Jimi Hendrix: I Don't Want to be a Clown Any More



The guitar king, out of the spotlight, rethinks the ride

SHELIA WELLER


Liberty, New York -- Records, film, press and gossip are collectively ambitious in creating the image of a rock superstar. With Jimi Hendrix -- as with Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison -- mythology is particularly lavish.

Unfortunately, it is also often irreversible -- even when it's ill founded or after the performer himself has gone through changes.

Several weeks ago, Life magazine described Jimi as "a rock demigod" and devoted several color pages to kaleidoscopic projection of his face. Well, why not? The fisheye lens shot on his first album cover shows him in arrogant distortion: on the second album, he becomes Buddha. Lest anyone forget, Leacock-Pennebaker's Monterey Pop has immortalized his pyromaniacal affair with the guitar. Rock-media bedroom talk makes him King Stud of the groupies. Stories circulate that he is rude to audiences, stands up writers, hangs up photographers, that he doesn't talk.

What Jimi's really all about -- and where his music is going -- is an altogether different thing.

For most of the summer and early fall, Jimi rented a big Georgian-style home in Liberty, New York -- one of Woodstock's verdant "suburbs" -- for the purpose of housing an eclectic family of musicians: Black Memphis blues guitarists; "new music" and jazz avant-gardists; "Experience" member Mitch Mitchell; and -- closest to Jimi and most influential -- Juma Lewis, a multi-talented ex-progressive jazzman who is now the leader of Woodstock's Aboriginal Music Society.

The hilltop compound -- replete with wooded acreage and two horses -- was intended for a peaceful, productive musical growth period. But hassles did come, sometimes sending Jimi off on sanity-preserving vacations in Algeria and Morocco: local police were anxious to nab "big-time hippies" on anything from dope to speeding; the house was often hectic with hangers-on; pressure mounted from Jimi's commercial reps to stay within the well-hyped image and not go too far afield experimentally.

But with it all, growth, exchange and -- finally -- unity was achieved among Jimi and the musicians, whose work-in-progress was evidenced in occasional public appearances in the New York area (at the Woodstock/Bethel Festival, Harlem's Apollo Theater, Greenwich Village's Salvation discotheque, and ABC's Dick Cavett show) and has been recorded for Reprise on an LP which will be released in January. The name of the album, Gypsies, Suns and Rainbows, epitomizes the new Hendrix feeling.

With close friends of Jimi, I drove up to Liberty on a quiet September weekend. The melange of musicians and girls had departed. In a few weeks, Jimi himself was to give up the house, woods and horses for less idyllic prospects: a Manhattan loft and a November hearing on the narcotics possession charge he was slapped with in Toronto, May 3rd [1969].

Photographs have a funny way of betraying his essentially fragile face and body. He is lean. Almost slight. Eating chocolate chip cookies on the living room couch in this big house furnished straight and comfortable -- he seems boyish and vulnerable.

He offers questions with an unjustified fear of his own articulateness that is charming -- but occasionally painful. "Do you, uh -- where do you live in the city?" "What kind of music do you li... -- would you care to listen to?" He is self-effacing almost to a fault: "Do you ever go to the Fillmore? No? -- that was a silly question, sorry." "I'm sorry, am I mumbling? Tell me when I'm mumbling. Damn...I always mumble."

It becomes uncomfortable, so one say: "Jimi, don't keep putting yourself down. There's everybody else to do that for you." He attaches to that statement, repeats it slowly, whips out the embossed Moroccan notebook in which he jots lyrics at all hours of the day and night, and scribbles something down.

Fingering through his record collection (extensive and catholic;e.g., Marlene Dietrich, David Peel and the Lower East Side, Schoenberg, Wes Montgomery), he pulls out Blind Faith; Crosby, Stills and Nash; and John Wesley Harding. The Dylan plays first. Jimi's face lights: "I love Dylan. I only met him once, about three years ago, back at the Kettle of Fish [folk-rock era hangout] on MacDougal Street. That was before I went to England. I think both of us were pretty drunk at the time, so he probably doesn't remember it."

In the middle of a track, Jimi gets up, plugs in his guitar, and -- with eyes closed and his supple body curved gently over the instrument -- picks up on "Frankie Lee and Judas Priest," riding the rest of the song home with a near-religious intensity.

He talks intently to Juma and his girl. He cherishes real friends and will do anything for them. They, in turn, feel protective toward him. "Poor Jimi," one says. "Everyone's trying to hold him up for something. Those busts...Even the highway patrol exploits him. They know his car: they stop him on the road between New York and Woodstock and harass him. Then they have something to gloat about for the rest of the day. Once a cop stopped me on the highway and started bragging: 'Hey, I just stopped Jimi Hendrix for the second time today.'"

On the bookcase is a photograph of a Fifties Coasters-type R&B group: processed hair, metallic-threaded silk-lapel suits, shiny shoes. The thin kid on the foar left in a high-conked pompadour, grinning over an electric guitar: it it -- ? "That's okay," Jimi smiles at the impending laughter. "I don't try to cover up the past; I'm not ashamed of it." But he is genuinely humble about the present. For example, he'd been wanting for some time to jam with jazz and "new music" avant-gardists, but worried that such musicians didn't take him seriously enough to ever consider playing with him. "Tell me, honestly," he asked a friend, "what do those guys think of me? Do they think I'm jiving?"

We are listening now to the tape of such a session, the previous night's jam: Jimi on electric guitar, avant-garde pianist Michael Ephron on clavichord, Juma on congas and flute. A beautiful fusion of disparate elements, disjunct and unified at alternating seconds. Now chaotic, now coming together. "Cosmic music," they call it. Ego-free music. Not the sort of stuff the waxlords make many bucks off. Not the kind of sound guaranteed to extend the popularity of a rock superstar.

"I don't want to be a clown anymore. I don't want to be a 'rock & roll star,'" Jimi says, emphatically. The forces of contention are never addressed but their pervasiveness has taken its toll on Jimi's stamina and peace of mind. Trying to remain a growing artist when a business empire has nuzzled you to its bosom takes a toughness, a shrewdness. For those who have a hardness of conviction but not of temperament it isn't a question of selling out but of dying, artistically and spiritually. Regusing to die yet ill-equipped to fight dirty, many sensitive but commercially lionized artists withdrew. I watch Jimi quietly digging the pictures of faraway people and places in a book, The Epic of Man ("South America...wow, that's a whole different world. Have you ever been there?") and I wonder just where he will be and what he will be doing five years from now.

We crowd into Jimi's metal-fleck silver Stingray ("I want to paint it over -- maybe black") for a sunrise drive to the waterfalls. ("I wish I could bring my guitar-and plug it in down there.") The talk is of puppies, daybreak, other innocentia. We climb down the rocks to the icy brook, then suddenly discover the car keys are missing. Everyone shuffles through shoulder pouches and wallets. "Hey, don't worry," Jimi says. "They'll turn up. No use being hassled about it now." Jimi's taking pictures and writing poetry. "I want to write songs about tranquility, about beautiful things," he says.

Back at the house, he pads around, emptying ashtrays, putting things in order. "I'm like a clucking old grandmother," he smiles. "I've just gotta straighten things out a little." It's 7AM and he has to be at the recording studio in Manhattan at 4 in the afternoon. Everyone's exhausted.

After a few hours of sleep, Jimi floats into the kitchen looking like a fuzzy lamb unmercifully awakened and underfed. He passes up the spread of eggs, pork chops, crescent rolls and tea; breaskfast, instead, is a Theragran and a swig of tequila in milk. "Jimi, you never eat..." Juma's girl worries aloud.

We pile into the car for the two-hour drive into Manhattan. Passing two Afro-haired guys in an Aston-Martin, Jimi turns and flashes a broad grin, extending his fingers in a peace salute. We turn up the radio on Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour"; groove on Neil Diamond, Jackie DeShannon, the Turtles. Everything is everything: We're playing with a puppy, grateful for clear skies, clear road, clear AM station. What more could a carload of travelers in an inconspicuous blue Avis ask?

We pull into a roadside stop. No giggly bell-bottomed young girls in sight, Jimi gets out and brings back chocolate milk and ice cream for everyone. Truckers pay no attention. Middle-aged couples glare disdainfully.

The talk is of the session. They'll record at a studio on West 44th Street, then go somewhere else to mix it -- maybe Bell Sound of A&R -- because Jimi says the recording studio they're going to "has bad equipment...likes to take advbantage of so-called longhair musicians."

Downtown traffic on the West side Highway is light at rush hour. The fortresses of upper Riverside Drive are handsome in the sun, but the air has lost its freshness. Getting off the highway at 45th Street, it's 4:45. The session, costing $200 an hour, was booked to begin at 4:00. But delay couldn't be helped; no hassle. A car full of teenagers alongside us -- has the radio turned up loud on "If Six Was Nine" -- the cut being used as part of an advertisement for Easy Rider, I ask Jimi if he's seen the film; he doesn't answer.

Turning around, I find him streched out on the back seat, legs curled up embryonically, hands clasped under his cheek. Sleeping soundly.

(RS46 - November 15, 1969)

http://www.rollingstone.c...n_any_more
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tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431
[Edited 4/14/07 19:41pm]

Thanks for posting that, I enjoyed reading it. I really love Jimi and I've always felt close to him like he could have been one of my musician friends. The part of the article about him walking around and emptying ashtrays and straightening up got to me the most. That's the side I like to see of my musicians I admire. Not the fancy cars, the bling, the big houses and the flash clothes. I like seeing a more humbling side if that's what they wish to show me.

LQ

LadyQ said:

You're welcome.

And thank you for making me re-read that paragraph and correct my typo...


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

There was a typo?

LQ

Very interesting article. I can't help but imagine what might have been if he'd had a chance to explore all the different musical territory he was dabbling in, whether he would've gone rootsier and blusier, become a straight-up funk-rocker, gone deeper into jazz and fusion, learned raga or carnatic or gamelan music, jammed with Sly, jammed with P-funk, jammed with Miles and McLaughlin, joined the prog movement or hell maybe all of the above. Of all the words of tongue and pen ...

Thanks Aud. You still have to tell me your story on meeting Jimi.

a great read indeed see Jimi got tired of playing "haze and Foxy, Fire n shit like that, Jimi wanted to grow musically and there were alot of things that didnt allow Jimi to do that hence the Band of Gypsies happened and created this brand of Funk,Rock, soul to audiences.

it was Mitch who said "Buddy's drumming is like a cement mixer"

jacktheimprovident said:

Great article, Audience. Jimi's record collection lists are always an eye opener, I find.

Of course, in the real world, while we all wish he had lived and done all manner of amazing recordings, performances and collaborations, the reality might well have been very different. The whole Jimi-Miles thing fell apart because of money and women (the food of the blues ). Yes, Jimi could/ should have gone to music school as he might have been thinking about in his last months, but the poor lad seemed very confused all round towards the end imo, so who knows what might have happened had he lived on.

He didn't have time to seriously muck up, like arguably Sly, Lennon, Clapton (and Prince?), so we can project anything onto his blank canvas 'future'. Your words, Jack, are a best case scenario, and we could easily have had him repeating himself to less effect, taking on a band with a poor drummer, or with a second guitarist or organ/ keyboard player Jimi let do most of the main solos (he did seem to be thinking about a more background role in a future band), or going all spiritual like McLaughlin/ Santana (not necessarily bad as long as they don't preach it imo).

I suspect the reality of a longer lived Jimi would have been a lot patchier and disappointing than our fantasies, as life so often proves to be.

But in the end nobody will ever know. Whatever, it would've been a lot better than silence, often substandard posthumous releases and legal hell since September 1970 tho

Miles said:

Well I agree to a point. I think Jimi's early death has augmented his legend, but I also think he had untapped potential and that he had more growing to do. As you say his output might've been patchier and his imagination diminished if he'd lived longer (every career arc has its prime stretch if you ask me) but I have my doubts that he'd reached his absolute peak when he'd only had a 3-4 year career as a leader and hadn't even released a fourth studio album.

Thanks, tA. I totally heard him being embarrassed about mumbling.

Great article.

Great read.. What did he scribble in that notebook.

Miles said:

So true. I think the next step for him would have been a more straight-up RnB/soul sound (with horns and stuff) and more jazz. Then the 80s and like everyone his generation, the new soudn would have totally killed his music for a good decade. I guess.

LadyQ said:

Yeah, I typed "I'm like a slucking old grandmother," instead of clucking.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431