Just Kids [67]
As we walked down the boulevard Montparnasse I saw a headline that filled me with sorrow: Jimi Hendrix est mort. 27 ans. I knew what the words meant.
Jimi Hendrix would never have the chance to return to Woodstock to create a universal language. He would never again record at Electric Lady. I felt that we had all lost a friend. I pictured his back, the embroidered vest, and his long legs as he went up the stairs and out into the world for the last time.
Steve Paul sent a car for Robert and me to see Johnny Winter at the Fillmore East on October 3. Johnny was at the Chelsea for a few days. After his concert, we all met back in his room. He had played at Jimi Hendrix’s wake, and together we mourned the loss of our guitar poet, finding comfort in talking of him together.
But the next night we would meet in Johnny’s room to console one another again. I wrote but two words in my diary: Janis Joplin. For she had died of an overdose in room 105 of the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles, twenty-seven years old.
Johnny plunged. Brian Jones. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. He immediately made the J connection, as fear and grief merged. He was highly superstitious and worried that he would be next. Robert tried to calm him but said to me, “I can’t blame him. It’s pretty freaky,” and he suggested I read Johnny’s cards, which I did. His tarot suggested a swirl of contradicting forces, but spoke of no imminent danger. Cards or no cards, Johnny didn’t have death in his face. There was something about him. Johnny was mercurial. Even as he fretted over the deaths of the J-club, frenetically pacing the room, it was as if he could never sit still long enough to die.
I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in.
Todd Rundgren took me to the Village Gate to hear a band called the Holy Modal Rounders. Todd had made his own album, Runt, and was on the lookout for interesting things he could produce. Big acts like Nina Simone and Miles Davis would play upstairs at the Gate, while the more underground bands were booked in the basement. I had never heard the Holy Modal Rounders, whose “Bird Song” was featured in Easy Rider, but knew it would be interesting because Todd usually gravitated toward the unusual.
It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies. I fixed on the drummer, who seemed as if he was on the lam and had slid behind the drums while the cops looked elsewhere. Toward the end of their set he sang a song called “Blind Rage,” and as he slammed the drums, I thought, This guy truly embodies the heart and soul of rock and roll. He had beauty, energy, animal magnetism.
I was introduced to the drummer when we went backstage. He said his name was Slim Shadow. I said, “Glad to meet you, Slim.” I mentioned to him that I wrote for a rock magazine called Crawdaddy and that I wanted to write an article about him. Slim seemed entertained by this idea. He just nodded while I started my pitch, telling him about his potential, how “rock and roll needs you.”
“Well, I never really thought about that,” was his laconic reply.
I was sure Crawdaddy would accept a piece on this future salvation of rock and roll, and Slim agreed to come over to Twenty-third Street for an interview. He was amused by my mess, and sprawled out on my mat and told me about himself. He said he was born in a trailer and spun quite a yarn for me. Slim was a good talker. In a happy role reversal, it was he who was the storyteller. It was possible his tales were even taller than mine. He had an infectious laugh and was rugged, smart, and intuitive. In my mind, he was the fellow with the cowboy mouth.
In the following evenings he would appear late at night at my door with his shy and appealing grin