Джими Хендрикс (Jimi Hendrix)

The Legend of Jimi Hendrix
In 1966, he arrived in London an unknown. A week later, he was a superstar
By CHARLES R. CROSS

Jimi Hendrix took his first footsteps on British soil on Saturday, September 24th, 1966, arriving at Heathrow at nine in the morning. As he walked off the plane, he carried a small bag that contained a change of clothes, his pink plastic hair curlers and a jar of Valderma cream for the acne that still marred his twenty-three-year-old face. These few items, along with his precious guitar, were all he owned.
Escorting Jimi was Chas Chandler, formerly the bassist for the Animals, who was launching himself as a manager. Chandler had come upon Jimi in a Greenwich Village club and spilled a milkshake on himself, convinced that Jimi was his ticket to riches. Jimi was penniless at the time, having spent the previous three years as a backup musician on the chitlin circuit. Though Jimi had been born in Seattle, and didn't even begin to play guitar until he was fifteen, by the time Chandler met him he had already toured the nation with countless R&B combos, including Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. In Greenwich Village, fueled by both LSD and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, Jimi was attempting to re-create himself as a solo act. He was playing to twenty teenagers when Chandler arrived, yet Jimi still only agreed to follow him to England if he promised to introduce him to Eric Clapton.

Once in England, Chandler immediately set out to turn Jimi into a star. On the way from the airport, they stopped by the house of bandleader Zoot Money. Jimi attempted to play his Stratocaster through Money's stereo, and when that failed, he grabbed an acoustic guitar and began to wail. Andy Summers, who a dozen years later would help form the Police, lived in the basement and heard the commotion. When he came upstairs to join the informal party and found himself mesmerized by how Jimi's huge hands seemed at one with the instrument's neck, he became the first of Britain's guitar players to be awed by Jimi's phenomenal skill.

Also rooming in the house was twenty-year-old Kathy Etchingham, who would soon also be smitten by Jimi. She worked as a part-time DJ and had dated Brian Jones, Keith Moon and a few other rock stars. Money's wife tried to wake her to tell her about the new sensation in the living room. She said, "Wake up, Kathy. You've got to come and see this guy Chas has brought back. He looks like the Wild Man of Borneo." The tag would later end up as one of Jimi's nicknames in the tabloids, a consequence of his unkempt physical appearance and his race, both of which were so unusual on London's music scene that he might as well have been a new anthropological discovery. The name was racist, of course, and the description would never have been used for a white musician. Still, Jimi enjoyed the nickname, as it sounded mysterious and foreign, qualities he hoped to cultivate.

Etchingham was too tired to take a peek at the so-called wild man, but later that evening she went for a drink at a club and discovered Jimi onstage. As he started to play blues tunes, the club went silent and the crowd watched in a sort of shared rapture. "He was just amazing," Etchingham recalled. "People had never seen anything like it." Eric Burdon of the Animals was one of the many musicians at the club that night. "It was haunting how good he was," Burdon said. "You just stopped and watched."

Walking out of the club, Jimi -- unaware that British cars drove on the left side of the street -- stepped in front of a taxi. "I managed to grab him and pull him back, and the taxi just brushed him," Etchingham said. Later, Jimi asked her to come to bed with him. She found him charming and handsome, and consented. They would stay together for the next two years, and Etchingham would be one of Jimi's longest-term girlfriends. She knew everyone on the scene, and she became his entree into Swinging London and friendships with the Who, the Rolling Stones and many other bands.

Jimi had been in England less than twenty-four hours and he'd already wowed a key segment of London's music scene, bedded his first English "bird" and narrowly avoided death. He had spent twenty-three 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.

Chas Chandler's partner was Michael Jeffrey, the Animals' manager and a former British intelligence officer who did little to defuse sinister rumors that he had killed people as a spy. They placed a "musicians wanted" ad in Melody Maker, which drew in a twenty-year-old guitar player named Noel Redding. He had never before played bass, but Jimi liked Redding's frizzy hair, which reminded him of Dylan, and he was hired.

Even after Redding was hired, Chandler phoned Brian Auger, who led the blues-based jazz band the Brian Auger Trinity, and proposed a radical idea. "I've got this really amazing guitar player from America," Chandler told him. "I think it would be perfect if he fronted your band." Auger declined. As a fallback, Chandler asked if Jimi could at least jam with the Trinity at a show that evening. To this, Auger agreed.

The Trinity's guitarist, Vic Briggs, was setting up his gear when Jimi came onstage. Briggs was using one of the first Marshall amplifiers, an experimental model that had four six-inch speakers -- smaller than the later Marshall stacks but still capable of tremendous power. When Jimi plugged his guitar into the amp, he turned the amplifier volume knobs to their maximum, much to Briggs' amazement. "I had never had the controls up past five," Briggs said. Seeing Briggs' look of horror, Jimi said, "Don't worry, man, I turned it down on the guitar." He shouted out four chords and began.

The sound was a wall of feedback and distortion, which itself was enough to turn every head in the club; the moment also marked the beginning of Jimi's love affair with Marshall amplifiers. "Everyone's jaw dropped to the floor," Auger said. "The difference between him and a lot of the English guitar players like Clapton, Jeff Beck and Alvin Lee was that you could still tell what the influences were in Clapton's and Beck's playing. There were a lot of B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King followers around in England. But Jimi wasn't following anyone -- he was playing something new."

Just a week after Jimi landed in England, Cream were playing a show at the Polytechnic in central London. Chandler bumped into Clapton a few days before and told him he'd like to introduce Jimi sometime. Meeting Clapton, of course, was the one promise Chandler had made to Jimi before they left New York. Clapton mentioned the Polytechnic gig and suggested Chandler bring his protege. In all likelihood, Clapton meant he would be glad simply to meet Jimi, but Jimi nonetheless arrived with his guitar. Chandler, Jimi and their girlfriends stood in the audience during the first half of the show, and Chandler called up to the stage and summoned Clapton over to ask if Jimi might jam. The request was so preposterous that no one in Cream -- Clapton, Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker -- knew quite what to say: No one had ever asked to jam with them before; most would have been too intimidated by their reputation as the best band in Britain. Bruce finally said, "Sure, he can plug into my bass amp."

Jimi plugged his guitar into a spare channel and immediately began Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor." "I'd grown up around Eric, and I knew what a fan he was of Albert King, who had a slow version of that song," recalled press agent Tony Garland, who was at the show. "When Jimi started his take, though, it was about three times as fast as Albert King's version, and you could see Eric's jaw drop -- he didn't know what was going to come next." Remembering the show later, Clapton said, "I thought, 'My God, this is like Buddy Guy on acid.' "

When Bruce told his version of the fabled event, he focused on Clapton's reaction and alluded to graffiti in London that proclaimed, "Clapton is God." "It must have been difficult for Eric to handle," Bruce said, "because [Eric] was 'God,' and this unknown person comes along and burns." Jeff Beck was in the audience that night, and he, too, took warning from Jimi's performance. "Even if it was crap -- and it wasn't -- it got to the press," Beck later said. Jimi had been in London for eight days and he had already met God, and burned him.

(Excerpted from RS 980, August 11, 2005)

(Posted ?? 28, 2005)

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7504172

Hendrix 'pretended to be gay' to get out of army
29/07/2005

Rock legend Jimi Hendrix pretended he was gay to get out of the US Army, a new biography reveals.

Hendrix was discharged from the 101st Airborne division in 1962, launching a musical career that would redefine the guitar, leave other rock heroes of the day speechless and culminate with his headlining performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock in 1969.

Hendrix’s subterfuge, contained in his military medical records, is revealed for the first time in Charles Cross’s biography, Room Full Of Mirrors.

Publicly, Hendrix always claimed he was discharged after breaking his ankle on a parachute jump, but his medical records do not mention such an injury.

In regular visits to the base psychiatrist at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in spring 1962, Hendrix complained that he was in love with one of his squad mates, Cross writes.

Finally, Capt John Halbert recommended him for discharge, citing his “homosexual tendencies” – four years before Arlo Guthrie suggested that path for avoiding military service in the protest song, Alice’s Restaurant.

Hendrix’s legendary appetite for women negates the notion that he might have been gay, Cross says. Nor, he contends, was his stunt politically motivated.

Contrary to his later image, Hendrix was an avowed anti-communist who exhibited little unease about the escalating US role in Vietnam.

He just wanted to escape the Army to play music…he had enlisted to avoid jail time after being repeatedly arrested in stolen cars in Seattle, his home town.

Room Full Of Mirrors, titled after an unreleased Hendrix tune, is being published this summer to coincide with the 35th anniversary of his death on September 18 1970, from a sleeping-pill overdose at the age of 27.

It is Cross’s second biography of a popular musician who died at 27 – Heavier Than Heaven, a 2001 bio of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, was a New York Times best seller.

The Hendrix book is culled from nearly four years of research, including access to Hendrix’s letters and diaries, along with military records provided by a collector the author will not name. Cross focuses on Hendrix’s complex personal life and psyche more than his music.

“It’s not how much I know about Jimi’s B-sides; it’s how much I know about the emotional arc of his life,” Cross said in an interview.

The portrait that emerges is similar, in many ways, to that of Cobain. Both men grew up in poverty in Washington state, dreamed from an early age of becoming rock stars, found themselves with more fame than they knew how to handle and eventually retreated into a haze of drug use.

Cross, who lives just north of Seattle, describes Hendrix’s troubled childhood. Jimi’s father Al and mother Lucille both had drink problems. Al, a landscaper, rarely found decent-paying jobs and frequently split with Lucille. Jimi and his siblings were often left by themselves, or in the care of family friends. Jimi eventually flunked out of high school.

Before Hendrix even owned a proper guitar, he played air guitar using a broom, then a battered hunk of wood with a single string. When he was 16, his father bought him a right-handed electric guitar that Hendrix had to restring to play lefty.

After a show in Seattle, Hendrix had a star-struck teenager drive him around his old haunts and allegedly had an affair with French actress Brigitte Bardot, according to Cross.

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.asp?j=56465640&p=564659x4

2Primal Scream:

Большой Xie xie, Primal Scream!;)

Надо бы себе найти такой!

чего сейчас только не придумают... теперь Хендрикс голубой

2Betsy:

>чего сейчас только не придумают... теперь Хендрикс голубой

А вы, Betsy, назвались бы лесбиянкой, чтобы не идти в армию?

2Betsy:
>чего сейчас только не придумают... теперь Хендрикс голубой

Так сказано, что он притворился...

Хотя я сооовсем другие слышал слова....

Ерунда всё это!

ps Так ведь он же служил! Есть даже фотка сержанта (вроде) Хендрикса!

Манзарек, кстати, тоже назвался голубым, чтобы не попасть в ряды.

2Primal Scream:

а это бы помогло? а вопрос провокационный :)))

2Betsy:

В то время и в той стране помогло бы.

в книге про хендрикса я читал что он откосил от армии тем что во время 25 прыжка с парашютом(в числе могу ошибаться) повредил себе ладыжку или что то в этом роде.
про "голубово" там ничего не было, в то же время про манзарек в другой книге действительно закосил таким способом

2vasil ibn rashit:
>в книге про хендрикса я читал что он откосил
>от армии тем что во время 25 прыжка с парашютом(в
>числе могу ошибаться) повредил себе ладыжку или
>что то в этом роде.

аналогично.

Ну,он наверное для убедительности сказал:видите,нога посинела!Да я и вообще весь голубой!

2vasil ibn rashit & Rosco

Это инфа из новой биографии "Room Full of Mirrors" Чарльза Кросса. Писатель исследовал медицинскую карточку Джими и не обнаружил там никакой травмы лодыжки. Во время регулярных визитов к военному психиатру Хендрикс неоднократно упоминал, что влюблен в своего товарища по отделению. В результате его капитан рекомендовал его отчислить из ВС по причине "гомосексуальных наклонностей". Вот так Джими закосил под, чтобы откосить от.

Primal Scream может быть.
но если кто реально скажет что хендрикс "голубой"
пусть приезжает в питер и свяжется со мной - лодыжку сломаю)))

2vasil ibn rashit:

>Primal Scream может быть.
>но если кто реально скажет что хендрикс "голубой"
>пусть приезжает в питер и свяжется со мной -
>лодыжку сломаю)))

Да нет же, Хендрикс не был голубым. Он свалил из армии не потому, что он был против войны во Вьетнаме, а просто потому, что ему хотелось играть музыку. Кстати, в армию он сам завербовался, потому что не хотел сидеть за угоны автомобилей в родном Сиэттле.
Не, вообще хорошо, что Джими закосил под голубого, а то его послали бы воевать с "Чарли", может быть он оттуда не вернулся бы, и тогда крантец всему - мир бы никогда не узнал Хендрикса.

2vasil ibn rashit:
>Primal Scream может быть.
>но если кто реально скажет что хендрикс "голубой"
>пусть приезжает в питер и свяжется со мной -
>лодыжку сломаю)))

Разве что Рэй Манзарек подтвердит:)))

ps Ерунда всё это...Даже если и откосил...Джими - нормальный чел

Вот, кстати, этот дотошный биограф, Чарльз Кросс.

А вот книжка

2Primal Scream:
>Вот, кстати, этот дотошный биограф, Чарльз Кросс.

Хочу дотошного биографа книгу!



ps Всего одна на аглицком(((