Kiss the Sky: The Jimi Hendrix Experience
? N.M. Shabazz
Long before Rocker Ozzy Osborn actually decapitated a bat’s head with his mouth onstage, long before the group Kiss ever disguised themselves with makeup, there was Jimi Hendrix. He was the epitome of Rock and Roll music; sudden, bombastic, innovative, and tragic. Often thought of as the greatest electric guitarist of all time, his is a mythos that has remained for almost 50 years after his tragic death. Some even speculate whether or not Hendrix was destined to live a long life.
Like similar others in pop culture lore—such as James Dean—his flame burned all too brightly, too quickly. Yet he left an indelible impression, not only on Rock and Roll, but several other music forms as well. As writer Ann Powers said in a New York Times October 13, 2000 article, “…the three genres Hendrix helped found—heavy metal, jazz fusion, and funk—have evolved beyond his contributions.”
But Hendrix did more than this. He was the catalyst for the blues guitar, bringing it in with the modern age of Rock and Roll.
The man who would become Jimi Hendrix was born Johnny Marshall Hendrix on November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington. Hendrix would only see his mother, Lucille Hendrix Jeter, sporadically before her death in 1958. She was 17 when she had Hendrix and she had a tumultuous relationship with his father, James Allen ‘Al’ Hendrix. After his birth, she put Hendrix in temporary care with relatives in California.
James Hendrix was stationed at an army base in Oklahoma when his son was born. After his release there, he united with his son, taking him and changing his name to James Marshall Hendrix, supposedly in memory of Hendrix’ deceased brother, Leon Marshall Hendrix. For a brief period, James Hendrix also reunited with Lucille.
The couple had several more children together: Joseph, Kathy, and Pamela. Born with physical ailments, Joseph was given to the state to care for when he was three. Hendrix’s sisters wouldn’t fare much better as they were also given up to the state and for adoption. Kathy was born blind and Pamela—like Joseph—was born with physical disabilities.
The Hendrix’s divorced when Jimi was nine. Though he was not raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, he did grow up around diverse cultures. It is said that his high school, “…had a relatively equitable mix of African, European (including Jews), and Asian (Japanese, Filipino and Chinese) Americans.” Growing up with such diversity is perhaps what later led Hendrix to caution against racial barriers in music.
Ironically, Hendrix didn’t pick up his first guitar until he was 15 years old. At 14, he had seen Elvis Presley perform and had taken to mimicking him, playing a broomstick in imitation, for about a year. Once the acoustic guitar was in his hands, however, he took to it like a fish to water. From constant practice—through osmosis of watching others play and taking tips from experienced guitarists—Hendrix honed his craft. He also received additional guitar tutelage from listening to his father’s Muddy Waters and B.B. King records.
Though Hendrix would become known for his musicianship, he was also become known for wild antics onstage. Being a leftie, but playing a right-handed guitar, made him a standout. Some, however, did not like such showboating. Hendrix was fired from his first formal band, The Velvetones, for his guitar theatrics. After a brief stint in the Army, Hendrix continued to pursue a musical career; working as a session musician, backing up Little Richards, Sam Cooke, and the Isley Brothers. For a brief period, he even worked with Ike and Tina Turner. Yet, it wasn’t until he was discovered by Chas Chandler—the former bassist for the Animals—in a Greenwich Village club in New York that doors began to open for him.
When he heard Hendrix play, Chandler, spilling a milkshake on himself, had an epiphany. He begged Hendrix to come to England so that he could introduce him to some other musicians. Hendrix only agreed to come if Chandler could introduce him to Eric Clapton. Through sheer luck and destiny, Hendrix went overseas, played at key clubs, and met the right people at English music venues. Additionally, not only did Hendrix get to meet Clapton, who at that time was in the band Cream, he was able to play for him. Says Charles R. Cross of Hendrix, in the article The Legend of Jimi Hendrix, in Rolling Stone magazine July 28, 2005, “He had spent 23 years of his life struggling in an America where black musicians were outcasts within rock music. In one single day in London, his entire life had permanently been recast.”
Later paired with musicians Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix created The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a band that made admirers out of England’s music royalty: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Eric Clapton. In 1967, the band released its first single, Hey Joe. It was an instant smash in England and was followed by Purple Haze and The Wind Cried Mary. Part of Hendrix’s popularity came because of his guitar proclivity, to be sure, but Hendrix also harbored a certain sensual aura about himself. As writer Pete Townshend said, “To a man watching, he was erotic like Mick Jagger is erotic. It was a high form or eroticism, almost spiritual in quality. There was a sense of wanting to possess him and wanting to be a part of him, to know how he did what he did because he was so powerfully affecting.”
Still, there were two sides of the coin. While Hendrix was light-hearted and free-spirited, he was heavy into drug use. Though he allegedly had never tried any psychedelic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) until he met Linda Keith, Hendrix had a voracious appetite for cannabis and alcohol. Later, he would acquire a predilection for heroin and amphetamines. Accordingly, Hendrix was infamous for episodes where he became belligerent after consuming a lot of alcohol. Former girlfriend Kathy Etchingham says an inebriated Hendrix assaulted her with a telephone headset, thinking she was calling another man on the pay phone; another ex-girlfriend, Carmen Borrero, claims she had to have stitches after he became jealous and struck her with a bottle.
Despite the Experience achieving success in Europe, the group had yet to duplicate it in America. Their chance came when Paul McCartney suggested the band to organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 (the start of the Summer of Love) on the fairgrounds of Monterey, California. There, Hendrix gave an electrifying performance, doing a rendition of Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor (1965) and B.B. King’s Rock Me Baby (1964), among others. He ended the act by lighting his guitar on fire. American audiences started to take notice of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The group scored again in 1968 with another album, Axis: Bold as Love, followed up by another later that year, Electric Ladyland, which featured the smash hit All Along the Watchtower, written by Bob Dylan. The Jimi Hendrix Experience continued to tour until 1969 when it split up, mainly due to creative differences.
That same year, after Hendrix attempted unsuccessfully to create a new group—Band of Gypsys—he performed at the Woodstock Festival, in the little town of Wallkill, New York. It was here that perhaps his legend was etched in stone after he gave one of the most memorable renditions of the Star-Spangled Banner ever performed. After restructuring the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1970 and doing a European leg of a tour, Hendrix returned to London and talked about parting ways with his manager, Michael Jeffery, to Chandler and several others. Several days later, September 18, 1970, Hendrix died. The cause was ruled to be barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit. An ambulance crew found his body in the Samarkand Hotel, west London, in the room of a woman called Monika Dannemann, whom he had known only a few days.
Some theorize, however, that Jeffrey killed Hendrix to collect on a multi-million dollar insurance policy he had taken out on the musician before Hendrix could fire him. Supposedly, Jeffrey drunkenly confessed in 1971 to stuffing pills and pouring red wine down Hendrix’s mouth, but nothing was ever proved. Jeffrey died in a plane crash in 1973. Whatever the cause for Hendrix’s demise, it could never eclipse how he affected Rock and Roll and the impact he had on music overall. Even in death, his legend seemingly grows. Hendrix continues to kiss the sky.