Oh, no!
Certainly...
Well, one of the best
in this studio anyway.
How about some of the best
sitting in this chair?
Another rapid return visit by a trio
which is blazing a trail through Britain
with exciting new sounds.
I just wish I Could just grab you, man,
and just...
An experience for Jimi Hendrix, retaining
his title as the world's top musician.
I can't explain myself like this at that
sometimes 'cause it doesn't come out like that.
Wait, don't waste all that Elm there.
Stop it for a second.
I was born in Seattle, Washington, USA,
on November 27th 1942
at the age of zero.
My dad used to call me
Buster, or buddy boy,
and my mother
used to call me Jimmy.
Mostly my dad took care of me.
My dad was very strict and taught me
that I must respect my elders always.
I couldn't speak
unless I was spoken to first by grown-ups.
A fish wouldn't get into trouble,
if he kept his mouth shut.
So I've always been very quiet.
But I saw a lot of things.
My grandmother is part Cherokee.
I used to spend a lot of time on a
reservation in Vancouver, British Columbia.
My mother and father used to fall out a lot
and I always had to be ready
to go tippy-toeing off to Canada.
My dad was level-headed and religious
but my mother used to like
having a good time and dressing up.
She used to drink a lot
and didn't take care of herself.
She died when I was about ten
but she was a groovy mother.
I went to school in Seattle,
then Vancouver, then back to Seattle.
On the whole,
my school was pretty relaxed.
We had Chinese, Japanese,
Puerto Ricans, Philippines.
We won all the football games.
At school I used to write poetry a lot
and I wanted to be an actor or a painter.
They said I used to be late all the time
but I was getting As and Bs.
I had a girlfriend in the art class
and we used to hold hands all the time.
The art teacher didn't dig that at all.
I left school early.
School was nothing for me.
I wanted something to happen to me.
My father told me to look for a job,
so that's what I did.
I worked for my father
for a couple of weeks.
I had to work very hard.
Dad was a gardener
and it got pretty bad in the winter
when there wasn't any grass to cut.
Have you heard of Muddy Waters?
The first guitarist
I was aware of was Muddy Waters.
I heard one of his old records when I was
a little boy and it scared me to death,
because I heard all of those sounds.
Wow! What is all that about?
It was great!
One of the funkiest I've heard.
I dug Howlin' Wolf
and Elmore James, Jimmy Reed,
but I was into other stuff.
I used to like Buddy Holly
and Ritchie Valens, Eddie Cochran.
But you get your inspiration
from everything.
Color just doesn't make any difference.
Look at Elvis.
He could sing the blues and he was white.
I always say, let the best man win.
Whether you're black, white or purple.
I was about 14 or 15
when I started playing guitar.
I learned all the riffs I could.
I never had any lessons.
I learned guitar from records and the radio.
I was trying to play like
Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry.
Trying to learn everything and anything.
I played in my back yard at home
and the kids used to gather round
and said it was cool.
When I was 17, I formed this group
with some other guys
but they drowned me out.
I didn't know why at first
but after about three months, I realized:
I had to get an electric guitar.
My first electric was a Danelectro
which my dad bought for me.
Must have busted him for a long time.
I got the guitar together
because it was all I had.
No city I've ever seen
is as pretty as Seattle.
But I couldn't live there.
You get restless and, before you know it,
you're too old
and you haven't seen any of the world.
There's more for you
in today's "Action: Army".
I bet you didn't wear
this in the paratroops.
Not necessarily.
You were a para... What is it?
A paratrooper or a parachutist? Or "shoutist"?
It doesn't make a difference.
I was 18. I figured I'd have to go
into the army sooner or later
so I walked into the first recruiting office
I saw and volunteered.
I wanted to get everything over with
before I tried to get into
music as a career,
so they wouldn't call me up in the middle of
something that might be happening.
I had no musical training
so I couldn't sign up as a musician.
I figured I might as well go all the way,
so I joined the Airborne.
This is the Airborne.
Tough. Rugged. Big.
This is the outfit that one enemy called
"those devils in baggy pants
This is the outfit where brawn
has to match brains,
where every man has to be
in top-notch condition,
mentally, physically.
If you're that man,
this is your outfit.
I had to buy two pairs of jump boots
and four sets of tailored fatigues,
plus 20 Screaming Eagle badges.
You know what that represents?
The 101st Airborne Division,
Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
Yes, indeed.
"Dear Dad,
Well, here I am,
"exactly where I wanted to go:
in the 101st Airborne.
"How are you and Leon, and everybody?
Fine, I really hope.
"Well, it is pretty rough, but I can't
complain and I don't regret it so far.
"We jumped out of the 34-foot tower
on the third day we were here.
"It was almost fun.
"We were the first nine
out of 150 in our group.
"There were these three guys that quit
when they got to the top of the tower.
"But I have in my mind
that whatever happens, I am not quitting.
"I'll try my best to make this Airborne
for the sake of our name,
"so that the whole family of Hendrix
"will have the right to wear
the Screaming Eagle badge of the US Army.
"To Daddy Hendrix, from your son.
Love James.
"PS: Please send my guitar
as soon as you can. I really need it now. "
But the army is really a bad scene.
They wouldn't let me
have anything to do with music.
I was in the army for about 13 months
but I got injured on a jump.
One day, I got my ankle
caught in the skyhook
just as I was going to jump
and I broke it.
I told them I'd hurt my back too.
Every time they examined me I'd groan,
so they finally believed me.
I was lucky to get out when I did.
Vietnam was just coming up.
In the army,
I had started to play the guitar seriously.
So I thought all I could do is
to try to earn money playing guitar.
I went to Nashville, where I lived
in a big housing estate they were building.
Every Sunday afternoon, we used to
go downtown to watch the race riots.
We'd take a picnic basket because
they wouldn't serve us in the restaurants.
One group would stand on one side of the
street and the rest on the other side.
They'd shout names
and talk about each other's mothers
and every once in a while
stab each other.
Sometimes, if there was a good movie
on that Sunday,
there wouldn't be any race riots.
It took me some time to get better
from the injuries I had.
It was pretty tough at first.
I lived in very miserable circumstances.
I slept where I could
and when I needed to eat, I had to steal it.
I played in cafes,
clubs and on the streets.
That's where I really learned to play.
I started a group called King Kasuals
with a fella called Billy Cox
who played funky, funky bass.
I met a guy named Gorgeous George
and he got me on some tours.
So I started traveling around
and playing around the South.
The idea of playing guitar with my teeth
came to me in a town in Tennessee.
Down there you have to play with your teeth
or else you get shot.
Those people really were hard to please.
There's a trail of broken teeth
all over the stage.
What are you looking at?
What are you looking at?
There was a soul package
coming into town
with Sam Cooke, Solomon Burke,
Jackie Wilson, B.B. King and Chuck Jackson
and I got a little job
playing in the back-up band.
I learnt an awful lot
playing behind all those names every night.
"Dear Dad,
I hope everything is fine.
"Well, here I am again,
traveling to different places.
"I am on a tour that lasts about 35 days.
"We're about halfway through it now.
"We've been to all the cities
in the Midwest, East and South.
"I'll write soon, Jimmy. "
"Dear Dad,
"Just a few words to let you know
I made it to South Carolina.
"Tell everybody 'Hello'.
With Love, Jimmy"
I went to New York and won first place
in the Apollo Amateur Contest.
I stayed up there
for about two or three weeks.
Then The Isley Brothers asked
if I would play with them.
I played with them for a while
and got very bored
because you get very tired
of playing behind other people all the time.
I quit them in Nashville somewhere
and this group came up
and brought me back to Atlanta, Georgia,
where I met Little Richard.
"Dearest Dad, I received your letter
while I was in Atlanta.
"I'm playing with Little Richard now.
"We're going towards the West Coast.
"We're in Louisiana now.
"But my address will be in Los Angeles
when I write again. Jimmy. "
Well, Little Richard,
he was the guy up front and that was it,
and he said he was the only one
allowed to be pretty.
I guess I played with Little Richard
for about five or six months.
I quit because of money misunderstanding:
he didn't pay us for Eve and a half weeks.
I couldn't imagine myself for the rest of
my life in a shiny mohair suit
with patent leather shoes
and a patent leather hairdo to match.
I didn't hear any guitar players
doing anything new
and I was bored out of my mind.
I wanted my own scene,
making my own music.
I was starting to see that you could create
a whole new world with an electric guitar.
'Cause there isn't a sound like it.
I had these ideas and sounds in my brain,
but I needed people to do it with
and they were hard to End.
I went back to New York and played
with this little rhythm and blues group
called Curtis Knight And The Squires.
I also played with King Curtis
and Joey Dee.
"Dear Dad,
Well, I'm just dropping in a few words
"to let you know everything's so-so
in this big, raggedy city of New York.
"Everything is happening bad here.
"I hope everyone at home is all right.
Tell Leon I said hello.
"I'll write you a letter real soon
and will try to send a decent picture.
"So, until then,
I hope you're doing all right.
"Tell Ben and Ernie
I play the blues like they never heard. "
I had friends with me
in Harlem and I'd say,
"Come on down to the Village
so we can get something together. "
The Village was groovy.
I just laid around
and played for about two hours a night.
You had to chat someone up real quick
before you had a place to stay.
I got a break playing guitar
for John Hammond Jr. at the Cafe au Go Go.
Bob Dylan was also down there.
We were both stoned
and just hung about laughing
thanks to the demon ale.
When I first heard Dylan,
I thought you must admire the guy
for having that much nerve
to sing out of key.
But when I started listening to the words,
that sold me.
First real group I got together,
that would be around 1965, I guess.
My big slice of luck came
when a little English friend
persuaded Chas Chandler,
the bass player of The Animals,
to come down where
we were gigging and give an ear.
Chas came down
and heard me and asked,
would I like to come to England
and start a group there?
He seemed like a pretty sincere guy
and I'd never been to England before.
I wasn't thinking about nothing
but the idea of going to England.
That's all I was thinking about.
'Cause I like to travel, you know?
One place bores me too long,
so I have to see if I can get something
together by moving somewhere else.
And the idea of England
was the idea of England itself.
I said, "Wow! I've never
been there before. "
September 24th 1966.
That's when I came to England.
They kept me waiting at the airport
for three or four hours
because I didn't have a work permit.
They carried on like
I was going to make all the money in England
and take it back to the States.
I moved into a flat with Chas Chandler.
We used to get complaints about loud,
late parties when we were out of town.
Chas got real mad about it
but I didn't let it bug me.
Chas knows lots of telephone numbers.
He helped me ind
my bassist and drummer.
Four days after we got together,
we were playing at the Paris Olympia
with Johnny Hallyday,
who is like the French Elvis.
We just got thrown together,
we didn't know each other from Adam.
I was thinking of the smallest pieces
possible with the hardest impact.
That's why I like us being called
The Experience, it's right.
All the photos I had done
for publicity to begin with
were picked because I looked so grim.
But I guess it was necessary
to get that visual thing going
before we could make people listen.
My music isn't pop, it's me.
My guitar is my notes,
regardless of where they came from.
I haven't set out
to produce a commercial sound
but our intention is to be respected, you know,
after we die and we're old and all that.
Who doesn't want
to be written down in history?
"Dear Dad,
We're playing around London now.
"That's where I'm staying these days.
"I have my own group and
we'll have a record out in about two months
"named Hey Joe
by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
"I hope you get this card.
"I think things are going a little better.
Your loving son, Jimi. "
We all dug Hey Joe as a number.
Chas made me sing serious.
I was too scared to sing.
It was the first time
I ever tried to sing on a record.
While we were working on it,
I don't think
we played it the same way twice.
Hey Joe is really a blues arrangement
of a cowboy song.
It isn't quite a commercial song,
so I'm surprised
that it got so high in the hit parade.
I'm just wondering
how people are going to take the next one,
because it's so different.
I had this thing on my mind
about a dream I had
that I was walking under the sea.
It's linked to a story I read in a science
fiction magazine about a purple death ray.
It's called Purple Haze.
I don't consider it
the invention of psychedelic music,
it was just asking a lot of questions.
The way I write things, they are just
a clash between reality and fantasy.
You have to use fantasy
to show different sides to reality.
A lot of people think
what I do with my guitar is vulgar,
but I don't let them hang me up.
I play to the people
and I don't think our actions are obscene.
Music is such a personal expression,
it's bound to project sex.
What is so wrong about that?
Is it so shameful?
I play and move as I feel.
It's not an act, but a state of being.
I consider ourselves to be
some of the luckiest cats alive,
because we're playing just what we want
to play, and people seem to like that.
You must remember that Jimi Hendrix USA
didn't really have a chance to do anything,
because he was playing behind people.
Then this happened.
When Chas saw me
in Greenwich Village,
he said it would all happen
just like it has.
The first night of the "Walker Brothers Tour"
was when I started to worry.
This was an audience
who'd come to see the Walker Brothers,
Engelbert Humperdinck
and Cat Stevens.
We'd step outside the stage door
where the teenyboppers were,
and think, "They won't bother about us",
and then get torn apart.
I don't know how it happened
so suddenly,
but our records began to sell
at an incredible rate.
In England,
you have to keep releasing records.
They have very quick minds
and they get bored easily.
We are calling our album
Are You Experienced.
This is a very personal album,
just like all our singles.
I guess you could call it an ad-lib album,
as we made so much of it up on the spot.
I don't want people to get the idea
it's a collection of freak-out material.
Imagination is the key to my lyrics,
and the rest is painted
with a little science fiction.
What I like to do
is write a lot of mythical scenes.
You can write your own mythology -
like the history of the wars on Neptune
and the reason Saturn's rings are there.
Britain is our station now.
It's not my home
but it was our beginning.
They took us in like lost babies.
We'll stay here probably
until around the end of June,
and then we'll see
if we can get something going in America.
Paul McCartney was the big bad Beatle,
the beautiful cat who got us the gig
at the "Monterey Pop Festival".
I arrived in England
with just the clothes I stood up in.
I'm going back with the best wardrobe of
gear that Carnaby Street can offer.
"Monterey" was great.
It was a music festival done up
the way it's supposed to be done up.
That was our start in America.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Brian Jones.
This dude is a very good friend,
a fellow countryman of yours,
a brilliant performer,
the most exciting guitarist I've ever heard.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
When I was in Britain,
I used to think about America every day.
I'm American,
I wanted people here to see me.
I also wanted to see
whether we could make it back here.
We had our beautiful rock blues
country funky freaky sound.
I felt like we were turning the whole world
onto this new thing -
the best, most lovely new thing.
You know, I could sit up here all night
and say thank you, thank you, thank you,
but I just... I just wish
I could just grab you, man, and just...
Everything was perfect
and it was such a good feeling,
especially your own home country,
so I decided to destroy my guitar
at the end as a sacrifice.
You sacrifice the things you love.
I love my guitar.
The "Monterey Festival" was a good scene.
All those beautiful people.
It was one of the best gigs
I've ever played.
And we made it, man,
because we did our own thing.
And it really was our own thing
and nobody else's.
Jimi Hendrix!
Then we got into a tour
with The Monkees.
They're like plastic Beatles.
Then some parents
who brought their young kids
complained that our act was vulgar.
We decided
it was just the wrong audience.
I think they replaced me
with Mickey Mouse.
You get carted
from New York to London,
start a whole new scene going there,
then come back home.
America is so large.
When you play regularly in Britain,
you end up
going back to the same places.
That doesn't happen in America.
You ride into town,
you play your gig,
and these beautiful girls come around
for drinks and parties and so forth.
You do actually fall in love with them,
because that's the only love you can have.
If I get up at seven o'clock in the morning,
and, you know, I'm really sleepy,
but then I open the door and see somebody
that appeals to me, you know,
like the first thing I say,
"What in the world is she doing here?"
Or "What does she want?"
or something like that.
Then she says, "Maybe can I come in?"
And I'm standing there really digging her,
she's really nice-looking, you know.
To tell the honest to God truth, she's about
So, I say, "Oh".
Well, I probably stand there and then,
there I go,
I'll be biting into an apple maybe.
I used to be on the block starving.
Girls used to help me.
Girls were my best friends.
And ever since then,
that's when I said to myself,
"I'll have to show my appreciation. "
Little Wing was a very sweet girl that
came around, that gave me a whole life,
and me with my crazy ass
couldn't get it together.
I dig writing slow songs,
because I feel it's easier
to get more blues and feeling into them.
The ballads I really get together.
That's what I dig.
Flower power - yeah, I dig anything
as long as it don't hurt anybody,
anything as long as
people are grooving off it.
You're not a "love-in" person
just because you have curly hair,
or wear bells and beads.
You have to believe in it,
not just throw flowers.
Although the flower scene was all tied up
with sensation stuff about drugs,
the "love everybody" idea
helped one helluva lot.
Of course, a lot of those hippies
may get busted once in a while,
but you don't hear
of banks being robbed by hippies.
It's your own private thing
if you use drugs.
Anybody should be able
to think or do what they want,
as long as it doesn't hurt anybody.
Music is a safe type of high.
It's more the way it's supposed to be.
That's where highness
came from anyway.
Different strokes for different folks,
that's all I can say.
I don't consider myself a songwriter,
not yet anyway.
A lot of times I write a lot of words
all over the place,
on matchboxes or on napkins,
and then the music makes me think
of the few words I might have written,
so I go back to those few words,
you know, and just get it together.
Sometimes, if I have a new song,
maybe I'll go to the studio by myself
and have an acetate made,
and have a rough idea about the drums,
guitar, bass and vocals.
Then other times, I'll just come in
banging away on the guitar.
We recorded this album
right after the first one.
All the songs on it
are exactly the way we felt right then.
The reason for working
in the States is that
we make twenty times
more money here,
and there's no harm in that.
We have to eat like everyone else.
I'm looking forward
to going home to Seattle.
It's been seven years.
There's my father,
who's married again,
and my brother Leon, who's 19.
He's trying to form a band of his own now.
And I've got a six-year-old sister, Janie,
whom I've never seen.
That's how long
I've been gone from home.
The problem of succeeding
is a hard one for you,
if your bassist, say, is into the blues
or something like that,
and you suddenly make hundreds
of thousands of dollars a year.
Someone said it's hard
to sing the blues
when you're making
that kind of money.
This assumes that you can't be unhappy
and have a lot of money.
Sometimes it gets to be really easy
to sing the blues,
when you're supposed to be making
all this much money,
because, like, money is getting to be
out of hand now, you know.
And musicians, especially young cats,
they get a chance to make all this money,
and they say, "Wow, that's fantastic. "
And like I said before, they lose themselves
and forget about the music itself.
They forget about their talents,
they forget about the other half of them,
so therefore,
you can sing a whole lot of blues.
The more money you make,
the more blues sometimes you can sing.
There was a time I was worried
about the money.
I was worried about whether
I was getting all I was entitled to.
But money doesn't affect me right now.
These guys in the business
who go out and spend, spend, spend,
then end up flat busted broke.
Except maybe they have
some personal things they bought.
That's no good for me.
I get my biggest kicks out of music.
We've been together
for about two solid years
and we've been playing Purple Haze,
The Wind Cries Mary,
Hey Joe, Foxy Lady.
We've been playing all these songs,
which I really think are groovy songs,
but we've been playing
all these songs for two years.
So, quite naturally,
we started improvising here and there,
and there's other things
we wanted to turn on to the people.
We're cutting a new record
between our tours.
There may be two tracks
from the new Bob Dylan album on it.
In fact, we've done
All Along The Watchtower already.
It is now that I plan to start
making real music.
I wanna create a new sound.
Most of all, I'd like to forget
everything before 1968.
We call it The End Of The Beginning.
But see, LPs to us
are like personal diaries, you know.
That's why I like all the songs we did.
I'm not saying they're better
than anything else, but I just like them.
I have personal feelings for anything
that we recorded, we released.
That album, when it was released over here,
had a picture of me,
Noel and Mitch on the cover.
But people had been asking me
about the English cover
and I don't know anything about it.
All I can say is that I had no idea
that it had a picture
of dozens of nude girls on it.
When we recorded our last LP there,
Electric Ladyland,
we were touring at the same time
which is hard to do.
Because that means
you have to concentrate on two things.
You have to do a good show tonight
and plus tomorrow morning at six o'clock,
you have to go into the studio.
And so it was really hard.
So I got down half the things
that I really wanted
to get down during that period.
The negro riots in the States are crazy,
discrimination is crazy.
I think we can live together
without these problems.
But because of the violence
these problems aren't solved yet.
I don't look at things in terms of races.
I look at things in terms of people.
Quite naturally, I don't like
to see houses being burnt.
They asked us to give benefit concerts
for the Black Panthers.
I was iron in all this,
but I'm not for the aggression of violence
or whatever you wanna call it.
I just wanna do what I'm doing
without getting involved
in racial or political matters.
I can't express myself in a conversation,
I can't explain myself like this or that
sometimes 'cause, you know,
it just doesn't come out like that.
So, when we're on stage, it's our own
little world, that's your whole life.
Music is what matters.
When you hear somebody making music
they are baring a naked part
of their souls to you.
That was really nice.
Great.
Well, ladies and gentlemen,
in case you didn't know,
Jimi and the boys won
in a big American magazine called Billboard,
the Group of the Year
and they're gonna sing for you now
the song that absolutely made them
in this country,
and I love to hear them sing it,
Hey Joe.
I feel guilty when people say
I'm the greatest guitar player on the scene.
What's good or bad doesn't matter to me.
What does matter is feeling and not feeling,
technicality of notes.
You got to know the sound
and what goes between the notes.
I always try to get better,
but as long as I'm playing,
I don't think I'll ever reach the point
where I'm satisfied.
It was the same old thing
with people telling us what to do.
They wanted to make us play Hey Joe.
So I caught
Noel and Mitch's attention,
and we went into
Sunshine Of Your Love.
If you play live, nobody can stop you
or dictate what you play.
We'll stop playing this rubbish
and dedicate a song to the Cream,
regardless of what kind of group
they might be in.
I'd like to dedicate it to Eric Clapton,
Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce.
We're being put off the air.
An experience for Jimi Hendrix retaining
his title as the world's top musician,
Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees
doing the honors.
What do you like to hear
if somebody comes up after a concert,
what kind of compliment do you like?
I don't know.
I don't really live on compliments,
matter of fact,
it has a way of distracting me
and a whole lot of other musicians
and artists that are out there today.
They hear these compliments, they say,
"I must have been really great. "
So they get fat and satisfied
and they get lost
and they forget about
the actual talent that they have,
and they start living
in another world, you know.
A couple of years ago,
all I wanted out of life was to be heard.
Now I'm trying to figure out
the wisest way to be heard.
I don't want to be a clown anymore.
I don't want to be a rock 'n' roll star.
We haven't had a rest
since we've been together,
and we're going to have
to take a rest sometime or another,
or else some of the music
is gonna come out really bad,
or it's not gonna come out
the way we want it to.
What I wanna do
is rest completely for one year.
It's the physical and emotional toll
I have to think of.
Maybe something will happen
and I'll break my own rules,
but I have to try.
It was always my plan
to change the bass player.
Noel is definitely out.
Billy Cox has more of a solid style
which suits me.
I first met Billy when we were
in the US Airborne.
I'm not saying any one
is better than the other.
We're gonna take some time off
and go out somewhere in the hills,
or whatever you call it,
until I get some new songs,
and new arrangements and stuff like that.
So we have something to offer,
you know, something new.
I'm not sure how I feel about
The Experience now.
Maybe we could have gone on.
But what would have been the point?
What would it have been good for?
It's a ghost now, it's dead,
like back pages of a diary.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
I'll say hello to you again.
All right.
Dig, we'd like to get something straight,
we got tired of Experience
and it was blowing our minds too much,
so we decided
to change the whole thing around
and to call it Gypsy Sun and Rainbows.
For short it's nothing but a Band Of Gypsys.
What was the controversy
about the national anthem
and the way you played it?
I don't know, man, all I did was play it.
I'm American, so I played it.
I used to sing it at school,
they made me sing it at school, so...
It was a flashback, you know.
This man was in the 101st Airborne,
so when you write your nasty letters in...
Nasty letters? Why...
When you mention the national anthem
and talk about playing it
in any unorthodox way,
you immediately get
a guaranteed percentage of hate mail
- from people who say, "How dare...?"
- But that's not unorthodox.
- It isn't unorthodox?
- No, no.
I thought it was beautiful,
but then there you go, you know.
Everyone was amazed
at the absence of violence.
It's become a clich now about
that big festival and about the others.
- Were you surprised at it?
- I was glad, I was glad.
That's what it's all about,
you know.
Try to keep violence down,
keep them off the streets...
A festival of 500,000 people
was a very beautiful turnout, you know.
I hope we have more of them.
It was a success for the simple fact
that it was one of the largest
gatherings of people,
in the musical sense of it, you know.
It could have been arranged
a little more tighter
but it was a complete success, though,
compared to all the other festivals
everybody tried to knock here and there.
And the idea of people really listening to
music over the sky, in such a large body.
Everybody thinks that something's
gonna go haywire or something,
but that's always brought on
by the police, always, 'cause we play...
You said that this is a success
but there's 300,000 people,
isn't that pretty large
for it to really be a success?
It sure is and I'm glad it is a success.
What is your comment
on drug use at the festival?
I don't know, some people believe
that they have to do this
or do that to get into the music.
I don't know, I have no opinions at all.
Different strokes for different folks,
that's all I can say.
The Fillmore is proud to welcome back
some old friends with a brand-new name,
A Band of Gypsys.
We've been recording with my new group,
the Band of Gypsys.
It's a three-piece and we have
Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass.
You can always sing about love
and different situations of love
but now we're trying to give solutions
to all the protests and arguments
that they're having about the world today.
I want to dedicate this to a scene
that's happening right now,
the soldiers of Vietnam.
We call it Machine Gun.
I dedicate it to the other people
that might be fighting wars
but within themselves,
not facing up to the realities.
We're working on songs
that are very hard
but that are very straightforward
and to the point.
We're trying to get the people
to listen to us, first of all.
Then we can say to them,
"Come follow us.
"Let's go knock down
the White House door. "
The frustrations and riots going on today
are all about personal things.
Everybody has wars within themselves
and it comes out as
war against other people.
That's all it is.
You can see how desperate
the whole case must be
if a kid's going to go out there
and get his head busted open.
I like to see these kids with helmets on
and then do their thing.
Some of them will say, "We don't have
nothing else to live for anyway.
"This is our scene now. "
I'm working on music to be completely,
utterly, a magic science,
where it's all pure positive.
The more doubt and negatives
you knock out of anything,
the heavier it gets
and the clearer it gets,
and the deeper it gets into
whoever is around it.
It gets contagious.
Don't mind us,
we just feel like playing to you.
We're playing for
the new rising sun.
Are You Experienced was where
my head was at a couple of years ago.
Now I'm into different things.
There's a 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.
And the sun is very important.
It's what keeps everything alive.
The first rays of the new rising sun
is my new life.
The thing is you have to be positive,
you have to keep going until you have
all the negatives out of your system.
There is one thing
I hate about studios, usually,
and that is the impersonality of them.
Within a few minutes,
I lose all drive and inspiration.
Electric Lady is different,
I have done great things with this place.
It has been built
with great atmosphere and every comfort.
It makes people feel like they're at home.
It is capable of recording 32 tracks,
it has the best equipment in the world.
We have recorded a lot of material
and I hope the next single
will come out in six weeks.
The number most likely to be the A-side
is Dolly Dagger,
which is about a notorious lady.
When you first make it,
the demands on you are very great.
I don't try to live up to anything anymore.
The main thing
that used to bug me was
that people wanted
too many visual things from me.
When I didn't do it,
people thought I was being moody,
but I can only freak
when I really feel like doing so.
The moment I feel that I don't have
anything more to give musically,
that's when I won't be
found on this planet.
I'm not sure I will live to be 28 years old,
but then again so many beautiful things
have happened to me in the last three years,
the world owes me nothing.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
When the last American tour finished,
I just wanted to go away
and forget everything.
Then I started thinking,
thinking about the future,
thinking that this era of music,
sparked off by The Beatles,
had come to an end.
Something new has to come
and Jimi Hendrix will be there.
Kids listen with open minds
but I don't want to give them
the same things all the time.
I wanna keep doing fresh things,
I wanna show them all over again
what it's all about.
The "Isle of Wight" was great.
It's a fantastic place to have a show,
that brings the kids together
from not only the British Isle,
but also the whole of the continent.
- Yeah, right.
- Are you ready?
- Ask the road manager.
- Are we ready? Are we ready?
OK, ready.
Tell the MC to go, then.
A bit more volume on this one, Charlie.
It's gonna need it.
Let's have a welcome for Billy Cox on bass,
Mitch Mitchell on drums,
and the man with the guitar, Jimi Hendrix.
Yeah! Thank you very much
for showing up, man.
You all look out of sight.
Thanks for waiting.
We'll do a thing called Freedom.
The "Isle of Wight" might be the last
or the second to the last
before I form my new big band.
If the kids really enjoy it,
then I might carry on a little longer.
But I'm not here to talk, I'm here to play.
I don't think I'll be around
when I'm 80.
There's other things to do
besides sitting around
waiting for 80 to come along.
I'm into new things and I wanna
think about tomorrow, not yesterday.
I'm working on my next album.
We have about 40 songs in the works,
about half of them completed.
I have plans that are unbelievable.
But then wanting to be a guitar player
seemed unbelievable at one time.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience is oven
The acid rock musician died today
in a London hospital.
During his short careen
Hendrix Hailed his electric guitar
into some of the most unusual sounds
of an unusual music.
When I die,
I'm gonna have a jam session
and knowing me,
I'll probably get busted at my own funeral.
And I'll try and get Miles Davis along,
if he feels like making it.
The music will be played loud
and it will be our music.
When I die,
just keep on playing the records.