Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child Page #3

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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,

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