Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe': The Story Behind Rock's Original Murder Ballad [Episode 303]

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Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe': The Story Behind Rock's Original Murder Ballad [Episode 303] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Coming up on this episode of Book Don Rock. This
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: is the story of the song Hey Joe, made famous
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: by Jimmy Hendrix. It's a song that binds nearly every
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: strand of twentieth century American popular music.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: We're totally bummed rock and roll. I mean, gotta leave you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: You're reading Little Hans says it's time to roll Rock.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Roll up.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I totally booked.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Book Don Rock, Americ Senich. This episode's
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: guest is Jason Schneider. He is the author of the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: brand new book called That Gun on Your Hand, The
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Strange Saga of Hey Joe and popular Music's History of violence.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast, Jason.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Great to be here, Eric, Thanks.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Congrats on the book. First off, phenomenal job with the book,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: but what a fascinating topic.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I mean it goes back to probably the
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: first time I played my dad's copy of Our Experienced
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: when I was ten or eleven years old, and it
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: was one of those moments you know, I'm sure you've
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: had them in your life too, or you put a
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: record on and you're just mesmerized for forty five minutes
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: just listening to it.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: That was my experience.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, punintended. Now, were you like me and most people,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: did you assume Hey Joe was a Hendricks original?
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah. At that age, I didn't know anything about songwriting.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: But you know, as I got older started listening to
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: more artists, Suddenly I'd see Hey Joe popping up in
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: different places, different artists doing it, and that got me
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: to wondering a bit about its origins. And then I
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: went back to are You Experienced? I saw the writing
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: credit was by this guy, Billy Roberts, who I knew
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: nothing about, and it turns out there was really no
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: information about him anywhere. So that kind of got me
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: going on trying to unravel this mystery too of who
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Billy Roberts.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Was a very interesting backstory to the song. So talk
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: about how this book is divided into two parts.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the first half is really it goes back
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: to Hey Joe's origins and murder ballads early. Well, I
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: guess maybe you could go back to the late nineteenth
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: century and then early blues and country recordings from the
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: twenties and thirties, and then how that sort of influenced
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Billy Roberts into actually writing the song Hate Joe, and
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: then the journey, it kind of took from Billy through
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: a whole bunch of different artists doing it before Hendricks,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: and then the first half of the book ends with
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Jimmy's version and where he kind of took it. Then
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: the second half is basically discussing different artists who covered
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: the song after Jimmy's death.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Quite a few artists have recorded the song. It turns
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: out Patty Smith's version may be the most interesting beyond
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Hendrix's version, but that's one we'll get to as well.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Although other songs similarly updated themes found in early American blues,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: folk and country in the rock and roll era, Hey
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Joe offered something different. It's a visceral drama. A man
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: describes how he shoots his unfaithful lover to death and
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: intended to get away with it. Why do you think
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: this song has resonated so profoundly with so many people,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: fans and musicians.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: I think there's a few reasons. Number one, the song's
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: structure itself is very simple. The chord pattern it's based
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: on what's known as the circle of fifths, which people
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: who have a basic understanding of blues music, a typical
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: blues song is three chords A one, four, five, but
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: with Hey Joe, there's two additional chords thrown in there,
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: so it kind of circles around itself, I guess, creating
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: the term circle of fifths. So there's really no resolution
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: to it, and interesting enough, people might not realize it.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Doesn't have a chorus.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: It's just in one verse after another, and the versus themselves.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: It's constructed as a conversation between Joe and his friend.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: It's got that really personal side that I think anyone
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: can relate to, and then to go deeper into the
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: psychology behind it. I think all of us can relate
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: in one way to another. Two crimes of passion, of
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: being in a situation where we have to pull back
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: before we do anything drastic, and I think that has resonated.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I think that's part of the fascination just in general
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: with people with true crime. It's very similar. There's just
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: some fascination that we have with this how can a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: man cross that line? The one line in the song
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: that really gets me and it's real simple. But hey Joe,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: where are you going with that gun in your hand?
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: And right away you're thinking, WHOA, what's up? What is
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: this guy?
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Going to do yeah, and that, and and that kind
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: of puts the listener in the position of that person
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: asking the questions, so you know, right away the listener
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: is involved in the song, you know, waiting to hear
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: what Joe's answer is going to be, and you know,
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: having that kind of dialogue.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: So Billy Roberts hard to believe that his twenty seventeen
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: death went unreported by all news outlets in this day
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: and age, but that's what happened. The book presents previously
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: unpublished information about his life. So tell us about Billy Roberts.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he I think his life was kind of
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: mysterious by his own choice. He was born in South
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Carolina in the late thirties, I believe, so he kind
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: of grew up within that early blues scene in that
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: region of the country, and that's where he kind of
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: developed his love of music and folk music and blues.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: By the time he reached his early twenties, he decided
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: to go where the action was, which was Greenwich Village
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: in New York City. And this was all pre Bob Dylan.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Billy actually he arrived in New York almost exactly a
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: year before Dylan did, so it was a slightly different scene.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: It was a scene where the singers, very few of
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: them wrote their own material, Very few of them cared
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: about making records, you know, most of them just thought
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: it was a hassle. They weren't really concerned about making
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: money in general. They just wanted to play this music
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: and share it with people. So that was kind of
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: the world that Billy stepped into. And almost as soon
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: as he arrived, he met a woman who became his girlfriend.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: There a woman named Neela Miller who was a folk
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: singer herself, and she had this song called Baby Please
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Don't Go to Town, which you can look it up
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: on YouTube, and there are a lot of similarities to Hayjoe.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And Billy was fixated on that song.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he thought he could, you know, I guess
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: borrow it would be a generous term for the time,
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: and kind of do something with it on his own,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: and so he kind of took that as a basis
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: and injected his own experiences with the blues, and out
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: of that came Hey Joe. And almost immediately other artists
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: in the Greenwich Village scene picked up on it too
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: and started playing. And that's really where the song's journey began.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: The history of murder ballads is interesting too. It became
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: something that was part of the mainstream consciousness. In nineteen
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: fifty eight the Kingston Trios recording of the traditional ballad
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Tom Dooley. Yeah, but how far do we go back
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: to find the origins of the murder ballad?
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: That's kind of hard to say, because you can go
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: back to the British Isles in the sixteen hundreds. I
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: think there's songs about lovers killing each other. You know,
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: obviously it's part of Shakespeare as well. But by the
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: time folks songs were being documented in America in the
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: early twentieth century, that's when you see songs like Stagger Lee,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: songs based on real life events of people shooting each other.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Then one of the main songs I also examine is
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Frankie and Johnny.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, let's talk about that. One that turned the tables
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: on a standard murder ballad is what you wrote?
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was a song again based on
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: real life events. It was in Saint Louis, I believe,
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: where a woman found her boyfriend cheating on her and
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: during the course of a scuffle, she ended up shooting him.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: That was Frankie and she ended up getting off on
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: the charge due to self defense. But almost immediately one
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: of the Saint Louis barroom entertainers had written song based
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: on the events, and it became in I guess what
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: we would call a viral hit nowadays. You know, people
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: everywhere playing the song, and it ended up really kind
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: of destroying Frankie. Her full name was Frankie Baker. It
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: ended up really kind of destroying her life. She had
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: to move out of town start a new life. The
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: song grew to inspire movies. She ended up suing the
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: movie companies to no avail, and that really kind of
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: started this whole notion of a murder ballad being embraced
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: by popular culture.
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  Speaker 1: And what year was that that that song came.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Out, Well, the first recordings of it would have been
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties, late nineteen twenties, and there was
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: actually I think it was one of May West's first
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: movies it was based on the song. That movie was
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: a huge hit. It might have been one of the
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: first movies to get an oscar actually, if I'm not mistaken.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: And then STAGGERLYE. Of course that became a jazz standard
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: and then an R and B standard Grateful Dead.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I'm a big Dead fan. I know Jerry Garcia played
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: it a lot.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Yep, that's all about one man cheating another man after
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: he stole his hat. Then through early country music, bluegrass music,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: and then that led to Tom Dooley being recorded by the
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Kingston Trio in the late nineteen fifties.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: In the prelude to the book, there's a you tell
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: it's about Billy playing the song with another person. He
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: was a street busker in nineteen sixty can you tell
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: this story? Where did you find out about this story too?
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: I got a lot of great research from a website.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: There's a guy in Europe who created a website to
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: try to catalog every known version of Hey Joe. It's
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: pretty monumental task.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: But I'd love to know the number. What's the total
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: number of that?
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll blow your mind, you can't even imagine. But anyway,
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: on the website, a lot of his posts he got
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: some great responses from people. And that that story actually
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: got from a woman who wrote in and commented saying
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: that was her experience with Billy Roberts, who's busting with him?
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: In Paris in nineteen sixty, but he was there on
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: a trip with another New York Folks singer named Dino Valenti,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: who he became good friends with. And Dino really he
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: played a crucial role. Hey, Joe's next stage of kind
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: of migrating to the West Coast and suddenly being adopted
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: by every almost every band in LA.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Booked on Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after this.
• 11:14
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• 11:19
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• 11:21
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• 11:25
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• 11:53
  Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: to the show. As somebody from Connecticut who also spent
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: many years working in Danbury, Connecticut. I'm interested in the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: story of Chester chet Powers, who went on to become
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Dino Valenti. Right, yeah, so let's get into this. He
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: was born October seventh, nineteen thirty seven, in Danbury, Connecticut.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: He and Billy Roberts later became friends. His first gig
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: was at the Cafe Wa in Greenwich Village, which was
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: run by Manny Roth, who happens to be the uncle
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: of David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame. Dino Valenti
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: played Hey Joe often there and noted for his intense
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: performance of the song. What was it that he did
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: differently and how did that come from his desire for
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: a normal life while he was growing up.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: I think what made his version stand out based on
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: accounts of different artists, people like Richie Havens, who I
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: was fortunate enough to talk to you before he passed away,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Dino took the song and really embodied it, you know. He,
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: as Richie kind of described, he was just a really
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: tense guitar player. He basically put everything he had into
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: playing that song, and that really moved a lot of people.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: And I think you can see that in Richie Havens's
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: performances how intense he played too. By watching him, you
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: can kind of get an idea of what Dina Valenti
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: was like, since I haven't come across any footage of
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: him playing or anything like that.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: That's coming from when he was a kid, a Dino
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: then known as Chester. He wanted a normal life, but
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: he did not have one.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was something I was really fascinated to learn that.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: According to his sister, they grew up basically as the
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: kids of carnival workers, so they would spend their summers
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: traveling around in carnivals and kind of learning all the
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: all the tricks of the trade, how to entertain people
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: and at the same time, you know, maybe pull a
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: few fast ones on them.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: So that was sort of the reputation that.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Dino created that he was a guy who basically felt
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: he had a license to sort of do whatever he
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: wanted and he could get away with it.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: There's an important decision that Billy Roberts makes in nineteen
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: sixty two regarding this song Hey Joe. He goes to
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: the Library of Congress to register copyright for this song.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: This is huge talk about how important of a decision
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that turned out to be. Do you think that he
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: felt the urgency to do it because other artists are
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: performing it a lot.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: I couldn't really say definitively what motivated him to do it,
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: But like I said, at that time, folk singers weren't
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: concerned about copywriting. There if they'd written an original song,
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: they weren't really concerned about copywriting it. That obviously began
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: to change with Bob Dylan, who almost at that exact
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: time in early nineteen sixty two, Bob had just signed
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: his first record deal with Columbia, and his new manager,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Albert Grossman, was encouraging him to start writing his own songs,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: basically just as a as a way to make money
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: to try to get other artists to cover them. At
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: that time, Bobb had just signed his first publishing deal
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: and the rest of course's history. So whether Billy knew
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: about that, I'm not sure. But by that time he
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: was based in Washington, d C. So it wasn't too
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: hard for him just to pop over to the Library
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: of Congress do a search to see if anyone had
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: registered a copyright. No one had, so he went ahead
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: and did it.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Jason Schneider is the author of That Gun in Your
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Hand the strange sog of Hey Joe in popular music's
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: history of violence? How does Hajoe findance with it?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: David Crosby, That's another fascinating twist.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: So Crosby was just starting out his own career as
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: a folk singer and made his way from LA to
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: New York and when he got there, Dino Valenti was
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: one of the first people he became friends with, and
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: they had very similar personalities, So naturally, David Crosby learned
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Hey Joe from Dino, and when Crosby went back to LA,
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: he just started raving to everyone he knew about this
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: guy from New York. He was friends with Dino Valenti.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: He was one of the greatest singers he'd ever heard.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: So he eventually convinced Dino to come out to LA
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: to make some demos. And at that time, the Birds
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: were just starting to come together through Roger mcgwinn and
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Gene Clark. Crosby was part of that original trio, and yeah, Crosby,
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: he made the offer to Dino, do you want to
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: join this new band I'm forming. We're going to play
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: folk music with electric instruments. Dino declined for whatever reason,
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: but Crosby still took up the song Hey Joe, and
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: that became kind of his show piece in the early
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: Birds repertoire, and by all accounts too, it was one
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: of their showstoppers. Most of their early fans loved hearing it.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: I remember hearing the Leaves version of Hey Joe maybe
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: fifteen years ago or so, once YouTube became a thing
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: you could listen to anything, you know, and then streaming services,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: so that was around the first time I heard that
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: they're the first band to release an electric version of
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: this song.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: Correct, I think a version in general, they were the
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: first band to yeah.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Now there is a Bird's connection to this version.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Who were the Leaves and what was their connection to
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the Birds regarding Hey Joe?
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: After the Birds signed their record deal with Columbia. At
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: that time, they were the house band at a club
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: on Sunset Strip called Ciro's, And so after they signed
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: with Columbia, they had to give up the residency. They
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: were going to go on tour, so every band in
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: LA wanted to step in to fill in, and the
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Leaves got the gigs. So to kind of maintain that
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Bird's audience, they added Hey Joe to their repertoire just
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: to keep the Birds fans happy.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: That actually leads us to Jimi Hendrix and why he
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: ends up recording it. The story of how Hey Joe
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: lands on Hendrix's radar. Okay, this is a great story.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: So he heard nineteen sixty six version by singer songwriter
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Tim Rose, but I think he also had heard the
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Leaves version at some point, but I'm not sure, but
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the tim Rose version is the one.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Well, right like that.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's where the story gets really complicated, because yes,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: this is.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: The amazing case of serendipity.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Even before that, so we have the West Coast version
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: of Hey Joe, which is popular. But then we've got
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: this guy on the East Coast named Tim Rose, struggling
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: singer songwriter, and he hears a version of Hey Joe
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: played by another Greenwich village artists, and it's.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Just crazy how many people were playing that song.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So tim Rose hears the song and he
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: claimed throughout his life that he'd never heard he never
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: heard the song before until he'd heard this other guy,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Vince Martin play it for him. So he said, so
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: where get this song? Vince Martin couldn't tell him so
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: tim Rose just kind of took it up. He created
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: his own arrangement of it, which was a little bit
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: more slowed down, a little bit more bluesy, and he
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: ended up signing a record deal with Columbia as well
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: and recorded his version of Hey Joe, which didn't really
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: become a hit, but it was just such a special
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: according that even the record label like, they pull out
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: all the stops to make it a hit, but they
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: just couldn't make it happen. So anyway, fast forward to
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: the summer of nineteen sixty six, Jimmy Hendrix is playing
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: around Greenwich Village with pickup bands. He's decided to turn
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: his back on being an R and B side man.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: He wants to do his own thing.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: He's kind of.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Struggling, and just by happenstance, one night, the girlfriend of
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: Keith Richards, a woman named Linda Keith, a British model.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: She pops into a club where Jimmy's playing, and just
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: like anyone would be, he falls in love with him
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: and they begin this really kind of short intense relationship
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: where Linda is firmly committed that she needs to make
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Jimmy a star one way or another. At this time,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: the Rolling Stones are on tour, so Keith Richards is
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: kind of safely out of the picture. One night in
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: New York, Linda runs into the Animals Basis chas Chandler,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: who tells her that he's about to leave the band.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: He wants to move into record production and management, and
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Linda says, well, if that's your plan, you got to
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: check out this guy, Jimmy Hendricks. He's going to blow
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: your mind. So part of Chaz Chandler's plan as well
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: is that he's looking He's he's a fan of Tim
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Rose's version of Hey Joe, and he wants to find
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: someone to record it so it could become a big
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: hit in England. He's convinced it will. So Linda Keith
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: has absorbed all this information. She goes back to Jimmy
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: and says, look, I've invited Chaz Chandler to come see you,
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: but something you gotta do. You gotta play this song
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: Hey Joe for him. Chances are I'm almost certain Jimmy
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: had no idea what the song was, so he had
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: to quickly learn it. The next day, of course, chas
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Chandler walks into the club Jimmy's up on stage, he
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: starts playing Hey Joe and the Stars aligned.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Wow, that is one of the coolest stories. Yeah, that's
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest stories in rock and roll. Yeah,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: let's get into Jimmy's version, which was recorded in London.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: So there's a mix of the Leaves baseline with the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: tim Rose arrangement here. And it's interesting to read that
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Hendricks threatened to walk out of the studio after getting
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: into an argument with Chas Chandler.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another thing I didn't really realize until I
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: kind of dug into it, like this was really the
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: first time that Jimmy had sung his own songs in
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: a professional recording studio. Obviously he was nervous, and Chaz
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: actually brought in a female backing. Course they're not that prominent,
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: but you can kind of hear them in the background
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: giving them a little support. And Yeah, evidently they went
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: through a lot of takes just trying to get it right.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: And when you're trying to achieve that sort of perfection,
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: of course, you know, tempers can get freed. And at
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: one point the story goes, yeah, Jimmy did threaten to
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: walk out, but then Chaz said, well, hey, I've got
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: your passport, You're not going anywhere. That was the other
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: funny story about those sessions was Jimmy approached it as
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: if you were on stage, so he just instinctively just
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: cranked his amp up to maximum. And that's something that
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: the studio engineer had never experienced before. So all of
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: a sudden, you know, here's here's Jimmy playing a top
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: volume and you know, all kinds of things rattling around
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: the studio. But Jimmy refused to turn down that was
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: that was a sound, So they had to kind of
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: eventually work at a compromise. And you know, people have
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: debates all the time about the origins of hard rock
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: or heavy metal, but I think going back to that
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: time nineteen sixty six when Jimmy and young bands like
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: The Who were just first starting to make records, they
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: wanted volume, and that's of course cream Eric Clapton, the
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: birth of the Marshall amplifier. You know, I think all
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: of that just if you want to trace the origins
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: of heavy metal back to anything, I think that's where
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: I would go.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: And Jimmy's version went to number twelve on the British
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: arm Beach Art Top forty on the pop side. It's
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: going on to become the definitive version. The impression that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: it made it was quick. It was within weeks of
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the single coming out, and many bands and artists started
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: to jump on the song as well because they heard
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Jimmy's version.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, especially in England and Europe, nobody knew the
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: song the way they kind of did in America, so
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: all these artists immediately they not only connected Hey Joe
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: to Jimmy, but this was him giving.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: His first impression as an artist. You couldn't really.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Separate Jimmy from Hey Joe for at least that initial
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: period when he was in England. They released further singles
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Purple Hayes of course when Cries married, but Hey Joe
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: became synonymous with him, and so anyone he wanted to
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: imitate him. That was the place where they always started.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So you know, you had bands like The Creation. I
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: think they were the first British band to do it.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: And then not long after that, Deep Purple recorded a
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: version for their debut album, which was a lot different
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: but still retained a lot of that Hendrix's mystique about it.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Hendrick just had a way like he did with all
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: along the Watchtower. It's the same thing. He just had
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: a way of taking songs by other artists and making
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: it his own. Book on Rock podcast. We'll be back
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: after this. Find the book down Rock website booked rock
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: dot com. There you can find all the back episodes
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: of the show, the latest episode in video and audio,
• 25:06
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• 25:08
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Plus all the social media platforms were
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and x. Also check
• 25:16
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• 25:20
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• 25:23
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• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Pick up some Booked on Rock merch. It's all at
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: booked on Rock dot com. Now let's talk about Patti
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Smith's version from seventy four. This is another notable recording. Now,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: this is an interesting story here because she was twenty
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: three years old. She's a struggling writer. She was invited
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: to the grand opening of Electric Ladies Studios grand opening.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Well, she ended up at the Electric Lady party.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Covering it for a local newspaper or a magazine.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she was writing articles about musicians. She was basically
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: an early rock journalist. So she got an invitation to
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: the studio opening, and yeah, she ended up having a
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: brief but meaningful interaction with Jimmy. He had to leave
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: the party by all accounts, to catch a flight he
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: had to play the Isle of Wight Festival. But yeah,
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Patty making that personal connection with Jimmy that stayed with her.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: I'm sure it's still probably one of the most important
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: moments of her life. So fast forward a few years
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: when she begins making music herself. Early on, she's kind
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: of been this sort of struggle of finding a way
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: to turn her poetry into songs, which didn't really happen
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: at first, so she had to use other people's material
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: to kind of convey what she was feeling. So when
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: it came time to make her first single, she chose
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: to do Hey Joe, Well for very specific reasons if
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: you want.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: To, yes, the Patty Hurst thing. So yeah, she includes
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the monologue about fugitivaris Patty Hurst and her kidnapping in
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: participation with the Symbionese Liberation Army. So what was it
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that led her to include this in her version?
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: In that year, you know, nineteen seventy four, the Patty
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Hirst story was really kind of gripping the nation. It
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: was on the news every night, people just having trouble
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: believing that this young woman from great privilege be the
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: Suddenly people assumed she was brainwashed into joining this revolutionary
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: they might be called a terrorist organization nowadays, and you know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: committing these crimes. Of course, this was something that Patty
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Smith couldn't ignore either, and along with kind of sharing
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: the same name, Patty Smith felt a connection to Patty
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: Hurst in terms of feeling the pressure of patriarchal society
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: coming down on her. And to tie that in with
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: hey Joe, of someone taking it upon themselves to do
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: something through the use of a firearm, I guess you
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: know that's that's where it kind of happened. But but yeah,
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Patti Smith's version it's one of a kind, just because
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: by the end of it, she's sort of speaking through
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Patricia Hurst's voice as I'm tired of being oppressed, I'm
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: tired of what society is doing to women. It's a
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: version that really kind of turns the song's original story
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: on its head, and that sets the tone I think
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: for future versions where artists could really express their own
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: societal frustrations through the song.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: As for Billy Roberts, how did his life change after
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: the song's popularity in terms of his financial status, in
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: terms of his artistic pursuits.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: It's a really interesting question because by that time, the
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: late sixties, he was based in San Francisco. Interesting fact,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: for a time he lived in a rooming house owned
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: by Huey Lewis's mother get out and yeah, well, yeah
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: and Huey. He made an Instagram post I found at
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: one point that he said that he picked up harmonica
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: from Billy Roberts.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Get out, Yeah, because he was from San fran Yeah.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: But anyway, so Billy was he was around the late
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: sixties San Francisco scene, playing in various blues bands and stuff.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: But no, he kind of kept up his whole truidoor
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: philosophy of just going out and playing music without really
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: any concern for making money off of it. He did
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: end up making a record in the mid seventies. I
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: think it's called Thoughts in California. It's kind of hard
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: to find. It's nothing really spectacular. But the odd thing
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: is he never recorded. Hey, Joe himself.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Never recorded, isn't that crazy?
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah? There are home recordings of them doing it on YouTube,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: but he never officially recorded it as a single or
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: put it on an album or anything. I think he
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: was happy just to get the royalties from Jimmy's version.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah did he had to had to have put
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: a few bucks in his pocket. But according to the book,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: that lasted only so long.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: That goes back to his relationship with Dino Valenci in
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: the mid sixties, where it got really complicated because Dino
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: had some serious legal problems. He was actually went to
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: jail for a period for drug possession, and in order
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: to pay his legal fees to get out of jail,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: he ended up making a deal with an LA publisher
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: saying that he had written Hey Joe, which wasn't the case,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: And when Billy found out about it, he showed his
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: library of Congress registration and through legal wrangling, Billy ended
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: up getting the copyright. But anyways, it was something that
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: he just sort of helped him maintain the life he wanted.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Throughout the seventies. I saw stories that he would play
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: on cruise liners, he'd recorded radio jingles for people, and
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: you know, whenever the mood struck him, he would still
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: go out there and busk on the.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Street more so just because I think that was just
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: who he was.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely for sure. And sadly I can't remember what
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: year it was, sometime in the early eighties, he was
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: involved in a pretty serious car wreck that left him
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: with permanent head injuries.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: And he was lucky to live through that.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: He was lucky to live through that, and that was
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: really kind of the end of the story for him.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: He lived many years after that, but you could never
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: you could never really play music again, unfortunately. And yeah,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: he just sort of fell off the map after that.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: This book gives him the recognition he deserves, though he
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: really should be recognized more well.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that was definitely one of my intentions,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: and the power of Hey Joe lives on. I added
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: a little story right at the very end where a
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: couple of years ago a city in Poland, they decided
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: to try to set Againness Book of World Records for
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: the number of guitar players playing Hey Joe together at
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: the same time. I can't remember the number. It was
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: in the hundreds, but Steve Vai was there to kind
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: of conduct them.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: The forward in the book, By the way, Lenny k
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: speaking of Patty Smith, right, the guitar from the Patty
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Smith group. So you were able to get him to
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: do the former.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was very fortunate that he agreed to do that,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: and to me, it was the perfect choice given you know,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: not only he played on Patty's version, but as kind
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: of the garage rock guru, he knows every version of
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Hey Joe that exists, So to get his seal of
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: approval that meant the world to me.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: That got on your hand the strange saga of heyjo
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: in Popular Music's History of Violence. It's out now and
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: it goes much deeper than what we've discussed here. We've
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: just basically scratched the services so much in this book
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: that you're going to want to read about the history
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: of not just Hey Joe the song, but murder balance
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: in general. It is an amazing read. It's available wherever
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: books are sold, right.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Anvil Press based in Vancouver.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: You can order it from their website and I just
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: confirmed today actually that their US distributor should have it
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: out by the middle of next month.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Great. Where can people find you online, Jason if they
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: want to reach out to you.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: Schneidermedia dot com I'm always happy to meet new people
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: and answer questions.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Great man, it was great meeting you, and again congrats
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: on this book. It's a fascinating book I must read
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: for fans of music, music history.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Excellent. I really enjoyed it. Eric, thank you. That's it.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: It's in the books.