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Listen. The blues is white music, and so was most “free jazz.” All the musicians know it, everybody in the ghetto knows it because they be boppin’ to James Brown and Stanley Turrentine, don’t own Muddy Waters albums much less Robert Johnson, and 98 percent of them never even heard of Albert Ayler. My music was at least 70 percent white, if I’d played what black people wanted to hear at that time I’da been spectacularly unsuccessful in the hip rock superstar world, and if I’d gone down to the Apollo Theater and played what I played at the Fillmore I probably woulda been laughed off the stage. And knowing that has dogged my ass all the way to this moment. That and the fact that to a certain extent and in the interests of image, I had to shuck and jive because you know niggers is just sposed to be bad and fuck good wid big dicks an’ be finger-poppin’ all de time. I just added a little acid and feedback. And hell, for all of that I didn’t even get laid that much either, or not as much as I should. I mean, you would think with me bein’ JIMI HENDRIX and all the big deal that was made out of it, I’d be gettin’ more pussy than Haile Selassie's whole harem and better quality than, I dunno, who's the hottest cunt you can think of? Uhmmmm … Wilma Flintstone.

Thanks a lot. Like I coulda dug gettin’ into some a that Julie Christie, you know, or maybe some a that Ursula Andress, you know movie stars, continental flash class clits. Instead I get all these dopey bitches wanna read my Tarot and always gotta I Ching in the Bantam edition in their back jeans pocket ready to spring on you at any second and tell you just the exact state of the gobbledegook. Well, I got more gob-bledegook than I know what to do with already, as even a passing listen at my songs will tell you. You think I wrote all them fuckin’ cosmic lyrics because I had the Universal Mind on tap? Hunh. I liked Star Trek, but I ain’t Paul Kantner. I got more out of it than Paul Kantner, who shoulda profited by my bad example. I just dropped this and snorted that, and pretty soon a lotta shit was swirling about my head. Same shit as hit everybody else, really, especially Dylan, who was as inspiring and as bad an influence on me as anybody. I started out sincere, but half the time I couldn’t fuckin’ think straight, so stuff I knew was sloppy-ass jive-time mumbo jumbo came tumblin’ out, and people jump up like whores for a blow of coke: “Oh wow, Jimi, far out…” And maybe that's where things started to really go wrong, when I saw that folks’d buy that jive as profound, well, I just spaced it all away.

Are you saying you were a suicide?

I ain’t saying nothing, man. Except maybe that no dead niggers are suicides. But it's got nothing to do with me now. ‘Cause there ain’t no race bullshit Out Here. Ain’t no races—“Just us angels up heah, boss!” Maybe I’ll come back—just once—and do a three-night stint of God's Trombones as a rock opera, with Gil Scott-Heron and Stevie too. ‘Cause I wanna lay some shit on Stevie—that cat is off and I don’t care if he's blind, I don’t care if his mama sent him to seven churches for each day of the week, he is flat wrong, period. I mean, nobody should know this “Heaven” shit better’n me. I allow myself as something of an expert on the subject. It's been nothing but blow jobs ‘n’ soma since I bailed out back in ‘70. Don’t ever go ta Heaven, man, it's the shits. Only reason not to split is Hell is worse, we went down there one weekend on a binge and it's the dregs. Heaven is like total stardom with a constant-touring clause, nothin’ but arenas and hotels, but Hell is like Baltimore. The whole Afterlife trip is rigged to the rimjobs, and like New York cabaret cards it's one system you can’t beat.

Your rap is… well… I honestly can’t think of another question right now.

That's okay, I’m on speed, I’ll fill in. [Lights a cigarette, with compulsive urgency but steady hands.]

I get a feeling you’re pretty critical of your fellow musicians,