Article from Intro magazine: 30th September 1967
Jimi Hendrix musical trailblazer: JIMI HENDRIX shares a flat near London’s Marble Arch with his ex-Animal manager Chas Chandler and wife. Chas’s part of the flat is beautifully furnished with decidedly English taste.
Jimi’s room is like the back parlour of an oriental market shop. Just as beautiful, it has a very low double bed with a Chinese bedspread and over it, hanging from the ceiling, Chinese drapes.
Inscribed shawls are hung on the wall, and cushions with Chinese symbols on them are strewn about. There are also lots of instruments. The overall effect is very impressive. Absolute.
Jimi arrived here last September, having been spotted by Chas in New York’s Greenwich Village and asked if he’d like to come over. Before that, he led a nomadic existence; invalided out of the army when he was seventeen and wandering around the States, playing the guitar to live.
He didn’t go back home to Seattle, Washington, “Well, just because . . . anyway, I didn’t feel right at home. Another thing, I wanted to see different things.
Jimi Hendrix musical trailblazer
Like—in Sweden, there was that fantastic time when they moved us out of a hotel lobby just because Princess Alexandra was coming through.”
In fact, he hasn’t been home, or seen his family, for almost six years. He has a brother, Leon, and a five year old sister he has yet to meet. His mother died some years ago.
Since he’s been here he’s had four singles released, all of which made the top ten, including his present single Burning Of The Midnight Lamp.
Jimi began the fuzzy hair uproar, and keeps his hair in condition by washing it at least once a day, sometimes twice.
He walked into the bedroom wearing calf-length kid leather boots, skin-tight trousers, multi-coloured shirt and a black leather waistcoat with thousands of coloured sequins sewn on. Wearing four huge rings on the fingers of each hand, and bells, beads and necklaces hanging down his chest.
He went straight to the record player and put on a record by an American group, The Ragamuffins, and then sat on the floor.
“Man, you hear this guitar? I used to teach this guy how to play.”
The shrill and definitely Hendrix-style guitar faded out. Jimi jumped up and put on a few demonstration discs. As each one played, he said something like ‘’l play lead, bass and rhythm on this one,” or “I’m three basses and two leads on here.”
Jimi Hendrix musical trailblazer
He looked around his room and smiled. “I’ve got to finish this room. I got most of the stuff from the Chelsea Antique Market, and some of it from the States.
You know, I’m on this orient kick at the moment. I also brought back a couple of hand-painted badges. One says, “Mickey Mouse Is Free.”
Eventually the records finished and he put more on. The entire time Jimi is in the flat there must be music of some kind. Usually it’s blues, either by himself, The Cream, Bob Dylan, or a Southern guitar player he idolizes, Albert Collins.
It’s never The Monkees. “I don’t think anything at all about The Monkees’ music,” he said, “you know, not good or bad. It doesn’t even enter my mind. It doesn’t face me at all. I’ve no opinions whatsoever, but as persons they’re really groovy cats.”
Music is his entire life. “It really turns me on when I play.” Once, when The Experience played at The Saville Theatre, London, he turned on to his drummer, Mitch Mitchell, belting his drum kit, ruining his guitar and throwing Mitch bodily off the stage.
I like to play anywhere. So long as I can play close to people. Not where I’m playing a hundred feet away, like we did in the Hollywood Bowl. That was a drag, standing so far away from people.”
Jimi Hendrix musical trailblazer
He was near his audiences when he played in the Café Au Go Go in New York. Frank Zappa of The Mothers Of Invention, who was watching him, said he was knocked out, especially when Jimi left his guitar hanging from a hole he’d just made in the ceiling.
Since the success of his first single, Hey Joe, his audiences have been raving about his act. But powerful Daughters Of The American Revolution stopped The Experience appearing on The Monkees’ tour last July. That was New York.
And Jimi has influenced the scene both here and in the United States, in spite of opposition. He says, “I like to think I have.”
Why does he smash his equipment? “Oh now listen, man, that’s just not true. We’ve only done that about three times—out of about two hundred gigs together. You do one thing like that, and everybody thinks you do it all the time.
“I don’t like for people to start branding us. You know, damn them—and those crumby birdcrumb snatchers who say I don’t really play with my teeth. You just get tired of hearing about them, there are so many.”
plastic people
He stood up, marched towards the record player and lit a cigarette. He took a long draw, and then coughed. “It’s the same with those commercial critics and all those other plastic people picking on the little flower children.
“That’s why pop is just like boxing. In some ways, you always put dirt into it or make it seem like dirt. You know flower power, there’s no such thing at all, it’s just an expression they just happen to use.
Why make a big issue out of it? It’s all right. They’re minding their own business. It’s just a fashionable clique. You know, flower power, it’s a groovy word, and so you can really sound groovy, man. It’s cool. Well dig, man.
“Why put yourself in a category when you can start your own little groove happening?”
He smiled and turned sympathetic. “These flower people are really groovy. All those bands playing for free—that’s what I call groovy teamwork. We played for nothing, and I really enjoyed it too.
It was one of the best gigs we’ve ever played. And it sold ten thousand albums for us. I want to make a habit to play free, but only for good causes. Like cancer research and things.”
amiable person
Whatever Jimi and The Experience get up to on stage, it’s certain they give a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. Jimi Hendrix is a very amiable person.
He wants to please and in turn he wants to be pleased.
He wants everybody to have a good time. “I like anything as long as it don’t hurt anybody,” he said, “but anything, as long as people are grooving off it. You know, as long as people are having fun regardless of what they do.”
And his way of enjoying himself in his spare time is reading (Isaac Asimov is a current favourite) “and getting out in the open, like where there are fields, trees and flowers. That’s beautiful.
“And of course there’s my music.”
Then he put on his group’s LP, Are You Experienced.
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