drummer and we'll get back together again."

I just came on back to Memphis.

I was hoping that would take some of the heat off Jimi.

He had so established an identity with the public...

that they wanted to see him the way they saw him.

And when he didn't want them to see him that way anymore

they weren't ready for the transition.

Let's put it this way: It was much easier after that--

a relief, shall we say--

just to play with Jimi and Billy Cox.

I think, all in all, it went well.

Everyone did exceptionally well.

I was proud of that group and proud to be a part

of that Hendrix band at that particular time.

I really wanted him under the lights,

and I wanted it to be that really special moment

and the high point of the show for me and for the audience.

And...

then he did "The Star-Spangled Banner" and all that changed.

That was all of it combined.