belavista man

SCENE AND HEARD, Radio 1's rock magazine programme, had a special edition in August 1970 celebrating the Isle of Wight Festival. All the line-up were included in the programme, apart from Jimi Hendrix. Producer Jeff Griffin was determined to speak to Hendrix, who eventually agreed to talk to one of the programme's contributors, Keith Altham.

 Keith spoke to Hendrix in a hotel in London's Park Lane on 12 September. Jimi's bassist, Billy Cox, had just flown back to the States with drug problems.

 'Jimi was sprawled on a double bed, with my tape recorder balanced on the other end,' recalls Altham. 'I think he may have been drinking, but there was no evidence of the drugs that everyone talks about in connection with Hendrix. Although it was two days before his death, he didn't strike me as being particularly down or depressed in any way.

 'He could turn on this amazing exhibitionism on stage, but off stage he was extremely shy and introverted, so he was never especially lively in an interview situation. He was extraordinarily popular at the time, especially in America, but he was still more famous for his wild antics on stage than for his musicianship. I think he'd reached the stage where he'd made anough money, and now he wanted to push the barriers back further and extend himself a bit further. In fact I found him in fairly optimistic mood, with all kinda or plans for the future.

 Very little of this interview has ever been broadcast, simply because of the way Hendrix talks in it, often mumbling and laughing. He was found dead two days after it was recorded.

ALTHAM: Everybody, subsequent to the Isle of White Festival, has been talking about the new subdued, mature Jimi Hendrix. I wonder if you could tell us why this is, and where it started from.

HENDRIX: This is a period when I stop talking so much, because I'm going through certain things here and there. Whatever. I guess I just got very quiet for a while. I just do gigs, and stay down. I try to stay away, you know. Because I was changing, and getting into heavier music. It was getting unbearable with three pieces [in the band], you know. I always wanted to expand on all this. But I think I'll go back to three pieces again now. And get another bass player. And I'll probably be loud again. [LAUGHS]

ALTHAM: It does appear that the days of the baubles and bangles and the freaky hairstyle have disappeared. Are you not worried that maybe your quieter approach may lose a little of the mystique that there was with Jimi Hendrix which attracted people to begin with?

HENDRIX: You see, everybody goes through those stages. But I don't know, I just did that because I felt like I was being too loud. Because my nature changes, you know.

ALTHAM: You were quoted in one paper as saying you never wanted to be a visual thing.

HENDRIX: What I wanted to be basically - this is only hyped up on all the visual thing - I wanted to be listened to. I don't know if they were [listening] or not, though. After a while, I started getting aware too much of what was going down. That started to bring me down a little bit, so I just started cutting my hair, and start the rings disappearing one by one.

ALTHAM: Are you in fact saying that that kind of freak thing was really a publicity hype?

HENDRIX: No. No, all they did is let me do what I really wanted to do, my own kind of scenes. Like, one time I said, 'Maybe I should burn a guitar tonight, I really feel low.' Or, 'Maybe I should smash a guitar', or something like that. All they said, 'Yeah, yeah', and I said, 'Do you really think I should?' They said, 'Yeah, that would be cool', so I said, 'OK'. So I just has to work up anough anger as to where I could do it. But I didn't take too much of the hype scene and all that, because I dug wearing all those different things. It was fun. And I still do, but I don't see where many other people are doing it, so it gives me a dumb or stupid tendency to hold back on my own desires and so forth.

ALTHAM: So the anger, maybe, has dispersed a little bit.

HENDRIX: I didn't know it was anger until they told me that it was, you know, like with destruction and all that. I believe everybody should have a room where they get rid of all their... releases, where they can do all their releases. So me room was on stage.

ALTHAM: What is going to happen now? You apparantly said after the Isle of White festival that you were going to do less personal appearances.

HENDRIX: I think it can't work if we did less personal appearances. We're trying to get a tour in England together now. That's definitely going to call for another bass player.

ALTHAM: Would it be practical for you to get together maybe an organist, or a vocalist, so that you can step back as a guitarist?

HENDRIX: That's exactly what I want to do, actually. All I'll do is probably get two guitarists, counting myself, an organist and a singer. And drums, quite naturally, and bass. If I can get something like that, that would be out of sight.

ALTHAM: I remember talking to Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, and he said of you that you'd never really been truely appreciated or analysed as a song-writer. Do you feel that maybe your image got in the way of that? Do you feel that you've never truly been criticised as a songwriter?

HENDRIX: Well, probably that was good thing, because I'm still trying to get that together. All I write is just what I feel, that's all. I don't really round it off too good, I keep it almost naked. The words are so blank and everything, they probably didn't want to get into that. When we go to play, you flick it around, you flash it around, but they don't see nothing but what their eyes see, you know, forget about their ears/ I hate to be in one corner, I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or only as a songwriter, only as a tap-dancer or something. I like to fool around.

ALTHAM: Is it important for you to achieve recognition as a songwriter?

HENDRIX: I guess it would be if I wanted to lay back and predominantly write songs, when I can't go on stage anymore.

ALTHAM: You were quoted in one paper as saying you didn't really care what you did, as long as you 'turn people on'. What do you want to turn people on to, apart from your music? Is there any moral or political intent in the things you want to write?

HENDRIX: I like for them to get easier in the mind a little bit, because there's too many heavy songs out nowadays. Music is getting too heavy, almost to the state of unbearable. I have this thing, 'When things get too heavy, just call me helium, the lightest gas known to man.' [LAUGHS]

ALTHAM: So where are your inspirations for songs coming from at the present time? Where are you turning for your directions as a writer?

HENDRIX: Right from my recent experiences. What I try to do is look at the totality of that, and give them the other half. First of all you have the experience, then you have the second half, the solution to whatever it might be, which is the use of it all. I was just trying to go through a lot of changes, so I could write the nice part about them, you know? But right now, it's taken a while.

ALTHAM: You've been quoted as saying in the past that we're now at an end of something in music, and the next stage of popular music will change the world. Do you really believe that, or do you think that music is a reflection of the world?

HENDRIX: It's always a reflection, but a reflection of the world is, like, blues. That's where that part of music is at. But then you get this other kind of music that's trying to come around - it's not sunshine music necessarily, but it's like an easier type of thing, with more meaning to it. You're not going to be singing about love all the time in order to give love to the people. I was just feeling all nice and enthusiastic when I said that. I can't go back on what I said, because that's a nice thought.

ALTHAM: Do you want to change the world?

HENDRIX: I'd like to take part in a change in reality, probably. not the way to handle it, necessarily, but the was to get along better, as it were. Old and young don't clash so much together.

ALTHAM: What are the things you would like to see change?

HENDRIX: I don't know. More colour in the streets, probably. [LAUGHS] I really don't know. Whatever happens, it should have a chance to be brought into the open. If there's a new idea, a new invention, or a new gas, or a new whatever, it should be brought at least into the open, and be respected as being new, and probably a decent change that would help the human race, instead of keeping carrying the same old burdens around with them. You have to have your long hair and talk a certain way in order to be with them. In order to be the other, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean.

ALTHAM: I think certain people think of your music as angry music, raging against established principles.

HENDRIX: It's raging against it. If it was up to me there wouldn't be any such thing as establishment. Reality is each persons way of thinking, and the establishment grabs a big piece of that, and the Church of England and so forth. But it's the blues, that's what I'm singing about, today's blues.

ALTHAM: Do you have any politics, in fact?

HENDRIX: Not really. I was getting ready to get into all that, but everybody goes through those stages too. It all comes out in the music, most of the time. We had this one song called 'Straight Ahead', and it says 'Power to the people, freedom to the soul, pass it on the yound and old. We don't give a damn if your hair is short or long, communication's coming on strong.'

ALTHAM: When you look back on things like 'Hey Joe' not, how do you feel about those musically?

HENDRIX: I think they're alright, I guess. I don't have anything to regret at all in the past. Except that I might have unintentionally hurt someone else, or something. And the music, I think that they're all on a kind of downbeat. I just look at them as changes.

ALTHAM: It has been said of you, that you invented psychedelic music...

HENDRIX: [LAUGHS] A mad scientist!

ALTHAM: ...Do you think that's fair? Do you think of yourself as a psychedelic writer?

HENDRIX: I think it's more that than anything else. I'm trying to get more into other things. I don't know what the word means, really. What is it? You say one thing and mean another? Or you can get about three different meanings out of one thing? Is that where it's at?

ALTHAM: I think psychedelic to most people has connotations of LSD.

HENDRIX: You mean strictly LSD, or that type or consciousness?

ALTHAM: ...with dreams...

HENDIX: Right. You have to get a little bit of a dream on, so you can hear it over again, because it might come in a different mood. Different dreams come from different moods.

ALTHAM: You've talked quite a bit about audio-visual importance, the importance or having a film with your music. Are you thinking in terms of the days when we can fit a cassette into the side of our television and play music and film together?

HENDRIX: A lot of people are making more money then they ever have nowadays, like when they get a flat they find themselves with an extra room. So this whole room can be a total audio-visual environment, where you just lay back and the whole thing just blossoms out, with this colour and sound type of scene. You can go in here and you can just jingle out your nerves or something. That goes with a cassette, yeah. You put in your favourite star, and all of a sudden, the music and the visual scene comes in. Plus on stage, if we ever did any more stage things with this new band, it would definately have to be audio-visual. There would probably only be about 5000 people at the performance. Because we'd have this geodesic dome. It would probably take about three days to set the whole thing up. Then you get a performance under that for the next three days. And just handfuls of people coming in. I think that would be dynamite, because everybody would get more of an effect from it. Instead of putting a big black screen behind you.

ALTHAM: What about the subject of festivals? Do you think the Isle of White is, as some people have said, the last big festival?

HENDRIX: I don't know why they're always trying to kill the festivals really. It was great. People milling out, digging each other, so many mixtures of different countries. The only hostility you're going to get from festivals is not from the people themselves, but from the other people who can't understand the idea of mixing so many different people together, under the name of music, peace and love. Because this is a completely different from the World War II set-up. In World War II, all these countries were completely against each other. Now we're getting them all together through the idea of music.

ALTHAM: Do you feel personally that you've got enough money now, without necessarily making more money as a professional entertainer?

HENDRIX: I don't think so, not in the way I'd like to live - I want to get up in the morning and roll out of bed into an indoor swimming pool. Then swim to the breakfast table, come up for air and maybe get a drink of orange juice. And just flop over from the chair into the swimming pool and swim into the bathroom.

ALTHAM: You don't want to live just comfortably, you want to live luxuriously.

HENDRIX: No. Is that luxurious? I was thinking about a tent, baby, overhanging a mountain stream. [LAUGHS]

ALTHAM: Now Billy Cox [Jimi Hendrix Experience member] has split. So whatever happens, you've got to find a new bass player. Do you intend to form another small unit, or are you hoping to get something bigger together?

HENDRIX: I don't know. I think I'll get another small one together. It's really hard to decide. I'd like to have both if I could. And use one for touring, and then sometimes I could do a tour with the big one, or whatever. But it's really hard to know what people want around here sometimes. All I'm going to do is I'm just going to do what I feel, but right now I can't feel anything. There's a few things since this happened, so I just have to lay back and think about it all.

ALTHAM: Do you feel any kind of compulsion to prove yourself as 'King Guitar', which is the label that people have slapped on you?

HENDRIX: I don't know. I was always just playing lous, that's the only difference. No, I don't even let that bother me. Because they say a lot of things about people that, if they let it bother them, they wouldn't even be around today. 'King Guitar'? No, that's a bit heavy.