by Jimi Hendrix
YOU MUST REMEMBER that Jimi Hendrix U.S.A. didn’t really have a chance to do anything because he was playing behind people. Then this happened – thanks to Chas and Mike Jeffery, really. They were the ones who had the faith that I could make it over here. When Chas saw me in Greenwich Village he said it would all happen, just like it has.
Britain is our station now. It’s not my home, but it was our beginning, our birth. They took us in like lost babies. We’ll stay here probably until around the end of June, then we’ll see if we can get something going in America. We’ve been told that we’ll do well, but I’m not sure we will be accepted as readily there. People are much more narrow-minded than they are in Britain. In the States the disc jockeys stopped playing Hey Joe because people complained about the lyrics. If they do like us, great! If not, too bad!
I arrived here with just the suit I stood up in. I’m going back with the best wardrobe of gear that Carnaby Street can offer. Noel and Mitch will go over great in the U.S. They’ll love them so much they won’t have to wash their own socks.
JUNE 18, 1967, MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA.
Paul McCartney was the big bad Beatle, the beautiful cat who got us the gig at the Monterey Pop Festival.
That was our start in America.
MONTEREY WAS PREDOMINANTLY A MUSIC FESTIVAL done up the way it’s supposed to be done up.
Everything was perfect.
I said, “Wow! Everything’s together!
What am I gonna do?”
In other words, I was scared at that almost. I was scared to go up there and play in front of all those people. You really want to turn those people on. It’s just like a feeling of really deep concern. You get very intense. That’s the way I look at it. That’s natural for me. Once you hit the first note, or once the first thing goes down, then it’s all right. Let’s get to those people’s butts!
Music makes me high onstage, and that’s the truth. It’s almost like being addicted to music. You see, onstage I forget everything, even the pain. Look at my thumb – how ugly it’s become. While I’m playing I don’t think about it. I just lay out there and jam. That’s what it’s all about, filling up the chest cavities and the empty kneecaps and the elbows.
It’s another way of communication, of trying to make harmony amongst the people. When they feel and smile with that sleepy exhausted look, it’s like being carried on a wave. You get into such a pitch sometimes that you go up into another thing. You don’t forget about the audience, but you forget about all the paranoia, that thing where you’re saying, “Oh gosh, I’m onstage – what am I going to do now?” Then you go into this other thing, and it turns out to be almost like a play in certain ways. I have to hold myself back sometimes because I get so excited – no, not excited, involved.
When I was in Britain I used to think about America every day. I’m American. I wanted people here to see me. I also wanted to see whether we could make it back here. And we made it, man, because we did our own thing, and it really was our own thing and nobody else’s. We had our beautiful rock-blues-country-funky-freaky sound, and it was really turning people on. I felt like we were turning the whole world on to this new thing, the best, most lovely new thing. So I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of the song as a sacrifice.
You sacrifice things you love.
I love my guitar.
THE MONTEREY FESTIVAL WAS A GOOD SCENE. All those beautiful people. We had a few days off, and then we did the Fillmore West. Then we played for nothing [Golden Gate Park in San Francisco], and I really enjoyed it too. Those flower people are really groovy. All the bands playing for free, that’s what I call groovy teamwork. It was one of the best gigs we’ve ever played, and it sold ten thousand albums for us!
Flower Power! Yeah!
I wonder what we’ll get next?
I suppose we’ll get weed speed,
and then I can’t wait for the winter when we’ll get all those
fog songs and sledge-heads on the scene.
It’s having fun though. I dig anything as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, but anything as long as people are grooving off it. You’re not a love-in person just because you have curly hair or wear bells and beads. You have to believe in it, not just throw flowers. It’s the feeling, and someone who wears a stiff white collar can have it.
Although the flower scene was all tied up with sensation stuff about drugs, the “love everybody” basic idea helped one hell of a lot with the color problem in the States. Colored artists didn’t dare go near some southern audiences in the past. But since the flower power craze much of the violence has gone. Of course, a lot of those hippies may get busted once in a while, but you don’t hear of banks being robbed by the hippies in California, do you?
I love the West Coast. That’s where I’d like to live. The weather’s nice, and there’s lots of funny little people. I like the cars, man, beautiful cars. Not too many Volkswagens, which is good. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot – the girls. They even come down to the gigs. It’s beautiful, it’s ridiculous and all this other stuff, but I don’t know what is happening at all!
WE HAD A GREAT TIME IN LOS ANGELES. We stayed at Peter Tork’s house. It had about a thousand rooms, a couple of baths and two balconies that overlook the world and Piccadilly Circus. There’s a stereo that makes you feel you are in a recording emporium, with an electric piano and guitars and amplifiers all over the place. There’s a carport in which there is a Mercedes, a GTO and something that looks like an old copper stove. And a cute lovely little yellow puppy-type dog.
Dave Crosby and a group called the Electric Flag came round to see us at the Whisky A Go Go. Electric Flag are real groovy. One guy, Buddy Miles, is someone I like talking music with. I’m turned on to different things now, from the Electric Flag to Jefferson Airplane. I dig Jefferson Airplane’s sound, but they shouldn’t work for their lights. They’ve so much talent, yet sometimes their light shows are so good that the group becomes only 25 percent of what’s happening. They become nothing but shadows, nothing but voices to the light patterns. I don’t like that kind of thing blasting away throughout my act, but something different to illustrate each song would be nice – candles on stage for The Wind Cries Mary, a film for Purple Haze and so on.
{JULY 1967, FIRST TOUR OF AMERICA}
Then we got into a tour with the Monkees. They’re like plastic Beatles. The Beatles are one group you really can’t put down, because they’re just too much, and it’s so embarrassing when America is sending over the Monkees. They’re a commercial product of American show business. Oh God! Dishwater! I really hate somebody like that to make it so big when they’ve got groups in the States that are starving to death trying to get breaks.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the Monkees themselves. The personal part was beautiful. They’re such good cats. I got on well with Micky and Peter, and we fooled around a lot together. All the rumors about being segregated on the plane were just nonsense.
We played seven performances with them, then pulled out of the tour because there was a hassle. Firstly, we were not getting any billing – all the posters for the show just screamed out MONKEES! They didn’t even know we were there until we hit the stage. Then they gave us the “death” spot on the show – right before the Monkees were due on. The audience just screamed and yelled for the Monkees.
Finally they agreed to let us go on first, and things were much better. We got screams and good reactions, and some kids even rushed the stage. The kids started digging us more than the plastic Beatles!
Then some parents who brought their young kids complained that our act was vulgar.
They’d say, “What is this all about – kid’s rushing that!?
Ugh! Too erotic!”
I am bemused by the whole thing. I suppose I might move around in certain ways, and girls in the front seats might have funny expressions on their faces, but it’s not downright sexy. I believe it might have something to do with just the idea of somebody being on stage and showing themselve
s, and the people knowing they can’t really touch them but they would like to. It’s a frustrated feeling, but it’s a good feeling. They probably don’t get a chance to scream until this one time, and then they let EVERYTHING out.
We hadn’t really played to that kind of kids’ audience before, and you have to realize that though the parents of the kids in England don’t interfere too much, the parents in the States are something else. And then there are all those different kinds of stuffy organizations over here, right? In New York the Daughters of the American Revolution tried to stop our show because they said we were too sexy. Imagine how these old ladies must have been turned on. They were turned on so bad they had to try and stop us from doing our thing. So this is where it’s at now!
We decided it was just the wrong audience. I think they replaced me with Mickey Mouse.
AMERICA’S JUST LIKE ANY OTHER COUNTRY. It just takes a little more time. We did different little places around like the club scene in New York, Central Park; Washington, D.C.; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the Hollywood Bowl. We didn’t know where we were sometimes.
We were taken around a little with the Mamas and Papas. In New York we all went out to the Electric Circus club in the Village, which completely blew my mind. There was a group called the Seeds playing there, but they had all these funny little acts going on between things. One guy walked up onto the stage and stood there and growled for about five minutes. Then he said, “Thank you” and walked off! There was another guy who came on in a straitjacket and just rolled around on the floor for half an hour.
Then some funny little guys came swinging down on ropes from the ceiling. We couldn’t believe it! The Village Fugs are real crazy. They do things arranged from William Burroughs, songs about lesbians and things like freaking out with a barrel of tomatoes, squashing them all between your armpits. Euuuggghh! You’d never believe it, man, those cats are downright vulgar. They tell these nasty, beautiful poems, the nastiest ones you can think of.
Yeah, it was a really groovy time in the States. Except I got pulled up by the police in Washington, D.C. and I was refused entry to one or two restaurants, but that was because I was with a couple of hippies. One of them looked like Sitting Bull. It wasn’t a racial thing.
In New York taxi drivers would drive up to me, take a look at my appearance then drive away. Some of these guys want everybody to be the same conforming type as themselves. Well, they ain’t gonna catch me like that. Why should I be like the taxi driver?
I was completely unknown in America until the word got back that the British dug my kind of music. Now it’s sellout business here. At the clubs in Greenwich Village we were welcomed like gods. Nobody who is continually experimenting with music makes big money, but they get respect in the right quarters.
I don’t do anything all that different, but suddenly the magazines like LIFE and TIME are writing about me. It’s a funny feeling. These are the same people who first laughed. Ha, Ha! Now I’m not stupid Jimi anymore, I’m Mr. Hendrix. They try to analyze me and come up with a psychiatrist’s report, and it doesn’t sound like me one little bit. They don’t know what’s running through my blood. We live in a different world. My world? That’s hunger. It’s the slums, raging race hatred, and the only happiness is the kind you can hold in your hand.
CRITICS REALLY GIVE ME A PAIN IN THE NECK. It’s like shooting at a flying saucer as it tries to land, without giving the occupants a chance to identify themselves! There’ll always be somebody who wants to nail you down. They come back to the dressing room with a kind of “let’s strip him naked and hang him from a tall tree” attitude. Most of them go away so stoned they don’t know what they’re writing about.
They are already classifying us on the basis of one album and perhaps one or two concerts they’ve heard. It’s not easy to classify us, but sure as hell they are going to try! Like, somebody called me the “Black Elvis.” It’s the establishment’s game. Pat us on the back and get rid of us quick. Squeeze the soul out of us and put us in cages for the rest of our lives. But we won’t be put in! We don’t pay attention to brand names like that. Once they have you thinking about yourself, they have you by the balls.
Something different like the Experience comes along, and a lot of labelers are frightened by it. They want to put you in little bags. If they can’t put you in a bag, then they’re frightened and don’t know what to do. Quite naturally they’re going to start little rumors about people they don’t understand, like “Jimi Hendrix is sullen, he’s always stoned, he drinks watermelon juice with his coffee, he uses shower curtains for toilet paper.” This is what the negative folks are trying to tell you. They project a certain image so everybody gets scared to actually know about me.
It’s going to take time to reach these labelers with our sounds. For starters I don’t think you should try to dissect the musical and the visual. People who put down our performance are people who can’t use their eyes and ears at the same time. They’ve got a button on their shoulder blades that keeps only one working at a time. You feel they’re kind of afflicted, like a cat who can’t watch TV and chew gum. Damn them and those crummy bird-crumb snatchers who say I don’t really play with my teeth!
WHEN WE GOT TOGETHER IN ENGLAND we didn’t say, “All right, now we’re going to play this song, I think I’ll go down on my knees, and Mitch, you twirl your sticks there, and Noel, you put the bass on top of your head.” We just got thrown together. We didn’t know each other from Adam, and all these things started happening.
What it is, is self-satisfaction. We’re playing for the audience, but I have to entertain myself too. And I’m working for that note to come out a little different. Sometimes I have to wind it up physically to feel that note. If I feel like putting the guitar down and stepping on it, I’ll do it. Same with Noel. He plays his guitar any kind of way he feels.
If I stopped moving around because some people were distracted from the music, I would be dishonest and give myself ten points less. We might play sometimes just standing there. Sometimes we do the whole diabolical bit when we’re in the studio and there’s nobody to watch. It’s how we feel. How we feel, and getting the music out. The sooner people understand that the better.
And I think it’s time for people to understand that we are not always in the same bag with each performance. How can you be when you are constantly reaching, improvising, experimenting? It’s impossible. In the old days we used to go on with a list, but pretty soon I threw the list away because I didn’t feel like it. Spontaneity is what I could best term it. We are constantly growing in this spontaneity. This whole thing’s going to blow wide open soon.
Things have to go through me, and I have to show my feelings as soon as they’re there. That’s why when we played at Monterey I decided to burn my guitar. I’d just finished painting the guitar that day and was really into it. I sprayed lighter fluid on it and then stamped out the burning pieces. It went over pretty well, so in Washington, D.C., I destroyed my guitar again. When we played the Hollywood Bowl they were waiting for us with fire extinguishers!
THE SMASHING ROUTINE BEGAN BY ACCIDENT. I was playing in Copenhagen, and I got pulled off stage. Everything was going great. I threw my guitar back onto the stage and jumped back after it. When I picked it up there was a great crack down the middle. I just lost my temper and smashed the damn thing to pieces.
The crowd went mad – you’d have thought I’d found the “lost chord” or something. After that, whenever the press was about or I got that feeling, I just did the bit again. But it isn’t just for the show, and I can’t explain the feeling. It’s just like you want to let loose and do exactly what you want if your parents weren’t watching.
I’m not really a violent man, but people got the impression I was because of the act. You do this destruction thing maybe three or four times, and everybody thinks you do it all the time. We only do it when we feel like it. You feel very frustrated, and the music gets louder and louder, and all of a sudden, crash, bang, it goes
up in smoke. Some nights we can be really bad. If we smash something up then, it’s because that instrument, which is something you dearly love, just isn’t working that night. It’s not responding, so you want to kill it. It’s a love-hate relationship, just like you feel at times when your girlfriend starts messing around. You can do it because the music and the instrument can’t fight back.
It’s just the bad bits coming out in me. I mean, no matter how sweet and lovely you are, there are black and ugly things deep down somewhere. I bring mine out on stage, and that way no one gets hurt. And we find that it works for the audience too. We try to drain all the violence out of their systems. We mostly build on bar patterns and emotion, not melody. We can play violent music, and in a way it releases their violence. It’s not like beating it out of each other, but like violent silk. I mean, sadness can be violent.
Maybe after people dig us presenting some violence on stage they won’t want to leave and destroy the outside world. Feeling vibrations and letting loose at a place like that is a soul-bending type of thing. It’s better than bending your soul in riots. You should never get to that point.
{THE SUMMER OF 1967 WAS MARRED BY THE WORST RACIAL VIOLENCE OF THE DECADE. THE EXPERIENCE PLAYED IN DETROIT ON AUGUST 15, SHORTLY AFTER RACE RIOTS HAD DEVASTATED MUCH OF THE CITY AND LEFT FORTY-TWO DEAD.}
THE NEGRO RIOTS IN THE STATES ARE CRAZY. Discrimination is crazy. I think we can live together without these problems, but because of the violence these problems aren’t solved yet. There’s a lot of silly talk on both sides. Quite naturally I don’t like to see houses being burned, but I don’t have too much feeling for either side right now.