Jimi Hendrix
When Jimi Hendrix landed in London for the first time, the rock world tilted on its axis and in a blinding psychedelic flash he shot from unknown to superstar and changed everything.
The whole rock’n’roll world changed when he arrived in London.
In September 1966, 23-year-old Jimi
Hendrix hit London like a one-man invading army, going from unknown American sideman to guitar-slinging supernova in four months.
Why did Hendrix have to move to England to find fame and fortune? Well, in the mid-60s America simply wasn’t swinging enough to get on his wavelength, or what he later described as the “free feeling – a mixture of rock, freak-out, blues and rave music”. If you need proof, who better to provide it than Les Paul, inventor of the electric guitar and multitrack recording, the two things that helped Hendrix become a star.
“I came across Jimi in 1965 one afternoon at a roadhouse in New Jersey called the Allegro,” the late genius revealed in 2007. “I was on my way into the city to drop off some tapes at Columbia Records. The club was pretty empty. Jimi was auditioning. He was playing a Les Paul Black Beauty left-handed. Man, he was all over that thing! At the time, I was getting into artist management, so I stayed curious about new acts. I thought, ‘I’ll swing back on my way home from New York and meet this guy.’ When I got to the Allegro an hour later, Jimi was gone. I asked the bartender: ‘Where is that guitarist? Did he get the gig?’ And he said: ‘Are you kidding? We threw him out. He was too loud!’ ‘What was his name?’ ‘I didn’t get it.’ I looked in every joint in Jersey for the guy, only knowing he was tall, with bushy hair and played lefty. Never found him. Two years later, I see him on the cover of an album and he’s a big smash over in England.”
Of course, Hendrix had more going on than that failed bar audition suggests. He’d been a regular on the chitlin’ circuit for three years, playing with King Curtis, Little Richard, the Isley Brothers – names that then had more cachet in Britain than in their home country, America. He’d been on stage at the famed Apollo in New York. He’d guested on various TV music shows. “I had all these ideas and sounds in my brain, and playing this ‘other people’s music’ all the time was hurting me,” Hendrix said. But the jump from sideman to frontman can be an Atlantic-sized crossing. Sometimes it helps to have a champion in your corner.
Hendrix found his in 1966 with Chas Chandler. The former bassist with The Animals was making his own jump, from musician to manager. After being wowed by Hendrix’s performance at Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village – which included playing the guitar with his teeth and behind his head – Chandler signed his first client.
The Pan Am flight that brought Hendrix on his first ever trip to Britain arrived at Heathrow on the morning of Saturday, September 24. Although Chandler’s plan was for Jimi to live in London while he put a band together for him, the two had to be creative at customs. Britain had laws restricting foreigners coming for employment. A member of The Animals’ road crew took Jimi’s guitar through separately.
Then a press agent friend of Chandler’s, Tony Garland, came to sort out Hendrix’s work permit. “I had to invent a story that Jimi was this famous singer who’d come to collect his royalties,” Garland said. “Otherwise they weren’t going to let him in.” Finally, Hendrix was cleared, but with only a one-week visa.
That evening, Chandler took Hendrix to the Scotch Of St James club. One of the people at the club that night was 20-year-old Kathy Etchingham, a hairdresser and part-time DJ who’d dated Keith Moon and Brian Jones. “There were stairs winding down to the basement, and everybody was leaning over the banisters to listen to this guy sitting in the corner of the club playing,” Etchingham recalled. “They were enthralled.”
Later, Etchingham was introduced to Jimi. “He just looked unusual – stunning, really. He was fresh and he had a very soft sort of American accent.”
The flirtatious Hendrix asked her to go home with him. And there began a two-year romance – but not before she saved his life. Jet-lagged and unacquainted with traffic being on the left
“He just looked unusual – stunning, really.” Girlfriend Kathy Etchingham
in Britain, Jimi stepped right into the path of a speeding cab outside the club. Etchingham yanked him back to the kerb just in time.
London in late ’66 embodied the ‘Swinging’ tag it had acquired: The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine and The Who’s I’m A Boy were topping the singles chart; Blow-Up and Georgy Girl were pushing the envelope in cinemas; Emma Peel and John Steed were making TV crime- fighting look glamorous; the club scene was alive at Blaises and the Bag O’ Nails; dress hemlines were climbing upwards; and flared trousers and velvet jackets were blooming in dayglo colours in Carnaby Street and the King’s Road.
Although he would soon indulge in the fashion scene, especially the vintage military jackets that were the rage, Hendrix had more immediate goals: to put together a group, and to get a work permit. His idea for a band was informed by past experience. He wanted nine pieces, with piano, horns and backing singers. But Chandler knew that a small combo would keep the spotlight where it needed to be.
The group to back Hendrix, The Experience (named by Animals manager Michael Jeffery) – not a nine-piece, just a rhythm section – was put together in just two days, October 4-5. It comprised Noel Redding, a guitarist who was asked to switch to bass, and Mitch Mitchell, a jazzbo drummer. His inclusion was literally the result of a toss-up, Chandler flipping a coin to decide between Mitchell and Aynsley Dunbar. Redding’s first impression of Hendrix was: “Funny overcoat and weird shoes! The first day, we went through three songs,” he said. “Afterwards I went down the pub with Hendrix, and he was asking me about English music and I was asking him about American music. We had a nice chat and he said: ‘Would you like to join my group?’ I said: ‘Give us the old train fare and I’ll come back tomorrow.’ Within two days I was in.”
Mitch Mitchell remembered: “There was Noel, and he’d never played a bass in his life. Hendrix arrived in a Humphrey Bogart raincoat, with his Stratocaster and two little Burns amps. They had already auditioned something like thirty drummers. We just played over various rhythms and that was that. Hendrix said: ‘Okay, see you around.’ Chas said there was a gig in Paris the next week with [French pop sensation] Johnny Hallyday and asked if we fancied doing it. So we said okay and spent three days rehearsing, then off we went. And that was how it started. There was complete freedom in what we played. It was like escaping from jail.”
That same week, Chandler took Hendrix to see Cream at the Polytechnic of Central London. Jimi was excited to meet Eric Clapton, one of his favourite guitarists. But Chandler had more in mind. During a break, he called Clapton to the front of the stage to ask if Jimi could jam with Cream. It was an unusual request for the trio, and they didn’t know what to say. Finally, Jack Bruce shrugged and said: “I guess he can plug into my bass amp.” When Jimi played a blazing version of Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor with them, jaws dropped – including that of Clapton, then considered to be the hottest guitarist in Britain. Although early on Clapton was critical of Jimi’s “sexual thing” of tonguing the guitar and rubbing
it across his crotch, he said he was “fantastically talented and a beautiful player”.
He wasn’t the only guitarist taking note. Jeff Beck said: “It was like a bomb being blown up in the right place. I went away from seeing
Jimi thinking: ‘I better think of something else to do.’ I followed him around a bit – and he’d heard of me, which I couldn’t believe. He said: ‘What’s the lick you play on [The Yardbirds’] Happenings Ten Years Time Ago? I swiped that.’ I thought: ‘Wait a minute. We can talk music now. It’s not like he’s some immovable force.’”
Pete Townshend said: “I never had any sense that I could ever come close. I remember feeling quite sorry for Eric, who thought that he might actually be able to emulate Jimi. I also felt sorry that he should think that he needed to. Because Eric was wonderful anyway. Once – I think it was at a gig Jimi played at the Scotch Of St James – Eric and I found ourselves holding each other’s hands. You know, what we were watching was so profoundly powerful. The electric guitar had always been dangerous, it had always been able to evoke anger. Jimi made it beautiful and made it okay to make it beautiful.”
After their brief tour of France supporting Hallyday, Hendrix and The Experience returned to play some shows in England. And the music papers were taking notice. “Great stage presence and exceptional guitar technique,” said Melody Maker. NME said: “A one-man guitar explosion. What he does to a guitar could get him arrested for assault.”
In between shows, Hendrix moved in with his new girlfriend Kathy Etchingham. Despite their psychedelic fashion sense and vampire hours, at home they would come to prefer a surprisingly domestic life, drinking tea, watching Coronation Street (Jimi loved Ena Sharples) and keeping a tidy flat. “He was a bit of a clean freak,” Etchingham said. “I think because he was in the army, and they must’ve taught him to get up, make the bed, make sure everything’s neat.”
Being the toast of the club scene and having the attention and respect of England’s top guitarists was one thing. But could Hendrix sell records? His first single was Hey Joe, a cover of a murder ballad written in 1962 by Billy Roberts. When Chandler heard Jimi play it at Cafe Wha?, he knew it could be a hit. Jimi had learned the tune from folkie Tim Rose, but it had already been covered by The Leaves, Love and The Standells.
Jimi’s version was definitive. Punctuating the lyrics with piercing guitar commentary, he sounded like he was the desperado on the run ‘down Mexico way’. Released on December 16, the same day The Experience appeared on TV pop show Ready, Steady, Go!, the song became a hit, peaking at No.4. Admittedly, there was a bit of goosing from management, who paid kids to buy up the single in the shops. But from a distance,
“The electric guitar had been able to evoke anger. Jimi made it beautiful and made it okay to make it beautiful.” Pete Townshend
what’s more significant than this solid debut is that Chandler encouraged Hendrix to write a song for the B-side. In an afternoon, he came up with Stone Free, which began a burst of songwriting creativity.
Hendrix finished off 1966 with an appearance on Top Of The Pops and a New Year’s Eve gig at Hillside Social Club in Kent. As eventful as his first four months had been, 1967 would be the watershed year for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Purple Haze,
The Wind Cries Mary, Foxy Lady, Monterey, The Fillmore, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love… all that and much more was just ahead for the funky American expat.
As Hendrix told Melody Maker in early 1967: “I didn’t have roots in the States that would hang me up. It don’t matter which bit of the world I’m in as long as I’m living and putting things down. With The Experience, we’re trying to create: our own music, personal sound and our own personal being… and I’m gonna make certain I don’t fluff it all up.”