STEVE LUKATHER WHAT DID JIMI HENDRIX MEAN TO YOU AS A PLAYER?
“It was the aftershock of The Beatles changing the world, then an alien landed on our planet to give, those that understood, the truth. All that before he was twenty-seven years old.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK HENDRIX BROUGHT TO THE GUITAR?
“A total reinvention of the possibilities. He could make a statement with his use of feedback, and amazing use of chords and R&B stylings which he made his own. Very loudly! It’s like nothing else. I’m not sure anyone could make an impact like that afterwards. EVH did but he was not on a cultural level, because Jimi was part of the sixties antiestablishment scene. Black man with a white band, accepted by everyone. But I never saw colour, just the sound. It was a colossal sound; the anger and intensity of Machine Gun through to the softness of The Wind Cries Mary. Goodness knows what he could have gone on to have done.”
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE HENDRIX MOMENT, AND WHY?
Impossible. They are all a huge part of my growing up. Kids today might not ‘get it’, but remember this was 1966! Nothing like it had happened before, or indeed after it.”