Latest / Stairway to Eleven / Stairway to Eleven #37: The One About Jimi
Transcript
- 0:00There's a podcast that's sure all that rocks hard is gold.
- 0:06And they're climbing the stairway to 11.
- 0:12When they get to there they know the record stores are all closed.
- 0:20But online they can get what they came for.
- 0:30Oh,
- 0:33and they're streaming the Stairway to 11.
- 0:40Hello,
- 0:40and welcome to Stairway to 11.
- 0:41My name is George.
- 0:44This is John.
- 0:45I'm TR.
- 0:47And I'm Jay,
- 0:48bringing up the rare.
- 0:49All right, we've got some fun stuff for you today.
- 0:52I'm going to hand the microphone over to Jay in a second.
- 0:54But before I do,
- 0:56I just wanted to let everybody know that as of today,
- 1:00We have a completely new and redesigned Stairway to 11 website.
- 1:05It's awful pretty.
- 1:07Stairwayto11.com.
- 1:08You should check it out. If you've been to Stairwayto11.com before,
- 1:11you may have noticed how absolutely ugly that was.
- 1:15That was basically the default website that came with the podcast hosting that I was too lazy to do anything with.
- 1:23And so at some point I said, you know what? I'm going to make us a nice,
- 1:27pretty little website.
- 1:29there now.
- 1:31It's not just pretty, but it's also functional.
- 1:34You can listen to the episodes and for every episode.
- 1:37You can,
- 1:39there's a generated list of albums mentioned in the episode.
- 1:44So if you're like, hey, what was that one band?
- 1:45You can, you know, you can scroll through this list and see it, it, it, it, it's scraped by AI.
- 1:51So it's not perfect, but it does get most of the stuff.
- 1:54And it'll list the different bands and albums that we mentioned along with streaming links.
- 1:59if they're available where you can listen to the album.
- 2:02And there's also a Spotify
- 2:05playlist,
- 2:06which I'm like, I think back to Mark Franceschi on Metalheads and how he used to build us these Spotify
- 2:14playlists for every episode.
- 2:15Well,
- 2:15now,
- 2:17based on that album's mentioned list,
- 2:18Spotify automatically generates a playlist.
- 2:22So you can just listen to that if you don't want to go through and click through all the individual links for the different bands.
- 2:27And,
- 2:28you know, there's some other cool stuff in there, too. But, you know, those are the two biggest draws, I think.
- 2:32And hopefully people will find that, you know, fun and useful.
- 2:37And also,
- 2:39there may be bugs in there still. So if you see anything, drop me a line. Let me know what's not working.
- 2:44All right?
- 2:45It's really nice, George.
- 2:46Like, it really,
- 2:47it's a good-looking website.
- 2:49It is.
- 2:50Yeah, and that's not like blowing smoke up, George.
- 2:52You know,
- 2:53it's... You would have done that anyway. It's so pro-looking.
- 2:58You would have anyway,
- 2:59so I mean,
- 3:00yeah.
- 3:00That should make what Jay's saying even more valid,
- 3:05you know? So,
- 3:06yeah.
- 3:06By the way,
- 3:07I have not heard the franchise mentioned in a while, so it's good to have the franchise back on the airwaves.
- 3:13Exactly,
- 3:13yeah. I wonder what he's up to.
- 3:15Yeah.
- 3:15I haven't seen him in a while. Franchise in a long time.
- 3:17Before there was the situation paradox,
- 3:20there was the franchise.
- 3:22All right. Well, I can tell you,
- 3:25I'm going to give a shout out to my friend,
- 3:27Steve Barth,
- 3:28who listens to us pretty religiously,
- 3:30and he was always saying to me,
- 3:33you know, it's always so hard because I always try to figure out what you guys were talking about,
- 3:39and then I go back and I write down everything that you said so I can listen to it on this thing, and I'm like, guess what? George is working on that.
- 3:46George is on top of that.
- 3:48Now it's done. It has come to pass.
- 3:51He's going to be very happy.
- 3:52The hard work has been done for you.
- 3:54That's right.
- 3:55Thanks to AI.
- 3:56And I'm literally in the process of pushing out one for metalheads as we speak.
- 4:01It's like running in the background trying to get the links all updated from the old location to the new location.
- 4:08But we'll pimp that on that podcast.
- 4:10Nice.
- 4:11Very nice. Thank you very much,
- 4:13George.
- 4:14You're welcome.
- 4:15All right, now I'm going to turn things over to Jay.
- 4:18Jay, what are we up to tonight?
- 4:20We are talking about Jimi Hendrix,
- 4:23which is kind of one of those elephants in the room.
- 4:28Well,
- 4:29he's just so big that you're almost like, how do you do this,
- 4:32first off?
- 4:33So we're just going to jump in and be idiots and try to accomplish talking about a pretty large career that lasted all of four years.
- 4:43Less than four years.
- 4:44Less than four years.
- 4:46Yeah.
- 4:46They're into the Beatles soon.
- 4:48Everybody loves to see the Beatles.
- 4:50But so we're going to just start from square one here because we're going to,
- 4:54again,
- 4:54we're going to talk about
- 4:55about Jimi Hendrix today.
- 4:56Definitely some Jimi Hendrix fans on this podcast.
- 5:00I'm under the assumption that a lot of people may write him off because he's very firmly wrongfully put in this kind of like 1960s hippie box, I think, for a lot of people.
- 5:13He could be inaccessible to certain people.
- 5:15I mean, we're older than you guys might think, so there are a whole generation of people.
- 5:20So we're going to go back and just kind of give a very brief history just of him as a man.
- 5:24And I'm relying on the Google machine.
- 5:27Here, we're just going to read the first couple paragraphs.
- 5:30Off of Wikipedia.
- 5:34So here we go.
- 5:36First of all, he was born in 1942.
- 5:38I only mention that because he'd be 80.
- 5:40God knows what.
- 5:41My mom is born in 41 and she's 85.
- 5:46So,
- 5:47you know, there you go, right?
- 5:48Yeah,
- 5:48I like that you took the easier math problem here. I'll just wrap this for my mom's birthday.
- 5:54That's what I did too.
- 5:55More importantly,
- 5:57he began playing, and this is now, this is the Wikipedia entry,
- 6:00Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15 in 1961.
- 6:04He enlisted in the U.S.
- 6:05Army.
- 6:06He was discharged the following year. A lot of people might be surprised to hear that he was in the Army. He actually played guitar in the Army, and I think like the PX band or something. Didn't he like jump out of planes and stuff too?
- 6:14He jumped out of airplanes,
- 6:16yeah.
- 6:17And I think successfully did all those things, but ultimately let go because they were like, this guy's not interested in the Army.
- 6:22It's better for us if we send
- 6:29And I think there's a famous picture of him in a military uniformed plane.
- 6:34Am I right about that, John? I've seen something of that nature, yes. Okay.
- 6:40But anyway,
- 6:41he stepped out of that, and he played in the Chitlin circuit,
- 6:44which sounds racist these days, but it's not intended to be so. And it was just really the sort of black nightclubs throughout the South that people would play.
- 6:52and probably some of the white ones, I don't know.
- 6:55But he,
- 6:56along the line, played famously with the Isley brothers.
- 6:59He played with Little Richard.
- 7:01And then he played with Curtis Knight. And the Squires ultimately formed some of his own kind of like stuff.
- 7:07Then he moved to New York City and was kind of around Greenwich Village for a while.
- 7:15But most importantly and relevant to all of us, the dude from the Animals,
- 7:20Chaz Chandler,
- 7:21I think he left
- 7:22animals to do this, to become a manager.
- 7:26And Keith Richards saw Jamie Plain,
- 7:30kind of tried to help him get started,
- 7:32hooked him up with this manager.
- 7:34And they were like,
- 7:36the hell with us, we're moving to London.
- 7:37And that's where it all started.
- 7:40That always blew my mind. I was like, what? He had to leave the country to get big?
- 7:45Well,
- 7:46you know, we'll talk about this, but go listen to Monterey.
- 7:49I mean, Monterey broke him in the United States.
- 7:51Like he played live at Monterey and everybody was like,
- 7:55what the hell?
- 7:57I don't know if that's a racial thing, by the way, that it was easier for him to break through in England.
- 8:01That'd be an interesting conversation. I hadn't thought about it like that, yeah.
- 8:04Now,
- 8:06that's the brief history of Jimi Hendrix, but let's go with the Hendrix version of his own history.
- 8:13And this,
- 8:13well, and it's this. The night he was born,
- 8:16he swears the moon turned to fire red.
- 8:19His poor mother cried out,
- 8:21Oh Lord, the gypsy was right.
- 8:23And then he seen her drop down dead.
- 8:26Mountain lions found him there and set him on an eagle's wing.
- 8:29They took him past the outskirts of infinity.
- 8:32And when he brought him back,
- 8:34they gave him Venus, which is right.
- 8:36Now, I don't know about you guys, but I feel like that explains a lot.
- 8:39Definitely a voodoo child.
- 8:41Assuming it's all true.
- 8:43Well, that is, of course, the lyrics from voodoo child.
- 8:46And you probably know voodoo child,
- 8:47slight return.
- 8:48Voodoo child is the blues jam on that same record.
- 8:52But enough about all that, what we're going to talk about is that, you know, Jimmy was this big, huge,
- 8:57well-rounded performer,
- 8:58which, by the way, there are a lot of great stories about when he moved to England and like all the,
- 9:02you know,
- 9:03they all heard about him real quick. And I'm talking about Clapton, Page,
- 9:06Beck, blah, blah, blah. And they all,
- 9:08and they all, a lot of them were like, oh man, we're screwed.
- 9:10They crapped their pants.
- 9:12Yeah.
- 9:12This guy's on hold,
- 9:13including this one very great interview I saw with Jeff Beck where they were asking him about, about Hendrix and he, and they were like, oh, yeah, yeah.
- 9:21They were all there.
- 9:22They were all like, we gotta go.
- 9:23You know, everybody's talking about him. And he was walking out and one of the other guys was walking. And let's just say it was Clapton, but I don't know who it was.
- 9:29He said, don't worry, he's not that good.
- 9:32And then he laughed after he said this, like in the interview,
- 9:35because he literally like was setting whoever it up,
- 9:38whoever it was up, like you go in and see our future,
- 9:40buddy.
- 9:41Yeah.
- 9:42Yeah.
- 9:43So there's a lot of angles that we're going to talk about him here.
- 9:47And,
- 9:47and one of the things,
- 9:49this is the big bite.
- 9:50I mean, this is hard. We're going to talk about him.
- 9:51and we're going to talk about the biggest stuff at first.
- 9:53But it's just that how well-rounded he was as a entity in the musical world. So we're going to talk about him as a writer,
- 9:59as a producer,
- 10:00as a performer,
- 10:01and as a player.
- 10:02And we're all going to kind of make some suggestions of things you can check out to understand how thoroughly he was active in his own career and how he was a well-rounded artist that cared about how things were produced,
- 10:16put on a hell of a live show,
- 10:17wrote really well,
- 10:19and on the line.
- 10:21So I think we'll just start here first with unless anybody has any other opening comments incidentally.
- 10:28I love Jimmy Hendrix.
- 10:32So I might be the least familiar with Hendrix out of this group.
- 10:37I'm not sure but I have to admit like I'm glad we did this because this was I'm sad to admit I had never listened to any of his albums in their entirety.
- 10:50That blows my mind.
- 10:51I don't think you're alone and I don't think don't feel silly about that he I don't know why he gets into this weird little corner but people think he's just for guitar players or people he's just people who are like potheads or whatever you know you don't know unless you and then he's not like constantly on the radio or anything you hear some of the hits but right I was definitely familiar with the hits I kind of knew a little bit about his history I certainly knew about his disciples but I never really listened to it to be honest
- 11:21I mean, I was familiar with a few songs,
- 11:23but not like I never sat down and listened to a whole album.
- 11:26And so for this,
- 11:28I decided,
- 11:29yeah, I need to do this.
- 11:31And so I listened to each of the four main albums that were released during his lifetime.
- 11:37And I think Ben a gypsy is not to be a dick, but I think that came out after he died. Didn't it, John?
- 11:43No,
- 11:43just before, I think. Was it right before he died? I think it was right before.
- 11:47And that's a live show,
- 11:49too.
- 11:51The Actual Studio Release.
- 11:52Everything that came out after Electric Ladyland was post-death,
- 11:56unfortunately.
- 11:58Yeah.
- 11:59So anyhow,
- 12:00like,
- 12:01you know, I'm... During this whole thing, like, I literally am coming at this very completely fresh and new,
- 12:11and I mean, again, there's some familiarity there,
- 12:16obviously, but like,
- 12:17not to the level of, oh, I'm so familiar with each of these albums,
- 12:20and I,
- 12:20you know,
- 12:21completely comb through and know every song.
- 12:23No,
- 12:24that's not me.
- 12:26But I'm glad I did because I learned a lot.
- 12:30And I also kind of picked up on a few things that I heard on these albums that got kind of parroted back from various people that were clearly into him.
- 12:43So it's interesting.
- 12:45You hear this stuff and you're like, oh, I see where that came from.
- 12:48Oh,
- 12:49I see where that came from.
- 12:50Yeah, for sure.
- 12:52Yeah.
- 12:52You know,
- 12:53and which, by the way, I mean, maybe it's something I should have started with, which is that I, my own personal view is that he was a monumental talent.
- 13:00Like, I mean, a genius of sorts. And, and also,
- 13:03but other utterly approachable and listenable to, you know, I mean, he's not obscure or weird or so,
- 13:09or so with all due respect, Proggy that,
- 13:12you know, he puts off whole groups of people. He had things like,
- 13:15you know, hits like fire and purple haze, you know,
- 13:18cross town traffic.
- 13:20Yeah.
- 13:20Crossed Out Traffic.
- 13:21The stuff you know. You know what I mean? I don't mean you PR at TR. I mean people,
- 13:26you know,
- 13:26like... Excuse me while I kiss this guy.
- 13:33Indeed.
- 13:35Which is kind of why we're doing this deep dive because if you don't know him, there's a lot of neat things that he did that are worth looking into.
- 13:44So that's it that I thought we would first focus on him as a writer.
- 13:47Right. Before we start, I didn't get a chance to say anything here.
- 13:50I do want to say something.
- 13:51No, you're good.
- 13:52I find it interesting that the non-guitarists of this group has been a fan of Jimi Hendrix for over 45 years,
- 14:03which is, I find, really funny that I don't play guitar.
- 14:08And I immediately gravitated to him.
- 14:14Just a quick note,
- 14:15I got the album Smash Hits.
- 14:17I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.
- 14:19And it really is a bunch of smash hits from him,
- 14:24plus a couple of blues songs thrown in there.
- 14:27But surprisingly,
- 14:28they're almost all from the first album,
- 14:30which I always found ironic later on.
- 14:34That was so weird back then, dude.
- 14:36Right.
- 14:37There's nothing from his second album,
- 14:39and there's only two songs from Electric Ladyland and one's a cover.
- 14:43And I always thought that was funny. And then I realized that's because they all, the songs that were included that were not from the first album,
- 14:49all sound like the first album,
- 14:50which I found really funny.
- 14:53But I did want to bring that up.
- 14:55I'm glad you did, because I think I sort of, I hope I said this, I think I did, which was, I think a lot of people don't approach him for multiple reasons. And one is, I think they think he's a guitar guy.
- 15:06I'm not one of those guitar nerds, you know.
- 15:09Yeah, but I am.
- 15:11And so it's like,
- 15:13you know. Also weird then, yeah.
- 15:14Exactly.
- 15:15So,
- 15:15you know. Weird as John being the one, yeah.
- 15:18I think though,
- 15:20and I tried to figure this out because it's like,
- 15:23by all rights,
- 15:23I ought to be into this guy.
- 15:24Like I ought to really be into this and have all the stuff and really be totally all about it.
- 15:30And,
- 15:31but yet like I'm not.
- 15:33And even after listening to these albums,
- 15:36I'm still not like I,
- 15:38I was still impressed by what I heard,
- 15:40but at the same time,
- 15:42like I think some of the things you hinted at Jay,
- 15:46which is like,
- 15:47He's kind of mired down in the psychedelic thing that was going on in the late 60s.
- 15:53And I feel like that whole vibe from the... I actually ended up liking Electric Ladyland the most of the three albums that I listened to.
- 16:03Actually, I listened to four, but as you guys said,
- 16:07Band of Gypsies was a live thing.
- 16:09But in terms of studio albums,
- 16:12I thought Electric Ladyland was kind of like...
- 16:17It just seemed like the most approachable and the most diverse in terms of the styles and the various things that I was hearing on there. It's so funny to hear you say it's the most approachable and it's by far his most experimental album.
- 16:33But he's not wrong in ways.
- 16:36The psychedelic stuff really is only the first album because he was already shedding it by the second album.
- 16:43It really disappears fast.
- 16:47Well, I'd call the mind things like,
- 16:49if six was nine, where he, if all the hippies cut off all their hair, I don't care.
- 16:53He really was trying to set himself out as this other thing and just sort of be like, you think I'm on your wavelength when I'm not.
- 16:59But TR, you bring up an interesting point,
- 17:01and I don't want to delay us from getting into it,
- 17:04but that album I mentioned, Smash Hits, only focused on the first album for the most part, which was all, had more of his psychedelic stuff.
- 17:13And I think that's what people think of him,
- 17:15which Jay, I think, was alluding to before,
- 17:17people just get it in their head that he's just all psychedelics and feedback and just being weird all the time with some hits yeah and it couldn't be any further from the truth that was how he started yep but it disappears fast i mean i don't know if people know this those first three albums which are his main three albums all were released in under two years that's it yeah it's insane that first two were in 67 and it's like
- 17:47I was shocked because I was like wait a minute.
- 17:49Yes.
- 17:49This was in 67 and this was in 67.
- 17:52Now the first sound was recorded for the most part in 66 and the first single was released in 66 but that was in December.
- 18:01So this literally happened in less than two years.
- 18:05Almost all the music you hear on the radio was in the span of two years.
- 18:10Yeah.
- 18:11So you actually brought me up perfectly to this because I really like the comment.
- 18:17which is that you could think that he's just this guy was constantly on the wah-wah pedal and it was all weird it's nothing like that that's really not who he is so if that's what's keeping you out of the Jimmy camp dive into his records because and and and so I think let's get on to our first little part of his existence and being which I have called writer and I mean and I'm talking about his compositions if you will I mean we may talk about him as a lyricist and you could do that now if you want to but I just wanted to give a couple of good examples of him as
- 18:47as a very quality songwriter that wasn't just this fuzz box thing that john mentioned and so the examples i'm going to offer up are um i'll i'll mention two and then there's a million others you should check out but one is one of my favorite songs which is called the burning of the midnight lamp yeah it's like it's got this like almost elvis liked a big song it's like an epic song and and it's so it so does not fit in with what you think of him as being you know i want to be your lover man or the
- 19:16the quick blues shuffle stuff he did or the psychedelics whatever you want to call it
- 19:21it's this big massive um epic sounding song it's not about that epic length and it's also and it's from
- 19:30this point of view of like a person who's lived in the desert alone and quite literally this is how he
- 19:36said it was and it's just the greatest song and it was also he wrote about things he believed in he was he's talking about how i'm out here and i'm always burning the lamp i'm never stopping
- 19:44even though I'm all alone blah blah.
- 19:46It's just a great beautiful song. I really suggest that people check it out.
- 19:51And then I'm going to also suggest the actual the title track for Electric Ladyland. And that because it's very much almost like a Marvin Gaye song.
- 20:03Like you could easily forget in what you know about Jimi Hendrix that he was a black dude. You know what I mean? Like he had a kind of soul aspect to his
- 20:14Motown slash soul aspect to his existence and being and he did some of it on every single record and Electric Ladyland was really exciting because he started to get into that like I said this more Marvin Gaye thing like he hadn't I there wasn't anything that kind of smooth in it you know what I mean and um and I can think of eight million other examples but I want to kind of open the conversation here to the other guys to share any examples they might have of proof that he's not just the the human fuzz box um you know I also felt manic to
- 20:44because I think it's just such a great riff and such a great song and he says music sweet music I wish I could caress that's what Johnny or Jimmy was all about he wanted he loved music so much you know so yeah I'll go with I came up with a timeline real quick and you guys can comment on if you want but to prove he wasn't just that you know singular psychedelic kind of upbeat acid rock I guess they were calling it at the time you know whatever to me it's just still rock but I just kind of did a little time on it
- 21:14on songs and how he changed.
- 21:16And one of the songs I'm including,
- 21:18T.R., it sounds like you didn't listen to this, but he does have some compilation stuff that came out post his death.
- 21:25And it's come out in numerous forms and different renditions.
- 21:31We'll probably talk about this album quite a bit at some point,
- 21:34I'm thinking.
- 21:35It's called First Rays of the New Rising Sun, which is probably the best compilation of all his post-Electric Ladyland Band of Gypsies songs.
- 21:44Which were stuff he was playing already anyway.
- 21:47But anyway, so my all the time,
- 21:48if you think about it,
- 21:49he went from playing Purple Haze,
- 21:52which is probably his most recognizable radio friendly song,
- 21:59I would say.
- 22:00On the same album, he does a song called The Wind Cries Mary,
- 22:03which is absolutely gorgeous.
- 22:04But he goes from this loud, psychedelic hard rock to this kind of quiet,
- 22:09delicate,
- 22:10kind of bluesy song.
- 22:12The next album,
- 22:14which I did not know until today,
- 22:16that this song,
- 22:17and you'll hear me mention this song a lot, because this is one of my favorite songs by him, but this song was actually sort of written on piano by,
- 22:24what's the engineer's name? Is it Eddie Kramer? Eddie Kramer.
- 22:30Yeah.
- 22:30He liked to just do stuff on his own in the studio,
- 22:34and he was doing a little jazz bit, and Jimmy came in and heard it. He goes, what is that? That's amazing.
- 22:38I want you to play it on my record.
- 22:39He goes, no, I'm not going to do that, which you
- 22:44I'll teach it to you though.
- 22:45Yeah.
- 22:46And he ended up writing the intro to this song,
- 22:48which is Spanish Castle Magic.
- 22:51So you now it's more rock based.
- 22:53It's not psychedelic as much anymore.
- 22:55Now it's in your face. It's fast.
- 22:58But it's also got a kind of a little bit of a groove to it now.
- 23:01You know, in the chorus of that song, and I'm just kind of glad you brought it up. It's one of my favorite songs by him.
- 23:07There's this I can't.
- 23:09Unfortunately,
- 23:10I can't play a clip of it.
- 23:11But what
- 23:12It's just a little bit
- 23:42which is iconic.
- 23:45It's probably been covered by a Brazilian guitarist.
- 23:48But again,
- 23:49another kind of delicate soft.
- 23:51He was a master at writing ballads.
- 23:53You think of him playing Purple Haze and Foxy Lady in Crosstown Traffic.
- 23:57He wrote a lot of ballads.
- 23:58Beautiful ballads.
- 23:59Beautiful ballads.
- 24:00And that's saying a lot because if you know anything about him in the studio, he kept wanting to keep turning it up.
- 24:05And I said, turn it down.
- 24:08You're doing a ballad.
- 24:09Turn it down.
- 24:11Two more.
- 24:11It goes into Voodoo Child's Slight Return,
- 24:13which is probably his best song he ever wrote.
- 24:16I think.
- 24:17It certainly is.
- 24:19It's one of the greatest rock songs of all time as far as I'm concerned. It is.
- 24:22It's got one of the greatest intros ever,
- 24:25and it's his big ball song. It really, it just is.
- 24:27And then the last one I'll mention is,
- 24:29Jay mentioned this a little bit, he started getting kind of into this 70s kind of funk vibe,
- 24:35Easy Rider,
- 24:36where he starts playing with other musicians now,
- 24:40like Billy Cox on bass,
- 24:41and
- 24:42Oh God, I can't believe I'm dropping the name here for Bandit Gypsies.
- 24:47But yeah, Buddy Miles.
- 24:48Thank you. Oh my goodness.
- 24:49How could I forget Buddy Miles?
- 24:50You know, he starts playing with guys like this,
- 24:52and now he's got this different kind of funk and rhythm going on,
- 24:56and he's more of a blues guy now.
- 24:58He was always a blues guy, but a different type of blues player.
- 25:02Just those,
- 25:03that's the span right there.
- 25:04Well,
- 25:05I would say with that, though, it's about two and a half years of music.
- 25:08But in that one, in that song in particular,
- 25:11I'm an easy rider and I also would include in from the storm yeah it's such a good song there they're almost like this weird blueprint for 70s rock to me 70s hard rock and and Jimmy is playing in a much more controlled way they're like you could tell yourself that his improvisation was kind of his only thing and it wasn't if you put him in a weird box he was putting himself in a weird box at this time he would go okay well I'll just do a little fill here and there were just like things you would hear on other people's albums five years later
- 25:41But he was really starting to turn towards that.
- 25:46Probably would have kept doing 8 million other things.
- 25:48But I love that.
- 25:51I think George maybe will share, if you don't mind, the Spotify list that I put together.
- 25:57We've mentioned the song now, so it'll be there. But do check out Easy Rider.
- 26:00I agree.
- 26:01And it's a great, that and From the Storm are both such well-written 70s hard rock songs.
- 26:07Right.
- 26:08And if you listen to that album, First Raise, the new rising sun, which is probably,
- 26:11I think it's probably the best single disc compilation.
- 26:16I know there's all these box sets. I got that.
- 26:18But you listen,
- 26:19there's songs like Freedom,
- 26:20Isabella,
- 26:23Dolly Dagger.
- 26:24They all have this same kind of funk,
- 26:27rock,
- 26:28groove vibe to them.
- 26:30And they just sound, the bass end is different on this. It just,
- 26:36it sounds like there's an in-the-pocket drummer,
- 26:39which Mitch Mitchell was,
- 26:40he's the
- 26:41reason why some of those songs sound as amazing as they do.
- 26:44He gave him something completely different that some people in the same era did not have on drums.
- 26:52It just worked well.
- 26:55I've not heard anybody ever say this before,
- 26:58but it's a theory I have.
- 27:00But I feel like, and Jimmy was always really impressed with and happy to kind of cover the songs of his contemporaries.
- 27:07I feel like, John, there was a kind of
- 27:11Stone influence there.
- 27:13It could be.
- 27:14Almost in the big family way,
- 27:16too, where he wanted so many musicians to work with him and stuff. And I don't know that he was going to launch a career like that. I just think that was the vibe he was kind of going for in the studio during those sessions.
- 27:27Well, during the Electric Lady on sessions,
- 27:30he basically asked a bunch of people just to sit in. I mean,
- 27:33basically the traffic,
- 27:34the band traffic sat in with him and he was supposedly enamored with Steve Winwood and was like, man, I got to get this guy in my band.
- 27:41He was afraid to ask him though.
- 27:45He thought he was just too good for us.
- 27:47Steve Winwood loved playing with him. They kind of played off each other so well.
- 27:52That's kind of scary to think.
- 27:54I love Traffic too.
- 27:56It could have been kind of cool. Dave Mason sings on a song on the album.
- 28:01It would have been great.
- 28:03Just a quick bookmark here for people who don't know his career.
- 28:10You can quickly find this out on your own.
- 28:11The first record is Axis Boldest Love. Third record is Electric Ladyland.
- 28:18I mention that because I want to bring you up to what John has mentioned several times now,
- 28:22which is New Race of the... God, I forget it every time I leave it. First Race of the New Sun.
- 28:28Yes.
- 28:29And this was stuff that Jimmy was working on right before he died,
- 28:35probably over a period of time.
- 28:36It is the presumptive follow-up record to Electric Ladyland, but it's also definitely
- 28:41to call it a compilation because it doesn't have his stamp on and he didn't go like I want a sequence like this I wanted this and he was probably writing other stuff but in a perfect world it's the follow-up to Electric Ladyland right and I think it was originally released as the cry of love which is a great album title yeah and I think that's what he was leaning towards if I'm not mistaken I could be wrong about that I think he called that group of he he was such a weird kind of guy with words and I think he called it this
- 29:12The New Race of the Rising Sun and all that. I don't think it was.
- 29:15And so I think they just took that and thought he was going to call a record that. But it was this, Jimmy talked in weird ways, and one of the ways he talked was like that was the phase they were in.
- 29:23Yeah.
- 29:24Anyway, I just wanted to do that timeline,
- 29:26just how he dramatically changed on three albums.
- 29:29And it covered some really important good stuff. And again, all good examples of the writing thing we're talking about here. But here, I would like to make sure that TR and or George have a chance to share their thoughts.
- 29:41and or titles.
- 29:44TR, you want to go?
- 29:47Well,
- 29:48you know,
- 29:49I guess I didn't really.
- 29:55I don't think I really got the chance to fully absorb all of this because honestly,
- 30:01this was like the first time I'm hearing all of these albums in their entirety.
- 30:08Obviously,
- 30:09I've heard a lot of these hits and was familiar with the songs that most people are aware of,
- 30:15but definitely saw a progression from the first album to what came much later,
- 30:26or not much later,
- 30:27because really we're only talking about a couple of years here.
- 30:31But the bottom line is, you know, I definitely saw a progression,
- 30:37and I really kind of,
- 30:38I wish that there was more and I'm sure I'm not alone because it's like once he kind of shed that psychedelic stuff it was like okay now I'm starting to get interested now I'm starting to feel like this stuff's kind of cool whereas the psychedelic stuff I thought it was cool I enjoyed it but like it was it was kind of it just seemed mired in that whole vibe of like which just seemed like a
- 31:08you know a passing thing which which it was right like it's kind of like that early pink
- 31:13floyd stuff where it's like it's hard to listen to it because it's just like it's just a snapshot of 1967 1968
- 31:22and so um anyway i i do kind of wish that there had been more because i felt like he was starting he was
- 31:31really starting to grow and grow out of that whole psychedelic piece and i was starting to get more
- 31:37interested in the stuff that came after that.
- 31:41So I'm,
- 31:42you know,
- 31:43that's just kind of my impressions as kind of a new Hendrix person here. Like I'm,
- 31:49you know, just hearing a lot of this, some of this stuff for the first time. So.
- 31:55Yeah.
- 31:56I got into Hendrix in the somewhere in the eighties.
- 32:01I have an uncle who bought me the essential Jimmy
- 32:07Hendrix 2 vinyl set.
- 32:12He was into all that old hippie music, I guess. The only stuff you ever got me, he got me that,
- 32:19and he got me Grateful Dead's What a Long Strange Trip It's Been.
- 32:24And well, I liked the Hendrix.
- 32:29And yeah, I was just like, I haven't seen that physical double LP in forever.
- 32:37I'm sure it's downstairs somewhere but I had to look it up I was like what was that called again
- 32:41because I hadn't thought about it in years and I has this central Jimi Hendrix and so that was my intro to Jimi and after I started playing guitar I was like well I need to know more about this and and in I wouldn't probably around somewhere around 90 or so 90 91 I read the book kiss the sky and that just
- 33:07my love of all things Hendrix.
- 33:13I have to say I'm a little,
- 33:15I don't know, I was just kind of dumb because I just kind of, for the most of my life, I've really just sort of stuck to the three albums.
- 33:25You know, I mean, I've got the blues album, I've got the Woodstock album,
- 33:29you know,
- 33:29and Band of Gypsies and stuff, but I really kind of limited myself to the three albums.
- 33:34And Are You Experienced is probably the one I've spent the most time with because it's 11 completely solid songs.
- 33:47Also the raw rock guitar album.
- 33:50Yeah.
- 33:50And it's got the stuff everybody knows.
- 33:53Purple Haze, Hey Joe,
- 33:56Foxy Lady.
- 33:57But it's also got a couple of my favorite songs,
- 34:02one of which John mentioned, which is The Wind Cry.
- 34:05is Mary.
- 34:06And as someone who's tried to play that,
- 34:09I can tell you that Jimi Hendrix also had one of the most talented thumbs in the guitar world because his hands were so freaking huge.
- 34:18And he's just like, I'm just going to wrap that thumb around on that low E string while I'm playing down here.
- 34:23I'm like,
- 34:24my little teeny hands, I can't do it,
- 34:27Jimi.
- 34:28You know, and so that was very frustrating to me trying to play that. But another one from that album that I absolutely love.
- 34:35Another ballad. May this be love.
- 34:38Waterfalls.
- 34:39I mean,
- 34:39come on now. I can't sing it, but you know.
- 34:42Just amazing stuff. And then Third Stone from the Sun, which for years I tried telling people,
- 34:50you know,
- 34:52this is Brian Adams cuts like a knife.
- 34:56He totally ripped this off.
- 34:58And everybody for years was like, you're an idiot.
- 35:02And while I was sitting here waiting, I googled that.
- 35:04And Google said, you have an incredible ear for musical DNA.
- 35:09It is literally the same riff.
- 35:11It says,
- 35:13it's just on different strings.
- 35:15But it goes from the ninth fret to the 11th fret, the seventh fret to the fourth fret.
- 35:21And it's sliding with an open drone.
- 35:29Cuts like a knife.
- 35:34You know,
- 35:35I can,
- 35:36um,
- 35:37this,
- 35:37this would be a whole episode in and of itself and we won't do this,
- 35:41but when I really get into a Hendrick place and I'm just listening to him for like a few days,
- 35:45I,
- 35:46I can find so many examples of things that I'm like,
- 35:50Oh, that's where that guy got that.
- 35:52Yeah.
- 35:53Like really?
- 35:54Yeah.
- 35:55Yeah. I don't know anything.
- 35:56And I heard all that. Yeah. Just, just, just hearing this stuff for the first time. I was like, Oh my God.
- 36:01Oh,
- 36:02I see where that came from.
- 36:03Oh,
- 36:04there's a lot of things.
- 36:04where that was.
- 36:05Yeah.
- 36:05He did so many things first.
- 36:08Yes. Yeah.
- 36:09Anyway, I interrupted Joy. That's all right. And then moving on to Bold is Love,
- 36:13obviously mentioned Spanish Castle Magic.
- 36:19Little Wing,
- 36:21also,
- 36:22of course, a massive song, but another one of my favorites from the guitar standpoint,
- 36:26because it's just like, oh,
- 36:28so pretty.
- 36:30And I also,
- 36:31I've always for years said that Pearl Jam's Yellow
- 36:34Ledbetter was kind of an homage to that.
- 36:38Sure, it doesn't sound like it. Yeah.
- 36:40Castles Made of Sand,
- 36:42another good one on there. Love that stuff.
- 36:46Electric Ladyland was never one of my,
- 36:50it would always have been third of three for me.
- 36:53And it's,
- 36:54you know, I agree with TR when he says it felt more psychedelic and you guys are like, nah,
- 37:01man, he's other psychedelic.
- 37:02To me,
- 37:03just because
- 37:04because there's a lot of little things where he's just like, hey man,
- 37:08you know,
- 37:12stuff like the beginnings and endings of songs and just like weird,
- 37:17not trippy psychedelic guitar parts, but like synthesizer things that were just going on.
- 37:22It was not as focused of an album for me.
- 37:26However,
- 37:28Cross Down Traffic, amazing.
- 37:30Obviously the voodoo childs of both varieties.
- 37:34Burning of the Midnight Lamp.
- 37:36Gotta come back to that. It's a great tune.
- 37:38Love that so much.
- 37:40He sets out the blueprint for that record in the first song when he says, I want to show you different emotions and all those things.
- 37:45And that's really what he's... Well, it's cool. We have our basses covers because I know Axis is John's favorite.
- 37:52Electrical Alien is my favorite.
- 37:53And I'm the experienced one.
- 37:55And then we got you with How You Experienced. But that also speaks to... It's nice to have a different favorite record across the board.
- 38:03Yeah.
- 38:04And it speaks to the different nature of the things he did.
- 38:08I don't want to allude to possibly one of your other topics too soon, but all along the Watchtower is also on Electric Ladyland.
- 38:16And I'm sorry,
- 38:17Bob,
- 38:18but this one's better.
- 38:22It's something I wanted to bring up. I think one of his strongest suits,
- 38:26and let's be honest,
- 38:27technically,
- 38:29he's not better than a lot of guys alive today.
- 38:32That's irrelevant.
- 38:34because he still was he was kind of like Babe Ruth at that time. They're standing on his shoulders.
- 38:40Right.
- 38:40Well yeah or they've like somebody like C. Ray Vaughan almost was channeling him more than standing on. I mean he was like saying I'm going to continue this.
- 38:50I mean I still think C. Ray Vaughan's version of Voodoo Child is better but that's you can debate it either way but I don't know to people who say it's a bad version.
- 39:00I've never heard anyone ever say about that version.
- 39:03It's always like
- 39:04Wow,
- 39:04that's the only guy who's ever played it right,
- 39:07is what I hear people say.
- 39:08But I think he was a really good arranger of music.
- 39:12I mean, his covers are better than the originals by,
- 39:17like,
- 39:18light years.
- 39:19Hey Joe is awesome.
- 39:20So this is a good time to drop this little bomb, and it's not really a bomb, but Bob Dylan, when asked what the best cover of a song of his he had ever heard was, it was All Along the Watchtower.
- 39:32Yeah.
- 39:32Yeah.
- 39:34He heard it. He said, I might have left some stuff out there.
- 39:37Like he took it to a place that probably should have gone.
- 39:39Well, what's funny is,
- 39:40I don't, Jake,
- 39:41you can confirm this. I don't know, Tara,
- 39:43I'm assuming you don't know this. And George, maybe you do or don't. But I believe Hendrix's version came out first,
- 39:49even though Dylan wrote it in terms of the timing.
- 39:53That sounds familiar.
- 39:54Yeah.
- 39:54Because he had heard it in the studio and was like, I got to play this.
- 39:59He did that with other things too. He
- 40:02the day Sgt.
- 40:03Pepper came out
- 40:04he learned that and played it that night.
- 40:09Let's see.
- 40:10But his covers are actually
- 40:13really damn good.
- 40:15Last thing I wanted to say.
- 40:17Bob came out in 60
- 40:19Bob came out first but it was December
- 40:2127,
- 40:2167
- 40:22and then Jimmy released his
- 40:24single
- 40:27September 68.
- 40:28See, I thought that it was 68 for Dylan,
- 40:31but okay.
- 40:32He may have performed it before it came out.
- 40:34Maybe performed, yeah.
- 40:35I thought that it's first.
- 40:37That could be.
- 40:39The first actual vinyl release I thought was in 68, but that makes sense then,
- 40:43obviously.
- 40:45Okay.
- 40:46So the only other thing I wanted to say regarding the albums is that listening to first rays of the new Rising Sun, I left that out earlier,
- 40:56New Rising Sun,
- 40:59First of all,
- 41:00you know,
- 41:01okay,
- 41:02it's not necessarily what Jimmy wanted it to be or arranged in what order he may have wanted or including all the tracks, whatever.
- 41:10But it being what it is,
- 41:14I felt like it was more focused and than Electric Ladyland.
- 41:25Like it was. Oh,
- 41:26no, it's definitely more focused.
- 41:27Yeah.
- 41:28And it was like, okay,
- 41:29he's like going somewhere tighter and different now.
- 41:34And I mean,
- 41:36it's just some,
- 41:37yeah,
- 41:37it's just an amazing album.
- 41:40Tighter is the better word because,
- 41:42and I'm not taking issue with your phrasing here, only that I don't find Electric Leaning line unfocused.
- 41:48It was,
- 41:48he purposely was sprawling out in the ways he was sprawling out. So it wasn't just like, you know, it was, it was just more relaxed is what I would say.
- 41:56And for proof of that, go listen.
- 41:58to the demo version of 1983.
- 42:06I would be.
- 42:08It's all there.
- 42:09The whole thing. And that song sprawls out and does all kinds of weird stuff. But when it's just him and his guitar, you're like, oh, he had this all planned. He's even making the sounds of the sort of like, the special effects sounds. He's going, at one point, and that's what happens on the record.
- 42:24It's also worth listening to because you also hear him turning the pages of his notes.
- 42:28book clearing his throat and the horn honking outside his window i mean it's really
- 42:33intimate but well jay i think this might be a perfect time to move into your your second
- 42:37area which is him as a producer because the reason why electric ladyland sounds like it does to
- 42:43people is it's really two different producing camps on the album you know i mean he kind of started
- 42:51pulling away from chaz chander a little bit to do his own thing to produce and they were sort of
- 42:57Butting heads a little bit in the studio.
- 42:59Yeah.
- 42:59Because he wanted to explore.
- 43:01So I know that your next area you wanted to talk about was him, you know, as a producer or producing or going down that route.
- 43:09I mean it almost,
- 43:10and we will,
- 43:11and let's do it now.
- 43:12And I mean it almost in the weird Trent Reznor Nine Inch Nails sense.
- 43:16And what I mean is that he was not above or below or anything trying to make his guitar sound like something completely different.
- 43:22Or once they had a track down,
- 43:24I mean, other than a guitar.
- 43:26He would find ways to do things like that. But then he also
- 43:31was a big fan of the mixing board. He wanted to understand how it worked.
- 43:36He liked panning things left and right. He liked
- 43:40doing all kinds of strange things. And he was in up every track that was available to him to record on.
- 43:44So I had mentioned Electric Leyland as an example. And I'm going to do that again.
- 43:49And that and Crosstown Traffic. And all I'm going to suggest is that you
- 43:52Listen to those two songs in headphones and anything on AXIS or Electric Ladyland.
- 43:58And listen to the way that the,
- 44:00like on the song Electric Ladyland,
- 44:03he actually recorded multiple lead vocals,
- 44:07and it's all one long phrase,
- 44:09but he sings in one track,
- 44:11one part, and then the other track he's singing the next part.
- 44:15It's seamless when you listen to it, but you can tell on headphones that it's different tracks that are going in and out of each other, and he did that with background.
- 44:22vocals and stuff.
- 44:24He was infinitely creative with like going,
- 44:26I've written this cool thing.
- 44:28Now what weird stuff can we do to it in the studio?
- 44:30And he was such a great performer that you could not know that about him.
- 44:35That was infinitely exciting to him.
- 44:37And I think the best way for you to experience it is to listen to Acts as Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland,
- 44:44both of the records in headphones,
- 44:46and understand where things are panning left and right and start to pay attention to things other than the guitar and drums. And you'll realize
- 44:52he was maximizing everything he could get in there.
- 44:55EXP, man. And it's all so musical.
- 44:57Well, I think Eddie Kramer deserves... Oh, of course....infinite amounts of credit for that because... So I was... Before we started, I mentioned that I have these 2010 versions of the first... His three albums.
- 45:10Not his first three. His three albums.
- 45:12And they're single discs and they come with DVDs.
- 45:15And on the DVD part... And there's no extras,
- 45:18which... Except on the first album,
- 45:21if people don't know,
- 45:22Back in that time, they used to release a UK version and a US version,
- 45:25and they would mix songs from all the singles where they were released,
- 45:30and the track order would be different, and even the spelling of the song titles would be different between the two.
- 45:35What they did on the first one,
- 45:37their only bonus tracks were just the US version of Are You Experienced,
- 45:41and it includes all the tracks from the UK version that are not on the US version.
- 45:45So you get both albums,
- 45:46but as one,
- 45:48not as two together.
- 45:49Anyway, they have these DVDs,
- 45:51and they talk.
- 45:52And the DVDs are like 12 minutes on one and 17 on the other two.
- 45:57They're short.
- 45:57They talk about how they were doing the recording process for X number songs for each album on that specific DVD.
- 46:05They talk about all that,
- 46:06of all these things that Eddie Kramer came up with. I was thinking about doing this. And so I did it. I played it for Jimmy. And he was like, this is amazing.
- 46:15Let's do this.
- 46:17And so they were talking about how they were recording on four tracks only.
- 46:21All this was on 4-track.
- 46:22Yeah,
- 46:24and they bounced it down to, like, they were able to get, like, I think,
- 46:27like, actually somewhere around 6 or 8.
- 46:30I honestly think you can achieve,
- 46:33let's see, you can bounce 4 into 1,
- 46:37and then that leaves you 4-tracks. You can do it multiple times.
- 46:40That's what they were doing. They were constantly dropping down.
- 46:44I think mathematically it's 16,
- 46:46but maybe it's more than that. I'm not sure. But yeah, you had it right. What they would do is they would mix
- 46:51down everything onto one of the tracks.
- 46:54Which, by the way, is a George Martin innovation.
- 46:56But they,
- 46:57yeah, you got it right, TR.
- 46:59Long story short. Well, you can just keep doing it and doing it. I mean, it's going to sound crappier,
- 47:03but.
- 47:04You could. But given the technology they had at the time,
- 47:07and it just,
- 47:08it's, if you ever get a chance to see these,
- 47:10they're short.
- 47:11Again,
- 47:1217 minutes is the longest one.
- 47:14And I think they talk about five songs in the studio. It just, they talk about all that creativity of things they were trying to do.
- 47:22I don't think people realize how much of a badass Eddie Kramer is and was in terms of what he could do as an engineer.
- 47:35I made this great article about Randy Rhoads one time and they were talking about him recording the solos for Diary of Mad Men and they were doing all these weird things like they would wrap the microphone in plastic and put in a bucket of water and all this kind of stuff.
- 47:50because this is how you used to try to get different sounds.
- 47:54And Hendrix was like that, which is really the producer thing I'm talking about. And I agree with John.
- 47:59I think Eddie Kramer created and or facilitated 100% of it.
- 48:04But Jimmy was so interested in music and his own music and the things that he could do that he was not against going in and going. Now, how can we mess this up in the best kind of way and put interesting things in there and all these little things?
- 48:18So he's a headphones guy.
- 48:19You gotta listen to his records in headphones.
- 48:21The other thing I was gonna mention was Crosstown Traffic. I might have, but just go listen to that song in headphones and then listen to where they get to the chorus.
- 48:29It's Crosstown Traffic,
- 48:31look out! And everybody's all in these different places and stuff and they pan them in all these great places.
- 48:35It's using the mixing board as an instrument and it's perfect.
- 48:39You know, it's just the man's love for music was so clear in every part of the process.
- 48:45Let's put it that way.
- 48:46Well,
- 48:46and you mentioned Sgt.
- 48:48Pepper,
- 48:48so it's clear
- 48:49A lot of that on there too,
- 48:51yeah.
- 48:51I'm pretty sure he listened to that and said, how can I do that with my music,
- 48:55right? Like, I'm sure that there was a lot of that kind of thing where,
- 49:00because that was exploding at that time, right? Like, the Beatles were doing things nobody had ever done in the studio.
- 49:08The Beach Boys were doing stuff that nobody had ever done in the studio.
- 49:13So I'm sure there was a lot of, there was like, hey, how can, how can I leverage this and what can I do to,
- 49:19to kind of do some things that are unique or like what I want to do with my music,
- 49:27right?
- 49:27It came out, that came out in 67 and so did Axis Bold as Love.
- 49:33Now as John mentioned, he was releasing,
- 49:34you know,
- 49:35all this stuff in a very short period of time and I'm sure that record influenced him.
- 49:39But I also like thinking that they were kind of coming up with these things at the same time,
- 49:42you know, I think to a certain extent.
- 49:46They had the same dealer,
- 49:47man.
- 49:49You know, it's funny, you mentioned the Sgt.
- 49:51Peppers, and there's the very famous interview thing with Dennis,
- 49:56was it Wilson?
- 49:59Beach Boys guy.
- 50:00Brian Wilson.
- 50:02Brian Wilson, thank you.
- 50:03And he was just sitting there feeling very proud of him.
- 50:07Pet Sounds had just come out.
- 50:09Yeah.
- 50:10So he gave him a copy of Sgt. Pepper, and he was like, God damn it.
- 50:13Yeah.
- 50:15Right.
- 50:16It obviously influenced Hendricks because
- 50:19that famous show, Isla Wright,
- 50:21which I think was right before he died.
- 50:24I think he died like that. Three weeks later or something. Three weeks later, okay.
- 50:28He opens with God Save the Queen and Sergeant Pepper.
- 50:33That's how he opens his show.
- 50:34He doesn't even open with his own music.
- 50:37I mentioned this previously at some point, not in this episode,
- 50:43but if you watch the Isla Boy performance,
- 50:46which you can do,
- 50:48and they,
- 50:49starts out backstage with him for a few minutes.
- 50:52And I love that right before he goes on,
- 50:54he says to somebody, wait, wait, wait, wait. And they're like walking by. He goes, how does God save the queen go again?
- 50:59And it's because I think he decided in that moment, I'm going to play it and I don't remember how it goes.
- 51:04He still went out and nailed it. Yeah.
- 51:08Okay.
- 51:09So just another quick sidebar.
- 51:12We mentioned the wind cries Mary a couple of times,
- 51:14maybe more than a couple of times.
- 51:16Do you know that they recorded that,
- 51:18That whole song,
- 51:20everything,
- 51:20learned and recorded.
- 51:2220 minutes.
- 51:23Absolutely.
- 51:24Yeah.
- 51:25So apparently Jimmy,
- 51:27I have to go back and watch it again.
- 51:29I was watching it earlier today.
- 51:31He and Chaz were,
- 51:32because they were actually roommates in London,
- 51:36and they were working on it. And when he went into the studio,
- 51:39the one thing I got from everyone on these three videos is that he was, don't be fooled by the,
- 51:45yeah,
- 51:46man, cool,
- 51:46groovy, all that stuff.
- 51:47Yeah,
- 51:48that was real, but apparently was very well prepared.
- 51:51I mean,
- 51:52literally everywhere he went,
- 51:53he had a guitar. He woke up, had a guitar still strapped on him, hit the head, was sitting there with his guitar, cooking with his guitar.
- 52:00He was always extremely prepared,
- 52:03and Chaz Chandler was always time is money in the studio. Let's go.
- 52:06Let's keep it moving.
- 52:07We only got three hours, guys.
- 52:09Let's rip these songs out.
- 52:10And that's where sort of the friction came,
- 52:13especially with Noel Redding, too, because Noel Redding liked that, and Jimmy wanted to explore a little more.
- 52:17Did you get the feeling?
- 52:19What's your opinion on Noel Redding?
- 52:20Was he kind of a dick?
- 52:22Yeah,
- 52:23so let me get to that in one sec. I want to get to this because I don't want to forget this.
- 52:27So that when they went in,
- 52:28they literally,
- 52:29Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, credit to both of them, got it down and they cut it in 20 minutes because they had like literally 20 minutes left in the studio and Chaz is like, we're not spending any more money in the studio.
- 52:41And they ripped that song off and that's the version you're hearing. And I'm like,
- 52:46wait, wait a minute.
- 52:46How many takes?
- 52:48One?
- 52:48Two? That's it?
- 52:50So yes.
- 52:51Back to Noel Redding.
- 52:53Yes.
- 52:54I think that there was definite friction between them. I think he did not like the multiple takes or the exploring. I think he was a dick.
- 53:04I think I'm sticking with that.
- 53:06I think I saw something where Mitch Mitchell was like, yeah, I love Jimmy.
- 53:11I didn't love Noel.
- 53:13I saw something where he was just like,
- 53:16Yeah, I never know.
- 53:18On the Electric Ladyland documentary about the studio,
- 53:21every time they talk to him, he comes off as such a perrick.
- 53:25And he's just like...
- 53:26A perrick.
- 53:27He's sort of like, I don't know, judgmental.
- 53:31And he's...
- 53:31He pushes back on a lot of stuff.
- 53:33Like,
- 53:34I contributed to this,
- 53:35and I should be talked about a little more kind of thing.
- 53:38Yeah,
- 53:39so I think what I got to is that Jimmy got along with Mitch Mitchell a lot.
- 53:44And even though Buddy Miles came in,
- 53:47Mitch Mitchell still was playing with him after Band of Gypsies, you know, after they did that.
- 53:52By the way, I don't think he took that personally either. I think he was a pretty laid-back dude. And Noel Redding was nowhere to be seen.
- 53:58It was all Billy Cox at that point,
- 54:00you know, and anybody else that, I mean,
- 54:02Jack Cassidy's on, he actually plays on the album on Electric Ladyland because he happened to just be there at the time, Jack Cassidy being from Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna.
- 54:12He was the bass player.
- 54:14I'll give Noel Redding this much credit. And that is that,
- 54:17I mean, not credit,
- 54:18but allowance.
- 54:20And that's that in the, in one of those documentaries I watched,
- 54:23um,
- 54:25he does say, Jimmy would be like, yeah, I'd be there at eight and Jimmy would show up at two.
- 54:28So, okay. Like I get it. You know what I mean? Like,
- 54:30yeah, he, he obviously wanted five nights a week.
- 54:33He wanted a more structured,
- 54:34uh, studio,
- 54:36uh,
- 54:37setup,
- 54:37which he was real. That's why he got along with the Chaz Chandler style of let's get this done.
- 54:43I think Chaz Chandler made a comment. If you can't get this song done in three or four takes,
- 54:48then you're just not a good musician kind of thing, which is like,
- 54:51well,
- 54:52yes and no, I guess.
- 54:54Maybe.
- 54:55So anyway,
- 54:55sorry to sidetrack there. I guess that kind of plays into the whole producer part of it a little bit. It does.
- 55:00And I'm wondering,
- 55:01I'm going to transition this away, but I want to give George and our TR a chance to throw anything extra against the wall here on this particular part.
- 55:09We've gotten to a nice segue here when the time comes. I'm good.
- 55:15Yeah,
- 55:16I think so.
- 55:17Well, good, because we were talking about Isla White,
- 55:22and so the next little kind of section here I had put was Performer,
- 55:27and let's bear in mind as we go down this list that Player is the last one, so that's number four.
- 55:33So I'm talking about Performer. I'm talking about Presence.
- 55:35I'm talking about what he did when he went on stage.
- 55:38You can talk about his fashion, whatever you want. I mean, the guy was a rock star,
- 55:41so there's that.
- 55:42But you know, I'm talking about how he played behind his head. He lit his guitar on fire. He played with his teeth.
- 55:47He moved in a cool way.
- 55:49You know, I mean, he just put on a show.
- 55:52And I love that about him, you know, and I love the live at Monterey, which is when the United States was truly officially introduced to him. There was no Internet.
- 56:01You know,
- 56:01they'd heard Hey Joe and that was it.
- 56:04And he comes out and just starts out with a dantica dantica dantica dantica dantica dantica dantica dantica dantica dantica
- 56:12He's doing it at his speed. None of these people have ever heard before.
- 56:15The fuzz pedal hasn't come on yet until the bass and drums come in.
- 56:18Can you imagine,
- 56:19man?
- 56:20I mean, if you were there, you would have been like, dude, I saw this guy the other night.
- 56:25Yeah.
- 56:26Well,
- 56:26and I kind of feel like,
- 56:29you know, as I listen to all this stuff and I listen to these albums,
- 56:34I also felt like I'm missing something because I'm not seeing it.
- 56:40You know?
- 56:41Like, you can
- 56:42Listen to the studio albums,
- 56:43but everything about this is like,
- 56:46oh,
- 56:47dude, you know,
- 56:48Clapton was like, we watched this guy and he blew us all away.
- 56:51Well, they watched him.
- 56:53You know what I mean? Like,
- 56:54yeah, they heard him,
- 56:55but they watched him play and they were like,
- 56:58oh, my God, what are we doing?
- 57:00Right.
- 57:01And so I kind of feel like some of that was lost on me because I didn't really,
- 57:08you know, when I was kind of preparing for this,
- 57:11All I did was listen to the albums.
- 57:13And I don't think I adequately...
- 57:15Obviously, I've seen the Woodstock footage and some other stuff.
- 57:22And various other things where just kind of little small pieces of his performance footage.
- 57:31But I feel like that element of it should not be underestimated.
- 57:39Because at the time,
- 57:42nobody had done that.
- 57:44Nobody looked like that.
- 57:45Nobody played like that.
- 57:47And I'm sure that people were completely captivated.
- 57:53And minds were blown, right?
- 57:55And so I kind of feel like I need to watch more live footage of him.
- 58:02The presentation was important.
- 58:04There's no question about it.
- 58:05Yeah.
- 58:05And I kind of feel like I'm doing myself a disservice.
- 58:08because I have not watched enough live footage of him to appreciate.
- 58:16It's just like Elvis.
- 58:17If you just listen to Elvis,
- 58:19yeah, it's good.
- 58:20But when you see him actually perform,
- 58:23it's like,
- 58:23oh,
- 58:24there's this whole other dimension.
- 58:26And if you don't see that,
- 58:28you kind of miss out on it. You just don't get the full picture.
- 58:33Yeah.
- 58:33I don't think you're wrong about that.
- 58:37And I think he,
- 58:38because he was really something to look at.
- 58:40I mean,
- 58:41he was a guy that if there was no musical thing going on and it was 1968,
- 58:46he walked by on the street,
- 58:47you'd be like,
- 58:47did you see that dude,
- 58:48dude?
- 58:48You know what I mean?
- 58:48Like there was presence there.
- 58:50Plus,
- 58:51plus this aspect aspect of performing,
- 58:53obviously,
- 58:53which was very flamboyant or whatever you want to call it.
- 58:58I would suggest,
- 58:59actually I got two things.
- 59:00I'll say the first thing I'm going to pause for the second.
- 59:03Cause I want George to edit it out.
- 59:06I would suggest,
- 59:07TR, that you focus more on the later shows than the early shows. Because the early shows are going to get the guitar with the teeth picking.
- 59:16You're going to get the guitar lit on fire and kind of the gyrations.
- 59:20As he gets further down the road, which is only a couple of years, I think it's more a band at that point.
- 59:27And they're really kind of just jamming.
- 59:30Meaning like they're grooving out there.
- 59:32And it's not so much about the presentation.
- 59:34The presentation is still there.
- 59:36But he's really given you the whole package.
- 59:39Before,
- 59:39lighting a guitar and fire,
- 59:41that just blew everyone away. That's all people see is him lighting a guitar and fire any time you see an image of him. But then you go back and watch Isle of Ryder,
- 59:48Woodstock. It's almost like a completely different guy at that point.
- 59:52It is.
- 59:52I have an addendum to that,
- 59:55John. And it's that Ingve Malmsteen famously was influenced. The first he saw the Live at the Monterey thing was a little boy in Sweden.
- 1:00:05he's from.
- 1:00:06And he said, and I swear to God, I saw this interview myself,
- 1:00:10and he says, and it was that I saw him, and he set his guitar on fire,
- 1:00:14and he said, and I thought, man, that's what I want to do.
- 1:00:17And he said, and then I swear to God, his next sentence was, not necessarily the music.
- 1:00:20It was sort of like, I didn't pay attention to him.
- 1:00:24So I don't disagree with John, but I would say this, you do need to watch live at Monterey,
- 1:00:27because you need to see what happens.
- 1:00:29You've got to see where it starts.
- 1:00:30Yeah.
- 1:00:31When the United States saw him for the first time, you're going to want to see that.
- 1:00:35But then,
- 1:00:36do know also,
- 1:00:37and this is a testament to what John's saying, is that he came to sort of resent that stuff.
- 1:00:42Like,
- 1:00:43he got, by the time he died, he was just like, I hope they're not expecting me to play with my teeth tonight.
- 1:00:49You know what I mean?
- 1:00:50Like,
- 1:00:50he sort of resented that that was one of the things people appreciated about him.
- 1:00:54Okay.
- 1:00:55And then my second thing, real quick, and I'll pause.
- 1:01:00We got an hour and 15 minutes before I gotta go.
- 1:01:02And I'm fully contributing to this.
- 1:01:05this derailed train.
- 1:01:08I fully admit that.
- 1:01:09But I don't want to miss out on some of the stuff that, Jay, you wanted to talk about.
- 1:01:14Well, we're almost there.
- 1:01:15We're doing good. Because I know we have to talk about where was he going and our suggestions,
- 1:01:20and I don't want to miss out on that. So I just,
- 1:01:21and I'll shut up more.
- 1:01:24More edits,
- 1:01:25dumb, dumb.
- 1:01:26We've almost gone like two hours. Like, holy shit, are we moving that fast?
- 1:01:30Well,
- 1:01:30okay.
- 1:01:32To that end, edit.
- 1:01:34On edit.
- 1:01:35In the interest of economy,
- 1:01:37I think we can safely move on to the last little aspect of this thing, but it's one of the more important things with Hendrix. And it's also,
- 1:01:44it can't be talked about that much because it's sort of hard. It's ineffable. It's hard to put into words.
- 1:01:50So what we're going to do is talk about Jimmy as the player,
- 1:01:53which is what he's famous for,
- 1:01:54right?
- 1:01:55He loved the women. I'm just going to make a couple of suggestions of things that I think people should check out and just know that me,
- 1:02:03and I think I can speak for John when, you know,
- 1:02:05I don't know if completist is the word but definitely I if it's a show from 1967 four months after the last one that I owned and it's the exact same thing I'm going to check it out and the reason I'm going to check it out even though I've heard all the other ones is because he does something interesting in every show there's always something where I'm like whoa I never heard that before and he goes in all these weird directions and they're just a testament to how much he knew about the guitar the amount of ideas he had the different styles that he was capable of playing it was insane
- 1:02:35And so I'm going to make two suggestions to our listeners if you don't know his stuff very well. And one is called,
- 1:02:41it's literally called Woodstock Improvisation.
- 1:02:45It's on the Woodstock release in which he just plays for four or five or six or seven minutes.
- 1:02:50And he's just making it up as he goes along.
- 1:02:53And it's crazy.
- 1:02:54It's not lead stuff.
- 1:02:55He's doing a lot of like acoustic or not acoustic stuff,
- 1:02:57but just it's like he's playing like a rhythm guitar thing.
- 1:03:00And you're just like, how many chords does this dude know? And why did he turn left there? And now it's the coolest thing I've ever heard in my life.
- 1:03:05And he was capable of doing that over and over and over. So I'm going to mention that one.
- 1:03:10I'm going to mention from the same thing,
- 1:03:15the Woodstock show is a song called Jam Back at the House, which I think is worth listening to because it's called Jam Back at the House because right when they start to play, he says, we just came up with this jam back at the house.
- 1:03:27And this means 10 minutes ago or last night or whatever.
- 1:03:30And they play this complete,
- 1:03:32really cool,
- 1:03:33proggy,
- 1:03:33riffy thing.
- 1:03:35Finally,
- 1:03:36if you've listened to any combinations of the two podcasts that we're on, you've heard Machine Gun mentioned.
- 1:03:44And if you don't know the Band of Gypsies version of Machine Gun, they're all good.
- 1:03:48Like I said, he does something interesting all the time.
- 1:03:51But he proves that somebody can basically play lead guitar for 12 minutes straight and have it be interesting and not repeat yourself.
- 1:03:58Actually, the only other thing I'll mention is a wonderful show that John turned me on to,
- 1:04:02a Berklee show.
- 1:04:03And there's a song on there that later became a different song on New Rays of the Rise of the Sun.
- 1:04:09It's not even called the same thing, but it's called, on this one, it's called Passin' On.
- 1:04:16So listen to the Berklee version of Passin' On,
- 1:04:18and it's just a basic, really cool riffy structure,
- 1:04:22but you can see how easily he got bored, because every time he comes back around the verse, he plays the main riff in a completely different place, or just decides to change the chords,
- 1:04:33or whatever.
- 1:04:34And if you were not educated in music at all, you'd be like, oh, well, these are all different.
- 1:04:38It's not. It's all the exact same thing. It's just like, now I'm going to play it, you know, three steps down and I'm going to play chords instead of this. And it is so interesting. And he was capable of doing that over and over and over. So as a player, the guy was incredible.
- 1:04:52That's what I think I have to contribute to that. We could go on for hours.
- 1:04:55But please, if there are any performances you'd like to share our thoughts.
- 1:05:00I'm going to double down on Machine Gun.
- 1:05:02And I don't think I can emphasize a song more that kind of is him.
- 1:05:08I mean,
- 1:05:08I think Voodoo Child,
- 1:05:09Slight Return,
- 1:05:11and Machine Gun are the songs that we should remember more for than some of his early stuff.
- 1:05:16But the reason why I'm doubling down on Machine Gun,
- 1:05:19just real quick.
- 1:05:21So I have the first night at the Fillmore East where he did his famous band at Gypsy Shows.
- 1:05:28And the first concert setting,
- 1:05:30I guess, where it was
- 1:05:32It wasn't the first time it played. It had been played two times before that.
- 1:05:37But it was played as a medley at some charitable event.
- 1:05:42And then it was played on the Dick Cavett show a couple months before that.
- 1:05:46But the first time, like a full concert setting was at this first show at the Fillmore.
- 1:05:51And the reason I want to bring up Machine Gun is it was like just under nine minutes on that show.
- 1:05:56Then the day three show, which is on the Band of Gypsies, which TRU listened to,
- 1:06:02that you're referring to as the fourth album. George, I know you've heard this.
- 1:06:06It's 12 minutes and 40 seconds on that. Now, I don't know how much of that is crowd noise,
- 1:06:10you know, in between the songs.
- 1:06:12But on Isla Wright,
- 1:06:14it's listed as 22 minutes and 13 seconds,
- 1:06:18you know.
- 1:06:18And then on The Berklee Show, it's 11 minutes and 22 seconds.
- 1:06:23So my point is,
- 1:06:25Jay already alluded to this,
- 1:06:26it changed.
- 1:06:28It might be the same songs,
- 1:06:30but it changed every night or every time you prefer.
- 1:06:32And that's why it's really worth going back and listening
- 1:06:36to see what he's doing different.
- 1:06:38You know, and where his mindset is.
- 1:06:40Because, you know, I don't, if you listen to his live shows,
- 1:06:42he mumbles a lot before songs.
- 1:06:44So,
- 1:06:44you know, we came up with this song and I don't know,
- 1:06:46maybe you like it, maybe you don't.
- 1:06:47We're just going to kind of groove it.
- 1:06:49See how it goes from there, man.
- 1:06:50Yeah, it's cool.
- 1:06:50Cool.
- 1:06:51All right, hold on a second.
- 1:06:52You know, he like walks off for a second and comes back.
- 1:06:54It's kind of funny how he does it.
- 1:06:56You know?
- 1:06:56And then my second one is two songs we've mentioned already numerous times.
- 1:07:02But that was from
- 1:07:06Something called Live at the Winterland
- 1:07:08Which you can't get that disc anymore
- 1:07:09Which kind of pisses me off
- 1:07:11Unless you get it on Discogs or eBay
- 1:07:13And I should have got it when I had a chance
- 1:07:15But it's since been re-released
- 1:07:17As all six shows at the Winterland
- 1:07:20The disc originally when it came out
- 1:07:22Was a combination
- 1:07:23Anyway,
- 1:07:23on the
- 1:07:25God, I can't remember what night it was
- 1:07:27He does Little Wing followed by Spanish Castle Magic
- 1:07:30And just to hear him go from this quiet,
- 1:07:33delicate kind of ballady song into this aggressive,
- 1:07:37up front,
- 1:07:37in your face, hard rocker,
- 1:07:39and they're tied together.
- 1:07:41I just really thought that was great to hear the different dynamics all in a span of what, eight minutes?
- 1:07:49I think nine minutes that he does this.
- 1:07:52I would suggest those. Any live show that you hear about is going to be good.
- 1:07:59We've mentioned a lot of them already.
- 1:08:01He never phoned it in, though.
- 1:08:03Yeah.
- 1:08:04Some of the live performances don't sound great.
- 1:08:06Not to cut you off. I apologize,
- 1:08:07Jay. Last thing. But all the ones we've mentioned, Jay mentioned Berklee. We've all mentioned Band of Gypsies,
- 1:08:12Woodstock,
- 1:08:13Isle of Wight. You're not going to go wrong listening to all those.
- 1:08:17Monterey.
- 1:08:18Monterey, yeah.
- 1:08:18Thank you.
- 1:08:19Well, at the Berklee show, I don't know if you just said that, but I do want to push that one on people. I think it's a really exemplary show.
- 1:08:25There was a great moment in it, too, that I love, which is he kind of, once he's
- 1:08:29I once he did the national anthem at Woodstock he went on to make part of his set you know he would that was probably I don't know if he debuted it there I think he did but then he was just like okay I guess this is something I got to do now and he does it at the Berklee show and I just love that he's doing it and it's just like machine gun it's different every time but by the way I always think he was doing an English siren when he goes dee dee dee dee in that I'm sure that's what he was doing but in any case when he gets to the part
- 1:08:59of Our Flag Was Still There.
- 1:09:01And keep in mind, this is the full stack.
- 1:09:04Marshall,
- 1:09:04blah, blah, blah.
- 1:09:05And he stops playing for 0.2 seconds.
- 1:09:08And he goes, and the flag was still there.
- 1:09:10Big deal. And then he goes right back into it.
- 1:09:15That was the best thing to say. The flag was still there. And I think he's more making fun of himself.
- 1:09:20Like, I've played this song a million times.
- 1:09:23Anyway,
- 1:09:24I think that covers Performer. Unless anybody else says anything they want to drop in here?
- 1:09:29I was going to talk about the Star Spangled Banner thing,
- 1:09:31but you handled it nicely. Yeah, I think that was my only thing,
- 1:09:34too. And I honestly,
- 1:09:36that's like that to me was like,
- 1:09:38I think what kind of put him on the map in a lot of ways,
- 1:09:41because like nobody had ever done that to the Star Spangled Banner,
- 1:09:44you know, like it was like,
- 1:09:45holy crap,
- 1:09:46you know,
- 1:09:47here's this guy and he just made all these sounds and it was like unbelievable.
- 1:09:51And I just I remember thinking to myself.
- 1:09:56Once he did that,
- 1:09:57it opened the door like it opened.
- 1:09:59door for everybody to kind of have their own version of the Star Spangled Banner.
- 1:10:04You know,
- 1:10:04people rightfully,
- 1:10:06there's,
- 1:10:07I don't know if you ever read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
- 1:10:12Yep.
- 1:10:12But Hunter Thompson says that Las Vegas was, you know, like the 60s took off in California.
- 1:10:21And then in his flowery and dirty language, he basically explains how it was the crest of the wave that came over to a sweep of the United States,
- 1:10:30but then it died in the desert, and that's why we have Las Vegas.
- 1:10:33But I mention that because there is so much weird social,
- 1:10:41anthropological kind of with that song at that moment.
- 1:10:48Because let's remember, this was Woodstock.
- 1:10:51was like it's right there's 500 000 of us we're all here together and we're hippies and then he came out and i'm not going to say psychedelicize but what did whatever he did to the national anthem and it that was like a turning point in the baby boomer history you know what i mean yes also the crest unfortunately was also las vegas it was the end of the 60s it was a lot of weird stuff you know and hendrix got that he understood the violence of the 60s you know what i mean like you can remember 60s however you want but some of it was pretty ugly
- 1:11:21And there was the Manson stuff.
- 1:11:24And Vietnam.
- 1:11:25The fact that he played the national anthem during Vietnam and kind of made it his own.
- 1:11:35I don't know.
- 1:11:36So I give him credit. I have listened to him too much.
- 1:11:41And I hear so much more than just a creative guitar player in that moment. I hear this guy that was really in tune with his times.
- 1:11:51about psychoanalyzing himself and putting into music what was going on with him and himself.
- 1:11:58And it was a huge moment.
- 1:12:00And it wasn't an accident, is my point. And I see that in so much of his music.
- 1:12:04It almost makes me feel like, and I could be 100% wrong, but also his way of saying, this is my ship that I'm sailing.
- 1:12:12And if I want to play this,
- 1:12:14there's not a damn thing anyone can do or say.
- 1:12:17And I'll go where I want to go.
- 1:12:19And I might have my views on things,
- 1:12:22but there's a time and place that I'm going to use this time and place to do this because it's not what you're expecting me to do.
- 1:12:29And I think he relished in that.
- 1:12:32In his lyrics,
- 1:12:34he always talked about that.
- 1:12:36You know, like, Six Plus Nine was another good example. That's the one where he's saying, you know, if the hippies cut off their hair, I don't care.
- 1:12:41That whole song, and a lot of his songs are about, you know what I'm saying,
- 1:12:45man, I'm walking down a direction.
- 1:12:46I'm walking down.
- 1:12:48It's me.
- 1:12:49I know who I am.
- 1:12:50I don't care about all this other stuff that you're glomming on to me.
- 1:12:53You know,
- 1:12:54and it's funny you mention that, too, because at the end of that Berklee show,
- 1:12:58he says,
- 1:13:00well, it's the national anthem for all of us, blah, blah, blah. He plays it, and he says, now I'll play the new national anthem, and he plays Voodoo Chels Late Return.
- 1:13:06And,
- 1:13:08yeah.
- 1:13:08Well, I mean, his views on Machine Gun changed over time.
- 1:13:12How he said, well, originally it's a Vietnam song,
- 1:13:15but then it says the Machine Gun actually could just be the struggle within yourself.
- 1:13:19You're fighting your own battle.
- 1:13:21And so I think he
- 1:13:23I don't know if we're giving him too much credit
- 1:13:25but I think he
- 1:13:26I think he saw through a lot
- 1:13:29of the BS
- 1:13:31and if it wasn't for the fact that
- 1:13:33he got cut short,
- 1:13:34I think he would have
- 1:13:35gone a completely different route
- 1:13:37at some point.
- 1:13:37Anyway. He would have taken the velvet
- 1:13:39pants off at some point and it would
- 1:13:41have been appreciated for
- 1:13:44I'm not going to say
- 1:13:45visionary, I'm going to say literary
- 1:13:47Which brings us around to this.
- 1:13:48Bob the lyricist.
- 1:13:50Jimmy kind of wanted to be Bob Dylan.
- 1:13:52And I mentioned that. I wanted that to be part of this.
- 1:13:54Because he did.
- 1:13:56He loved Bob Dylan.
- 1:13:59And it's most worth mentioning. I'll give you two examples of what I think are very fine lyrics by him.
- 1:14:07And one of those is called My Friend.
- 1:14:11Just listened to it. It was from the first race of the new rising sun.
- 1:14:16and also the song bold is love which i happen to know john likes very much
- 1:14:21if i told you that those were that those were lyrics bob dylan gave you might might just go okay
- 1:14:27i'd buy that and so all i mean to say is that he really admired that and he wasn't some of it came
- 1:14:32out as he got to get there by dragonfly i get it but he he also was he really liked that chopped up way of
- 1:14:38talking about things which really by the way is more james joyce than it is bob dylan at least bob
- 1:14:43Dylan stole that from James Joyce.
- 1:14:45Sorry to get all literary on you there,
- 1:14:47but Hendrix was a smart guy.
- 1:14:49And do yourself a favor. When you listen to him, listen to his lyrics, you're going to, you know, Purple Haze isn't going to change your life,
- 1:14:56but Bold is Love Mine,
- 1:14:59you know what I mean? Like, just make sure you tune in to some of the things he's talking about, the way he likes to say him, the way he likes to put a weird slant on things.
- 1:15:06You know, I mentioned My Friend,
- 1:15:08and the song My Friend is very, it could be, you know, Johnny's in the bass,
- 1:15:16"Subterranean Homesick Blues." Thank you,
- 1:15:18George.
- 1:15:19I actually like that song.
- 1:15:21Oh yeah,
- 1:15:22I'd love anything Dylan.
- 1:15:23Well,
- 1:15:24okay,
- 1:15:24not anything.
- 1:15:25Not everything. He famously was a napkin writer.
- 1:15:29He famously had journals with him. You know, he sometimes what he said is very simple, but sometimes I like things said to me in a very simple way.
- 1:15:36So I just think he probably doesn't get the credit he deserves as a lyricist.
- 1:15:41Unfortunately, I think it's the psychedelic thing.
- 1:15:43But that was such a small moment in time.
- 1:15:46Yeah,
- 1:15:47and I think that kind of put me off at first.
- 1:15:51So I guess I appreciate that you're telling me,
- 1:15:55like,
- 1:15:55no, you got to keep looking because,
- 1:15:57you know, some of that early stuff was kind of garbage.
- 1:16:01Like, I don't know, to me it was anyway.
- 1:16:03Like, it just seemed like, okay,
- 1:16:06like all this psychedelic kind of stuff. Then maybe there were other meanings and I'm missing it or something.
- 1:16:12But I just felt like... No, some of it was acid-speak, too. There's no question about it.
- 1:16:17Yeah.
- 1:16:17And I kind of came away thinking... I don't know. I did not... I didn't respect Jimi Hendrix as a lyricist.
- 1:16:28See, I think there's a lot of double meaning in his lyrics,
- 1:16:32to be honest with you.
- 1:16:32Especially... I have three of them here.
- 1:16:34They're short.
- 1:16:36And you might... They might say, oh, this is psychedelic gobbledygook.
- 1:16:39But then kind of take out the psychedelic and think of a
- 1:16:43inside their own head.
- 1:16:45Voodoo Child opens up with just an absolute killer.
- 1:16:48It's kind of his trooper.
- 1:16:50You know, the trooper's got that great opening verse.
- 1:16:53Well,
- 1:16:54this opens up, well, I stand up next to a mountain and I chop it down with the edge of my hand.
- 1:16:58You think, oh, it's just some psychedelic stuff. All right, now let's put it in some dude inside his head, battling something,
- 1:17:04you know, and how he's going to try to get through that.
- 1:17:07And when I went back and started listening to his lyrics,
- 1:17:10or,
- 1:17:11you know, listening and reading,
- 1:17:12I'm like,
- 1:17:14there's way more here than just him high as a kite.
- 1:17:17You know, like, oh, I got some cool stuff, man.
- 1:17:19I mean, Little Wing,
- 1:17:20while she's walking through the clouds with a circus mind that's running wild.
- 1:17:25I mean, you might say, okay,
- 1:17:26you know, more crap.
- 1:17:27But maybe he's talking about someone who's just kind of not right upstairs.
- 1:17:30I don't know.
- 1:17:31Maybe his lyrics are interpretive.
- 1:17:33There's no doubt about it.
- 1:17:35And I think that's what makes good lyrics.
- 1:17:38This is not, I'm bringing it out.
- 1:17:41I don't care.
- 1:17:41I haven't done it in a while.
- 1:17:42This isn't Steel Panther lyrics,
- 1:17:44okay?
- 1:17:46It's not.
- 1:17:48Okay? You know, I would also include in that, John,
- 1:17:52and I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember the name of the song right now, but I will come up with it very fast.
- 1:17:56But it was the opening song on Woodstock.
- 1:18:03Message to Love.
- 1:18:05Message to Love. And that has a whole verse on it where he's telling women,
- 1:18:10don't let guys
- 1:18:11tell you what to do you know like it is so forward thinking he's just sort of like you do
- 1:18:16something for yourself figure your own thing out and then come back and prove the man that you're
- 1:18:20better than them kind of thing and like he did a lot of weird forward thinking yeah i mean that's a lot of
- 1:18:25stuff to say in 1966 you know well my last one i'll say um and by the way tear i'm not disagreeing to
- 1:18:32disagree i i know what you're saying i just found i i found another avenue to those lyrics is what i'm
- 1:18:37I'm saying.
- 1:18:38Castles made of sand.
- 1:18:40The chorus alone.
- 1:18:41I mean, it sounds,
- 1:18:43again,
- 1:18:43like hippy-dippy, but then you realize it really says something.
- 1:18:47And so castles made of sand. And there's two choruses. He uses two words. The second line is melts into the sea eventually or slips into the sea eventually.
- 1:18:55And it kind of just puts it a little more perspective if you take out the hippie 60s part of it and just start thinking about everything at some point is going to have its downturn or its fall.
- 1:19:08Yeah. But it,
- 1:19:10you know,
- 1:19:11if you're thinking of him from that period,
- 1:19:13you're like, what is this crap?
- 1:19:15Yeah.
- 1:19:16But then,
- 1:19:17but then you step aside outside of it and try to be neutral. And you're like,
- 1:19:21this is kind of profound stuff considering not make it again,
- 1:19:25not saying he's going to want to pull it, sir,
- 1:19:27you know,
- 1:19:28but yeah,
- 1:19:28it's,
- 1:19:30it's done in such a way that it's so interpretive that you can go somebody different places.
- 1:19:34It's not cut and dry.
- 1:19:36And in a time when there were so many politically driven songs,
- 1:19:40I don't subscribe to rock music has always been political. That's BS.
- 1:19:45You've never listened to an early Zeppelin album because they weren't talking about politics.
- 1:19:52I mean, Whitesnake took their cues from Zeppelin.
- 1:19:57But this is kind of nice to not have all this political jargon in a song and to say, well, what is he getting at here?
- 1:20:05That's just my take
- 1:20:06Well,
- 1:20:07he hid that pretty good, though
- 1:20:08And that's how clear where he was
- 1:20:09Because House Burning Down
- 1:20:10Is about the Detroit riots after murder
- 1:20:11Sure, exactly
- 1:20:12That's my point
- 1:20:13But it's not blatant
- 1:20:15I don't think you
- 1:20:15And so I agree with you
- 1:20:17I think he was just really good at metaphor
- 1:20:19And I think
- 1:20:20I agree with everything John said
- 1:20:21You know, I get it
- 1:20:23Some of it's a little goofy
- 1:20:24You know what I mean?
- 1:20:24And,
- 1:20:25you know, like
- 1:20:25I'll go to Spanish Catch-all Magic
- 1:20:27Where he says, you know
- 1:20:29It takes about a half a day to get there
- 1:20:31If we travel by dragonfly
- 1:20:32I get it
- 1:20:32You know what I mean?
- 1:20:33Like,
- 1:20:33that's
- 1:20:34That's about as like, hey, I just smoked a joint as it gets. But there's really not that much of it. If you listen to things like 50th Anniversary or 20th Anniversary or whatever it is and stuff,
- 1:20:46or I was glad John mentioned Castles Made of Sand.
- 1:20:49So that's got these really nice several different verses about things passing and up to including this kid who's like an Indian and he wants to be a great warrior his whole life and he's looking for his first battle the night before.
- 1:21:02So he sneaks in and kills him.
- 1:21:03Yep.
- 1:21:04I mean, that's a great verse.
- 1:21:05And then he says,
- 1:21:07like,
- 1:21:07castles in the sand, you know? And that's, I do think that's really forward to thinking,
- 1:21:11like, to look at that and just go, I don't think he was about stuff.
- 1:21:15You know what I mean?
- 1:21:16I've always been a huge fan of the lyrics for The Wind Cries Mary.
- 1:21:21Absolutely.
- 1:21:21Oh, they're really good,
- 1:21:22actually,
- 1:21:23George. Yeah.
- 1:21:24I mean,
- 1:21:24this is,
- 1:21:25you could say that it's kind of hippy-dippy,
- 1:21:27but it's also really poetic.
- 1:21:30After all the jacks are in their boxes and the clowns have all gone to bed,
- 1:21:33You can hear happiness staggering on down the street,
- 1:21:36footprints dressed in red. I mean, that's beautiful.
- 1:21:39Well, tell me he was not trying to write a Bob Dylan song there, too. Yeah.
- 1:21:42Or,
- 1:21:43you know, a broom is drearily sweeping up the pieces of yesterday's, the broken pieces of yesterday's life. Come on. That's,
- 1:21:49you know, that's not,
- 1:21:51yo,
- 1:21:51I'm high.
- 1:21:51That's like,
- 1:21:53that's,
- 1:21:54that's really like thoughtful stuff there.
- 1:21:59I think,
- 1:21:59TR, I think you hit on something from a non-Hentany.
- 1:22:03Hendrix fan perspective that I think is kind of symptomatic of how people view Hendrix.
- 1:22:11The stuff that gets the most juice,
- 1:22:15the squeakiest wheels are all of the things that you don't like.
- 1:22:19And that's not an indictment on you.
- 1:22:22It's saying.
- 1:22:22It's a common experience.
- 1:22:24It's the commentary on how he's presented by everyone going forward that is probably not necessarily a big fan.
- 1:22:32They're going to hit,
- 1:22:33that,
- 1:22:33you know, excuse me while I kiss the sky.
- 1:22:35Yeah,
- 1:22:36look, that's a really cool thing.
- 1:22:37And Dragonflies.
- 1:22:38Yeah. And look how he burns his guitar.
- 1:22:40Did you know he put acid on his bandana and he wrapped his head? Did he went out and played?
- 1:22:44And that's all the stuff they focus on.
- 1:22:47Because,
- 1:22:48you know, if it leads,
- 1:22:49if it bleeds, it leads,
- 1:22:50right?
- 1:22:50And so that's... Alice Cooper had some good records, man.
- 1:22:53And I,
- 1:22:55which is to support you,
- 1:22:56John. Like, I agree with you. Like, it's the face on the cover of the record and it's that now we're stuck with it.
- 1:23:02You know,
- 1:23:02it's funny.
- 1:23:03because you've made me think and I really have thought this for some time but you reminded me that I do feel like Zeppelin,
- 1:23:10Pink Floyd,
- 1:23:11whatever,
- 1:23:12all these different bands that kind of... Jamie Hendrix kind of got left behind.
- 1:23:16You know, I don't think everybody who digs into the 60s or 70s goes, I gotta get a Hendrix record.
- 1:23:22He's, he's,
- 1:23:23it's like every fifth person.
- 1:23:25And to the point where the collectibles and all these different things, there's not,
- 1:23:29just as not as much. He's not as visible and I think it's because he's more of a musician's musician.
- 1:23:34I think you're right on the money there.
- 1:23:41And it's a shame, but I have a theory about
- 1:23:43Jimi Hendrix, and it's the same theory I had about George Jones.
- 1:23:47It's not a theory, but it was an experience.
- 1:23:49And it's just that I was listening to George Jones one time,
- 1:23:53and I used to always befuddle me. He had a couple songs I liked, and people were always like, he's the greatest country singer ever.
- 1:23:59And then one day,
- 1:24:01I was listening,
- 1:24:02some song came on, and it
- 1:24:03I broke my heart and I was like, oh,
- 1:24:05George Jones is the greatest.
- 1:24:08And then I heard everything he did.
- 1:24:10He stopped loving her today.
- 1:24:14Yeah,
- 1:24:14it wasn't that one,
- 1:24:15but yeah, exactly.
- 1:24:17But then I understood,
- 1:24:18oh, no, he's great. And then I heard everything. It changed the way everything he did sounded to me.
- 1:24:22And I kind of think there's a breaking point with Hendrix like that, where you got to get past the kind of weird way he sort of speaks instead of sings in the earlier recordings.
- 1:24:33I think you're right and I think that that's what's been like my hang-up and that's why I just haven't I don't know it feels like I just haven't broken through on this you know at some point it turns around and it becomes so beautiful I got it I got it for you TR I think this is the best example because we've all dealt with this it's the growling in your metal sure no think about it until you could get past that you you're like this is all crap I can't listen to this music and then
- 1:25:03Yeah.
- 1:25:03Then you finally get it and you're like,
- 1:25:05whoa,
- 1:25:06that's irrelevant now. Now I get the music,
- 1:25:09you know, and I think that that it's.
- 1:25:12And so I wasn't saying anything about you,
- 1:25:15how you view it. I get it because we've had the conversation before. It's just how it's the little bits you've gotten when you have seen it.
- 1:25:23It's they're always giving you the worst bits,
- 1:25:25not the worst,
- 1:25:26but the stuff that puts a negative picture,
- 1:25:30paints a negative,
- 1:25:30not negative, but something.
- 1:25:32Yeah,
- 1:25:33I mean, it just didn't speak to me.
- 1:25:35And I don't know,
- 1:25:37like,
- 1:25:37you know, like I said,
- 1:25:39I can hear all the stuff that went on to be the stuff that I'm into.
- 1:25:44Yeah.
- 1:25:44Right. I mean, if they promoted Band of Gypsies full-fledged,
- 1:25:47100%, I think more people would be into Hendrix. Like, oh, I can get this. I mean, not even that.
- 1:25:54Like,
- 1:25:54you listen to Stone Free, and it's like, that's an Oli Roth song.
- 1:25:58You know, like, the stuff he's doing on Stone Free
- 1:26:02I'm like,
- 1:26:03oh,
- 1:26:04Uli Roth totally ripped that off.
- 1:26:07Which, by the way,
- 1:26:08TR is, I think one of his, that's his earliest single.
- 1:26:12That was from 66.
- 1:26:13That was with the hate. That was the B side of hate Joe.
- 1:26:15So part of the problem is he,
- 1:26:17it was a punchline.
- 1:26:18So that's the, that's the perception has been taken. It's like every time there's a silly drug reference in a movie,
- 1:26:23it's.
- 1:26:25Yeah,
- 1:26:25that's true.
- 1:26:26Yeah. And that's what you get first.
- 1:26:27And so you just think,
- 1:26:29oh, it's this kind of like stereotypical,
- 1:26:32weird.
- 1:26:33And we're not talking about
- 1:26:37Blue Cheer or whatever.
- 1:26:39You could understand.
- 1:26:44I think it just requires
- 1:26:48a little more time and effort on my part
- 1:26:50to peel the onion back a little more.
- 1:26:53The sun might just need to shine through the window
- 1:26:55at the right time at 3 o'clock in the afternoon too,
- 1:26:57though, dude.
- 1:26:57Well, the other thing is,
- 1:26:59I have not listened to First Rays of the New Rising Sun either.
- 1:27:02So I think there's a little bit of like,
- 1:27:07I don't know,
- 1:27:08I think just more of this stuff needs to get in. I never really kind of listened to a lot of this just because it just,
- 1:27:16I didn't connect with it at all.
- 1:27:19Like other than like,
- 1:27:20yeah, the hits were great.
- 1:27:21And it's like,
- 1:27:22okay, this is cool music and everything.
- 1:27:24But like,
- 1:27:26and I could clearly understand this guy as a performer and like,
- 1:27:30you know, he's doing stuff nobody ever did.
- 1:27:32He's making sounds with the guitar nobody ever made.
- 1:27:36So I get all that,
- 1:27:38but it still didn't,
- 1:27:40like, I still just wasn't,
- 1:27:41like,
- 1:27:42pulled in on it.
- 1:27:44Sure.
- 1:27:45I mean, we've all got that, but I think because you've got a musical mind,
- 1:27:49eventually it will. And it might not be for 20 years, but you're going to be like, oh,
- 1:27:52shit, now I got it.
- 1:27:54Yeah.
- 1:27:55Maybe so. You just mentioned,
- 1:27:58for the multiple,
- 1:27:59many times we've mentioned,
- 1:28:01first raise of the new ride,
- 1:28:02And so we're going to talk now about where could this all have gone?
- 1:28:07And I'm glad you mentioned First Race United Sun for one reason quickly, which is honestly, if I was going to tell somebody to get into him, didn't quite get him, I would say get that record first because it doesn't have any of the tropes of the earlier records.
- 1:28:20And I don't think of them as tropes. It's just the thing.
- 1:28:22It's the razor wire people get caught on trying to storm the Jimi Hendrix beach.
- 1:28:26You know what I mean? Like you got to, and none of that stuff is in First Race.
- 1:28:31But I think there will be some good opinions about this, about what would he have done?
- 1:28:38What could he have accomplished?
- 1:28:40What were maybe some of the most logical next steps he was going to take?
- 1:28:44Because I do think he would have had a long and deeply fruitful musical career. I'm not sure it would always have been financially huge,
- 1:28:53but I do think he was such a dedicated guitar player.
- 1:28:58Just like I'm sure we all know,
- 1:29:01Stevie Ray Vaughan was not going to stop Tura.
- 1:29:03You know what I mean? And I think Jimmy had built his own studio.
- 1:29:07He had a studio in New York that he owned, could go in and use anytime he wanted to.
- 1:29:11And that meant something to him. And I think he would have used the living daylights out of it for the next 10 years.
- 1:29:16Yeah.
- 1:29:17Well, I think he kind of would have been like Prince in that way, right? Like, I mean,
- 1:29:21Prince. Oh, that's a good comparison. That is.
- 1:29:23Honestly spent hours and was a perfectionist in the studio.
- 1:29:28Like when I'm reading all this stuff about Hendrix,
- 1:29:30about how he was a perfectionist,
- 1:29:31and how he spent like days in the studio and they're like dude you could have bought your own studio by now and then they actually did they went and said look let's buy this studio or create this studio so you don't like you don't go broke yeah um it just it reminded me of prince because it sounded like oh yeah well this is like what prince was doing like he that's a good that's a wonderful comparison imagine those two guys getting together you know what they probably well they've
- 1:30:01Very could have well have could have yeah I mean I you know because he would have been interesting I do think by the 80s or 90s he would have been you know I don't think he ever would have stopped performing that do but I think he would have occupied like a Clapton-esque place in the musical society where people like yeah well I'm afraid to go say hi to him kind of thing you know at the bar when it's some new musician um well the best evidence we have of the last musical direction was um the
- 1:30:31Rising Sun album and Band of Gypsies I think is kind of needs to be included but I include that because I think that is the collaboration thing I think he would have always had a kind of weird Band of Gypsies thing going off on the side while he was also just pursuing making his own records that's kind of a thing I see that might have happened I think he would have had some of the big hits of the 70s along the lines of like just some hard rock song like you know that you
- 1:31:01that we would all refer back to over and over and over again.
- 1:31:05And I mean, like radio hits, I think it would add some of that.
- 1:31:08I kind of wonder,
- 1:31:10though,
- 1:31:11you know, he died so young.
- 1:31:13Yeah.
- 1:31:14Would there have been like kind of cringey stuff like disco?
- 1:31:18Would he have had a disco album?
- 1:31:20You know, like would he have done something like that where it's just like,
- 1:31:23oh,
- 1:31:24dude,
- 1:31:24you know, like you look back on it and you're like,
- 1:31:26oh, man, I can't believe he might have just like Kiss. You know, they made like some of these albums where you're
- 1:31:31You're like, oh my god, I can't believe they did that.
- 1:31:34Like, would he have done that?
- 1:31:35Like, I kind of wonder. I think he might have been above it. I think he might have been like,
- 1:31:38because I think he took a lot of heart and understanding soulless things and like going,
- 1:31:43oh man,
- 1:31:43that guy, you're not living from your heart, buddy. So I don't know if he would have done that. That boy lives in his heart.
- 1:31:50That's an awful big place for a boy like that to live.
- 1:31:55I don't know. That's a good question.
- 1:31:57But I mean,
- 1:31:58you know, a lot, there's not, the 60s guys,
- 1:32:01All had some embarrassments in the 80s. Let's put it that way.
- 1:32:04Yes.
- 1:32:04And I kind of wonder if that would have happened to him somehow.
- 1:32:08In other words, there was so much drugs.
- 1:32:12And drugs had a very large impact in so many of those guys where they got to such a low point.
- 1:32:24And Clapton's a good example where he put out these albums and it's just like, dude, you've got to clean yourself up.
- 1:32:31It's just like Aerosmith and all these other bands where they just like, they were so drugged out.
- 1:32:37And, and,
- 1:32:38you know,
- 1:32:39Elvis never even recovered from that.
- 1:32:42He died.
- 1:32:43And so it's like,
- 1:32:45okay,
- 1:32:45would he have been able to have the wherewithal to get through the whole drug thing,
- 1:32:49clean himself up and then have kind of a second chapter like Clapton did where,
- 1:32:56you know, he comes back and it's like, oh my God, he's back. And look, listen to this guy.
- 1:33:00And we missed him, and here he is.
- 1:33:03I kind of wonder if that would have been the arc that he would have followed.
- 1:33:08It's a very fair and valid question.
- 1:33:11I think he overdosed the way he did because he didn't have a lot of experience with the drugs that he took at that time.
- 1:33:19So I don't know that he was a deep, deep addict,
- 1:33:21but it was 70,
- 1:33:23and everybody was in trouble in 75,
- 1:33:25so I don't know that he wouldn't have gotten into cocaine and all that stuff.
- 1:33:29I don't know.
- 1:33:31I think I mentioned when we were talking about this a couple weeks ago that I think he might have had a Jeff Beck like I think a Jeff Beck like existence might have worked for him kind of outside a little bit sometimes some of his records would come out on labels that famously put out guitar player records you know what I mean and no chance or even hope of it being on the radio like that's not why he did it.
- 1:33:54Jimi Hendrix on shrapnel records.
- 1:33:59Exactly.
- 1:34:00But I don't know. The best evidence we have is the last things he did. And I think
- 1:34:06it's sort of embracing the kind of
- 1:34:08funky groove of Band of Gypsies
- 1:34:10that he would have done some stuff like that.
- 1:34:12And I have one other theory that I'll share quickly.
- 1:34:14And then Rising Sun, I think
- 1:34:16he would have had this really bright
- 1:34:18slightly more organized, not
- 1:34:20wandering,
- 1:34:2170s hard rock
- 1:34:22career.
- 1:34:23And then finally
- 1:34:24there's a part of me that thinks
- 1:34:26he might have got caught up in
- 1:34:29the funkadelic stuff and also the big movement in the 70s of black artists with a huge focus on Africa.
- 1:34:40Like there's this African vein that runs through James Brown's 70s records where he's wearing they're literally called things like Africa and he goes and he might have done something like that.
- 1:34:51Hard to say. I mean, I think he thought of it as an every man's man and he was happy to sort of be like, well, none of us are any.
- 1:34:58other man you know what i mean so i don't know if he would have done that but
- 1:35:01yeah or like you said like maybe he would have hooked up with george clinton or you know it's like
- 1:35:05it's hard to say like you know what kind of collaborations might have taken place because i'm sure he was
- 1:35:11kind of always looking for things and people like oh that's a cool sound i want to kind of get into that
- 1:35:19and so who knows who he would have collaborated with so i'm doing to get anything you think that you
- 1:35:26I knew about his future.
- 1:35:28Do you want to go, George? I'll go after you.
- 1:35:31Oh,
- 1:35:32you know,
- 1:35:33I was thinking like, you know,
- 1:35:35would he have gotten into anything that was more hard rock based? And it seems unlikely,
- 1:35:41but some of the 70s hard rock guitar players were pretty good. You know, I mean,
- 1:35:47they're all right.
- 1:35:48But,
- 1:35:49you know, it might have been something that might have at least tickled a passing
- 1:35:56Fancy from him.
- 1:35:57Obviously,
- 1:35:57Jimmy Page kind of overlapped with him a little bit.
- 1:36:00And I don't know of any,
- 1:36:02like,
- 1:36:02connection there.
- 1:36:03And I kind of doubt that,
- 1:36:05like, he would have been into Black Sabbath or any of the Tony Iommi kind of stuff.
- 1:36:09It's probably not his bag man.
- 1:36:12But,
- 1:36:13like, you know, Eddie Van Halen or,
- 1:36:16you know,
- 1:36:19Brian May,
- 1:36:20Alex Lifeson, you know, these guys,
- 1:36:23even,
- 1:36:25like,
- 1:36:25Angus Young.
- 1:36:26who,
- 1:36:27not technical,
- 1:36:28but had a very important blues-based,
- 1:36:34harder-rocking kind of sound,
- 1:36:36he might have been like, oh,
- 1:36:37man,
- 1:36:38you know.
- 1:36:39Yeah, I've been missing something here. That's cool.
- 1:36:42Yeah, he could have gotten into that. Yeah,
- 1:36:43that's a good point, George.
- 1:36:45And, you know, it's interesting to think about what Hendrix would have thought of the people that got influenced by
- 1:36:56I was just going to say an infinite feedback loop of I influenced you, you influenced me, I influenced you back. Oh my God,
- 1:37:02yeah, right. It's like, oh my mind is blowing up. But like,
- 1:37:05you know, we never got to,
- 1:37:07we really never got to see that,
- 1:37:09right? Because he died so young.
- 1:37:11It's like he had to,
- 1:37:12otherwise this would have happened. It would have been the end of the world.
- 1:37:14I mean,
- 1:37:15there wasn't anybody else like,
- 1:37:16there was Clown, but nobody,
- 1:37:18he was the Eddie Van Halen of that time.
- 1:37:20Yes.
- 1:37:22And I think of them as the two weird geniuses that,
- 1:37:26watched people play guitar,
- 1:37:28somehow learned to play by watching them,
- 1:37:30and just knew where to touch the neck at any time.
- 1:37:33And it wasn't all founded in musical theory.
- 1:37:36I have a third guy to add to that.
- 1:37:39George,
- 1:37:40were you done with your part?
- 1:37:41Yeah, yeah,
- 1:37:41yeah,
- 1:37:42go ahead.
- 1:37:42So, I haven't heard anyone mention it yet, so I'll add a different avenue.
- 1:37:48See, I think he would have further gone down the band of gypsies avenue and gotten into
- 1:37:56not so much funkadelic,
- 1:37:59but funk rock in itself.
- 1:38:01But I also think he would have started to get influenced by the jazz rock fusion guys because there's more exploration there.
- 1:38:08And I kind of see him hooking up with Jeff Beck more.
- 1:38:13Yeah,
- 1:38:14because Jeff Beck was huge and popular. And then all of a sudden he decided,
- 1:38:18I'm going over here and it's not popular.
- 1:38:22You know,
- 1:38:22so John, I think more than any other vision,
- 1:38:25that's the one I believe.
- 1:38:26Yeah.
- 1:38:26And I just feel like he would gravitate, because Beck just played to his own.
- 1:38:32Yeah.
- 1:38:33So he was a, you know,
- 1:38:35a drummer statement,
- 1:38:36played to his own beat, his own drum.
- 1:38:39And I just feel like he would have gravitated towards that.
- 1:38:42And so.
- 1:38:43They would have wanted to just keep exploring his guitar and he didn't care he listened.
- 1:38:46Right. I think he would have suffered in the 80s. I don't think that the sounds of the 80s,
- 1:38:51the synth,
- 1:38:52the gated sound would appeal to him.
- 1:38:55Yeah.
- 1:38:55I almost feel like he would do the opposite.
- 1:38:58Maybe I'm wrong about that.
- 1:39:00He would have gone completely old school.
- 1:39:02I don't know if he would have had Eric Clapton's resurgence in the 80s with Behind the Sun, you know, where he was writing pop songs,
- 1:39:11but they were bluesy,
- 1:39:13but they were radio friendly.
- 1:39:15No, he wasn't a lay down Sally guy.
- 1:39:17He had a string with three albums in the 80s that were massive.
- 1:39:20I don't know if Hendrix would have done that because I don't know.
- 1:39:25Well,
- 1:39:25see,
- 1:39:25that's the thing.
- 1:39:30He's the only one that could have probably innovated his way out of that to the point where it's like we can't even imagine what he would have done.
- 1:39:40That would have been so... He did like technology.
- 1:39:44He did, but I could see him recoiling against that kind of technology and going all acoustic for like six or seven years.
- 1:39:51Or would he go and be like,
- 1:39:55Prince,
- 1:39:56going back to Prince,
- 1:39:57and be so far ahead of everything that the majority of what he did at the end of his life was just like, people are just shrugging and going, I don't know what to do with this.
- 1:40:08Yeah, I don't know either.
- 1:40:09Well, that's possible.
- 1:40:10Yeah,
- 1:40:11like,
- 1:40:11it's just,
- 1:40:12you know, it didn't register until later,
- 1:40:14and then it's like, oh yeah, he was so far ahead of his time, we didn't get it at the time.
- 1:40:18John's theory is my favorite,
- 1:40:20though,
- 1:40:20and I do think, because in the Electric Lady Land,
- 1:40:25They do talk about how he really liked some jazzy elements.
- 1:40:28Which,
- 1:40:28by the way, he went on Rainy Day and those songs on there. He went and found, there was some jazz band he said, you guys come down and play on my record. So that's a whole other band playing those songs.
- 1:40:39And he liked riffing on top of that.
- 1:40:41I could have seen them at least having a fusion period.
- 1:40:45At least.
- 1:40:46Which is more or less what you guys are saying anyway, which is he would have gone somewhere where a lot of people were like, I kind of don't really get Hendrix anymore.
- 1:40:54Well,
- 1:40:55maybe,
- 1:40:55yeah.
- 1:40:55I mean, would he be like hooked up with like Chick Corea and John McLaughlin and Aldi Miola or something like John Luke Pani or something like the, you know,
- 1:41:05just jamming with those dudes?
- 1:41:07Maybe.
- 1:41:07I can see that.
- 1:41:08He was capable.
- 1:41:09I mean,
- 1:41:10there's stuff. I talk about some of these live shows.
- 1:41:12It wasn't always just dive bombs and cool blues licks. I mean,
- 1:41:16he played some weird Spanish style runs and stuff in all kinds of different stuff. He knew what he was doing. He was good.
- 1:41:23And he was aware of different things.
- 1:41:27I just think my last on this part is I just think he would have probably embraced the unknown or the lesser known avenues and players not that Jeff Beck was lesser known but let's be honest he wasn't followed like the 70s hard rock guitarists were not by a long time he just got by a million miles I mean Eric Clapton was way more famous than him and Jeff Beck was
- 1:41:54way better player than him.
- 1:41:56And I'm not disparaging Eric Clapton.
- 1:41:58It's just... Beck was light years like he had been handling everybody else.
- 1:42:02But he just kept moving forward on his playing. He didn't stay in his lane all the time.
- 1:42:08Just ask Jimmy Page.
- 1:42:10They all looked up to him.
- 1:42:12Yeah. And I think they all would have looked up to Hendricks. I don't know. Who knows? I mean, we got robbed of seeing him play with Steve Ray Vaughn.
- 1:42:20Wouldn't that have been cool?
- 1:42:22Yeah.
- 1:42:23Whether you like...
- 1:42:24You know that would have happened. I mean,
- 1:42:26there's no doubt that would have happened. Go back and listen to Steve Ray Vaughan now.
- 1:42:30And you hear every guitarist that influenced him in his music.
- 1:42:34And he has, he had zero qualms saying, yeah,
- 1:42:38I was influenced by that.
- 1:42:40So.
- 1:42:42Let's, if I may,
- 1:42:45so we can be respectful of a time limit here.
- 1:42:48Thought it was a nice way to finish this.
- 1:42:51Well,
- 1:42:51two things. I want to say two things.
- 1:42:53One, we,
- 1:42:54We've talked about this for a while,
- 1:42:56and I don't feel like we've scratched the surface.
- 1:42:58So, you know, dig your hands into some of this stuff.
- 1:43:03Put your headphones on.
- 1:43:04Listen to some of these things.
- 1:43:06Read a book. Watch a documentary.
- 1:43:08To that end, I thought we could make a few suggestions of things that we thought people who wanted to go a little further or even just get started might do. And so I'm going to suggest any documentary that looks to be of quality, I think you should check out.
- 1:43:22John mentioned these ones that are attached.
- 1:43:24to these remasters that came out i think it was in 2010 he said um i bet you you could find those on youtube probably i'm guessing you can yeah everything's jacked right and put up there i'm going to suggest a fairly recent documentary came out that's called um electric ladyland a vision i think it's called and it's about the building of the studio of electric ladyland but that was hendrix studio it's all about hendrix it's all about the studio it was all about his vision for music
- 1:43:54How He Built the Studio,
- 1:43:55blah, blah, blah.
- 1:43:56I would suggest that.
- 1:43:57There's also very good documentaries on the album Electric Ladyland that you can watch on YouTube that are about an hour long.
- 1:44:06I'm going to suggest that you get live at Monterey and experience what all the teenagers in the United States experienced for their first time that night.
- 1:44:15I just don't think you can do much better than the Woodstock show.
- 1:44:19It was Jimmy at the height of his powers,
- 1:44:21and it's
- 1:44:22It's a pretty long show and it kind of covers all the bases.
- 1:44:26It does some amazing improvisation on that so you can hear the plane.
- 1:44:30And then I'm going to, this is too easy, it's too broad, I'm taking away everybody else's suggestions,
- 1:44:34but get those studio records,
- 1:44:35everything up through Rays of the New Rising Sun and listen to them in the set of headphones.
- 1:44:42Preferably back to back to back.
- 1:44:44Any suggestions,
- 1:44:45folks?
- 1:44:46And maybe it's just one of those records or something, I don't know.
- 1:44:49I would suggest you just rewind what Jay said and then listen to them.
- 1:44:52Listen to him say it again.
- 1:44:53That's what you should do.
- 1:44:56Because,
- 1:44:57you know,
- 1:44:57I mean,
- 1:44:58personally,
- 1:44:58you know,
- 1:44:59as I said earlier, I kind of focus mainly on the three albums.
- 1:45:04So I haven't gone nearly as far down the rabbit hole as Jay and John have.
- 1:45:13But there's a lot in those three records,
- 1:45:15George.
- 1:45:15Yeah,
- 1:45:16yeah. But I mean,
- 1:45:16you know,
- 1:45:17there's so I mean,
- 1:45:19there is a lot of stuff out there, but there's at the same time,
- 1:45:22there is so little.
- 1:45:24Just suck it all up.
- 1:45:26Just take it all in.
- 1:45:28You know? I would say, you know what, to that end? Get several live shows.
- 1:45:32Start at the beginning.
- 1:45:33Several versions of Machine Gun.
- 1:45:34Listen to the core.
- 1:45:37See what it's about.
- 1:45:40And then branch out to the deep end and the live shows and all that stuff.
- 1:45:48Yeah, there's so much out there right now that
- 1:45:52It's weird because there's always been this debate about whether the Hendrix family should release stuff.
- 1:45:58But we've gotten some serious gems.
- 1:46:01I mean, I haven't even got all my stuff ripped on it because I had it all on CD. I just listened to it then.
- 1:46:08Since we started talking about this, I was like, oh, I got to get this stuff back out on my 10 bazillion byte drive.
- 1:46:15In case anything happens,
- 1:46:17I have that.
- 1:46:18My suggestion,
- 1:46:19these are all great suggestions,
- 1:46:21I would really,
- 1:46:22I would suggest finding something where there's multiple shows because he did a lot of you know first set second set which is kind of okay was it really just a long show and it had two sets kind of like when we saw Rush no it was probably one of these deals where he played it like what seven seven early there's like an hour in between and then they play a late show then and because of that he was able to play songs from both sets both times but then
- 1:46:52and he changed them how he did it and he changed the order and i would suggest
- 1:46:57grabbing something like winterland or live at winterland is like six shows in that and just kind of
- 1:47:05slowly working through and also without question the band of gypsies which is the new year's eve new
- 1:47:11year's day shows in the film or east 69 70 there they he plays a lot of the same songs in all four sets
- 1:47:21but they're all different.
- 1:47:23They're placed in different.
- 1:47:25Staging them on the set list changes how you hear the song.
- 1:47:29I mean,
- 1:47:30we just saw Rush, just to give an idea, and they opened with one of their progress longest songs to start the show.
- 1:47:38Never in a million years would I have thought that they would have done that.
- 1:47:41He would do that. He played Machine Gun early in the set,
- 1:47:44or he'd play it late in the middle,
- 1:47:46and it changes your perception of how the song is.
- 1:47:49So I would suggest
- 1:47:51All from I mean,
- 1:47:53everyone's made great suggestions for I'm just pushing the live shows Jay's mentioned Berkeley you can't go wrong with any of these live shows Woodstock,
- 1:48:01Isle of Wright they're all they all give you something so there's an interesting thing here that we didn't touch on and I think partially to keep negativity out of it but he is one of those musicians and there aren't that many that come off the top of my head but who has had a lot more released posthumously than was released during his career
- 1:48:22But that's testament to how often he wanted to record,
- 1:48:25how many shows he played,
- 1:48:26the way he did things,
- 1:48:27the way people were smart enough to record his shows and all this different stuff, and a lot of studio stuff.
- 1:48:31But the negative part is that his estate was controlled by his dad for a long time, and his dad, I think, was kind of a money grabber.
- 1:48:38So he kind of flooded the system for a while.
- 1:48:41But as John said, it's fine. It was a double-edged sword because he accidentally released a whole bunch of really good stuff, and there's probably not that much of his junk.
- 1:48:51a confusing catalog to jump into because they're constantly releasing stuff.
- 1:48:57But, you know,
- 1:48:58like I said, I think so.
- 1:48:59I think John and George mixed together is right.
- 1:49:03Start at the core and then get to the deep end a little bit.
- 1:49:06And if it's a famous show,
- 1:49:08it's probably pretty good.
- 1:49:09Try that.
- 1:49:10Meaning Woodstock,
- 1:49:11Monterey,
- 1:49:12so on and so forth, Isla White.
- 1:49:13John's mentioned a couple of times.
- 1:49:16And then the real fun can start after that because that's when you can go,
- 1:49:19I'm going to listen to these five shows that I've never heard of.
- 1:49:22And you will be surprised at how different and creative each of them is. The basis of the song will be the same, but the man knew more notes than his guitar seemed to contain.
- 1:49:32I don't know how he did it,
- 1:49:33but he did.
- 1:49:34You know, George mentioned earlier,
- 1:49:37he mentioned The Dead.
- 1:49:39I almost feel like outside of Axis, Baldest, Love, which I do listen to still all the time,
- 1:49:44I almost feel like he's like The Dead a little bit with his live shows.
- 1:49:48I know dead fans that don't listen to the albums.
- 1:49:51They only listen to the live shows.
- 1:49:53Yeah.
- 1:49:54Because whether you like the dead or not,
- 1:49:57and I've seen them one time,
- 1:49:58it's a whole different ball of wax than the albums. And you don't know what you're getting every night.
- 1:50:04I feel that way with his live shows.
- 1:50:06Yeah.
- 1:50:07You can almost live with those and never hear Purple Haze once on any of these shows,
- 1:50:13you know, because he's always doing something different.
- 1:50:15I would actually,
- 1:50:16John, I'll go.
- 1:50:18I'll jump on that and just say you could never listen to any of the studio records and just listen to the live records and you're still going to have a heck of a great time.
- 1:50:25Right.
- 1:50:25And understand the magnificence.
- 1:50:28It's cool that he was able to somehow pull this all down and put it on tape.
- 1:50:33And it's such an organized fashion,
- 1:50:36but.
- 1:50:36You have to just put it all in perspective.
- 1:50:39The first single came out in December of 1966 and he died in September of 1970.
- 1:50:47All this happened.
- 1:50:48in less than four years.
- 1:50:50Absurd.
- 1:50:50It's absurd.
- 1:50:52He never stopped.
- 1:50:54He never stopped. He was always... So maybe you guys can clarify this,
- 1:50:59because one of the kind of contradictions to me is, like,
- 1:51:04he was so... So based on what I read and all the information that I kind of absorbed in the last couple of days about,
- 1:51:12like, his perfectionism and wanting to do all these takes and all this stuff in the
- 1:51:18the studio.
- 1:51:20But yet,
- 1:51:21like,
- 1:51:21he released this band of Gypsies album,
- 1:51:25which was just a single night, you know, live thing.
- 1:51:31And I'm pretty sure they didn't do any overdubs or do anything else. Actually,
- 1:51:34it's a combination of two different nights.
- 1:51:37It's not even a full show.
- 1:51:39But Gypsies, not the philosophy of it, right? Right. But yeah, my point is, though,
- 1:51:43here's a guy who's like,
- 1:51:45you know, so focused on perfectionism,
- 1:51:48but yet,
- 1:51:48It's like, yeah, let's let this total,
- 1:51:51you know,
- 1:51:52live thing just get out there without like,
- 1:51:57I don't know. It just seems I find that hard to reconcile because I couldn't understand how this guy who is so obsessed with like trying to make these sounds in the studio and doing 29 takes of a particular song.
- 1:52:10But yet they just improvise this whole thing in the show.
- 1:52:14It's like,
- 1:52:15it's just like these guys and they just record it and put it out.
- 1:52:18And it's like there was no obsession with it,
- 1:52:22right?
- 1:52:22The early stuff with Chaz Chandler was very,
- 1:52:26let's get it done, we only have an hour left in the studio.
- 1:52:29It was Electric Ladyland on is when he started to become that kind of conflicting personality that you're talking about started to happen more then,
- 1:52:40when he had more control in the studio.
- 1:52:43But I have another answer for that too, and it was one of my own perceptions.
- 1:52:48that was changed some time ago. And it was years and years and years ago when I first discovered Hendrix.
- 1:52:54First of all, if you've never played a single coil Stratocaster through a wah pedal and a distorted amp, you're missing out.
- 1:53:05It is such a cool sound.
- 1:53:08You just do stuff that you didn't know you could do.
- 1:53:11So there's that.
- 1:53:12But secondarily,
- 1:53:13I used to say to people,
- 1:53:14oh,
- 1:53:15Hendrix made mistakes all the time. They just sounded good.
- 1:53:18I was wrong.
- 1:53:19I have listened to Jimi Hendrix so much like in the last like four years. He's kind of been one of my constantly rotating.
- 1:53:25Hendrix almost never made a mistake.
- 1:53:27And I'm not joking.
- 1:53:28Like you might be like just really go and listen and understand where some of the sounds are coming on. If you hear something then you can kind of sometimes he's doing these things that sound like mistakes that are completely on purpose.
- 1:53:38So all I mean is that part of him what he felt about music was it was like he was such a live performer that it was like he was like he was like he was like he was like he was like he was like he was like he was like he was
- 1:53:48felt it was to be experienced in the moment,
- 1:53:51blah, blah, blah. And listen to some of his ramblings on things.
- 1:53:53Like, we're all here, man. Like, he talks about at the Berklee show. He says, yesterday was yesterday,
- 1:53:57tomorrow was tomorrow. I'm sure you got stuff you wrote, but this is our little magic moment together,
- 1:54:00man, right?
- 1:54:01You know, and then they play the show.
- 1:54:03That's why he was able to do things like Band of Gypsies, because he really believed in those kinds of expressions.
- 1:54:08He just loved the studio, too.
- 1:54:10So I don't even know if he was a perfectionist.
- 1:54:13I think he was somebody that eventually somebody had to tell him, dude, there's no more buttons we
- 1:54:18can push.
- 1:54:19It's one o'clock in the morning.
- 1:54:20It's done,
- 1:54:21dude.
- 1:54:21You know what I mean?
- 1:54:22I think he would, I don't think it was perfectionism. It was, uh,
- 1:54:25I bet I can get four more sounds on there. That's all.
- 1:54:28Okay.
- 1:54:29That's my take on it.
- 1:54:30And, and also I got to say band of gypsy is pretty flawless performance.
- 1:54:34So I, they didn't, there was nothing that had to be done to that thing.
- 1:54:36So.
- 1:54:37Oh yeah.
- 1:54:38Well, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't kind of, I didn't take it that way.
- 1:54:41Yeah.
- 1:54:41But, but my point was just that, you know,
- 1:54:44it's very improvisational and I'm sure it was like,
- 1:54:48It certainly didn't sound over-rehearsed.
- 1:54:51It's just like,
- 1:54:52hey, I'm going to let these guys do their thing.
- 1:54:56I'm going to do my thing.
- 1:54:58And here it is.
- 1:55:00But yet, it was as far from this perfectionist studio thing that you can imagine.
- 1:55:11I think a good way to wrap this up is with a story that was from the Electric Ladyland studio.
- 1:55:18And Eddie Kramer is saying, you know,
- 1:55:21Jimmy,
- 1:55:23you could go off at great length, but he kind of always was doing something great,
- 1:55:26you know, and important and whatever.
- 1:55:28And then when they did Voodoo Child,
- 1:55:30not the Slight Return,
- 1:55:31but the bluesy jam in the first record,
- 1:55:34which,
- 1:55:34by the way, is as good as the song Black Sabbath, as far as I'm concerned, but whatever.
- 1:55:38And Buddy Miles has a drum solo in the middle of that.
- 1:55:43And it went on,
- 1:55:45apparently,
- 1:55:45for like a half an hour.
- 1:55:47And it got to the point where it was longer than the side of a record,
- 1:55:55right?
- 1:55:55And they're making a record.
- 1:55:57And he looks over at Annie Kramer,
- 1:55:59and he kept slumping down and down and down until finally he said,
- 1:56:03buddy needs to shut the hell up.
- 1:56:09Which was it. I mean, not much of a comical line, but my point is that he had a vision for it. He was just like, let's let him have his night, and then we'll go and cut out 12 minutes of it.
- 1:56:18Which is exactly what they did.
- 1:56:21And so just know that song is apparently 24 minutes longer than the already 12 or 14 minutes is.
- 1:56:28Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if Perfectionist really was his thing. I don't think that's what it was. I think it was Exploration.
- 1:56:35Okay.
- 1:56:35Maybe the live show allowed him to feel free of the studio and allowed him setting aside the recreational enhancers that may have been happening
- 1:56:47live.
- 1:56:48Maybe he felt,
- 1:56:49to answer your question,
- 1:56:51or maybe he felt like, hey, I don't have the restrictions
- 1:56:53of the studio.
- 1:56:54I'm just going to
- 1:56:55see where this goes tonight.
- 1:56:58Maybe it was his Jekyll and Hyde.
- 1:57:02Or maybe he was just
- 1:57:03chasing that magical moment.
- 1:57:05I think that that might have been what it was
- 1:57:07where it's like, hey, let's see what happens
- 1:57:10and something really incredible
- 1:57:11could happen here.
- 1:57:14But you just never know when it's going to happen.
- 1:57:16with the right guys and let's oh you know like let's just kind of cultivate this and see how this jam goes and oh wow there was this really amazing part and okay that's what i was looking for you kind of just gave me the chills dude i'm not joking because i think that's exactly who he was i think he was always chasing the magical moment and yeah i think you i think the nail on the head i think we we missed where this was all going i think it was a new direction and
- 1:57:46I think he hopes we all like it jazz odyssey as odyssey I see what you did there buddy miles he wrote this yeah well I'm gonna I'll purposely cut us off there just because we got I would done well by the time one of us needs here but I it's a conversation that we could do it all over again I mean there was so much more I kind of
- 1:58:16I personally wanted to say, but I think we hit some good, hot, emotional, and intelligent points about this artist who's really worthy of your time and your devotion and your love and your whatever,
- 1:58:27if you can find your way into it. And it's a gift that really gives a lot.
- 1:58:31So if you don't know Hendrix, give it a shot. Yeah.
- 1:58:34George, is there any additional you want to add? Because I know you didn't have, maybe I was stepping on you too much tonight.
- 1:58:40Stop stepping on me.
- 1:58:42I'm not your stepping stone.
- 1:58:43Obviously,
- 1:58:44you're my stepping stone.
- 1:58:47Except that's the monkeys.
- 1:58:49He was on.
- 1:58:51But, um,
- 1:58:53no, I don't think so. I think I
- 1:58:55think I have said my piece.
- 1:58:58Cool.
- 1:58:58Okay.
- 1:59:00It's fun. It's
- 1:59:01fun, man.
- 1:59:02There's so much to talk about
- 1:59:03with this guy.
- 1:59:04So,
- 1:59:05good stuff.
- 1:59:06It's funny. I've been
- 1:59:07looking at John's, um,
- 1:59:08got Axis Bull
- 1:59:09to Love up on his now playing
- 1:59:11section behind his head and it makes me really
- 1:59:13want to listen to the record.
- 1:59:14Hold on.
- 1:59:15There was 40 comments I wanted to make about that record,
- 1:59:17but whatever.
- 1:59:18But Jay,
- 1:59:19there's something behind it that I bought by accident.
- 1:59:21Hold on.
- 1:59:22Yeah, yeah.
- 1:59:24So I thought I bought the CD,
- 1:59:26because I don't buy as much vinyl anymore,
- 1:59:28but I want it. I have all his live stuff, and I got this.
- 1:59:32Oh, wow.
- 1:59:33By accident,
- 1:59:34and I was going to actually send it back, because I was like, oh, I don't want the vinyl, and I was like,
- 1:59:38ah,
- 1:59:39fuck it, I'll keep it.
- 1:59:40Yeah.
- 1:59:41You know what?
- 1:59:42I do want the vinyl.
- 1:59:45brain working there one was going tell john he should keep another one was like say tell john send it to me hey i have a small alice cooper anecdote that would be a perfect way to wrap this up because i just saw this yesterday and it was wonderful and it was um i saw him be an interview because i think he just had a book that just came out yep and i've been seeing little excerpts from his interviews on whatever algorithm i get stuck in and i had known this story but it's a great story it's very short um about how he
- 2:00:16met Elvis.
- 2:00:18I think it was in Las Vegas and Elvis had handlers as you know and they would gather people and say hey Elvis wants to meet you.
- 2:00:26And so somehow he ends up backstage or in the hotel where Elvis is staying in his room and he's there with I don't know why but Liza Minnelli.
- 2:00:35And I think they've come separately. They didn't take the same limo or anything.
- 2:00:38So it's Elvis,
- 2:00:39Liza Minnelli and Alice Cooper in this hotel room.
- 2:00:43Sounds like a joke.
- 2:00:46It's got a good punchline. A priest and a rabbi and a walk into a bar.
- 2:00:50I promise you it's perfectly true, but it's got a punchline in any case. But Elvis immediately says to Alice,
- 2:00:56like, hey, it's nice to meet you both.
- 2:00:58And he says,
- 2:00:58and then he goes,
- 2:00:59and that was because come over here. I want to show you something interesting.
- 2:01:02And you guys will know that Elvis was capable of this kind of behavior.
- 2:01:05He reaches in this drawer and he pulls out a loaded.38 pistol.
- 2:01:10And then he gives it to Alice Cooper and he goes,
- 2:01:14and Alice is like, this is
- 2:01:15and it's like i'm gonna show you how to take a gun off of a person because i was
- 2:01:22studying new karate and all that stuff right but the punchline is that elvin or that alice with whom the
- 2:01:28interview was being conducted said he said in the little devil on my shoulder was like shoot him and it was
- 2:01:36because he said could there be a better headline than alice kerper alice cooper murders elvis presley
- 2:01:42He was observing himself from outside of his body. It's just like people would love to read that story.
- 2:01:48He said, I've of course passed,
- 2:01:50but he said for a minute I've just just like I'm gonna shoot Elvis.
- 2:01:54Just simply for the headline and it would have been a magnificent headline.
- 2:01:58Oh God.
- 2:02:00Anyway,
- 2:02:00and it's a true story.
- 2:02:02Right.
- 2:02:03And then I guess he went on to show him how to disarm a person.
- 2:02:06So whatever.
- 2:02:06Yeah.
- 2:02:08So Elvis,
- 2:02:09Alice almost shot Elvis.
- 2:02:12All right, well, I think we have jumped the Jimmy shark here,
- 2:02:17and it may be time to move on.
- 2:02:20Well, I think we could still devote a whole episode to all the people that,
- 2:02:25like,
- 2:02:26his disciples.
- 2:02:27Yeah, this is just Jimmy part one.
- 2:02:29This is, yeah, I think there's a whole other separate set of this that we haven't. Which we almost didn't, you know, Satriani worshipped him, man. You know what I mean?
- 2:02:37Yes.
- 2:02:38Well,
- 2:02:38and Vi and Roth and
- 2:02:45Yeah, absolutely.
- 2:02:49It's true.
- 2:02:49Wait, isn't that funny?
- 2:02:50We didn't touch on that much of that.
- 2:02:53Tip of the iceberg.
- 2:02:55So what else have you guys been up to lately?
- 2:02:58Listen, anything good?
- 2:02:59Do anything fun?
- 2:03:00What's going on?
- 2:03:02Well, just the other night,
- 2:03:04I went out to see the Back to the Beginning movie,
- 2:03:09which had kind of, you know,
- 2:03:11due to Ozzy's death that took place right after the concert happened in,
- 2:03:16I guess it was,
- 2:03:17yeah, 2025.
- 2:03:20The original intent was to get that out sooner and have it out so that people could have a lasting keepsake of that event.
- 2:03:34But of course when Ozzy passed, it was,
- 2:03:36I guess,
- 2:03:38obviously it was devastating to the family and everybody that was involved.
- 2:03:41So it ended up taking a lot more time to kind of put that together.
- 2:03:47Pivot a little.
- 2:03:48Yeah.
- 2:03:49And so it will eventually and actually it's already out right now. You can go online and get copies of the new like the this this version of the film.
- 2:04:02It's like there's a Blu-ray some CDs and there's I thought they weren't coming out till December.
- 2:04:08So I was like oh it's out.
- 2:04:10And and there's a
- 2:04:11a massive box set that's like $389.
- 2:04:14Yikes.
- 2:04:14With like,
- 2:04:15you know, all this extra footage and a book and all this other stuff.
- 2:04:20I love them that,
- 2:04:21but not that much.
- 2:04:22So I'll probably just get the Blu-ray and the CD.
- 2:04:27And the film was pretty cool.
- 2:04:29They basically,
- 2:04:31it was like part documentary,
- 2:04:35but mostly performance footage from the day,
- 2:04:39which was July 5th.
- 2:04:41of 2025 when uh for those that may not be familiar that was basically slated to be uh the last
- 2:04:51performance for ozzy in both as ozzy his as a solo artist and uh for black sabbath as a as a group like that
- 2:05:00their final show and they invited numerous different bands to participate in this uh and tom morello was kind of in charge he was like the music director
- 2:05:11And he basically invited all these bands to be part of it. And with the premise of you're going to do a cover of either an Ozzy song or a Black Sabbath song, and then you can do songs of your own band as well.
- 2:05:30And they also put together kind of like this all-star group of performers that also would come together and play different songs that they had throughout the day.
- 2:05:41And it was a multi-hour affair, as you can imagine,
- 2:05:43because there were numerous bands that participated.
- 2:05:47And so,
- 2:05:48you know, I wasn't quite sure how this movie was going to work, because obviously to go from hours and hours of footage of this performance,
- 2:05:57these various performances.
- 2:05:59But what they did was they basically took the Sabbath or Ozzy covers that each band did and put that into the film.
- 2:06:11along with kind of interspersed with some comments from different people that were there as to like how the day went and what it was like and Tom Morello talking about,
- 2:06:24you know, putting the thing together.
- 2:06:27So it was very interesting.
- 2:06:28The performances were really good.
- 2:06:31It was just really impressive to watch this performance and to,
- 2:06:37you know,
- 2:06:37and now knowing as you watch it, like this is Ozzy.
- 2:06:43It was kind of moving and touching.
- 2:06:47You could see that Ozzy truly felt the love from everybody.
- 2:06:55It was a really great performance.
- 2:06:58Unfortunately,
- 2:06:59they only release these films a lot of times like this for a day or two before it gets released.
- 2:07:10I don't know that they'll put it back in theaters again but like it was definitely worth going to see because I enjoyed seeing it on the big screen and hearing it through you know the movie sound system which was really good how long was it what was the running time it ended up like just under two and a half hours so it seemed like you know which sounds like a really long time but as you watch it it actually went quickly because you know you're seeing all these short
- 2:07:40musical performances.
- 2:07:43It's like, okay,
- 2:07:43here's Mastodon doing their song, and here's
- 2:07:47whoever doing Alice in Chains doing their Black Sabbath tune.
- 2:07:53So it kind of actually went fairly quickly,
- 2:07:56and I think they
- 2:07:58also kind of edited some of the songs down a little bit.
- 2:08:03So some of the songs
- 2:08:06I don't think were totally complete for those of the people
- 2:08:10out there that,
- 2:08:10you know, because that was a live stream event and a lot of people actually bought tickets and you could live stream it in your house and watch it like all day,
- 2:08:17which my friend Bernie did.
- 2:08:19And so for him, he was like seeing it all again in this movie and felt like,
- 2:08:24wow,
- 2:08:24you know, they definitely kind of cut some stuff down.
- 2:08:27But they had to if you're going to make a movie out of this.
- 2:08:30So I didn't have a problem with that.
- 2:08:33And it was very cool performance and very touching when you think about,
- 2:08:39you know,
- 2:08:39This is it.
- 2:08:40This is the very end.
- 2:08:42And Ozzy actually sounded really good.
- 2:08:45All the bands were really amazing.
- 2:08:47The musicians just put on these really incredible performances.
- 2:08:53And so I enjoyed seeing that in the theater.
- 2:08:56I read you need to bring Kleenex.
- 2:08:58Well, there were some touching moments and some moments where you kind of get choked up because it's like, I'll say this,
- 2:09:08you know,
- 2:09:08it caused
- 2:09:09a sensation at the time because I don't know that he's really considered like he's definitely not considered like a metal guy but the what Youngblood's performance of changes was really gripping I've heard that a lot from people I mean like seriously people whom I respect and I haven't even checked it out totally wanted to admit it and more than one person that I know was like dude the Youngblood thing was crazy good he's kind of cool regardless I mean he does some weird stuff but some of his stuff's kind of cool too I don't
- 2:09:39I don't know what's about him but I have seen little clips of him talking and he seems like kind of an okay guy quite frankly but well yeah and part of what he said in the film was just he really related to Ozzy because Ozzy was like this kind of crazy guy that did some wacky things who was you know very talented obviously but like at the time you know Ozzy was this edgy thing where you know people were scared or worried or like what is this and this
- 2:10:09this guy, I think,
- 2:10:10kind of related to that and felt like, well, this guy,
- 2:10:14I'm living this guy's life,
- 2:10:16you know, like I'm kind of coming up on my own and I'm doing these crazy things and I get a lot of,
- 2:10:21you know, people slagging off on me.
- 2:10:24But the reality is, is like,
- 2:10:26I'm,
- 2:10:27I feel like,
- 2:10:28you know,
- 2:10:29Ozzy's a person I can really relate to.
- 2:10:31And I think Ozzy probably felt the same way.
- 2:10:34And of course he was invited to perform.
- 2:10:36So,
- 2:10:36you know,
- 2:10:37so I think, I think he was,
- 2:10:39He felt a very strong connection to Ozzy,
- 2:10:42and I think that's why his performance was particularly moving.
- 2:10:47So yeah, it's not coming out until December 11th.
- 2:10:50You can pre-order now?
- 2:10:51Yeah, the pre-orders are up,
- 2:10:53yeah.
- 2:10:53And no word on streaming,
- 2:10:56so God knows when I'll actually get to see it.
- 2:10:59Have you seen any of it, George?
- 2:11:01I mean, other than just the clips that circulated, I guess. No.
- 2:11:04Yeah, me either.
- 2:11:06I've seen bits and pieces,
- 2:11:07but literally.
- 2:11:09and pieces.
- 2:11:10Yeah.
- 2:11:10I think every once in a while somebody would mention one of the performances and I thought I'd go check it out.
- 2:11:14I think I've seen the changes thing because that was everywhere.
- 2:11:17But I thought some of it but not not much. I think it was in a kind of like quickly edited recap.
- 2:11:24Plus he's been playing that like since then.
- 2:11:28Oh it's like part of his set now.
- 2:11:29Yeah.
- 2:11:31Yeah.
- 2:11:32And I think the Blu-ray CD combo is like 40 bucks.
- 2:11:36So it's like I'm definitely in for that. You know like it's definitely worth
- 2:11:40I got nothing to play it on.
- 2:11:43Oh, you have PS5, don't you?
- 2:11:45Oh,
- 2:11:46that's true.
- 2:11:47Wait, no, I don't have a...
- 2:11:48I only have the digital only one.
- 2:11:50Oh, shoot.
- 2:11:52Because I thought I didn't have one, but I have an Xbox.
- 2:11:54And I was like, that's right, I got an Xbox.
- 2:11:56Yeah, I don't do discs anymore.
- 2:11:59Yeah,
- 2:11:59that's funny.
- 2:12:01I mean, I actually do have like a...
- 2:12:03One I can plug into my computer somewhere
- 2:12:05so that I can still rip my CDs when I need to re-rip them.
- 2:12:08But yeah.
- 2:12:12What about shows?
- 2:12:13People have gone. I know John has
- 2:12:15something he's going to mention that
- 2:12:17sounds very interesting to me.
- 2:12:19Not show related.
- 2:12:21But we'll get to the shows in a second.
- 2:12:23I just had a revelation the last
- 2:12:25couple of weeks.
- 2:12:28For
- 2:12:30God knows how long I've heard
- 2:12:32about this soft rock legend
- 2:12:35band that used to be
- 2:12:37a rock band. And I was like that's just total
- 2:12:38I don't believe it and I'm referring to the band Ambrosia and if you don't know who
- 2:12:44Ambrosia is you've heard their soft rock classics how much I feel and here the only woman in the biggest part of me and I know that not only do I know the songs but I know the lead singer because I've seen him on one of those time life you know soft rock collections where he he's hawking it oh the 70s were a great time Julie yes exactly
- 2:13:09And so I was like, yeah, there's no way this band has any prog rock in their DNA.
- 2:13:16So I finally gave in and listened to the, no,
- 2:13:20that's back it up.
- 2:13:22I was on my way to BJ's to get something there. BJ's in this area is like a Costco.
- 2:13:29This song comes on, it's just this really cool prog rock song, but this is badass.
- 2:13:34And I look over and it says,
- 2:13:35Ambrosia.
- 2:13:36And I'm like, wait a second here now.
- 2:13:38And so right away,
- 2:13:40I think I took a picture of my Sirius XM so I could remember it. And I got home and I listened to the album and I was like, I'll be damned.
- 2:13:48This is a really good frog rock album.
- 2:13:50Yeah,
- 2:13:51that first album is really good. So I got it. I got the second one, too, because the second one is still they're still doing frog rock.
- 2:13:59It's a very proggy name,
- 2:14:02honestly.
- 2:14:02Well, that's true.
- 2:14:03I mean,
- 2:14:04yeah,
- 2:14:04ancient Greek,
- 2:14:05you know, it's like, OK,
- 2:14:06that's that's kind of.
- 2:14:08That or a side dish at Thanksgiving.
- 2:14:11Well,
- 2:14:11yeah.
- 2:14:14Let's be honest there.
- 2:14:15Come on.
- 2:14:16Nobody's thinking about it.
- 2:14:17That's such a 70s thing.
- 2:14:21Ambrosia salad.
- 2:14:23What do you call it, George?
- 2:14:24Ambrosia salad.
- 2:14:25Ambrosia salad, yeah. I don't know that I've ever had it, but I remember that from Edward Scissorhands.
- 2:14:31That's like whipped cream,
- 2:14:33jello,
- 2:14:34and chopped up fruit or something like that. Something like that,
- 2:14:36yeah.
- 2:14:36It's very 19.
- 2:14:38With the little baby marshmallows,
- 2:14:41too.
- 2:14:42Yeah,
- 2:14:42and it probably tastes wrong if it's not in Tupperware, you know what I mean?
- 2:14:47And it tastes wrong for being in the Tupperware.
- 2:14:52That's my big revelation.
- 2:14:53I was like,
- 2:14:54damn,
- 2:14:54this is a really good album.
- 2:14:56And it is.
- 2:14:57It's no BS.
- 2:14:59And it's a shame that they went to that soft rock. I'm sure they've made a ton of... Well, it probably lined their pockets,
- 2:15:06yeah.
- 2:15:08It's in so much,
- 2:15:10I don't want to say syndication because that's television,
- 2:15:13but,
- 2:15:13you know, they're probably cleaning up from those songs. What is the word for that?
- 2:15:17Ass, let's just say ASCAP.
- 2:15:19You know,
- 2:15:20so I don't know.
- 2:15:21What is the syndication word for music?
- 2:15:24Residuals. Let's call it residuals.
- 2:15:26Yeah.
- 2:15:27Royalties.
- 2:15:27Probably.
- 2:15:28Yeah, I mean, they get,
- 2:15:29I'm sure if I went on to,
- 2:15:31if you go on to Spotify, you could see the plays just for them alone, and I'm sure it's huge.
- 2:15:35This is pretty unprecedented.
- 2:15:37That means $1.45.
- 2:15:38But yeah.
- 2:15:40If you get over a million listens on something,
- 2:15:43you're going to get a partial amount.
- 2:15:45But if they've got millions of listens.
- 2:15:47Has that changed?
- 2:15:48Have they kind of worked out a payment structure that's better for people?
- 2:15:51No.
- 2:15:52No.
- 2:15:52They're getting screwed left and right.
- 2:15:54Yeah.
- 2:15:55So this is pretty unprecedented that a prog band would then do something poppy.
- 2:16:00I mean, because I can't think of any other band that's ever done that.
- 2:16:04Not pop.
- 2:16:06Soft rock.
- 2:16:07Big difference.
- 2:16:08Rock,
- 2:16:08Pop Rock.
- 2:16:09I'll even go to one runner and call it Yacht Rock,
- 2:16:12but I think, George,
- 2:16:13I detect a little sarcasm there.
- 2:16:15Well, that's just the genesis of my humor.
- 2:16:18Har Har.
- 2:16:19Yeah, well.
- 2:16:20Yeah,
- 2:16:21no other prog band became a pop band like that.
- 2:16:24Right,
- 2:16:25yeah,
- 2:16:25but those bands still had a little bit of bite to their sound. Oh, I love them, both versions.
- 2:16:33You just go listen to how much I feel, and then you come back and you tell me that that's the same as Abbott Cavern.
- 2:16:38Or Dodo.
- 2:16:40Right.
- 2:16:41At least those had a little bit of a bite, right?
- 2:16:43Point taken,
- 2:16:44yeah.
- 2:16:44Yeah.
- 2:16:45That's a pretty hard turn,
- 2:16:47for sure.
- 2:16:47Oh,
- 2:16:48yeah.
- 2:16:48It really was.
- 2:16:49You're like, what the hell?
- 2:16:50And then you realize,
- 2:16:51well, yeah, they weren't going to make any movie on those first two albums.
- 2:16:55So anyway, that's my big revelation.
- 2:16:57Interesting.
- 2:16:57Cool.
- 2:16:58Speaking of that, before we get into the rest of it, since we just talked about Genesis,
- 2:17:02I went to see the musical box,
- 2:17:06which is the Genesis tribute band.
- 2:17:09And on this particular tour,
- 2:17:11they're playing the Genesis period.
- 2:17:14They call it And Then There Was Phil tour.
- 2:17:16And so they play the stuff from 76 to 80,
- 2:17:21which is basically,
- 2:17:22you know, Wind and Wuthering,
- 2:17:24Trick of the Tale,
- 2:17:24Duke,
- 2:17:26and then there were three,
- 2:17:29which is all in there.
- 2:17:30So it was a great show.
- 2:17:32And it was cool to hear a lot of those songs again,
- 2:17:34because who are you going to hear playing Burning Rope these days?
- 2:17:38Like, it's just not going to happen.
- 2:17:40So it was it was a good show.
- 2:17:43Nice.
- 2:17:44Well,
- 2:17:44they're always good to see live.
- 2:17:46So yeah.
- 2:17:47Any other shows that might have happened at all recently?
- 2:17:50Maybe there might have been multiple shows from a band in the area.
- 2:17:56Oh, right. I heard about that.
- 2:17:58Yeah.
- 2:17:59So if you're not familiar,
- 2:18:02is this band that came back from the depths of retirement to go on tour again.
- 2:18:10And they're like cleaning up all over the place.
- 2:18:14We've talked about it already before.
- 2:18:15I'm not going to delay it anymore.
- 2:18:16Rush hit DC finally for two shows.
- 2:18:20And don't know how to spell.
- 2:18:23Yeah.
- 2:18:23Well,
- 2:18:24it's not them.
- 2:18:25That's whoever put their merch together.
- 2:18:27I'm curious.
- 2:18:28Yeah.
- 2:18:29So yeah.
- 2:18:31What was it? The poster.
- 2:18:32right?
- 2:18:32It's supposed to. The shirts are spelled right. The shirts were right. They spelled Capital One Arena with an O, not an A.
- 2:18:39Yeah.
- 2:18:40In the capital.
- 2:18:41Nice.
- 2:18:41Well,
- 2:18:43the thing is,
- 2:18:43technically,
- 2:18:44the word is still a correct word.
- 2:18:46It just refers to the capital building or the capital city,
- 2:18:50not the Capital One Arena.
- 2:18:52Right.
- 2:18:53But yeah, they played here. I bet Capital One wasn't very happy.
- 2:18:57Probably not.
- 2:18:58Yeah.
- 2:18:59Well, they're still laughing all the way to the bank because.
- 2:19:02Yeah, they get a cut of all of that. Everything that got sold,
- 2:19:05there was a cut that went to them. So they don't care if it's spelled right or not. They got their money.
- 2:19:10They're doing all right. Yeah.
- 2:19:11So Rush played DC on October 25th and 27th, so Sunday and a Tuesday.
- 2:19:17And I went to both shows.
- 2:19:18The first day, I'll do real quick, I went and I thought I was flying solo for that.
- 2:19:24And this ticket I got from the canceled show in Fort Worth. I took the money from that show and I bought a floor seat.
- 2:19:32because I needed that money to buy the floor seat.
- 2:19:35Although my floor seat wasn't actually that much, believe it or not, compared to what my seats were in Fort Worth for an individual seat, and it was significantly worse seating.
- 2:19:46But I got a message from a friend of mine, a former co-worker,
- 2:19:50and somebody that I've done a bazillion shows with in the past,
- 2:19:53my friend Joe,
- 2:19:55who George met for the first time in the night, and TR has met him a few times in the past.
- 2:20:01that shows.
- 2:20:03And I met up with him and his wife before the show.
- 2:20:06And then we went over and they were just sitting a section over for me on the floor.
- 2:20:10So I went from solo to having some people there that I knew.
- 2:20:14And so I caught them on the first night. It was the same exact show I saw in Cleveland,
- 2:20:19except they swapped two songs out that I did not see in Cleveland. So that was a positive. And I also assume they didn't say hello,
- 2:20:25Cleveland.
- 2:20:27However,
- 2:20:29they did screw up 2112 to the point where they
- 2:20:31had to stop.
- 2:20:33Getty said,
- 2:20:34somebody fucked up.
- 2:20:35And they started over again,
- 2:20:37which I've never seen them ever do.
- 2:20:40Ever.
- 2:20:40Can I just offer that that is evidence of how loose and at ease they're feeling about this thing?
- 2:20:48I think that's cool.
- 2:20:50I like that. Yeah.
- 2:20:51So the screw-ups are real.
- 2:20:53The reactions are staged, from what I understand.
- 2:20:56Meaning,
- 2:20:57there's a shtick if they do screw up and they kind of stick to it a little bit. However,
- 2:21:01This was a pretty big screw-up because what happened... I swear Alex came in too early at the beginning of 2112.
- 2:21:09But then something was wrong because he was looking over at Getty and Getty's bass was completely out of tune.
- 2:21:15The wrong bass.
- 2:21:17So he literally walked off and got a new bass and came back and then they played it after that,
- 2:21:22which was really funny,
- 2:21:23to be honest with you. I mean,
- 2:21:25I can't remember the last... I mean,
- 2:21:26there's a lot of flubs in these shows.
- 2:21:28I mean, I'm sure,
- 2:21:30George,
- 2:21:31maybe you
- 2:21:31I know you've probably seen some and they don't care.
- 2:21:35No, but I mean, it's not like it's happening left and right. I mean, it's no, no, but there's moments when you know, most of the time it's pretty subtle. I mean, you know,
- 2:21:42I mean,
- 2:21:43yeah, but there was never a mistake in the past.
- 2:21:47And if there was somebody was visibly angry.
- 2:21:49I mean, I,
- 2:21:50I mean, I saw Alex basically almost throw his guitar off stage when he broke a string once in 86.
- 2:21:56Wow. He was pissed.
- 2:21:57Yeah.
- 2:21:57Now they mess up and they're just like,
- 2:21:59oh, well.
- 2:22:01Yeah.
- 2:22:02It happens.
- 2:22:03Anyway, so it was great.
- 2:22:04You know, they're always really fun to see, but now they're even more fun to see just because they're really loose.
- 2:22:12Okay, that's the first show.
- 2:22:14Then the second show was the 27th,
- 2:22:17of which both George and TR also went.
- 2:22:20However,
- 2:22:21we ended up having quite a gathering.
- 2:22:25My friend from 40 years ago flew in,
- 2:22:32who I saw Rush with back in 1990 in Sacramento.
- 2:22:37That's a whole other story.
- 2:22:41But he flew in from Florida.
- 2:22:44My friend Joe, I mentioned before,
- 2:22:45he came, but this time with his brother, Pat, who was also at the show.
- 2:22:49Both of them were at the show,
- 2:22:50obviously,
- 2:22:51on Sunday,
- 2:22:53but I didn't see Pat. So we got that.
- 2:22:54So there's one,
- 2:22:56two,
- 2:22:56then my friend Rich, me,
- 2:22:58that's four, then George and TR, it's five. And then another friend of ours,
- 2:23:02TR and I know, this guy Jeff,
- 2:23:05we've known for years from Porcupine Tree. He has a YouTube channel, Gas Mass and Hang Grenades.
- 2:23:10He was there, he's dropped in.
- 2:23:12And so we saw him pre-show and then TR and I saw him and his friends afterwards post-show. Anyway,
- 2:23:18we had like a little rush gathering,
- 2:23:20which has been a long time since I've done that.
- 2:23:22And I realized sitting at the table,
- 2:23:24I had done multiple shows with people at the table,
- 2:23:28minus George,
- 2:23:29because George broke his Rush Cherry.
- 2:23:31I was a Rush Virgin.
- 2:23:32He was a Rush Virgin.
- 2:23:33But everybody else at the table, I had done multiple shows with at some point, somewhere.
- 2:23:39Or at minimum, one.
- 2:23:41So anyway, it was great.
- 2:23:43And we got the set that I was hoping we'd get,
- 2:23:45which I think I saw nine or ten different songs from the previous night in that set. So I've seen everything except four songs.
- 2:23:54So I almost caught up to TR.
- 2:23:57Which is pretty good considering,
- 2:23:58you know.
- 2:23:59I had a double,
- 2:24:00I had the same show twice,
- 2:24:01yeah. Yeah,
- 2:24:02well,
- 2:24:02yeah, but I mean,
- 2:24:03considering what you saw,
- 2:24:05let's see, Cleveland,
- 2:24:07well,
- 2:24:07Cleveland and the two DC shows, right? Right,
- 2:24:09because the Fort Worth was canceled,
- 2:24:11so. Yeah, so you did pretty good for three shows,
- 2:24:13you, you, you know,
- 2:24:15that's pretty good.
- 2:24:16You got almost everything,
- 2:24:18really.
- 2:24:18Really,
- 2:24:18two shows when you consider that. Well, yeah, it's about the same,
- 2:24:21right? It was the same for just, except for two songs.
- 2:24:24And I saw every song at one show.
- 2:24:28Close.
- 2:24:30Every single one of them they played, I was there.
- 2:24:33That makes it sound like he saw more than you guys.
- 2:24:35I don't know why that set was worth it.
- 2:24:38No,
- 2:24:38but the second show in DC was the best set list of the three for me,
- 2:24:42at least, because they played a song I'd never seen before.
- 2:24:45I waited 40 years to hear them play A Farewell to Kings,
- 2:24:49which, by the way, they hadn't played for 50 years almost.
- 2:24:53So that was the highlight of the night. Oh, and New World Man 2, because I had not seen that since 1986.
- 2:25:03So yeah,
- 2:25:04because they've only played in one tour.
- 2:25:07And yet I've seen it.
- 2:25:08You saw it once,
- 2:25:09I've seen it twice.
- 2:25:11Somehow.
- 2:25:12But you're still behind.
- 2:25:14Yeah, that's nothing.
- 2:25:16Yeah.
- 2:25:17I've seen that one.
- 2:25:18What?
- 2:25:18What?
- 2:25:19They've played that every time I've seen them, man.
- 2:25:21Exactly.
- 2:25:23Exactly.
- 2:25:23Yeah,
- 2:25:25you're still 19 shows behind,
- 2:25:27so.
- 2:25:29Anyway,
- 2:25:29no, it was fun.
- 2:25:30It was a great time. It was a good time.
- 2:25:32Yeah, definitely good times.
- 2:25:34I was drooling over all of Alex's Gibsons.
- 2:25:41Yeah. I was like, he had like a Gibson for every song, man. He had,
- 2:25:45you know.
- 2:25:46And then he walked away for Gibson for a long time, George,
- 2:25:48so it's cool that he's playing him again. Yeah.
- 2:25:50He had like some kind of thing up his butt about him. A tiff.
- 2:25:53Well,
- 2:25:53he went to PRS at some point and was exclusively playing them, which I believe he does still pull it out. He had one PRS that I was like, okay,
- 2:26:02well,
- 2:26:03all these Gibsons and he pulls out a PRS.
- 2:26:05I've been meaning to try a PRS and I have never played one, so I really want to do that now. Don't wait your time. But he,
- 2:26:11you know, he played an SG.
- 2:26:13Lights is too expensive?
- 2:26:14No.
- 2:26:15No. Gibsons are too expensive, too.
- 2:26:16I've owned two and they both had no life.
- 2:26:19They were soulless and you cannot, you can throw it off of a building and still,
- 2:26:23going to look exactly the same.
- 2:26:24There's something about him I don't like.
- 2:26:26That's wild because Mike from Opeth uses him and he gets every ounce of emotion out of him.
- 2:26:32And I know he does.
- 2:26:33Yeah.
- 2:26:34That's wild.
- 2:26:35You know, color me like bemused. I don't know how he does it. But also,
- 2:26:39George,
- 2:26:40there is a Alex Lifeson Gibson signature model.
- 2:26:45Yeah. Which they were kind enough to even include, I think, a Floyd Rose on or something,
- 2:26:49strangely.
- 2:26:50Yeah.
- 2:26:50Like I said, he played an SG.
- 2:26:52He played a double.
- 2:26:54He played a million different Les Pauls. He played two different,
- 2:26:59I don't know if it was a 335 or a 355. He played the white one,
- 2:27:02and then he played a gold one.
- 2:27:04Which I've never seen the gold one before until this tour.
- 2:27:07And he even played an Explorer.
- 2:27:10Yeah,
- 2:27:11that was cool.
- 2:27:12Wow, that seems out of place. I mean, you know, he's not a flashy.
- 2:27:15The white one's a 335.
- 2:27:17I wouldn't know about the gold one, but. Yeah,
- 2:27:19and then a random telly.
- 2:27:22Cool.
- 2:27:23I was like what it was on yeah what was that it was new world man is yeah yeah yeah he played that's what he played it on uh I think when they toured originally he that's what he had for it yeah and and not to be outdone Getty has a bazillion bases on stage too that's right so uh real quick they are doing gag or Annika is doing gags their drummer she does it at the very end of working man and
- 2:27:53I think we got the best gag on the first night of the show.
- 2:27:56So they do this thing where they have cameras on her rig set up. And so Geddy and Alex actually,
- 2:28:04I've never seen them turn their back that much to the crowd before,
- 2:28:06but they face her,
- 2:28:09but then the camera picks them up. And so you can see it on the big screens and they have a massive big screen going on. So it's almost like they're still looking at you, but through the cameras on her riser.
- 2:28:23And so they do this thing where they walk together at the end during the final song.
- 2:28:27And they kind of stare at each other and they start to slow down and slow down.
- 2:28:31And they stop and they look back at her and she always does a gag.
- 2:28:35Something.
- 2:28:36Which, by the way, you can find them easy.
- 2:28:38Right.
- 2:28:38Somebody even has compiled them.
- 2:28:40Yeah.
- 2:28:40Oh,
- 2:28:41wow. Okay.
- 2:28:41So the gag for the first night in D.C., she actually got one of Alex's guitars.
- 2:28:46It was live.
- 2:28:47And they were doing their whole, you know, at the end where it's like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
- 2:28:51and everyone's just playing a thousand notes at one minute. It doesn't sound like anything.
- 2:28:55And they stop and it's all of a sudden you see that Alex is like, what is that weird noise coming out? He didn't know what was happening. And he looked up and he stopped playing. He saw her playing one of his guitars and both he and Getty just burst out laughing.
- 2:29:07She sits down back on her drum seat with the guitar still live on her to play the last note on drums with them.
- 2:29:14So it was pretty cool.
- 2:29:16I mean, I've seen that.
- 2:29:17And that was why they show up like if you're on Instagram or something, everybody wants to ask me, be like, hey, here's what I'm going to do.
- 2:29:21what she did last night. I saw that one just recently.
- 2:29:24Yeah.
- 2:29:25So,
- 2:29:25and she did like a Groucho Marx, I think at our second show, didn't she?
- 2:29:28Yeah.
- 2:29:29Yeah.
- 2:29:29The little glasses and big nose with this.
- 2:29:33Yeah. With the, you know, the mustache and the thing. And,
- 2:29:37but then she pointed at Getty when she did it,
- 2:29:39which was really funny.
- 2:29:42As a fellow owner of a big nose, I appreciate that.
- 2:29:45Yeah.
- 2:29:46I really loved the, uh,
- 2:29:47the movie at the beginning.
- 2:29:49And I'm curious because it was around Halloween.
- 2:29:52And it was,
- 2:29:53is it the same thing that they played like in Mexico?
- 2:29:56Every night.
- 2:29:57Yeah. Every night. Okay.
- 2:29:58Yeah.
- 2:29:59That was pretty darn amusing with all the cameos in there from Paul Rudd and Jason Segel and the South Park fellas.
- 2:30:10Well, yeah, they had a new skit for that.
- 2:30:14That was, they hadn't done that before.
- 2:30:16So.
- 2:30:16Yeah.
- 2:30:16Yeah. That was pretty funny.
- 2:30:18Pretty entertaining.
- 2:30:21Yeah.
- 2:30:21You know,
- 2:30:21Oh, and they're goofing around on stage,
- 2:30:24which is... I loved Alex's come-out-and-pose thing.
- 2:30:29Yeah.
- 2:30:30He comes out to front of center stage and strikes a rock star pose.
- 2:30:37I mean,
- 2:30:38it's bizarre to see them, for one.
- 2:30:41It's even more bizarre to see Alex singing as much as he does now.
- 2:30:44Yeah.
- 2:30:45Which is... It's funny, what he used to sing on before, he doesn't sing on anymore.
- 2:30:50The guy Lauren Gold does those parts.
- 2:30:51So he's singing other parts now, which is really kind of wild.
- 2:30:55But anyway,
- 2:30:56yeah.
- 2:30:56So we had a little rush gathering and we had fun beforehand at some divey Irish bar,
- 2:31:02which was only two blocks away.
- 2:31:05And it worked out.
- 2:31:06And it was just nothing but a bunch of rush nerds in there hanging out.
- 2:31:09Yeah,
- 2:31:10that was perfect.
- 2:31:12So I don't know if you guys want to add anything,
- 2:31:14but we did our little rush con beforehand.
- 2:31:17Yeah,
- 2:31:18no, it was really good. And it was fun to see people,
- 2:31:20some of which I've
- 2:31:21I hadn't seen in a long time.
- 2:31:24And it was great to meet Joe's brother, Pat, which I had not met before.
- 2:31:29And so we had a,
- 2:31:30yeah, it was a very good time to catch up with old friends and talk about Rush and whatever else.
- 2:31:37Like we,
- 2:31:38it was,
- 2:31:39you know,
- 2:31:40just what you'd expect with a,
- 2:31:42you know, Rush gathering.
- 2:31:43So that was fun.
- 2:31:44Right.
- 2:31:45Oh, you know what?
- 2:31:46Actually,
- 2:31:46and I know, TR, I think you, you may have too.
- 2:31:49I met another friend,
- 2:31:50another coworker.
- 2:31:51He was with his wife there,
- 2:31:52but I met him up at the seats, my co-worker named Mike,
- 2:31:55who I'd gone to a Rush show with before.
- 2:31:59But I can't remember if you were there at that one tier. It was at First Mariner in Baltimore a while back.
- 2:32:07Okay.
- 2:32:09A Rush show?
- 2:32:10Yeah, which is really weird to see a Rush show at the arena in Baltimore.
- 2:32:13Oh, yeah.
- 2:32:15Well,
- 2:32:16the one I recall seeing there, I don't know that you guys were there,
- 2:32:20so I'm not sure.
- 2:32:21I was at one of them there because I distinctly remember the drive home because there needed to be an emergency stop.
- 2:32:29So,
- 2:32:30okay.
- 2:32:31Yeah.
- 2:32:32Somebody wasn't going to make it. Well,
- 2:32:33yeah. And I actually,
- 2:32:34I also saw some people I knew after we took to the seats.
- 2:32:38I saw a couple of buddies of mine from my old workplace a long, long time ago. So that was a lot of fun.
- 2:32:44And then another buddy of mine,
- 2:32:47Mike Biggerman,
- 2:32:48who does our rock trivia at our,
- 2:32:51local brewery.
- 2:32:53And so he and his wife attended.
- 2:32:56And I didn't see him up close,
- 2:32:58but I found him in the audience.
- 2:33:00Because he was pretty much on the first row of one of the sections.
- 2:33:03So I could see him from where I was sitting.
- 2:33:05And I was texting him.
- 2:33:07So we had a good time.
- 2:33:08It was fun.
- 2:33:09Oh, one last thing I'll say.
- 2:33:11And George, I don't want to cut you off if you want to say anything.
- 2:33:12I don't want to forget this.
- 2:33:13No, I'm good.
- 2:33:14The night that I was there on the floor,
- 2:33:17I sat down.
- 2:33:18And as I'm sitting down,
- 2:33:19this woman says to me,
- 2:33:21oh my God,
- 2:33:23you know who boards of Canada are?
- 2:33:25Because I was wearing my boards of Canada shirt.
- 2:33:27And I said, I think the question is, do you know who boards of Canada are?
- 2:33:32Clearly she did,
- 2:33:34right?
- 2:33:34Well,
- 2:33:35her husband likes them.
- 2:33:37And so she started,
- 2:33:38because she was with her parents.
- 2:33:39And so,
- 2:33:40yeah, we discussed boards of Canada. I can't tell you how many people stopped me on the street,
- 2:33:44no matter, or in hotels or buildings.
- 2:33:46What is boards of Canada?
- 2:33:48What is that?
- 2:33:48And I even got stopped at Falling Water in Pennsylvania,
- 2:33:52the Frank Lloyd Wright designed house.
- 2:33:53I got stopped by two people there.
- 2:33:55So,
- 2:33:56wow.
- 2:33:57Yeah.
- 2:33:57Anyway,
- 2:33:58George,
- 2:33:58I didn't want to cut you off there. If you had anything to add about your first Rush experience.
- 2:34:04Gosh,
- 2:34:04I mean, it was just a really good show.
- 2:34:07You know,
- 2:34:08at my advanced age,
- 2:34:10I'm frequently finding myself at the end of shows going, come on,
- 2:34:14hurry up. I want to go home. I want to go to bed.
- 2:34:17And,
- 2:34:17you know,
- 2:34:18And despite the fact that they played probably one of the longest sets I've ever seen from anyone.
- 2:34:23Because,
- 2:34:24you know, they did an intermission.
- 2:34:25And so it was probably like around three hours. And most shows I've seen there,
- 2:34:29they tap out at two,
- 2:34:30two and a half.
- 2:34:32So,
- 2:34:33you know,
- 2:34:34no boredom there.
- 2:34:36It was pretty awesome.
- 2:34:38It was really nice to finally see them. It was nice to be able to sit there and just nerd out over Alex.
- 2:34:45I didn't nerd out over Getty at all.
- 2:34:47Yeah,
- 2:34:48it was really cool to see Geddy, too.
- 2:34:52And Annika,
- 2:34:53she definitely brought it.
- 2:34:56Yeah.
- 2:34:57You know,
- 2:34:58so,
- 2:35:00yeah, it was great.
- 2:35:01Awesome.
- 2:35:03Jay, I don't know if you'll get a chance to see them when they play Glendale,
- 2:35:06but if you made your way up there and somehow found a ticket,
- 2:35:10you will not be disappointed.
- 2:35:12So I got a ticket. My buddy got his tickets.
- 2:35:14Oh, that's all good.
- 2:35:16Very cool.
- 2:35:17I guess what two nights yeah we're just one-to-one but do you know which night you're going to first or second um he has the tickets and I don't remember which what he said yeah yeah because the set lists will be different between the nights right right yeah cool awesome well that's your uh episode section rush section of the episode so yeah oh by the way just as an offshoot um talking about reunions I think
- 2:35:47Rather Classy Reunions,
- 2:35:49but having to pull in some outside musicians,
- 2:35:51Triumph had to cancel the second leg of their whole thing.
- 2:35:54So for medical reasons, I don't know what happened.
- 2:35:58Yeah,
- 2:35:59and that directly impacted me because I had tickets to that show in Baltimore,
- 2:36:03and I'm just super bummed because I was really looking forward to seeing them again.
- 2:36:08Thankfully,
- 2:36:08I got to see them earlier this year,
- 2:36:10but it was such a good concert that I wanted to see them again.
- 2:36:14See, that's why I bailed, because I just figured they'd cancel.
- 2:36:20Yeah,
- 2:36:21right.
- 2:36:23You know, actually,
- 2:36:24one other thing, too,
- 2:36:25just because it just suddenly entered my mind, but it's worth mentioning,
- 2:36:28and I don't know where it is,
- 2:36:29but it shouldn't be hard to find,
- 2:36:32but they just re-released some record of Billy Squire's that was never on vinyl before.
- 2:36:37Beside the point. Don't worry about the record.
- 2:36:39But he did an interview for it, and it was the most thoughtful interview,
- 2:36:42and I thought, boy, I sure like Billy Squire.
- 2:36:44He just comes across as so thoughtful,
- 2:36:45so smart.
- 2:36:46Why do I feel like I just saw this?
- 2:36:48It's there are clips of it showing up on Instagram or wherever you're jumping around.
- 2:36:53He's great.
- 2:36:54He's got the long his hair is maybe shoulder length.
- 2:36:56Great. I think I just saw some of that.
- 2:36:58Yeah.
- 2:36:59Some woman is interviewing him, but there's lots of cool stories he tells about Zeppelin and stuff like that.
- 2:37:04That's what that's what I saw.
- 2:37:07Yeah.
- 2:37:08Did he did he talk about how the record label ruined his career after his third album by making him do that stupid video for that song?
- 2:37:16It didn't.
- 2:37:16No,
- 2:37:17he didn't,
- 2:37:17but he... You should watch it.
- 2:37:21I'm a fan. I like Don't Say No.
- 2:37:23Oh,
- 2:37:23Don't Say No is awesome.
- 2:37:24I love it.
- 2:37:25But it's just nice to see somebody who's kind of been out of the radar for a while in this really cool interview with him. I was glad to see. Oh, his first three are... Especially Don't Say No are great,
- 2:37:35but yeah, I watched that. I saw that video again. I don't know why. I was like, oh my God, why did they make him do this?
- 2:37:43Totally destroyed his career. Oh, it hit me wrong,
- 2:37:45and I was...
- 2:37:4713 or something.
- 2:37:48I mean, I was crazy about don't say no. And then that came out. I was like, come on.
- 2:37:51And then what emotions in motion was next, which was good. Not as good as don't say no, but it was good. And then they killed him anyway.
- 2:38:02All right. Well,
- 2:38:03I guess that's it for this episode.
- 2:38:07Yep.
- 2:38:10Until next time. Until next time.
- 2:38:13Take it easy.
- 2:38:13All right.
- 2:38:15Bye.
- 2:38:15Bye.
- 2:38:16Peace out.