50 YEARS AFTER SEMINAL LP, Jimi was a genius ..but it all started with a one-string ukulele he found in an old garage
ROCK legend Jimi Hendrix was famous for playing with his teeth but his taste for music came from an unlikely source... a battered ukulele with just one string.
The crumpled instrument was in a garage being cleared by Jimi, his brother Leon and their dad in the mid 1950s.
Jimi twanged away, tweaking the tension to hit the right note – and could soon play virtually anything on the uke.
Leon, Jimi’s younger brother by five years, revealed fascinating details about their childhood as the 50th anniversary of the star’s best-selling Electric Ladyland album draws near. The sibling also said Jimi was more
than – a shy kid from Seattle who struggled with fame and grew tired of his own classic hits, like Purple Haze and Hey Joe.
And he said the happiest time of Jimi’s life was when he earned $100 a week and drove a “beaten-up old car”.
Leon, 70, said: “As a child, Jimi was quiet and shy, in fact very mellow.
“He never did anything outrageous. Friends teased him because he wouldn’t go and play baseball or mess around in the park. If he was ever in the park, he’d just be on his own, playing his guitar.
“As he got older the only way Jimi became able to express his emotional outlets was on stage. This was his only avenue, there was no other way for him.
INTROVERT
“On stage he was an extrovert, burning guitars, playing with his teeth. Off stage, he could be withdrawn, a real introvert.”
Leon, speaking in Miami before his own UK tour next month, told how the family was devastated by alcohol abuse, poverty and marital break-up.
Yet that chance find in a garage set the young Jimi on a path to stardom – before his tragic death in London at just 27.
The brothers’ dad, Al, gained custody after divorcing mum Lucille. He had a business picking up junk.
Leon said: “The three of us were clearing a garage. I was seven and Jimi was 12. There was a ukulele, it had one string and that’s where Jimi started. He took it.
“One string and when he wanted to change notes he’d tighten and loosen it and that’s how he started to make music.
“He said ‘Wow, I get the whole range on one string’. He played the Peter Gunn TV theme tune on that one string, just going, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum dum, dum… dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum dum, dum.
“Over and over. It was like Jimi could just about play anything on Redding, Kathy and Townshend with Jimi plaque one string. He heard music and he learned it. Music has a spirit and Jimi felt that spirit. “After his ukulele he got an old broken-up box guitar. “It was really raggedy. So he got the Sears catalogue and ordered an
electric pick-up and screws. He made an electric guitar out of that old box guitar by fixing everything together with duct tape. Finally he got a new Kay guitar from Sears and a little amp for $19.95. He was still only 14 or 15.”
Jimi – later dubbed the “greatest guitar player in history” by Rolling Stone magazine – moved to London in 1966, aged 24.
Within a year he had top 10 hits with Hey Joe, Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary with his band The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
On his first day in the capital he met 20-year-old Kathy Etchingham, who became a long-term love and was reportedly the inspiration for the hit Foxy Lady.
They set up home in Mayfair and an English Heritage plaque has adorned the Brook Street building since 1997. Kathy, now 71, Jimi’s former bass player Noel Redding – who died aged 57 – and The Who star Pete Townshend, 73, were there for the unveiling.
Leon told how he always looked up to older brother Jimi. He said: “Growing up with Jimi was an adventure, it was fun. He was in charge of babysitting me. I went everywhere with Jimi.
It was like he could play anything on one string... he heard music, he learned it LEON HENDRIX YOUNGER BROTHER ON GUITAR LEGEND
SOCKS
“When he first started those early band practices, he dragged me along. When he started playing clubs I would still have to go and we’d walk home. Jimi was almost like a substitute parent.
“And he was playing all the time, learning all the time. In Seattle they had clubs where they held ‘sock hops’.
“You had to take off your shoes and dance, or whatever, in socks. So me and