Frank Marino

Frank Marino first saw Jimi Hendrix in 1967, but at first he didn't get it.
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"I first heard him in 1967, but I wasn't a guitar player. I was part of the '60s generation of people into that kind of music. It was impressive to me from a psychedelic point of view. I was really into psychedelic music, and the first song I heard from him was 'Are you Experienced?' I remember thinking, boy, does that music fit the way I live. And I was born in '54. I would have been turning 13. I was part of the hippie generation when I was 10. I think when I heard Hendrix I was knocked out by the psychedelia, but I was a drummer so I was just as influenced by Mitch Mitchell.

It's a funny thing. I've become so equated with Hendrix over the years, to the point where it kind of bugs me. But when I saw Jimi Hendrix in '68, I left. I thought it was awful. I didn't get it. I thought it was going to be what I heard, the psychedelic sound effects stuff on 'Are You Experienced?' I remember this guy came out in red pants and proceeded to make the most god-awful noise I ever heard. I remember walking out of this, I was the only one and it was almost eerie. I could hear my footsteps on the cobblestones as I walked. And I remember as I got older and people would say, Frank Marino/Jimi Hendrix, Frank Marino/Jimi Hendrix. I thought, this is this guy's revenge on me for walking out of his concert. 'I'll make sure you never forget my name, pal.'

I developed a healthy love for him when I became a guitar player. In late '68 I went to a hospital for having abused psychedelic drugs and I stayed there for a while. There was really nothing to do there besides get my mind off my trip. But there was a guitar there and I picked up this guitar and played it all the time. Naturally, I was trying to play psychedelic music. By the time I emerged from the hospital, I had stopped taking the drugs, and of course, everyone in the world was taking it, so I became kind of an ostracized person. I was not part of the gang anymore. So I spent a lot of time by myself. And spent a lot of time with the guitar. When I got out, my mother got me an electric guitar -- an SG I played all my career.

When my music started to emerge, it really did have that flavor, and it was considered perfectly normal at the time. But he happened to die two years later. All of a sudden it became, who do you think you are? A 16-year-old white kid from Canada playing Hendrix and no one else is. Then this music magazine invented this ridiculous story about reincarnation and hospital accidents. I was this 16-year-old kid. I didn't have a publicist. I tried for so many years to tell the facts about this. It wasn't until I had a Web site that I was able to publish my side. It's on the record that way back then I was telling these reincarnation stories. It's in Rolling Stone's bible of rock. It's taken 30 years to try to make this normal."

Source : http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07200/802540-388.stm