Starting At Zero (20 page)

It could be entertainment for some people and something really groovy for somebody else. And I think some of the drug scene seeped in through the music because everybody wants their own
identification in some way or form. Some people believe they have to go into LSD or what-have-you to get into the music. I have no opinions about that at all. Different strokes for different folks,
that’s all I can say.

T
HIS I REALLY BELIEVE, that anybody should be able to think or do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else. It’s your own
private thing if you use drugs of any kind. It’s nobody else’s concern. Drugs are, in general, a very hip and mysterious experience. I just used them for a certain thing, as a step
towards seeing it both ways, if you like. All Indians have different ways of stimulation – their own steps towards God, spiritual forms or whatever.

The trouble starts when people let it rule them, instead of using it as a step to something else. I see a lot of people who just sit around and get stoned. It’s up to them not to make it
into an escape.

{JIMI WAS GRANTED BAIL AND A HEARING WAS SET FOR DECEMBER 8, 1969. THE EXPERIENCE WERE ALLOWED TO GIVE THEIR PERFORMANCE AT MAPLE LEAF GARDENS, AND THE TOUR CONTINUED ON TO
NEW YORK, THEN CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA. ON JUNE 20, THEY GAVE AN UNEVEN PERFORMANCE AT THE NEWPORT POP FESTIVAL.}

I’ve been having kind of a hard time over it all
. People are starting to take us for granted, abuse us. It’s that
“what-cornflakes-for-breakfast?”
scene. Pop slavery, really. I feel we’re in danger of becoming the American version of Dave Dee, Dozy, Mick and Tich.

Sometimes, no matter how badly you play, people come up to you and say you were fantastic, and that really hurts, especially when you are trying to progress. That’s too much burden on me.
It hurts me inside, because you know the truth in yourself and sometimes people don’t really try to understand.

We’ve been working solidly for about three years. It’s the physical and emotional toll I have to think of. You go somewhere, the show is a bit under what it should be and you are
told you are slipping. But it’s the strain. It’s the strain of the moral obligation to keep going, even when you don’t feel that you can manage even one more show.

I’m as human as anybody else, and it’s impossible for me to work on and on without ever needing to take a break and forget and rest for a while. After this tour is over I’m
going to take a long vacation, maybe in Morocco or Sweden or way out in the Southern California hills.

Maybe I’ll never get to take that break. All I know is that I’m thinking about it most of the time now, and that doesn’t help create the right mood. Because I get very bored,
regardless of how good anybody else is. And I’m sure other people get bored too. It’s like I get bored with myself. I just can’t play guitar anymore the way I want to. Sometimes I
get very frustrated on stage, and I think it’s because it’s only three pieces. It restricts everybody – Noel and Mitch, too. But then again, I think that even if there were a
thousand people in this group it still wouldn’t be enough.

{ON JUNE 29, 1969, THE EXPERIENCE PERFORMED FOR THE LAST TIME TOGETHER AT THE MILE HIGH STADIUM, DENVER. THE THREE-DAY ROCK FESTIVAL ENDED AMID RIOTS AND TEAR GAS.}

This is the last time we’re playing in the States, and like, it’s been really a lot of fun. Noel Redding has his thing together called

the Fat Mattress, we’ll be looking out for them. Mitch Mitchell has a thing together called Mind Octopus.

feel proud to be Americans.
But we’re talking about

{AFTER THE CONCERT, NOEL REDDING ANNOUNCED HE WAS LEAVING THE EXPERIENCE.}

{IN JULY 1969, JIMI RENTED A HOUSE OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE OF SHOKAN IN UPSTATE NEW YORK, MOVING IN WITH BILLY COX AND OTHERS.}

I
FIRST MET BILLY COX when we were in the U.S. Airborne. We used to pinch parachutes. We used to play together, and since then he’s been
gigging around Nashville and California. Billy plays more of a solid bass, and we’re doing a lot of guitar and bass unison things, nothing but a lot of rhythms and patterns. We’re
starting to really make good contact with each other because we realize how important a friend is in this world.

With the Experience there was more room for ego-tripping. All I had to blast off stage were a drummer and the bass. But now I want to step back and let other things come forward. We’re
going to take some time off and go out somewhere in the hills and woodshed, or whatever you call it, until I get some new songs and new arrangements, so we’ll have something new to offer. The
new thing will consist of writers too. We have this family thing we’re trying to get together, but it’s best not to harp upon us, the personalities and all that. The body of the music
itself is what counts.

That’s where we go from.

We’re going to play mostly outside. It’ll be like a sky church sort of thing. You can get all your answers through music, and the best place is through open air. We’re going to
play a lot of places, like in the ghettos, in Harlem and so forth. Free when we can.

{JIMI’S NEW BAND MADE ITS DEBUT AT THE WOODSTOCK MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL ON AUGUST 18, 1969.}

We got tired of Experience and every once in a while we was blowing our minds too much, so we decided to change the whole thing

Strangely, there were only fifteen thousand people left when we played
. I insisted on playing in daylight, which meant waiting until the fourth day, and most of the
kids had split by then. I don’t know what all the fuss was about the National Anthem. I’m American, so I played it. They made me sing it in school, so it was a flashback, and that was
about it. All I did was play it. I thought it was beautiful, but then, there you go …

I dug the Woodstock Festival, especially Sly Stone. I like his beat, I like his pulse. Richie Havens is outasight – and the guy from Ten Years After. I was just a little bit jealous when I
saw him play. A festival of five hundred thousand people was a very beautiful turnout. I hope we have more of them. The nonviolence, the very true brand of music, the acceptance of the crowd, how
they’d had to sleep in the mud and rain and get hassled by this and that. There’s so many scores you can add up on this thing. If you added them all up, you’d feel like a
king.

I’d like everybody to see this type of festival, see how everybody mixes together in harmony and communication. But anybody can get a field and put a lot of kids in there and put on band
after band. I don’t particularly like the idea of groups after groups. It all starts merging together. It’s like the money thing of it. Everybody wants to get on the bandwagon. They
don’t give a damn about those kids out there. If it rains, well, it rains.

500,000 halos ...
OUTSHINED

W
E WASHED AND DRANK IN GOD
’
S TEARS OF JOY
,
AND FOR ONCE
...
AND FOR
EVERYONE
...

W
E CAME TOGETHER
...
DANCED WITH

R
IDING THE WAVES OF MUSIC AND SPACE
,

T
ALK TO THE PARENTS, the so-called other generation, because they have a way of overprotecting their young, of putting them in boxes. They put themselves in boxes
too, and that’s not a right way of living. Younger people, their minds are a little keener and they can figure this out, and since they can’t get release and respect from the older
people, they go into these other things, and their music gets louder and it gets rebellious. It’s just that they’re trying to find their own identification. They’re tired of
joining the street gangs, they’re tired of joining militant groups, they’re tired of hearing the president gab his gums away. They want to find different directions. They know
they’re on the right track, but where in the hell is it coming from?

The flower scene was an experiment. Now it’s just a fashionable clique. Flower power will not get you up a hill if you run out of gas, will it? Why make a big issue out of it? The scene
now is like bells and everything, and all those pseudo hippies running around flashing their little
“Love
not
war”
badges. Those kind won’t last
because they’re going to hop onto the next train, any train that comes close to them and is easy to hop.