ARTICLE ABOUT Jimi Hendrix FROM New Musical Express, September 5, 1970

This interview was published just 13 days before the genius that was the musician named Jimi Hendrix left this planet for good. It is almost heartbreaking to read about his enthusiasm for his new recording studio in New York, the legendary Electric Lady Studios, that he would never visit again.
Read on.

Hendrix – He`s a beautiful person

By Gillian Saich

THE slogan “Black Is Beautiful” could have been made up specially for Jimi Hendrix. When I spoke to him at his luxury penthouse suite at the Londonderry Hotel last weekend my first impression, and the most lasting one, was of his quiet magnetism and extreme physical grace.
Gone is the wild, flashy Hendrix of a few years ago — his famous hair has been trimmed a great deal and he was sombrely dressed in tight-fitting black satin trousers and shirt which he had had specially made for him just before he left New York.
Back in Britain for the first time in over a year the bewitching Mr Hendrix wasn’t particularly explicit about his past but very excited about the present and the future.
The most immediate prospect in his life at that time was his appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival. I was interested to know how he was feeling about it as he had already been quite ecstatic about open air pop after his memorable appearances at Monterey and Woodstock.
Oddly enough he admitted to being quite terrified at the prospect. “I think that the crowd will be much bigger than at any previous festival — even Woodstock. It’s a fantastic place to have a show because it brings kids together from not only the British Isles but also the whole of the Continent.

Daylight

“Strangely, there were only 15,000 people left when we played at Woodstock as I insisted on playing in daylight which meant waiting until the 4th day and most of the kids had split by then.”
Jimi was right — the crowds at the IOW exceeded expectations and the majority of them were still there to watch Jimi Hendrix play an electrifying set.
After a long absence from these shores this magical guitarist need not worry as to whether his fans have forgotten him — if they had his reception at the festival well and truly replaced in the ranks he deserves.
We talked about America, which he expressed as “not my scene man! I don’t want to go back until I really have to. I’ve been away from this country and Europe for such a long time, I want to show them all over again what it’s all about.
The line-up has changed since the days of the Experience: Billy Cox now plays bass, and after a short experiment elsewhere Mitch Mitchell is back on drums and sounding better than ever.
“We have been committed to so many tours and college gigs in the States that it was utterly impossible for us to come over to England — believe me we wanted to!”
On Monday morning after his Isle of Wight performance Jimi and the boys flew off to Stockholm where they started a tour of Europe followed by Australia and New Zealand. “We really want to came back to England and do some main venues here, like, say, one big concert in each of the major cities.”
With a beaming white smile he added “Jimi Hendrix at the Oval!?”
A somewhat perplexed Jimi proceeded to enthuse about his new recording studio — called aptly — “Electric Lady Studios.”
It is situated in Greenwich Village, New York where five years ago Jimi’s talent first came to the notice of ex-Animal Chas Chandler.
“I have done great things with this place — it has the best equipment in the world, we can record anything we like there.
“It is capable of recording on 32 tracks which takes care of most things and I am working on a symphony production to be done there in the near future.
“There is one thing that I hate about studios usually and that is the impersonality of them; they are cold and blank and within a few minutes I loose all drive and inspiration.”
“Electric Lady is different — it has been built with great atmosphere — lighting, seating and every comfort makes people feel they are recording at home. We have recorded a lot of material there from which we hope the next single will come in about six weeks.
The number that is most likely to be the A side is, “Dolly Dagger” which is about a notorious lady…. (so I didn’t dare ask about the theme of the B side “Night Bird Flying!”).

Many moons

It seems many moons ago since Jimi Hendrix played “Hey Joe” on “Top of the Pops,” had a hit with it and caused a great uproar amongst viewers and parents who found his sexual, aggressive guitar playing a degrading attack on the pleasant harmonic sounds that they were used to.
Well, Jimi Hendrix is now an international star and many, many other musicians have taken a leaf out of his book to add to their own. He is very flattered that in some ways he started the whole flow of accepted progressive music in this country.
“I haven’t changed very much in that time, my music is still as pulsating, perhaps a bit more varied. I either play very loud or very soft there is no aural medium.”

If you have a large collection of the following magazines, don`t throw them out, but contact me as I would be very interested in these: Creem, Circus, Hit Parader and Metal Edge.

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ARTICLE ABOUT Jimi Hendrix FROM New Musical Express, April 19, 1969

Some interesting comparisons between the US and the UK in this one. Enjoy and read on!

Jimi Hendrix shock: He wants to retire for a year!

By Alan Smith

UP the creaking stairs, past the accommodation agency, up the stairs again, then to a hardboard door in the gloom. Knock on the hardboard and wait. Footsteps. Then the strangely soft voice of jimi Hendrix — “Who’s there? Who’s there?” — and I mention my name and he opens he door and up I go.
There may be more space upstairs, but this room mainly seems to be his home… lOft x lOft, a big double bed in the middle with a canopy overhead, personal possessions, a monster dog, and the immensely affable Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, all not necessarily in that order.
It’s 3 p.m. but he pulls the curtains and blinks his eyes beneath the pastel brim of an Ascot hat and hunches down over Alley Cat and the largest circulation weekly music paper in the world.
I find Hendrix, articulate master of the guitar, wild exponent of sex and soul, a shy and introverted man away from the stage and the electric involvement of working before an audience.
If his friends were not here, watching and listening in the cramped room above the hiss of traffic on a rainy day in London’s Brook Street, I suspect he might be different. But he pours me a white wine, and one for himself, and he sits low in the seat and we talk about his affection for Britain and the way he sees his future.

Milder

“It’s a different type of atmosphere here. People’re more mild mannered. But in the States there’s more money to be made — that’s why you have to go there. And not too many people say No specially when the money’s about ten times better.
“Emotionally, though, I dig anywhere as long as it doesn’t bore me to death. I always have music, but it’s pretty hard to say what else I need in life to turn me on. Anything, I guess (laughing)… anything!
I’m as human as anybody else, and I’m not so involved that it’s possible for me to work on and on without ever needing to take a break and forget and rest for a while. Like right, at this moment… we’ve been working solidly for about three years, and there has to come a time when you have to get away from it all.
“What I want to do is rest completely for one year. Completely. I’ll have to. Maybe something’ll happen and I’ll break my own rules, but I’ll have to try. It’s the physical and emotional toll I have to think of.”
Mitch Mitchell says he knows the feeling only too well and how so many people out there in the public don’t realise the way life can pile up on an artist, what with the food and the time changes and sometimes seeing a different country only for a few hours every day.
Noel Redding says it’s not really so bad, because Jimi and the Experience went to the States last year, and in a way it’s now just like getting on and off a bus.
Somehow we’re then talking about the advantages and disadvantages of recording in America and in this country, and Jimi returns from a temporary departure into the pages of the NME to say he has no real complaints about the quality of recording facilities in Britain. Some artists wail about it, sure. But not him.
“Mainly,” says Jimi, “it depends what kind of music you go into. You can get sixteen tracks in the States, but who needs sixteen? You need only four really, if you’re going into something straight. Only occasionally do we need more, like some of the thing’s we did on our last LP. That’s what I call expression music.”

I ask about break-ups and Noel says he can’t see the Experience and Jimi splitting up at all.
“I’ve got my thing going with Fat Mattress,” says Noel, “and nobody’s gonna stop me doing my thing.
“Just because of Fat Matress, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna break us lot up. Why should it? The pop business is getting more free, and that’s fine by me.
“The only time you get groups coming together and then breaking up soon after, the way it’s happened recently, is when you’ve got people like Dave Mason. Dave shouldn’t be in a group. He’s not made that way.”
There is no comment on all this from Jimi Hendrix because, once again, he is back among the pages of the largest-selling weekly music paper in the world!
But I do get him to talk about the way he’d face the future if he found himself poverty-stricken tomorrow. He laughs and says he’d probably do what he’s doin’ now, but without the money.
Talking about the past, he remembers how he once played with Wilson Pickett and Ike and Tina Turner and the Isley Brothers. “Once in a while I like to listen to that soul stuff, but I don’t like to play it too much anymore. Soul isn’t adventurous enough. It’s just the one same thing.”
About himself: “I like to treat people fair until they screw you around. You can be terribly honest these days, but this tends to bring out a certain evil thing in people. Sometimes I’d like to say !?*!! to the world, but I just can’t say it because it’s not in my nature.
“I don’t know, sometimes everything makes me uptight once in a while. What I hate is this thing of society these days trying to put everything and everybody into little tight cellophane compartments.
“I hate to be in any type of compartment unless I choose it myself. The world is getting to be a drag.”
He picks up the paper and sits up with a flash of The Untamed Hendrix bristling across the ten by ten.
“I ain’t gonna be any cellophane socialite,” says The Wild Man of Pop.
“They don’t get me in any cellophane cage. Nobody cages me.”

But what happened to their friends in “Clouds”?

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ARTICLE ABOUT Jimi Hendrix FROM New Musical Express, July 27, 1968

I really liked the storytelling in this one. Praise to Mr. Altham who did a very good job on this one. Join him on an adventure with Hendrix and the boys in Majorca!
Read on!

Jimi brings manager`s new club roof down!

Getting around Majorca with NME`s Keith Altham

JIMI HENDRIX literally brought the roof down on the opening night at his manager’s club, Sergeant Peppers in Majorca by the simple expedient of ramming the neck of his guitar up through the low ceiling tiles. Amid thunderous applause, the Experience exited in a shower of plaster and debris after a series of brilliantly electronic histrionics!
Even manager Chas Chandler, somewhat ruefully surveying the ventilated ceiling in his brand new club, observed:
“No matter how many times I see them – they always knock me out!”
The group were introduced by flowerpotman Neil Landon (travelling with our party in the company of Noel Redding, with whom he is involved in a songwriting partnership). He requested that all those on the dance floor sit down, reiterating with Hitlerain emphasis: “You vill sit down or you vill be shot! “Immediately there was much sitting down, specially among the German contingent, before Neil announced: “For what you are about to receive may the Lord make you truly thankful! ”

Enter Mitch

On stage walked drummer Mitch Mitchell (known now to a select few as “the Julie Andrews of the group,”) bass guitarist Noel Redding and the man with the guitar that whips the flesh as well as the soul.
The Experience rolls along the motorways of the mind and the airways of the imgination. For the first two numbers their own amplification fought a “watta-thon” with the club’s PA system before Chas finally gave the group’s system best and let them loose on their own gear.
Each of the group has something to say through “Hey Joe,” “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp,” “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary,” but Hendrix is the supreme conversationalist on the guitar.
Mitch attacks a hundred drums with a dozen hands and feet, while Noel pounds his bass through the electric storm on his right, raised by the Odin of the guitar. In between the squaling static, the flailing and the wailing and the erotic gestures, the Black Prince mutters over the amplifiers and finally arrives at the song he calls “our national anthem” “Wild Thing” which wraps everything and everyone up.”
We have just been the victims of one of those all too rare appearances of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who now average about $30,000 a concert in the U.S.
“What really knocked me out is that the boys offered to do this one for me free,” said Chas. “I’m going to give them the gate money anyway, but they asked me if they could open the club themselves.”

Now people

Peppers is a revolutionary new club for the “Now” generation in Majorca. Neatly situated off the Plaza Gomilla (lovingly renamed “the Plastic Gorrilla by Noel) where most people meet in Terino in the evening.
It has an air-conditioning plant second to none, which provides a welcome relief from the still-hot Spanish nights, and a good beat group, “the Z-66,” with a vocalist who works himself into a grease-spot every night.
There is a first-class light show, getting better every night, as the all-American Bob gets more machinery.
Chas spends much of his time charging about like an enraged water buffalo, correcting minor defects in staff and controls. He worries about the club and the club worries about Chas. It is worriers like Chas who will make Sgt Peppers into the little goldmine it undoubtedly is to be.
I arrived in Palma on Sunday with Noel (Jimi and Mitch did their famous plane-missing trick) and that evening we watched one of the most exciting bullfights I have ever seen, with the famous El Cordobes in brilliant form, being awarded both ears of the bull (the highest honour) by El Presidente.

Impersonation

That evening we ate in a Terino restaurant which was formerly a boutique owned by Chas. There Noel treated us to an impersonation of the yet-to-arrive Mitch.
Bouncing up the restaurant stairs and creating the maximum amount of noise he darted about, on his toes, breezing:
“Oh, sorry I’m late. What’s going on? Can I have some of that? I forgot my money. Can you pay for it? Collapse of some few who know the ways of Mitch!
Monday saw the arrival of the other members of the group and walking down the street in glorious multi-colour they made an entrance into the Plaza Gomilla akin to the impact of the bad-men riding into town in a Western epic. You could hear the hub-bub of comment around the packed square before you saw the big three.
Noel came over to our table to say hello to footballer George Best, with whom he became quite friendly, and Jimi stopped by to exchange insults with me, our way of passing the time! His favourite dart on this holiday was to refer to me as “the little ol’ electric lobster,” due to my over-enthusiastic crash course on a sun tan.
Briefly Jimi and I discussed his lack of personal appearances in Britain.
“We’re not deserting Britain or anything like that,” said Jimi. “We are hoping to do some big city concerts in October. We’d like to have someone like the Small Faces with us, but there’s probably problems over who would top or something silly: There’s an American group called the Spirit right now that I would like to have with us.”
Mitch made one clar point about why they must play America again soon.
“Because that’s where we are treated best,” he explained. “Look, our most recent album has cost us $70,000 to produce. We’ve got to get that money back before we can start showing a profit, and America is where you earn the big money. There is still that feeling in Britain when we play some places that they want to make money out of us and that’s all. They treat us like dirt — give us a thousand pounds and think they are doing us a favour!”

Having kittens

Meanwhile Chas is having kittens about the volume of sound coming from the club from Jimi’s rehearsal and keeps talking about “impending doom.” He need not have worried. The Guardia Civil were very civil about the whole thing.
George Best appeared mesmerised by the Experiences performance on stage and the whole evening was an enormous success.
Tuesday saw a brief appearance of Hendrix and Co. on our beach at Lauro Verde. There, Jimi ventured into the sea for the first time in eight years. The spectacle of Mitch and Noel (they came up whiter than white!) was too much for most of the amateur home-movie exponents on the beach, who pointed whirring machines at them. Noel and Mitch obligingly gibbered about like sub-humans and danced up and down waving their arms. Jimi came out of the sea swearing his lungs had collapsed!
“You wouldn’t believe it but we’ve got Jimi insured for a million dollars,” said Chas. “And the doctor said he was the fittest man he had ever seen.” Chas broke off to address the frail figure of Redding in his bathing trunks. “We’ve got to get you insured too,” he said, “but I’m frightened to let you take the medical!
“The highlight of Wednesday’s activities was a visit to the go-kart track — the first time for Hendrix and Noel. Mitch duly informed me he was buying a formula one with gears to race it seriously! Jimi really took to the racing and was doing quite well, though he kept being driven off the track by an innocent young girl, ending up ignominiously among a heap of rubber tyres.
“I kept trying to play it fair and not bump any of the other cars off the track,” he told me later. He was still there an hour after Mitch, Noel and I left.
The pay-off to this experience was next day when I met Jimi with a lump out of his back and a badly grazed thigh. Apparently he was under the impression that he was back in the Paratroopers and had tried an ejector-seat release from his go-kart, but the chute had not opened! We were all sorry we missed that one.
That night Jimi made an impromptu return to the club with Mitch and Noel and they let loose a never – to – be – forgetten rock – and – roll session, including numbers like “Lucille” and “Johnny B. Good.” Jimi broke a string on his guitar but played better on five than most do on six.
His final remark about the visit to Majorca was to Chas: “I wish I had listened to you two years ago about this place!” It was a highly enjoyable working holiday and Majorca is likely to being seeing more of Hendrix at Sergeant Peppers.

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The original music paper this article came from (pictured at the top) is for sale!
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ARTICLE ABOUT Jimi Hendrix FROM New Musical Express, May 13, 1967

Not a lot of time since my last posting of this group, but as pivotal this group was you need to post whatever is to find about them when you find it. Well, it IS my blog, so I do as I please… 😉
Read on!

THE real Jimi Hendrix is now beginning to emerge from behind that skilfully placed publicity screen of early days when success was too fragile to toss in the air and see what came down.
His retorts are more spontaneous and there is a “Jaggered edge” to some which indicates a not unreasonable impatience with those misguided people who think he is more of a freak attraction than a gifted musician.
He is in fact an extraordinarily talented guitarist with a strikingly ugly appearance trying quite sincerely to produce songs and sounds which are reflective of today — his music — “NOW” music.
The sub-plot to this question-time was kindly provided by drummer Mitch Mitchell on a phone aside, who was having the most fascinating conversation with the Metropolitan Water Board in connection with his stop-cock!

Q Now that you have completed your first major tour with the Walker Brothers, are you happy with the results?
A Sure, the tour was good experience, but our billing-position was all wrong. I was setting the stage on fire for everyone else, following those pretty people like the Quotations and the Californians. I think we deserved to close the first half — that Engelflumplefuff hadn’t any stage presence. He never got anything going. Stopped it all stone dead.
It was a good tour though — one guy jumped about twenty feet from a box in the theatre at Luton on to the stage just to shake hands with us. We’d step outside the stage door where the teeny hoppers were and think “Oh they won’t bother about us” and get torn apart! We were good in something called Leicester, too.

Q Why did you decide to change your stage numbers?
A Because I realised you can’t fight the whole world at once, but we only brought in numbers that have some life of their own. We did Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Wild Thing” — you can get inside the composer’s mind on those things but we’re not going in for any of this “Midnight Hour” kick — no “gotta, gotta, gotta” because we don’t have ta, have ta, have ta

Q Are you concerned that a second single, “The Wind Cries Mary” has now entered the chart, while “Purple Haze” is still selling so well?
A We never thought “Purple Haze” would be this big. Maybe we should have waited for it to cool down before releasing “Mary”!
(Mitch Mitchell, experienced guitarist, is explaining very carefully to the authorities about his flooded flat on another phone in the office: “The top came off the tap and there’s a jet of boiling water about six feet high hitting the ceiling and the water’s so deep that we can’t open the door because of the pressure and the caretaker doesn’t know where the stopcock is. What was that? `Oh dear!’ is right! Yes I’ll hang on.”)

Q Are you at all concerned that your unusual appearance will make you someone to look at rather than someone to listen to?
A Before I go on stage my road manager says to me: “Jimi, you scruffy looking git, you’re not going on looking like that tonight, are you?” and I say: “As soon as I’ve put out this cigarette — I’m fully dressed.” This is how I like it. I feel comfortable like this.
(Meanwhile back at the stopcock! “Hello — yes. Yes I called the fire brigade but that was two and a half hours ago and nothing happened!”)

Q Met any nice folk lately?
A Donovan. First, when I saw pictures of this sweet little guy with the lacquered nails and all I thought “damnee,” but when I met him he turned out to be really groovy. It shatters me anyone could be that nice. He’s really beautiful.

Q Have you seen any other groups copying the Experience?
A I haven’t, but everywhere I go they tell me about one group who got up like us and the fella tried to play the guitar with his teeth and his teeth fell out all over the stage. That’s what you get for not brushing your teeth I tell ’em. You can’t be too careful.
(Mitch, now slightly hysterical: “But don’t you think someone should do something – I mean you can’t go in the bathroom or you get scalded to death. I wouldn’t mind but this is the second time this has happened in a week. Are you still there?”)

Q Can you tell us something about the new album?
A First off I don’t want people to get the idea it’s a collection of freak-out material. I’ve written songs for teeny boppers like “Can You See Me” and blues things. “Maniac Depressive” is so ugly you can feel it and “May This Be Love” is a kind of “get your mind together” track.
It’s a collection of free feeling and imagination. Imagination is very important — there’s one lyric line — “let’s hold hands and watch the sunrise at the bottom of the sea” that’s just pure imagination!

Q Have you encountered any deliberate hostility by the Press to you?
A There are still a few who have been obviously sent to get me. They come back to the dressing room with a kind of “let’s strip him naked and hang him from a tall tree” attitude. They don’t bother me too much — there’ll always be someone who wants to nail you down. Most of ’em go away stoned like the guy in Glasgow.
(Mitch in desperation on the phone: “I know it sounds funny but it’s not. lf you don’t do something quick I’m going to have no flat — again. The caretaker? He’s still looking for the stopcock.”)

Q Do you think you can repeat your success in America?
A The States is still very conservative — maybe the West Coast would be easier to break than New York — you can play louder on the West Coast. I like things the Mamas and Papas are doing.

Q Have you thought of augmenting the group?
A No, but on the album Noel plays a £2 guitar that he bought of Alan Freeman, which is held together With bits of sticky tape and makes a great sound.
Noel and Mitch will go great in the U.S. — they’ll love them so much they won’t have to wash their own socks.

Q Have you changed since your stay in Britain.
A I’ve got older and I say more of the things that I want to say.
(As for Mitch Mitchell — he was last seen disappearing in the general direction of Gerrard Street waving plunger and shouting, “A plumber, a plumber, my kingdom for a plumber!”)

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ARTICLE ABOUT Jimi Hendrix FROM New Musical Express, April 15, 1967

It is really sad when I think of the fact that all members of this band, the incredible Experience, have all been dead for a fairly long time now. Gone, but not forgotten. We are all “dust in the wind” as the boys in Kansas like to say. Being a little sentimental here, but sometimes you wish that time would just stop and that we all could live forever. It feels like such a waste that nature makes us all so expendable.
The more reason to remember the days and people that used to be.
Read on.

Hendrix IS out of this world

Even his ex-Animal manager needs a split personality!

By Keith Altham

“OUT of this world” is a much misapplied phrase, but when it’s applied to that extraordinary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, it’s appropriate. Looking as incredible as anything conceived by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, whose work he endlessly devours, Jimi is composing some numbers of equally unearthly inspiration.
There is one titled “Remember,” about a maniac depressive, described as “raw nerves on record,” another called “Teddy Bears Live For Ever” and a third concerning a visitor from another planet who decides that the human race is an unworthy animal to rule the earth and so destroys it, turning the world over to the chickens!
Hendrix is managed by Chas. Chandler, the ex-Animal, who has developed a kind of split personality to cope with the new image.
One moment will find him the good-natured ex-pop star wearing his Lord Kitchener uniform with gold braid, and the next immaculately attired in black suit and tie as Mr. Chandler, business man — complaining resignedly about having to buy a £2,000 mixing tape-machine instead of the Lincoln Continental his heart desires. Both Chas. and his protégé share a newly acquired apartment off Edgware Road, where, together with newly acquired publicist Chris Williams, I found myself last Friday surveying a room dominated by a psychedelic painting (Bought by Chas. while under the “affluence of inkahol” in New York). It depicted a bleeding eye letting droplets fall on a naked woman.
There was a brass scuttle from which projected a number of empty wine bottles — relics of some bygone happening, a book about vampires, the inevitable blind eye of the TV set, and an award for the Animals’ best group record, “House Of The Rising Sun,” on the mantelpiece, together with a model cannon.
The rest of the Chandler war souvenirs collection is yet to be installed, and the floor was covered with LPs and singles from Solomon Burke to the Beatles.
I was played tracks for the new LP by Jimi, and after one prolonged electrical neurosis, there was a mind-shattering instrumental from the three musicians who comprise the Experience.
As the last decibel faded into infinity, Chris produced an exercise in self-control by observing: “They play so well together, don’t they?
Hendrix, together with drummer Mitch Mitchell, who looks like a young Peter Cook, and bass player Noel Redding, are something new in musical and visual dimensions.
Jimi is a musical perfectionist who does not expect everyone to understand, and believes even those who come only to stand and gawp, may eventually catch on.
On a tour which boasts contradictions in musical terms like Engelbert and Jimi, he has come to terms with himself.
“Most will come to see the Walkers,” said Jimi. “Those who come to hear Engelbert sing `Release Me’ may not dig me, but that’s not tragic.
“We’ll play for ourselves — we’ve done it before, where the audience stands about with their mouths open and you wait ten minutes before they clap.”
Originally “Purple Haze,” his current NME Chart entry, was written about a dream Jimi had that he was able to walk about under the sea. Had the lyric been changed to make it more commercial? And was he as satisfied as with the original version?

Fighting

“Well . . .” said Jimi, and there was a significant pause, “I’m constantly fighting with myself over this kind of thing — but I’d never release any record I didn’t like.
“You’ve got to gentle people along for a while until they are clued in on the scene.
“I worry about my music — you worry about anything that you’ve built your whole life around.
“It’s good to be able to cut loose occasionally — we were in Holland doing a TV show last week, and the equipment was the best ever.
“They said play as loud as you like, and we were really grooving when this little fairy comes running in and yells, ‘Stop! Stop! Stop! — the ceiling in the studio below is falling down.’ And it was, too — plaster and all,” added Jimi with enthusiasm.
“I’m getting so worried that my hair is falling out in patches,” he sighed, tugging at a tuft in a hedge of hair which looks as if it could withstand a clip from a combine harvester.

Trend setter

Jimi has noted that since he adopted his bush-look that a number of other stars have been following suit — Gary Leeds is the latest bristling addition on the tour.
“I just thought it was a groovy style,” grinned Jimi. “Now everyone is running around with these damn curls. Most of ’em are perms — but there’s nothing wrong with perms – I used to get my hair straightened back on the block.”
There has been a hold-up in Jimi’s first LP because of the switch to the Track label, and tapes have been damaged in the transferring of studios. “We’re calling it `Are You Experienced,'” affirmed Jimi.
I smiled and noted.
“There’s nothing wrong with that!” emphasised Jimi.
Full of new ideas, Jimi came up with another on recording techniques.
“Sometimes when I’m playing I make noises in my throat – almost subconsciously,” said Jimi. “Jazz men like Erroll Garner do it a lot as they improvise. I’m going to get a little radio mike, hang it round my neck and record them – maybe I’ll incorporate some throat sounds on a disc.”

Beck flip

Among Jimi’s favourite singles at present is the flip side of the new Jeff Beck record, a number called “Bolero.”
“Beautiful guitar,” commented Jimi.
We talked of Mitch’s new green suede boots — and how Mitch thinks high heels are coming back.
“Y’know what I’d really like to do in the act?” said Mitch, his eyes alight with the gleam of inspiration. “I’d like to pour paraffin all over my drums while the guy from Premier is sitting in the audience.
“Then, at the end of the act, I’d set fire to ’em, and up they go in flames — just to see his face.”
That was the night Jimi’s guitar accidentally caught fire on stage, and “the fireman rushes in from the pouring rain — very strange!”

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