Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [137]
Jimi, you used to sing a lot about astral planes, the cosmos, and such when you were on earth. Now that you’re out here, how does it stack up against what you originally envisioned?
Well, I’ll tell ya, it's not like the advertisements. [Laughs] But then, neither was I. Because see, a lot of people got the wrong idea about me. Like who?
Me, for starters. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, except I dug r&b and Dylan, and found out howta get all these weird sounds outa my axe. That's where things got confused, just a little bit. Like I’m jammin’ my ass off one night onstage at the Fillmore, playin’ some kinda dirt-bike ride round the rings of Saturn, and I look out at the crowd and they’re like one big pinball machine I’m lighting up, making
‘em go buzz and tilt by playing “See See Rider” backwards or something I didn’t know because my fingers were turning into celery stalks and I’m afraid to look at that, so I shut my eyes a second but there was some kinda Marvel Comic s&m Thor's Mistress flashing this whip and snorting at me in there so I open ‘em up again fast as I can and now everybody in the audience is Bob Denver.
What? What do you mean?
I mean that every face out there looked identical, like Bob Denver on Gilligan's Island, with the little hat and the ratty shirt and everything, and they were all staring up at me with that goofy Gilligan look like “What’re we supposed to do now?” so I screamed out right in the middle of a chorus of another song I’d forgot anyway, “I’m the Skipper and I want you to go get Mary Ann and bring her here to me! I want that bitch on her KNEES!” It seemed to make sense in the context of the lyrics at the time.
Well, it was a time of great experimentation and innovation, after all.
I know I changed some things, not nearly as much as some people seem to give me credit for, but I coulda really CHANGED things, I think, if I knew then what I know now. But at the time the alternative was so irresistibly tempting, and I ended up takin’ the easy way out with jive and shit. So like on the night I was tellin’ ya about, screamin’ my lungs out at Gilligan, I had no idea in hell what the fuck Noel and Mitch were doing, they coulda been on a Greyhound to Tucson, Arizona, for all I knew or cared. So I just tore up into a long high note, held it, tore it off, and decided to get the hell out of there.
Now, no sooner do I get off the stage than who do I practically slam foreheads with but Bill Graham. Asshole's been standin’ there on the side of the stage watchin’ me this whole time. Now he just blocks my way, grabs my arm, stares deep into my eyes, and says: “Jimi. Why do you go out and play shit like that, when we both know you’re capable of some of the best blues I’ve ever heard in my life, man.”
Well, I hate to say it, but I just niggered out, played even more spaced than I was, because I didn’t wanna hassle with the cat, I just wanted outa there. But if I’d been physically and psychologically capable of staying, man, I woulda said: “Because there are times when I strongly suspect, deep down inside, that I hate the fuckin’ blues. Every broke-down nigger behind a mule he don’t own can sing the blues. I only do blues because it's fun and easy to get into once in a while, and because I know all them ofays don’t think a music show by a black person is their money's worth unless they get to hear some.”
Yeah, but what about cuts like “Red House” and “Voodoo Chile?” They were incredible songs, fantastically played!
They weren’t exactly what you would call original compositions. They were good takes, especially the second “Voodoo Chile.” The long version had a nice feel, but it was there to fill out a double album, and Winwood played the same damn solo he played in “Pearly Queen” and every other damn session he did for about three years. I played good blues on “Red House,” but it got way more attention than it deserved, probably because it was so hard to get in America for a long time. I mean, “I Don’t Live Today