by Pete Townshend
Anyone who has to judge him based on his recordings alone can only feel sorry for him. Only in flesh and blood was he truly unique – an alchemist who constantly shed his skin on stage and even seemed to change physically. And the fact that he mutated into this lithe, wonderful animal on stage didn’t just have to do with the fact that the audience might have been on acid – although that, no question, was certainly on the agenda at the time.
At the same time, Hendrix also radiated a calmness and inner strength that brought you back down to earth from your trip. Yes, Jimi was bigger than LSD. He played incredibly loudly, but also had an ear for nuances and nuances. He bridged the gap between authentic blues guitar – something Eric Clapton had to strive for for many years.
And modern sounds, the Syd Barrett-meets-Pete Townshend sounds, those wall-of-screaming-guitar sounds that would later make U2 popular. And he delivered a visual magic that is lost just by listening to his recordings. He struck a chord, and then his left hand swept through the air in a wide arc, so that for a moment you forgot that there was a guitarist on stage and that the music was actually coming from his fingertips.
“You were probably completely stoned,” is what you hear when faced with such memories. But I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t drunk either. All I remember is being completely overwhelmed. The images and associations he evoked were naturally psychedelic – just as everything around us at the time seemed to have this trippy, surreal quality.
If you went into a club, you would be greeted by a swirling light show. In private, Hendrix was completely different, a completely nondescript guy in a military jacket that was as dirty as if he had slept in it for a few nights. When he went on stage no one really noticed him, but when he came back from the stage the most attractive women swarmed around him.
All he had to do was snap his fingers and they would start running after him. On stage he radiated eroticism, just as – from a man’s perspective – Mick Jagger radiated eroticism. This wasn’t a gay fantasy, but a pure, almost spiritual kind of eroticism. You wanted to be part of him, wanted to know how he managed to touch so many people.
Johnny Rotten had this quality, Kurt Cobain too. As a man, you just wanted to be a member of their club.
Hendrix was shy and friendly and incredibly nice, but he was also fucked up and insecure. I was lucky enough to hang out with him for a few hours after gigs and watch that energetic, dazzling stage persona transform back into Jimi Hendrix.
And I saw an aspect that worried me: Hendrix had a hedonistic streak, and towards the end of his life he gave it free rein. A lot of musicians did that back then, but it made me sad to see Hendrix fall into that trap too. There was no room for envy in my relationship with Jimi. I never had the feeling that I could even come close to being a match for him.
I felt bad for Eric, who at the time genuinely believed he had to keep up with Jimi. I felt sorry for him because there was no reason for this competitive spirit at all – Eric was just as wonderful a guitarist in his own way. Maybe these are unjustified assumptions, but I believe they are true.
I remember one evening – I think Jimi was playing at the Scotch of St. James – when Eric and I stood in the audience and held hands: what we saw was overwhelming. The third or fourth time I saw Jimi was opening for the Who at the Saville Theatre; it was the first time I saw him with the burning guitar.
I said: “If anything, then yes. You have to dismantle it into its pieces and then throw the pieces into the audience so it can’t be put back together again.” He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. When I try to remember how I was influenced by Jimi, I also realize that I felt somewhat robbed.
To a certain extent, The Who were always a silly little band trying to fulfill my art-school ambitions: the ideas and lyrics were far-fetched, and there were some cool pop songs. Some of the stuff was okay, but a lot of it was just meant to be ironic.
At least we reserved the right to pull out the irony card ourselves when the audience started laughing. The Who actually always acted like they weren’t really serious. You smash a guitar, walk off stage and say, “Fuck it.” It’s just crap anyway.” It was actually the preliminary stage of a self-image that was later cultivated by the punks.
The guitarists from the fifties – James Burton, who played with Ricky Nelson and the Everly Brothers, or Steve Cropper with Booker T. – had this razor sound that always sliced through the warm sound of the acoustic guitar in the background. If you listen to the early Elvis numbers, Elvis himself plays the guitar on songs like “Hound Dog” – until suddenly the electric guitar comes along.
Born: 1942. Died: 1970. Guitar: Fender Stratocaster (1968)