jimi speaks december '68-nzc! (raisin hurders might want to delete)

[richard maenpaa <ritchiepage@xxxxxxxxx>]

howdy kids,
     i know this is a little off topic, but
that's what the delete button is for, and
besides, it's short and sweet.....and hey, jimmy
mentioned him (see my last couple of posts), so i
guess he opened the door, eh?;o)
     anywho, next installment: jpj on the road
with zep.


     when jimi hendrix plays, the house comes
down. it doesn't fall in small pieces but in
chunks. the whole place topples on the audience,
but it doesn't touch them because he's got them
flying up there with him somewhere. that's the
way it was at winterland in san francisco when we
interviewed jimi hendrix. that's the way he makes
it.
     "all my songs happen on the spur of the
moment," he says, and you know he's leveling with
you. so you ask him if he has to compensate for
this spontaneity by using gimmicks: "on some
records you hear all this clash and bang and
fanciness, but all we're doing is laying down the
guitar tracks and then we echo here and there,
but we're not adding false electronic things. we
use the same thing anyone else would, but we use
it with imagination and common sense. like in
"house burning down" (electric ladyland), we made
the guitar sound like it was on fire. it's
constantly changing dimensions, and up on top
that lead guitar is cutting through everything."
     he tells you his most important thing is to
honestly communicate with the audience. his stage
presence is usually expected to be sort of
obscene, with lots of gesturing, but this is not
true most of the time. jimi's presence is always
cool, and he lets his emotions come through
strong. at times he has turned his back on the
audience - if that's the way he really felt:
"when i don't say 'thank you,' or when i turn by
back to the audience, it's not against them. i'm
just doing that to get a certain thing out. i
might be up-tight about the guitar being out of
tune or something. things have to go through me
and i have to show my feelings as soon as they're
there."
     one problem that jimi has is that his
instruments won't hold up. he explains: "like
these two guitars i have now, they've been around
for a while and just won't stay in tune. they
might slip out of tune a bit right in the middle
of the song, and i'll have to start fighting to
get it back in tune. we tune up between every
song because it's not a flash gordon show -
everything all neat and rehearsed. it's not one
of those kind of things. it's important for us to
get our music across the best way we can. it
means we have to do it natural, like tuning up
before songs."
     jimi adds that it sometimes is tough working
with the other members of the experience, drummer
mitch mitchell and bassist noel redding:
"sometimes they might want to tell me something,
and i might not be able to understand. it gets
frustrating. any time you make a song, you want
your own personal thing in it as well as the
group. we don't compromise with each other very
much, you know. like one guy thinks one thing and
he's going to stick with that one thing, so he
does it the way he wants it."
     jimi admits the trio doesn't do much
practicing: "most of our practice is thinking
about it. they might hear the same tune i have,
so they throw it around in their minds and
picture the fingerboard. so when we go to the
studios and i give them a rough idea, maybe mitch
and i will lay down a track completely by
ourselves and then add the rest. as far as
jamming out here on a show....we try to listen to
each other."
     "i just keep my music in my head. it doesn't
even come out to the other guys until we go to
the studio. sometimes if i have a new song or if
the guys want to take a vacation or something
like that, maybe i'll go to the studio by myself
and have an acid tape made with a rough idea
about the drums, guitar, bass and vocal. then
other times, i'll just come in banging away on
the guitar and be singing and say this is a new
song. we try to put our own self into it no
matter what song we play."
     what does jimi look for in other musicians?
"when i see a group, i look for feeling, but not
the jump around kind of feeling. then i look for
togetherness, a communication between the
musicians. originality comes about fourth or
fifth."
     the night we talked with jimi hendrix was
the second anniversary of the trio. jimi himself
was born in seattle, washington, 21 years ago. he
left school early to join the army airborne.
"i've played with millions of groups, played with
cats that are making it now." jimi feels that
those who influenced him while he was trying to
make it were muddy waters, elmore james, eddie
cochran, and b.b. king, among others. but jimi's
style is not a mixture of the past. it is
something which comes out of himself. "i write
songs to release frustration. i like to play lead
sometimes so i can express myself. but the way i
ply lead is a raw type of way. it comes to you
naturally."
     the way jimi hendrix plays may be natural
for jimi hendrix, but it's the opposite of most
other guitarists. a left-hander, he usually plays
a right-handed stratocaster that's flipped upside
down and restrung the normal way with fender
light-gauge strings. he also has two gibsons:
"some of the tracks on our new l.p. have a gibson
on them. i also use sunn amps. it doesn't make
any difference what size the amps are, as long as
i know i have it. i'm not necessarily trying to
be loud. i'm just trying to get this impact. i
don't like to use mikes. to get the right sound,
it's a combination of both amp and fretting."
     jimi feels it's important not to have a
closed mind to new things that are happening:
"you can't just get stuck up on guitar. you have
to use a little bit of imagination and break
away. there's millions of other kinds of
instruments. there's horns, guitars, everything.
music is getting better and better, but the idea
now is not to get as complicated as you can, but
to get as much of yourself into it as you can."
     "music has to go places. we'll squeeze as
much as we really feel out of a three piece
group, but things happen naturally. we've got
about four tracks that we haven't released yet.
one has a very simple rhythm with a funky horn
pattern in it, and a tiny bit of echo to make the
horn sharper. it happens naturally, like when you
hear something you might want to hear strings
with. but we haven't been able to get these
things together because we've been on tour."
     jimi's advice to guys who are still out
there trying tomake it? "it's pretty hard to give
advice, but if these guys have really gotten into
it and everyone - mothers and freinds - have said
'wow,' then they should try to get in touch with
a major musician or have a representative of a
record company come to one of their gigs. but
tell them it's best not to sign anything too
soon. tell them to get some lawyers. managers may
not know it all, and a lawyer knows what's
right."
     "you have to stick with it," he adds.
"sometimes you are going to be so frustrated you
want to give up the guitar....you'll hate the
guitar. but all of this is just a part of
learning, because if you stick with it, you're
going to be rewarded."