EVENING BULLETIN - ‘Jimi Hendrix Fights With His Love Lady’ by Walter F. Naedele:
“A black Apache backed by two silent Englishmen, Jimi came on, blue silk headband flowing to his legs, scarves knotted at elbow and knee, a soft-spoken young man and his bad-mouth electric guitar. Different from B.B. King’s Lucille, the guitar became a woman Hendrix was love-fighting all night. To his wailing, she would shimmer back her own sass. As she built toward her screams, Hendrix would stagger back from the effort to get that much fight out of her. Sinking to his knees, holding her at arm’s length while she ran off at him, he would at last draw her around him, fondling her, kissing her into submission. All that, in ten minutes of ‘Red House."
DISTANT DRUMMER - ‘The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Slowing Down And Growing Up’ by John Lombardi: “The floor of the Spectrum was swarming by 8 p.m., the little girls from the northeast and the deep south sides of the city all giggling in their French undershirts from Ward’s Folly. The giggles changed to screams at 8:15 when Mr. Noel Redding ‘s leather bells slithered out of the basketball exit up the steps to the revolving stage. They kept on screaming, right through the entire Fat Mattress act and on into Hendrix, who arrived wearing a velvet sash around his head, de-emphasising the short hair. He did ‘Let Me Stand Inside [sic] Your Fire’ and ‘Red House’, then drove everybody totally mad with ‘Foxy Lady’ and ‘I Don ‘t Live Today’. But then, with all the little girls panting and waiting, he announces a song for “Beefy, in the hospital,” and it was a slow blues ‘Hear My Train A Comin’, and was completely out of context. It broke the sexy undercurrents, and although Jimi played with his teeth and got down on his knees in subsequent numbers, he failed to ‘do’ his guitar or any of the other things the kids had turned out for. When it was over, they tried to tear at his sash anyway, but the cops had a relatively easy time getting him out. “It wasn‘t like that last year,” one little cherub was telling another as they adjusted their eye-shadow in the mirror next to the big Schlitz beer sign near the press box. “I wish the Doors would come in.” Both kids had obviously been experienced, and were, like everyone else in the world, growing up.”
DISTANT DRUMMER - interview by John Lombardi :
[Question about] “setting the guitar on fire, going through the motions of intercourse.”
“We did those things mostiy because they used to be fun,” Jimi noted. “They just came out of us. But the music was still the main thing. Then what happened, the crowd started to want those things more than the music. Those little things that were Just added on, like frosting, you know, became the most important. Things got changed around. We don’t do that stuff as much anymore.”
[Question about obscenity arrest of Jim Morrison]
“Well, if it happened, it is flipped out, but I’ve only heard reports,” Jimi cautioned. “I guess you’d have to ask Morrison about that. I don’t want to talk about it. You know, we used to try to defend against some of the publicity, but we don’t anymore. They just ignore what you say anyway, and the people who know where you’re at know without asking questions. They know from the music. I dig music.
“Listen,” Jimi continued, “you want to talk about music? That’s what I really know about. I don’t want to say nothing about comparisons with other groups because if you do that puts you higher or lower than them, and that’s just the same old cycle. Our music is in a very solid state now. Not technically, just in the sense that we can feel around the music and get into things better. We don’t have any answers this time, but we’d love to turn everyone on to all we know... We know for instance that Jesus was starting to get it together quite nicely, but that ten commandments thing was a drag. The bogey man isn’t going to come get you if you don’t tie your shoe. You don’t have to be afraid to make love to one of your boyfriend’s wives. Brand- name religions like Bhuddism and Zen are just clashes. The Catholic church is spreading and vomiting over the earth. The Church of England is the biggest landowner in England. Your home isn’t America, it’s the earth, but things are precarious, man. America could start getting together and China or Russia could go and we’d all be even heavier slaves. You know my song, ‘I don’t live today, maybe tomorrow?’ That’s where it’s at.
“But I want to talk about music,” Jimi insisted. “Things were getting too pretentious, too complicated. ‘Stone Free,’ you know that? That’s much simpler. That’s blues and rock and whatever happens happens. People were singing about acid itself, man. Things start to rule you. Images. Drugs. Everybody forgets what happened to God.
“You know when you’re young, most people have a little burning thing, but then you get your law degree and go into your little cellophane cage. You don’t have to be an entertainer or anything to get it together. You can do the family thing. I’ve wanted to do that at times... I’ve wanted to go away to the hills sometimes, but I stayed. Some people are meant to stay and carry messages...”
You think of yourself as a messenger?
“No, man, nothing like that,” answered the offended Hendrix, who paused before speaking again. “I didn’t want to do this interview because I was tired and I never get any time to myself. I wanted to relax, wnte a song. But how can you say that to someone?”
At this point Gerry Stickells, Experience road manager, arrived to tell Jimi it was time to get ready to leave for the show. Before ending the interview, Jimi made one more point. “Listen, I’m tired but this is what I’m trying to say. If you prostitute your own thing.. you can’t do that. We was having a lot of fun with that stuff we used to do, but the more the press would play it up and the more the audience would want it, the more we’d shy away from it. Do you see where that all fits? When I’m on stage, playing the guitar, I don’t think about sex. I can’t make love when a beautiful record comes on. When I was in Hawaii, I seen a beautiful thing.. .a miracle. There were a lot of rings around the moon, and the rings were all women’s faces.”
When he was asked if he would mind being photographed. “No,” Hendrix replied, “the same shit happens every day, so fuck it.”
[Your hair appears shorter than in his publicity photos] “My hair?” Jimi questioned. “I cut it short in protest. There are too many long-haired people running around whose heads aren’t anywhere. But I think I’m gonna grow it again.”
[Questions about success and the nude LP cover] ?
“I don’t consider myself a success. I haven’t even started yet,” Hendrix said. “The scene puts you through a lot of changes.. you get involved in images. I didn’t have nothing to do with that stitpid LP cover they released, and I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s mostly all bullshit.”
At this point Gerry Stickells, Experience road manager, arrived to tell Jimi it was time to get ready to leave for the show. Before ending the interview, Jimi made one more point. “Listen, I’m tired but this is what I’m trying to say. If you prostitute your own thing.. you can’t do that. We was having a lot of fun with that stuff we used to do, but the more the press would play it up and the more the audience would want it, the more we’d shy away from it. Do you see where that all fits? When I’m on stage, playing the guitar, I don’t think about sex. I can’t make love when a beautiful record comes on. When I was in Hawaii, I seen a beautiful thing.. .a miracle. There were a lot of rings around the moon, and the rings were all women’s faces.”
“I wish I could tell somebody about it,” he said. Before leaving, [I] saw Jimi speaking with a pretty black girl who was trying to get Jimi to call her friend a fan named “Beefy,” who was in the hospital. Hendrix gave her a twenty minute call before he left for the performance.
Sujet: Philadelphie (Spectrum) : 12 avril 1969 
Sam 10 Juil 2010 - 23:15
