Jimi Hendrix (1942 – 1970)
Born Johnny Allen Hendrix, was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter.
White collar conservative flashin' down the street,
Pointing that plastic finger at me,
Hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
But I'm gonna wave my freak flag high.
You got me blowin, blowin my mind,
Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?
I used to live in a room full of mirrors,
All I could see was me.
Then I take my spirit and I smash my mirrors,
And now the whole world is here for me to see,
Now I'm searching for my love to be.
Definitely, and it's getting more spiritual. Pretty soon I believe people will have to rely on music to get some kind of peace of mind, or satisfaction, or direction, actually. More so than politics, the big ego scene. You know it's an art of words... Meaning nothing. Therefore you will have to get an earthier substance, like music or the arts.
Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.
You never told me he was that fucking good.
We want our sound to go into the soul of the audience, and see if it can awaken some little thing in their minds... 'Cause there are so many sleeping people.
Purple haze, all in my brain
Lately things just don't seem the same,
Acting funny, but I don't know why,
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky.
Hendrix had conjured – with his vision and sense of sound, his personality and genius – the most extraordinary guitar music ever played, the most remarkable sound-scape ever created; of that there is little argument. Opinion varies only over the effect his music has on people: elation, fear, sexual stimulation, sublimation, disgust – all or none of these – but always drop-jawed amazement.
We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea
But first, are you experienced?
Uh-have you ever been experienced? Well, I have
Anger he smiles towering in shiney metallic purple armour,
Queen jealousy envy waits behind him,
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground.
I want him to be remembered for what he was – not this tragic figure he has been turned into by nit-pickers and people who used to stalk us and collect photographs and 'evidence' of what we were doing on a certain day. He could be grumpy, and he could be terrible in the studio, getting exactly what he wanted – but he was fun, he was charming. I want people to remember the man I knew.
Waterfall, nothing can harm me at all
My worries seem so very small
With my waterfall.
I don't really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me. I know a whole lot of musicians, artists out there who hears the compliments and thinks "wow, I must have been really great" and so they get fat and satisfied and they get lost and forget about their actual talent and start living in another world.
When you listen to Hendrix, you are listening to music in its pure form … The electronics we used were 'feed forward', which means that the input from the player projects forward – the equivalent of electronic shadow dancing – so that what happens derives from the original sound and modifies what is being played. But nothing can be predictive – it is speed-forward analogue, a non-repetitive wave form, and that is the definition of pure music and therefore the diametric opposite of digital.
Look, if you throw a pebble into a lake, you have no way of predicting the ripples – it depends on how you throw the stone, or the wind. Digital makes the false presumption that you can predict those ripples, but Jimi and I were always looking for the warning signs. The brain knows when it hears repetition that this is no longer music and what you hear when you listen to Hendrix is pure music. It took discussion and experiment, and some frustrations, but then that moment would come, we'd put the headphones down and say, "Got it. That's the one."
Individual is unable to conform to military rules and regulations. Misses bed check: sleeps while supposed to be working: unsatisfactory duty performance.
Well she's walking through the clouds
With a circus mind, that's running round.
Butterflies and Zebras, and moonbeams, and fairytales-
That's all she ever thinks about. Riding with the wind.
I got a bad, bad feeling my baby don't live here no more...
But that's alright i still got my guitar.
You're just like crosstown traffic
So hard to get through to you.
Crosstown traffic.
I don't need to run over you.
Crosstown traffic.
All you do is slow me down.
And I'm tryin' to get on the other side of town.
Sorry for the tune up between time, but what the hell, cowboys are the only ones who stay in tune, anyway...