Starting At Zero (16 page)
Authors: Jimi Hendrix
The success is not good
. It makes my work suffer. It’s the reason
Electric Ladyland
is still not released yet. It was supposed to be out on July 21. Still,
there is a difference between doing your own shows and getting the bread than going around the same sort of circuit with guys like Little Richard and King Curtis.
{SEPTEMBER 1, DENVER, COLORADO.}
We played out there at Red Rocks and I had a lot of fun. People are on top of you there. At least they can hear something. It’s very hard sometimes if you know
those people out there are not going to hear anything. That’s how it should be, natural theater-type things, outside where a hundred thousand people can get together. The Grand Canyon or
Central Park. I’d like for us to play outside more because the air does something to the sounds. It’s terrible to have to rely on the Madison Square Gardens all the time, because
those places are not for real good rock music. Then you have to go to the small clubs and get your ears blasted away. I think they should make special buildings for loud electronic music, like
they make special buildings for restaurants and hotels.
{SEPTEMBER 7, VANCOUVER.}
My dad, brothers and sisters, my grandmother and her boyfriend and my cousins were out there tonight. I don’t get a chance to see them until maybe we play here.
This is only the second time in about eight years. I wanted to give my parents a new car, but I guess they didn’t want it. I guess they’re proud.
Each day on a tour like this kind of moves into the next. Nothing different about each one throughout a week. Sometimes I have this feeling I’m getting too mechanical. We’ve been
playing
Purple Haze
,
The Wind Cries Mary
,
Hey Joe
,
Foxy Lady
, which I really think are groovy songs, but we’ve been playing all these songs for two years. I know
we have to change some way, but I don’t know how to do it. I suppose this staleness will finish us in the end.
The promoters think you’re a money-making machine, and they have no faith in you. It’s dog-eat-dog constantly. I can always tell the artificial people from the real music people, the
ones who care about the music and what the musicians are doing. The trouble is, in this business there are so many artificial people. They see a fast buck and keep you at it until you are exhausted
and so is the public, and then they move off to other things. That’s why groups break up – they just get worn out. Musicians want to pull away after a time, or they get lost in the
whirlpool.
I’m so tired I could drop, but I find the relaxation comes from thinking about music. Nothing else moves me. I hear music in my head all the time. Sometimes it makes my brain throb, and
the room starts to turn. I feel I’m going mad. So I go to the clubs and get plastered. Man, I get real paralytic.
But it saves me …
I don’t really know if I have friends or not. I mean, the cats in the group and all this and Chas Chandler and Gerry Stickells, the road manager. Granny Goose, that’s his nickname.
My friends are the people who give me a belief in myself.
I spend most of my time just writing songs and so forth, and not making too much contact with people. They act just like the pigs that run these places, these countries. They base everything on
the status thing. That’s why there’s people starving, because humans haven’t got their priorities right.
I get mad when I hear about people dying in wars or ghettos. Sometimes I’d like to say
fuck to the world,
but I just can’t say it because it’s not in my nature. And I
can’t let it show, because it’s not really a good influence on anybody else. People just make me so uptight sometimes. They don’t give me inspiration, except bad inspiration to
write songs like
Crosstown Traffic
, because that’s the way they put themselves in front of me, the way they present themselves.
You jump in front of my car when you know all the time
Ninety miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive.
You tell me it’s alright, you don’t mind a little pain,
You say you just want me to take you for a drive.
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.
I’m not the only soul who’s accused of hit and run
Tire tracks all across your back,
I can see you had your fun!
But darling, can’t you see my signals turn from green to red,
And with you I can see a traffic jam straight up ahead.
You’re just like crosstown traffic
So hard to get through to you, crosstown traffic,
All you do is slow me down,
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. My eyes are very bad, and sometimes I
go into a club and I might not see somebody and they might get all funny – “Oh, you’re big-time now, you won’t talk to me!” And I say, “Hello. I was thinking
about something. I’m sorry.” Because you daydream a lot.
I don’t think I’m difficult.
I get a little deep at times and don’t talk, but that’s because I’m thinking about my music. I’ve got
notes in my mind, so I can’t kill them by talking. People get the wrong idea. They think I am being ignorant. I’m not, but after a while, I must admit, I don’t care what they
think.
I guess I could do without people. In fact, sometimes I’d rather be alone. I like to think. Yes, gee, man, I’m a thinker. I can really get lost thinking about my music. But then I
think so much I have to get out among people again.
{OCTOBER 5, HONOLULU.}
Hawaii is the place. I had some beautiful days there. So many girls.
I
smashed my car up at 100 miles per hour in a 50 miles per hour zone. I got hurt real bad,
and my face got scratched. I’ve been just freaking out for a few months.
{OCTOBER 10–12, CONCERTS AND RECORDING AT WINTERLAND, SAN FRANCISCO.}
It was great. We’ll use one or two of the things, maybe three of them. But I was out of tune a few times. With the way I play the guitar it might jump out of tune,
and so I have to take away 30 percent of my playing for three or four seconds to get back in tune. You might not even notice it.
You can usually tell how a show will go about halfway through the first number. Naturally, you try to play a little better when you get good feelings from an audience. But if there’s no
response at all, it doesn’t bother me too much. I try to turn them on regardless. When the audience is quiet while you’re playing, that’s really great. That means they’re
listening. There’s a few little piggies in the back row squealing every once in a while, but I don’t think about those things. I think about the feeling that is there. It’s like
all the spirits collect for an hour and a half. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
It doesn’t call for talking and yelling, does it?
{JIMI SPENT THE REST OF OCTOBER 1968 AT T.T.G. INC. SUNSET-HIGHLAND RECORDING STUDIOS, HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA. IN NOVEMBER HE MOVED BACK TO NEW YORK FOR A SERIES OF EAST COAST
CONCERTS.}
R
IGHT NOW, WHEN IT COMES TO ACTUAL PLAYING, I like to do really funky clubs. Nice sweaty, smoky, funky, dirty, gritty clubs. Because you can really
get to the people then. All this stuff where you stand two thousand miles away from the people, I just don’t get any feeling at all.
What you can do in America, especially New York, is meet up with guys and just go out and jam somewhere. Jamming is the thing now because everybody wants to create some music. The club scene is
so informal. Things don’t have to be official all the time. You just go in, wait your turn and get up there and blow. It’s like a workhouse. It’s nice to sweat.
I remember we used to play sometimes when even the amplifiers and guitars were actually sweating. It seemed like the more it got sweaty,
the funkier it got and the
groovier.
Everybody melted together, I guess!
The sound was kickin’ ’em all in the chest.
I dig that!
Water and electricity!
That’s what being a musician’s about.
That’s what you live for.
Half the people don’t know how to jam nowadays. They don’t play together, they don’t really think about the other person. That’s what jamming is about, it’s playing
with everybody. It’s kind of like making love to one another musically or like painting a picture together. After playing a while you feel the flow that goes through the music, like changes
of key, timing and breaks. Finally you get where you can be more together than on a record you’ve worked on for two weeks. It can be one of the most beautiful things if you have time to hit
it.
We have a certain little crowd, which is great. We’ve all been through the teeny-bopper group scene. There will still be a need for good performance groups, but this scene is developing
along the lines of jazz, where cats from different bands always jam together. We are like a band of gypsies who can roam free and do what we like. We are trying to produce real music and to hell
with the imaginary thing.
Maybe the group only exists for one album, maybe they go on for a year or so together, but they don’t stretch it out once it has started losing the sheer exuberance of jamming together.
Like they take up a kind of sound and then develop it, and out goes the heart of it. It becomes a sort of exercise in technique. Everybody loses interest, and back they go to a more basic thing.
Blues is basic. So too is a lot of country music. So you get these two things there at the roots of what’s going on.
{TOWARDS THE END OF 1968 THERE WERE RUMORS THAT THE EXPERIENCE WAS BREAKING UP.}
We are not breaking up –
no,
no,
no!
There are so many rumors going round right now. We are discussed
over and over. There has been too much talk about how I can go it alone. But I would never have made it as the Jimi Hendrix Experience without Noel and Mitch. I’ve always insisted we were a
three-piece group and should be acknowledged as such. Our group is just going to be called “Experience” in the future. It’s wrong that the spotlight should just be turned on one
guy all the time.
What we need now is a good rest. We’ve hardly had a day off since the group was formed two years ago. None of us has had time to sit down and think by himself. We might be working a little
less, but our records will be better, because we’ll have better peace of mind.
You know, it’s like being married with me and Mitch and Noel. Sometimes they might want to tell me something and I might not be able to understand, and it gets frustrating. Anytime you
make a song, you want your own personal thing in it as well as the group’s. So we’ll continue to play together, but we have to make sure that each one of us has a chance to grow within
the group. All three of us have individual interests. We work together in the Experience, but we are not tied down to that alone.
I’d like to see Mitch and Noel getting into the things that make them happy. Doing your own thing is what it’s all about. Noel has this thing called Fat Mattress
and wants to go on an English rock thing. How about that! Anglo Rock! A pseudo blues-rock music! Mitch is involved in his Elvin Jones thing. He’s becoming a little monster on the drums.
He’s the one I worry about losing. He’s becoming so heavy behind me that he frightens me!