Jimi Hendrix par Bill Lordan (futur batteur de Robin Trower)

Bill Lordan deviendra plus tard le batteur de Robin Trower, mais avant cela il jouait avec son ami le bassiste Willie Weeks (qui a joué avec et pour les meilleurs) dans un groupe, The Amazers.

Fan de Jimi et connaissant un ami d'un ami d'un ami de Jimi, ils se retrouvent d'un coup plus ou moins pressentis pour jouer avec Jimi à Woodstock...


La première rencontre eut lieu au Cafe Au Go Go dans Greenwich Village à New York, pendant le mois de Juillet 1969 lors d'une jam.

Interview de Bill Lordan : Audition pré-Woodstock

(Steve Shail) You got to play with the late, great Jimi Hendrix. When was this and how did you find yourself in such an enviable position?

(Bill Lordan ) I was living in Minneapolis and playing in a band with Willie Weeks called The Amazers, a gospel/soul group from Dallas Texas. We met Joey Davis Suthern, who was a friend of Buddy Miles and through him, Joey knew Jimi Hendrix. One day Willie and I, on kind of a bet or a dare, said to Joey that we were tired of what we were doing and can he get us a jam with Jimi Hendrix because we were big fans. Joey didn't say much, but came back a week or so later with a limo and said we were going to New York. Joey had made a call through Buddy Miles. Willie, Joey and I flew to New York, Manhattan, and stayed at the Penn Garden hotel across from Madison Square Garden. That is where Buddy stayed. We proceeded to the Cafe Au-Go-Go in Greenwich Village where it was all set up through Joey and Jimi for us to come down and jam. It was a jam audition (laughs). Jimi was looking for members to be in this new Gypsy Suns and Rainbows band that he told us about after dinner the first night. We jammed three days in a row.... Willie on bass and myself on drums. The sessions were in the mid afternoon and lasted until evening. After the sessions, we went across the street to a restaurant to eat with his entourage. Some of the people around him were, Floyd Rose (who was inventing special effects pedals for Jimi at the time), Floyd's wife or girlfriend was there too; there were lots of women coming by the table introducing themselves, who were all interested in meeting the star. There were other people there, but I did not know them and never learned their names. On another night, Buddy Miles and Billy Cox were there as well as the large group of people who always seemed to be around Jimi. After the evening dinners, we drove in Jimi's limousine and went back to Jimi's hotel to hang out and talk for awhile before returning to our hotel. One evening, we went down to the club called
The Scene. We saw a relatively unknown band at the time: The band was Sha Na Na! At the end of most evenings, Jimi would go back to one of his places.... he had more than one place to get away from everyone and find some peace and have some space. On the third night, we were at the dinner table and Jimi turned to me and said "I want you to play drums." Then Jimi said that he had a bass player, Billy Cox, an old friend from the army, so it caused a problem. Jimi turned to Willie Weeks and asked him if he could play effects bass or rhythm guitar. Willie was very proud and we were a package deal.... we wanted to stick
together and we were young. I was 19 at the time and Willie was a couple of years older than I was. So Willie said to Jimi, if I can't play the main bass I don't want to play at all. Later, Willie and I went back to Jimi's suite and Jimi asked us what we wanted to do. I said, Willie and I will stick together. Billy Cox wasn't going anywhere. Willie was better technically, a better bass player, but Jimi and Billy were friends and Jimi was going to be loyal to him. I met Billy and went to Michael Jeffery's (Jimi's manager) office to talk about this. Jimi really liked my drumming and thought Willie was a fine bass player as well. After the meeting, Willie and I went back to the hotel and talked with Joey. Joey said if you guys want to stick together and it's a package deal, we would just have to go back and tell Jimi that if you want Bill, you'll have to take Willie too.
I was young and naive about the whole thing. Overall, it was a great experience for a 19 year old kid to play with one of the greats.

(S.S.) Were there ever any recordings made with you during these sessions?

(B.L.) Unfortunately, we did not record the sessions with Hendrix at Cafe Au-Go-Go. (Where was my little Sony tape recorder then????). There were people in the club during those sessions; I am unaware that anybody recorded those sessions. It is possible that somewhere out there, someone might have a tape of these sessions. I am aware that obscure taped sessions continue to surface from time to time. Someone might have something.... who knows? It might be of some interest to guitar players that Jimi played on the Fender amplifiers of Elliot Randall from SeaTrain. He later was one of the first guitar players on the Late Night David Letterman Show in Paul Schaeffer's band.

(S.S.) Tell us how the sessions went with Jimi.

(B.L.) For the time that I was doing the sessions with Hendrix, a typical session went like this: Jimi would start a riff and Willie and I would
come in and jam on it for awhile. Then Hendrix would stop and start a totally different riff with a different tempo to see if we could keep up with
him. It seemed like Jimi was trying to see if we could keep up with him and if we could follow him. Some of the ideas that he was working on,
playing with us, I believe, were from the CRY OF LOVE album which came out shortly after the time that Willie and I jammed with him. Jimi was trying out his ideas and seeing how Willie's bass playing and my drumming fit with his groove. I felt that we hung in there with him very well.

(S.S.) Even with this, you still came close to accompanying Jimi to Woodstock. What happened?

(B.L.) After the sessions, Willie and I returned to Minneapolis and resumed playing with the Mystics, a soul horn band. At that time, Hendrix had not found a drummer he liked, and Mitch Mitchell was in England, where his wife was having a baby. When the call from the Hendrix camp came to the booking agency for me to play Woodstock with Hendrix, it was my agency's policy not to give home phone numbers of clients. Also, when the Hendrix people called, Willie and I were out of town with the Mystics on an engagement. It was the timing of my being out of town and my agency not getting in touch with me that made the Hendrix-Woodstock connection not happen for me. I can't tell you who called my agency, it might have been a manager or a road manager. It was not until I returned from Minneapolis from the engagement with the
Mystics that I learned that I was called to do Woodstock. The rest is history.

Source : http://members.shaw.ca/stevesplace/BLinterview.htm

Et deux photos de cette jam au Cafe Au Go Go !



Bill Lordan est de dos, Willie Weeks à gauche et Jimi... ben à droite. :roi:



Jimi de dos et Lordan de face.



Bonne lecture, à défaut de pouvoir dire "bonne écoute" (ça viendra peut-être un jour... ) !

C'est un témoignage de première importance, si du moins il reflète la réalité: Jimi à Woodstock avec Weeks et Lordan, ça aurait fait une troisième rythmique , complètement nouvelle. Ce témoignage est-il recoupé par d'autres?

Intéressant en effet. Si Jimi n'avait pas insisté pour l'inclusion de Billy Cox, la nouvelle version de l'Experience aurait pu être Hendrix/Weeks/Lordan.

Willy Weeks, je l'ai sur le disque "Hollywood" de Véronique Sanson. Un disque que j'aime beaucoup.

Je l'ai vu deux fois en concert avec Eric Clapton : c'est un bassiste de première classe. Il aurait certainement pu exécuter les lignes de basse de Billy Cox avec talent.