Cleveland (Public Music Hall) : 26 mars 1968 [Second concert]

Cleveland (Public Music Hall) : 26 mars 1968 [Second concert]


Titres :

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. Fire
3. I Don't Live Today
4. Red House
5. Foxy Lady
6. Spanish Castle Magic
7. Manic Depression
8. Purple Haze
9. Wild Thing

Source : C'est un enregistrement amateur de qualité audio très médiocre. La balance est déséquilibrée, et il y a beaucoup de distorsion.

Si les précédents concerts documentés sont ceux d'Ottawa (le 19 mars 1968), l'Experience n'a pas chômé pour autant : le groupe s'est produit à Rochester le 21, Hartford le 22, Buffalo le 23, Flint le 24, et donc à Cleveland le 26. Il ne subsiste pas d'enregistrement du premier concert, qui a été marqué par une alerte à la bombe.

Le second concert s'ouvre avec le "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" des Beatles, dans une version compacte et efficace... mais qui souffre d'une balance déséquilibrée : le chant est littéralement enterré.

Les choses s'améliorent sur les couplets de "Fire" (le chant restant inaudible lors des refrains). Le solo central de Jimi est bref, dans l'esprit de la version studio.

Jimi précise ensuite qu'il aimerait continuer avec "I Don't Live Today", qu'il dédie "aux amérindiens, aux groupes qui militent, à vous, à moi." Si le solo central, qui n'est pas très long, semble assez moyen, le solo final est en revanche très intéressant - Jimi tirant vraiment parti du feedback, qu'il couple à quelques plans free.

Jimi annonce ensuite un titre la version UK de "Are You Experienced" : c'est bien sûr "Red House", qui restera un pilier de son répertoire jusqu'à la fin. Lors du jeu de questions-réponses des couplets, la voix de Jimi est audible. Le chant de Jimi ne semble d'ailleurs pas des plus convaincants sur cette version. Lors du solo central, Jimi développe un jeu assez intense avant de revenir au calme avec de la wah wah, puis de jouer le passage percussif qu'il revisitera très régulièrement par la suite avec l'Experience. Il termine son solo avec un autre passage plus intense. Au regard de l'enregistrement, cette version de "Red House" ne semble pas inoubliable... mais la qualité audio est insuffisante pour être affirmatif.

Sur "Foxy Lady", la voix de Jimi est de nouveau couverte, alors que les choses s'améliorent sur les couplets de "Spanish Castle Magic" - pour les mêmes raisons que sur "Fire". Le groupe propose des versions encore compactes de ces titres, même si les solos centraux commencent à s'allonger un peu.

Suit "Manic Depression", mené tambour battant, avec une partie instrumentale impressionnante. Jimi précise ensuite que, contrairement à ce qu'il avait annoncé auparavant, il ne jouera pas "Stone Free"... et imite un rire avec sa guitare de façon impressionnante.

"Purple Haze" commence par une introduction bruitiste - véritable carnage sonore de deux minutes. Le titre lui-même est joué énergiquement, avec un bon solo central. Jimi joue un long final avec les dents... assez incroyable d'ailleurs !

On entend certains spectateurs demander à Jimi d'enlever son chapeau. Il répond à l'un d'entre eux qu'il enlèvera son chapeau s'il enlève son froc ! Il présente alors "Wild Thing" assez longuement... et commence le titre par une introduction directement inspirée du "Dear Mr Fantasy" de Traffic. Sans surprise, Jimi cite "Stranger In The Night" lors de son solo central, et cite "Taps" lors du final, qui se termine par un autre carnage sonore.

Au final ? Un document pour les seuls complétistes.

Wild, Woolly & Wicked
Friday, Apr. 05, 1968

Midway in Rock Singer Jimi Hendrix's concert at Cleveland's Public Music Hall last week, the master of ceremonies asked the audience to check under their seats: there had been a bomb threat. But as it turned out, the only explosion that night was onstage. Said Hendrix: "Nobody but Jimi burns a house down."

To light the fire, Jimi didn't even have to pull his stunt of burning his guitar—though a fireman was poised in the wings, ax at the ready, in case he did. Instead, he hopped, twisted and rolled over sideways without missing a twang or a moan. He slung the guitar low over swiveling hips, or raised it to pick the strings with his teeth; he thrust it between his legs and did a bump and grind, crooning: "Oh, baby, come on now, sock it to me!" Lest anybody miss his message, he looked at a girl in the front row, cried, "I want you, you, you!" and stuck his tongue out at her. For a symbolic finish, he lifted the guitar and flung it against the amplifiers.

Shouting "Stoned! Stoned!" his listeners surged forward, clawing at the kicking feet of the policemen who ringed the footlights. After the performance, they shredded curtains, ripped doors off their hinges, and generally wreaked the worst havoc on the Music Hall since it was battered three years ago by the Beatles.

Amplified Whirlpool. Such scenes have not been uncommon during the past three weeks on the latest U.S. tour by the Jimi Hendrix Experience—Hendrix plus Englishmen Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. Their music, when Jimi pauses to concentrate on it, is a whirlpool where the currents of Negro blues and psychedelic rock meet, and it churns with all but overwhelming power from their nine amplifiers and 18 speakers. But it is no more than a conveyor on which the high-riding Hendrix projects his anti-personality: wild, woolly and wicked.

His outfit is pure hippie Latin American bandido—black boots, silver-belted denims, Navajo vest, and a purple velours gaucho hat patted down over his colossal corona of frizzy hair. On the hat is a button that reads, "Let's Brag a Little." So he does: "What I don't like about being on the road, man, is that you only remember each town by the broads. Like the blonde broad with the mole, she's from Frisco —things like that."

For a fellow of 25, Hendrix has been on the road a long time. The son of a Seattle landscape gardener, he dropped out of high school at 18, largely, he claims, because of a teacher who was "prejudiced" against him as a Negro. "I couldn't dig that scene very hard anyway," he says. By that time, he was learning the guitar to Muddy Waters records on his back porch. After a stint as a paratrooper, he toured the rhythm-and-blues circuit, working his way to Nashville, Harlem, Greenwich Village and finally London.

There, in 1966, James Marshall Hendrix became Jimi, and his band became an experience. Their first record soared on the English bestseller charts. As soon as English audiences got a look at them, London hairdressers began featuring "the Experience Look." Last year, Jimi doused his guitar in lighter fluid and set a match to it on the stage of California's Monterey Pop Festival, whereupon his career in the U.S. heated up too. His first LP was No. 6 on the U.S. charts for a while; last week his second was No. 4.

Jimi confides that he is planning a "very groovy" new musical concept for his next album. "I want to be respected in the music field," he says. And skeptics had better believe it. "When people try to call me a phony," warns Jimi, "I smash them."

Source : http://www.time.com

CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER - by Jane Scott:
Jimi Hendrix was.. .hard to talk to, but for different reasons. Backstage.. .he had a date on each arm, each cuddling up for attention. One of the crew whispered that the two women were sisters. So much for the innocence of the ‘60s!... And now ‘Wild Thing!’ announced Jimi Hendrix. Then the wildness began last night at Public Music Hall. The tall, stove pipe slim singer in the rainbow-hued jacket and big black hat started making love to his white guitar. He played it with his teeth. He knelt in front of it. He tore off the strings. And he tossed it behind him. ‘What an experience!’ said Chris Bernard, 16, of Rocky River High. ‘Wow! This was the ultimate!’ ‘Greatest thing I’ve seen,’ said Denny Marek, player with the local Lost Souls group. ‘After this Motown is dead.’
Some thought it was too great. Police pushed four or five boys off the stage. ‘They swung at me, but I got it,’ exulted John Paulisin, 15, Cathedral Latin School, holding up a guitar string... Hendrix received $18,000 for the two shows but will leave a reported $8,000 here. He bought a blue Corvette with all the trimmings at Blaushild’s Chevrolet earlier yesterday.”

“Jimi ambled into Otto’s Grotto about midnight Monday wearing that trademark black hat with a gold chain band and a tiny button that said ‘Stoned.’ His voice is soft, compelling, sort of husky.
Jimi: “Music is very serious to me”
he said, leading me to a small table.
Jimi: “Other people may think it’s a load of junk or senseless but it’s my way of saying what I want to say.”
Jimi says he’ll have a Scotch and coke, if they have it, please.
JS : “How has success changed you?”
Jimi: “I’m more tired. More ambitious. More serious. Now that I’ve got this chance I want to do my best. Say, have you heard of a record called ‘The Big Hurt?’ It’s old, by Toni Fisher, I think but I don’t know the label. All the new techniques were used on that record, without anyone knowing about it. I’d sure like to get that one.”
he said. Suddenly he jumped up...
Jimi: “Be right back.”
he said. But he is up on the stage, grabbing a right-handed bass and playing his heart out. The party patter stops. Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek is also there, spellbound…”
(Page?) (25 March report) by Jane Scott: “An hour later [15:30] Jimi was spinning around Shaker Heights in a Le Mans-blue Corvette. ‘Shall we test it?’ the Blaushild’s Chevrolet salesman has asked.
Jimi: ‘I’ve had a ‘56 Chevy but this is a big fat dream’
He said happily running his hands over the highly polished finish... He startled the staff by peeling $8,000 out of his pocket and paying for the car in cash...”
“At 4:30 Jimi [and Noel] is answering phoned questions to WKYC like a pro. He wears that hat again but looks younger, more vulnerable.
Listener: ’Will ‘Fire’ be released as a single?”
Jimi : ‘No, it’s almost too late now. Maybe it should come out as an oldie but baddie,’
he joked.
Listener: ‘Is it your first visit to Cleveland?’
Jimi : ‘No, I was here three years ago with Chuck Jackson and all. No one noticed, then...’
Jimi [plugs Spirit, a group which includes Randy California and Cassidy...]
Michael Goldstein (who has a New York public relations firm) suggests that [Jimi stress the fact that Spirit is Lou Adler’s new group.]
Jimi: ‘So what? So what!’ he says.
“Two hours later Jimi and the Experience were behind the curtain at Public Music Hall. ‘Testing’ said Jimi and the crowd roared…”