It was the late afternoon of one of those dog days of late summer in Toronto – hot, humid and oppressive. Hardly any indications of the bitter winter winds and icy storms which would splatter regularly upon this lakeside metropolis in just a few weeks to come.
The interview was a last-minute affair, as superstar interviews tended to be in that ancient era of music promotion. The idea had been bandied around for weeks after I’d scored valuable points with the Hendrix organization for my coverage of Jimi’s drug bust at Toronto Airport for Rolling Stone magazine.
Then out of the blue, his lawyer’s secretary phoned from New York to see if I’d be available to talk to Mr Hendrix later that day. One was not to know, of course, that this would be the great musician’s final interview before he flew to London and that destiny which awaited him post the Isle of Wight festival.
Nonetheless your youthful and respectful reporter approached the task with a degree of trepidation, knowing Jimi’s intolerance for ignorance or undue assumption.
The results were revealing in many ways that I was not to comprehend until later. In some aspects, not until much later.
The guitar master was in notably good humour and appeared willing to talk about anything I cared to mention during our discussion. No matter where the flow meandered in the wide-ranging interview, it didn’t appear to phase him.
He said that he’d been spending his time “thinking, daydreaming, making love, being loved, making music and digging every single sunset.” It all sounded almost too idyllic to be true against a background of increasing street violence.
Jimi had clearly been giving more than passing consideration to the exalted position he had so rapidly assumed in the pantheon of rock. And the inevitable injustice of living with being one of the lucky ones, while so many others struggled.
“I feel guilty when people say I’m the greatest guitarist on the scene. What’s good or bad doesn’t matter to me – what does matter is feeling and not feeling. If only people would take more of a true view and think in terms of feeling. Your name doesn’t mean a damn : it’s your talent and feeling that matters. You’ve got to know much more than just the technicalities of notes : you’ve got to know sounds and what goes between the notes.”
Jimi made it abundantly clear that he was fed up with public expectations of him, but appeared to have transcended the issue. “I don’t try to live up to anything anymore,” he said, obviously buzzed by his newfound freedom. “I was always trying to run away from it. When you first make it, the demands on you are very great. For some people, they are just too heavy. You can just sit back – fat and satisfied Everyone has that tendency and you’ve got to go through a lot of changes to come out of it.
“Really man,” he continued, ” I’m just an actor… the only difference between me and those cats in Hollywood is that I write my own script.
“I consider myself first and foremost a musician. My initial success was a step in the right direction, but it was only a step, just a change. It was only a part of the whole thing – now I plan to get into many other things.”
The clash between body and beat was bound to come in Jimi’s colourful and erotic career. The classic Hendrix we first saw – all unforgettably dashing and devastating and sizzlingly defiant – was an image makers’ dream. The uncompromising way in which he performed, it looked as though every twitch of the bushy eyebrows, every thrust of the velvet-panted knee, every shake of the tousled frizz, had been meticulously formulated by a motley crew of assorted PR and promotion types, under the collective influence of a super fine batch of acid.
His concert persona, with the biting of the guitar strings and the complete overshadowing of all but Presley in what had gone before on the rock pile, was as precise and as phallicly-stimulating as a missile countdown. He whipped the audience into an absolute frenzy and left them as limp as a fading rose on a boiling summer’s noon.
There at least two personas of Hendrix – the electrifying live performer and the studio genius. They didn’t necessarily have to inter-relate. “When it all comes down to it, albums are nothing but personal diaries,” he insisted
“When you hear somebody making music, they are actually baring a naked part of their soul to you.
“Are You Experienced? was one of the most direct albums we’ve done. What it was saying was ‘let us through the wall man, we want you to dig this.’ But Ikater when we got into other things, people couldn’t understand the changes. The trouble is that I’m a schizophrenic in at least 12 different ways and people can’t get to it.
“Sure each album comes out (sounding) different, but you can’t keep on doing the same thing. Everyday you find out this and that and it adds to the total (mental) picture you have. Are You Experienced? is where my head was at a couple of years ago. Now I’m into different things.”
One of those things which concerns him most acutely is the relationship between the earth and sun and mankind. “There’s a great need for harmony between man and earth. I think we’re really screwing up that harmony, by dumping garbage in the sea and air pollution and all that stuff. The sun is very important – it’s what keeps everything alive.”
It is no coincidence that Jimi’s final studio endeavour has just been released under the title of First Rays of the New Rising Sun. It was the album he was completing when he died He talked about it briefly during our conversation.
“All I know is that I’m working on my next album. We have about 40 songs in the works, about half of them completed. A lot of it comprises jams – all spiritual stuff, very earthy.”
Scoffing at prevailing rumours that he had been contemplating taking a year off, Jimi did cast light on an immediate ambition, a big trip in its own right.
” I’m gonna go to Memphis,” he declared in a curious tone. “I had a vision and it told me to go to Memphis and meet my maker. I’m always having visions of things and I know that it’s building up to something really major.
“I think (organized) religion is just a bunch of crap. It’s only man-made stuff, man trying to be what he can’t. And there are so many broken down variations All trying to push the same thing, but they’re so cheeky – all the time adding in their own bits and pieces. Right now I’m working on my own religion which is life.
“People say I’m this and I’m that but I’m not. I’m just trying to push the natural arts – rhythm, dancing, music. Getting all that together is my thing.”
Jimi wasn’t too impressed with the state of pop music circa 1970. ” I think too many musicians are getting on bandwagons,” he retorted. “Now is the time to do your own thing You know man, sometimes I can’t stand to hear myself because it sounds like everyone else I don’t wanna be in that rat race !
“What I particularly don’t like is this business of trying to classify people. Leave us alone. Critics really give me a pain in the neck. It’s like shooting at a flying saucer without giving its occupants a chance to identify themselves. You don’t need labels man, just dig (the broad spectrum of) what’s happening.’’
I suggested to Jimi that during the course of our 45-minute interview, he seemed a lot happier and more relaxed than he’d been in earlier conversations. “Yeah man, and I’m getting more happy all the time,” he confided “I see myself getting through all the drastic changes, getting into better things.
“I like to consider myself timeless. After all, it’s not how long you’ve been around or how old you are that matters : it’s how many miles you’ve travelled. A couple of years ago. all I wanted was to be heard. “Let me in’ was my big thing Now man, I’m trying to figure out the wisest way to be heard.”
