[ Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Purple haze all in my brain ♪ ♪ Lately things just don't seem the same ♪ ♪ Actin' funny, but I don't know why ♪ ♪ 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky ♪ Stamp: Jimi was one of the last of the true rock 'n' rollers, I think.

I mean, they lived for what rock 'n' roll was supposed to be.

I mean, the people who'd gone into rock 'n' roll were in it to have a good time, to sort of make money, to have lots of laughs, and everything else.

And, I mean, Jimi did all those things.

Hendrix: ♪ Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Help me, baby ♪ ♪ Help me, baby, yeah ♪ You know, I look -- I think about Jimi Hendrix, you know, 'cause here he is, this young Black musician leading this whole new generation of music.

Where did he come from?

♪ Purple haze all in my eyes ♪ ♪ Don't know if it's day or night ♪ ♪ You got me blowin', blow my mind ♪ ♪ Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?

♪ Most of what the people had been used to was kind of dressed-up, watered-down soul music.

And for someone like Jimi to come along was so powerful.

I think it was simply that, simply that, that it was just so powerful and so direct that it was -- you know, it was what everyone had been waiting for.

[ Electric guitar playing ] ♪♪ Narrator: Jimi Hendrix's career was going nowhere until he was discovered in a Greenwich Village bar in September 1966 by Chas Chandler, the bass player with The Animals.

♪♪ Chandler: I thought musically he was the best guitarist I'd ever seen.

And he was playing with a little pickup band.

It was one of these coffee bar things that they have in Greenwich Village where you get like sort of 15 bucks to do a spot.

And the first song Jimi played that afternoon onstage was "Hey Joe."

And he was -- He had it all, you know?

You just sat there and thought yourself, "Well, this is ridiculous.

"Why hasn't somebody signed this guy up?

How come he's loose?"

You know?

Narrator: Hendrix is very keen to meet British guitarists like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, so it was easy for Chandler to persuade him to come to London, the music and fashion capital of the swinging '60s.

Hendrix: ♪ Always up, you never let me down ♪ ♪ The amazing thing, you turn me on naturally ♪ ♪ And I kiss you when I please ♪ ♪ You got me floatin' ♪ Chandler: A couple of days after we'd got to England, I bumped into Jack Bruce and Eric in a club called The Cromwellian, where we used to all -- It was one of our watering holes in them days.

And I told them about Jimi, and they said, "Well, bring him down to the Regent Polytechnic on Saturday."

That was when they had Cream by that time.

It was the very early days of Cream.

They said, "Bring him down and have him jam with us."

We were just getting ready to go on, and Chas showed up, Chas Chandler, With this young Black guy who was very striking in every way -- I mean, his appearance and his manner, which was, to say the least, very, very shy.

He was extremely shy, but at the same time quite kind of aware of himself, you know?

And Jimi got up.

And he'd brought his own guitar.

And he was left-handed, for a start, and he played a normal Strat, you know?

So the whole thing was upside down.

So, that was a little astonishing.

And he went straight into "Killing Floor," the Howlin' Wolf song.

[ "Killing Floor" playing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ He played just about every style you could think of, you know, and not in a flashy way.

I mean, he did -- I think he did a few of his tricks, like playing it with his teeth and behind his back and things like that, but it wasn't in an upstaging sense at all.

And that was it, you know?

I think we did maybe just that song.

And he walked off, and my life was never the same again, really.

Narrator: Chandler now put together The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass.

Noel had the same haircut as Jimi.

So I suggested he go down and try playing bass with Jimi.

So, I sat in with this gentleman guy and a drummer and a keyboard player, and they asked me to come back the next day.

And I said, "If you give me 10 bob, I will."

[ Laughs ] So they gave me 10 bob.

Chandler: We tried a series of drummers, and we literally flipped a coin.

Fortunately for us, it turned up Mitch, and I think we were very lucky there 'cause Mitch was the perfect man for the job.

Noel played like the anchor in the band.

He kept it just steady.

Jimi and Mitch were then just opened up and just played off the seat of their pants.

And they always could come back to where Noel was, just keeping the whole thing together.

It was just a perfect fusion.

It was very exciting.

[ "Hey Joe" playing ] ♪ Hey, Joe ♪ ♪ I said, where you goin' with that gun of your hand?

♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hey, Joe ♪ ♪ I said, where you goin' with that gun of your hand?

♪ ♪♪ ♪ I'm goin' way down south, way down south ♪ ♪ You know I shot my old lady ♪ ♪ Now I gotta get outta here as fast as I can ♪ ♪♪ ♪ I went down and shot my old lady ♪ [ Singing indistinctly ] ♪♪ The first time I met Hendrix was at a music club called The Bag O'Nails, which was a '60s nightclub, full of '60s beautiful people and rock 'n' roll people.

I was there with my partner, Kit Lambert.

And there was an ordinary English rock 'n' roll band playing on the stage, which I wasn't taking much notice of, when I suddenly -- and then suddenly I heard this amazing guitar playing.

And I looked up, and there was this incredible-looking Black guy playing.

My first impression was that he looked very much like a Black Bob Dylan, and the way that he played guitar was just sensuous, I think I should call it.

Kit practically knocked tables over to get across to talk to him, and he said, "I've just got to sign this guy."

And we sat that night and made out the deal, and he agreed to pay a £1,000 advance for The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

And that was done -- sort of worked out on a beermat.

We were doing, like, small clubs, and the buzz got about.

And suddenly all these little clubs we were doing, we were getting £15 pounds or something.

I don't -- I never saw it, anyway.

And suddenly it was packed, and there was, like, all these, like, celebrities coming along, which sort of freaked me out a bit 'cause I was very young.

Like, if you're sitting in a dressing room and John Lennon walks in... [ Laughs ] Chandler: The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were the aristocracy of music at the time.

And they very early on became big fans of Jimi.

Hendrix: ♪ Is that the stars in the sky, or is it... ♪ Chandler: I mean, I remember Jagger turning around one day and saying, "Why the hell are you interviewing me?

You should be interviewing Jimi Hendrix."

Things like that made it happen so quickly.

Hendrix: ♪ So big, so round ♪ It was a very skillful PR campaign, I think, to begin with.

Chas has worked very hard on it.

And he pushed the image and the photographs.

And it was necessary to get attention to Hendrix, I think.

It was a kind of like savage image when you looked at it in photographs.

When you actually met Jimi, of course, it was a slightly different kettle of rock altogether 'cause he was this quiet, whispering, gentle character offstage.

Jimi was a wonderfully warm guy.

He was very soft-spoken.

He was very hip.

He was very slyly hip.

Jimi always had a sort of sly smile.

He would see things, and you would realize he was seeing something you hadn't seen, but when you looked at him, you would recognize it.

And there was just this sly smile that he had, and you would laugh with him.

Beautifully warm guy.

I just -- That's how I remember him.

I mean, and also, I thought he was some sort of genius as well.

I was talking to some little kids, you know, the people that they call teenyboppers, you know?

I was talking to them, and I found out -- You know, I said, "What are your favorite groups?

"What are some of your favorite groups?

Do you know anything about music?"

You know?

They said, "Yeah, we like The Cream.

We like y'all's group."

I said, "Oh --" [ Clears throat ] Excuse me.

"Oh, yeah?

Great.

Thank you very much."

Man: Beautiful.

And so I said, "Wow."

You know, their minds are different.

So they don't want to hear about this manufactured tinfoil music, you know?

When he first came over to England, through his meetings with a few people, it just seemed like a lot of material suddenly came out in a very short space of time.

[ "The Wind Cries Mary" plays ] Chandler: We were recording, the B side of "Purple Haze," and there was 20 minutes left in the studio.

And Jimi had written "The Wind Cries Mary" the night before at home.

♪♪ ♪ Well, after all the jacks are in their boxes ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And the clowns have all gone to bed ♪ ♪♪ ♪ You can hear happiness staggering on down the street ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Footprints dressed in red ♪ ♪♪ ♪ The wind whispers, "Mary" ♪ ♪♪ We'd go in, and it'd be like -- I'd say, "What key is it in?"

And Mitchell would say, "What tempo is it?"

And we'd record it.

[ Laughs ] Mitch and Noel had never heard the song before it was recorded, including five guitar overdubs in the 20 minutes, and that was all part of the session for "Purple Haze."

And we had the third single there and then.

So, as soon as "Purple Haze" started fading in the chart, we brought "Wind Cries Mary" out.

♪ A broom is drearily sweeping ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Somewhere a queen is weeping ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Somewhere a king has no wife ♪ ♪♪ ♪ The wind cries, "Mary" ♪ ♪♪ Narrator: "Hey Joe," "Purple Haze," and "The Wind Cries Mary" all made the British top 10.

♪♪ In the spring of 1967, The Experience embarked on their first major tour in the unlikely company of Cat Stevens, the Walker Brothers, and Engelbert Humperdinck.

By the time the first album came out that May, the Jimi Hendrix Experience had established themselves throughout Europe.

Chandler: "Are You Experienced?"

came out within a couple of months of "Sgt.

Pepper," and "Sgt.

Pepper" became, like, a watershed album.

And so there we were with "Are You Experience?"

coming out right on the coattails of a very innovative album by The Beatles, which really did make a significant change.

Albums became taken as a much more serious piece of work in them days, at that time.

♪ It was 20 years ago today ♪ ♪ Sgt.

Pepper taught the band to play ♪ ♪ They've been going in and out of style ♪ ♪ But they're guaranteed to raise a smile ♪ ♪ So may I introduce to you ♪ [ Speaking indistinctly ] ♪ Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, you got to remember how huge the Beatles were in them days.

There were just a colossus.

And when The Mamas & Papas and John Phillips and them come up with the Monterey thing, they asked Paul to be part of the board that would set up and front and guarantee the Monterey Festival, and Paul just basically said, "I'll join the board of the Monterey if The Jimi Hendrix Experience are on the show."

That was his condition on joining it.

And Brian Jones was a good pal of Jimi's and mine, used to be up at our house all the time.

And it was Brian that answered the phone from California when John Phillips came on the phone asking us to go up to Monterey.

And because Brian had answered the phone, we turned around and says, "Yeah, Brian will come out and do the announcing for Jimi."

So Brian went out with us and announced Jimi onstage.

I'd like to introduce a very good friend, a fellow countryman of yours, the greatest performer and most exciting guitarist I've ever heard -- The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

[ Cheers and applause ] It was freaky, you know, for, like, the first gig in America, doing this huge festival, all these people sort of leaping about, taking various things, and -- [chuckles] and hair everywhere.

And women, of course.

[ Chuckles ] [ Cheers and applause ] [ Instruments tuning] Hendrix: There's an old big story about we going here, we couldn't make it here, so we go over to England and America doesn't like us because, you know, our feets too big or we got fat mattresses and we wear golden underwear.

Ain't no scene like that, brother.

You know, it's just -- Dig, man.

Just, you know, I was layin' around and then went to England and picked up these two cats.

And now here we are, man.

It was so, you know, groovy to come back here this way, you know, and really get a chance to really play, you know?

[ Cheers and applause ] You know, it's amazing that the guy had to come to England to make it back there.

But -- So, of course, you know, going back to America was a big deal for him.

[ Engine revving ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was important for him to make it under his own name and steam, you know?

I mean, yeah, the guy -- There was enough ego involved that the guy wanted to get in there and hit hard.

[ "Wild Thing" playing ] ♪♪ Come on, man!

Let's go!

Sing it with me!

♪ Wild thing ♪ ♪♪ ♪ You make my heart sing ♪ Come on, yeah!

♪ You make a-everything groovy ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Wild thing ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Wild thing, I think you move me ♪ ♪ But wanna know for sure ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Come on and s-s-sock it to me one more time ♪ ♪♪ ♪ You move me ♪ Look out.

♪♪ I can't express myself in a, you know, conversation.

I can't explain myself like this or that sometimes 'cause, you know, it just doesn't come out like that.

So -- excuse me -- when we're on stage, it's all in the world.

That's your whole life.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Man: Jimi Hendrix!

[ Indistinct shouting ] [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ Narrator: Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle in 1942 and grew up in a predominantly white community.

His parents divorced in 1950.

Jimi spent much of his childhood with his grandmother, a full-blooded Cherokee.

Hendrix was a shy and introverted boy.

When he was 12, his father bought him his first electric guitar.

Learning from the rock 'n' roll hits on the radio, he taught himself to play.

In 1961, he joined the paratroopers, but 14 months later, he was discharged after injuring himself during a parachute jump.

For the next three years, Hendrix played with any band that would have him, working a network of Black clubs and theaters known as the Chitlin' Circuit.

Man: ♪ Buy yourself a shotgun now ♪ ♪ Break it down, baby, now ♪ ♪ Load it up, baby, yeah ♪ ♪ Shoot him 'fore he run now ♪ ♪ Shotgun ♪ ♪ Shoot him 'fore he run now ♪ ♪ Do the jerk, baby ♪ ♪ Do the jerk now ♪ ♪♪ Chandler: You have to remember that this lad had been onstage with a lot of very influential blues players in America.

He worked with the Isley Brothers.

He'd worked with Ike and Tina Turner.

He'd worked with Little Richard doing the Chitlin' Circuit in America.

That's got to rub off on you.

I mean, if you don't entertain on them shows, they throw things at you.

So you got to learn to entertain damn quick.

And it all just came to fruition with two little lads from England.

[ Chuckles ] As is the way with musicians, we just sort of dug up all our heroes and compared them.

And we actually thought the same.

He liked Robert Johnson.

He liked Freddie and B.B.

King, and he liked Buddy Guy, He liked all the same people, and he just seemed to be conversant in all this.

I mean, it was such a thrill for me because it was all secondhand in reality, for me.

It was something that I learnt from records.

This guy had been amongst them and was one of them.

I don't know if he idolized me as a musician, but he seemed to respect what I did.

And so if he did something bluesy, that's the thing that he would play for me.

And he'd play it so -- His attack to a guitar man was, oh, something else.

I think of one of the great American pitchers or ballplayers or one of the great fighters of the world, you know?

That's the way he would attack any note on his guitar.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I got to see Jimi for the first time in '69 in Seattle 'cause I lived in Seattle at the time, and just the wildest music I ever heard.

I mean, just really -- After that first assembly, I went and bought "Are You Experienced?"

And living in Virginia, I mean, we were playing soul music and things like that, and it was just a completely different way of an approach to a guitar.

And I was really thrilled by it.

I think really what it was, was he was making these extraordinary, futuristic guitar sounds, but also you could hear almost the whole history of the blues in them or something.

There was some connection between blues history and the guitar and the way that Jimi was taking it into the future.

But Jimi played blues and played it well, and he played good blues.

He just did it Jimi Hendrix's way, which was Jimi Hendrix.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I was a one-way player.

I played strict Chicago blues, you know?

I'd never tried to cross it with anything.

And he had this melting pot going on that he'd drawn from different places that I did try and pick up on.

Well, I was pretty young and impressionable at that time, and I would sit and listen to his records as much as I could, you know, and I'd sit and learn all the licks and everything in my room.

My mother would ask what the hell was going on downstairs, you know?

I had this big room.

I had my stereo cranked up loud.

And I swear, man, I had a lot of that stuff down note for note.

I was really into Jimi's music a whole lot.

And for me, it just like -- it opened up -- it just opened up all kinds of avenues and different ways of going about playing guitar.

You know, he used to get up in the morning to go and fry himself a breakfast, and he'd be frying bacon and eggs with a guitar on.

He took the guitar around -- That lad never had a guitar on less than eight hours every day, plus at a gig at night.

He'd take the guitar to the loo with him because he liked the sound of the echo in there, and he'd sit in there sometimes for hours, just playing a Fender guitar, not plugged in, because he liked the sound coming off the tiles in the loo.

He had a guitar on all the time.

All the time.

He was the best guitarist in the world because he wanted to be the best and he was prepared to work at it.

Narrator: After their success at Monterrey, The Experience were booked at the Fillmore in San Francisco, the top underground club on the West Coast.

Jefferson Airplane were top of the bill, Jimi was second, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were the opening act.

We'd done two nights there, and Jefferson Airplane cried off 'cause they got -- Jimi just crucified them, murdered them onstage.

And they pulled out of their last show.

And we got back to the hotel after the second show after being told that we'd be topping the bill on the last night.

And we were really ecstatic.

It had been a fantastic night.

And we got a phone call from Mike Jeffrey in New York to tell us he pulled off this fantastic deal, that he got them on the Monkees tour.

And Jimi and I just sat there stunned.

We couldn't believe he'd done this.

I mean, The Monkees.

I thought it was great because The Monkees were huge in America at that point.

They had their own airplane with "Monkees" written on the side.

So, I thought that was lovely.

And we got little things saying "Monkees touring party" and all that rubbish.

But we didn't actually go down that well because it was a whole different crowd altogether.

And I just said, "Well, I'm getting them off this tour."

Now, Dick Clark was promoting that tour, and he agreed with me that it was a terrible mismatch.

And the two of us sat there and cooked up this tale about the Daughters of the American Revolution, that they'd made complaints about it.

The Daughters of the American Revolution in them days were anybody's Aunt Sally.

I mean, they thought Barry Goldwater was a pinko, you know?

And it was a -- It was a good thing to hang it on.

So we put out this story, and the next thing we knew, it sort of front-page news everywhere.

Altham: I don't think there was any doubt that there was a concerted effort on the part of the publicity machine around Jimi at the time to cause a little bit of moral indignation within the context of the media and some of the pillars of the establishment at the time because, I mean, that's one of the things that immediately gets the kids on your side.

I mean, it worked with The Stones.

It worked with the Sex Pistols.

It worked with Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix: ♪ I want to hear and see everything ♪ ♪ I want to hear and see everything ♪ ♪♪ Narrator: From mid-1967, for the next two years, the Jimi Hendrix Experience toured nonstop, establishing themselves as one of the most successful live acts of all time.

Hendrix: ♪ Aw, shucks ♪ Chandler: As an artist is generating publicity, his album's going up the chart.

Your first section of the tour may be in 2,000- or 3,000-seater auditoriums.

The next section may be in 5,000-seaters.

By the time we finish that '68 thing, we're doing big arenas and state fairs and he was topping the bill and we were picking up like 100,000 bucks a night by the end of that tour.

This guy Mike Jeffries who managed us all, was a remarkable guy.

And he and Jimi had figured out, I think, that to tour a band around the United States using air transport was really not that much different from touring it around London using road transport.

And so we zigzagged to and fro, up and down north, south, east, west, you know, across America.

And you'd be swimming in Arizona in the morning and the afternoon you'd get out in a blizzard in Canada.

♪♪ Hendrix: ♪ Is this true?

♪ ♪ Please let me talk to you ♪ ♪ I just wanna know about the rooms behind your minds ♪ ♪ Do I see a vacuum there, or am I going blind?

♪ ♪ Or is it just the remains ♪ ♪ From vibrations or echoes long ago ♪ ♪ Things like "Love the world" ♪ ♪ And "Let your fancy flow"?

♪ ♪♪ ♪ Is this true?

♪ If you're touring in that manner, there's basically no time to relax 'cause, like, you get on the plane, you go to the place, you go and do a press reception, you go to the hotel, you have a bath, you go and do a gig, you go to a club, you find a young lady or she finds you, you go back home, and then whatever else follows, and then you get up at 8:00, you get on a plane, go to the next place, go to the club, and you do that for about three months.

You do tend to get very tired.

I've never seen so many women in my life.

And I was only 20 years old, but when we started, there was women everywhere.

And -- And that escalated, especially when we went to America later on.

That got a bit silly then, you know, with the ladies.

♪ Whoo, foxy lady ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ I see you down on the scene ♪ ♪ Foxy ♪ ♪♪ ♪ You make me wanna get up and scream ♪ ♪ Foxy ♪ ♪ Listen, baby ♪ ♪ Yeah, I've made up my mind ♪ ♪ I'm tired of wasting all my precious time, yeah ♪ ♪♪ ♪ You've got to be all mine, all mine ♪ ♪ Whoo, foxy lady ♪ ♪♪ I used to always say to Jimi, "You should have a revolving door in your bedroom."

Right?

[ Chuckles ] There's not much more to say.

Then it was a different time, you know?

It was an era of the three P's, wasn't it, you know?

Penicillin cured everything.

The pill introduced promiscuity.

[ Chuckles ] Like, if I'll get up at 7:00 in the morning, you know, I'm really sleepy.

But then I open the door and see somebody that appeals to me, you know?

Well, like, first of all, thinking of what -- First I say, "What in the world is she doing here?"

you know, or, "What does she, you know, want?"

or something like that.

I seen her.

She says, "Maybe can I come in?"

And I'm standing there and really digging her, you know?

She's really nice looking, you know?

To tell the honest-to-God truth, like, she's about 19, 20 or, you know, beyond the age of so-and-so.

And so I say, "Oh, well --" I'll probably stand there, and then there I go.

I'll biting into an apple maybe or something, you know?

To tell the honest-to-God truth, that's the way I am 'cause, like -- [ Laughs ] Really, it was the first band where you've got a young Black...

Guy.

...guy in some position of power.

that was, uh -- "A," you know, I mean, white girls liked him, as well.

Right.

You know?

There again, Black girls liked us.

That's right.

You know?

[ Laughs ] It was a threat to the authority, you know?

They just didn't like what was going down.

Redding: We were down in Louisiana once.

And me being English, not knowing about the -- as you say, the Black situation, we stopped someplace.

We were gonna get some cheese and some beers or something in this place.

And we stopped, and myself and Mitch went in this shop.

It was a redneck place, Louisiana.

And all these guys went... 'cause we had the hair and the pink suits.

And Hendrix wouldn't get out of the car and he wouldn't come in.

We said, "Come on.

Come on.

What's wrong?"

"No, man."

And that's when I started realizing -- I didn't know nothing about it, being English, you see, so... You find out, like, the guy driving the car was one of, like, the big Ku Klux Klan member.

And so Hendrix would know this.

And so he'd make sure he sat in the front of the car with the guy chauffeuring him, you know?

Yeah, people used to say to me, "Mitchell, uh, um... what's it like playing with a Black guy?"

I'd say, "Well, I don't know.

He's a guitar player."

You know?

We didn't consider him being Black.

I considered him being American.

Hendrix: ♪ Come in, now Jimi ♪ We were in a bar in Virginia, and it was -- As far as I can remember, Jimi and Mitch and Noel and Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, and various other people.

And the woman who was serving the drinks told us that Martin Luther King had just been assassinated.

And there were these guys at the bar opening bottles of wine and drinking to the health of the assassin.

And of course I was -- You immediately find yourself wondering what your role should be.

You want to kind of go in there and do something.

You're so outraged, you know?

And I remember turning and looking at Jimi, who was just staring away into space as though nothing had happened.

And I realized, of course, that these guys were just waiting, probably trying to prompt some reaction from Jimi and from us, you know, so that they could beat us up.

So we left the bar.

I was actually terrified, totally terrified.

I felt I'd grown 20 years older in 2 minutes, you know?

And we went back to New York, and the following night we were due to play at Newark in New Jersey.

And nobody wanted to go.

There were riots in the streets in New York and cars were being overturned.

And Jimi said the last time he'd been in Newark, there were tanks on the street and the whole city was on fire.

And so everyone was pretty scared, at least I suppose they all were.

I certainly was.

And then the police came on the phone and said that there was a vast crowd gathered at the auditorium.

and if we, um -- if didn't show up, they thought they'd burn the city down.

And so the the driver of the main Cadillac took the cheroot out of his mouth -- I'll always remember -- and said, "Jimi sits up front with me, or I don't go."

So Jimi sat up in front with this guy, the driver, and the rest of us white guys all cowered down in the back of the car.

And we drove off through the empty streets of Newark like that.

And when we got to the auditorium, there was a really vast crowd.

I was doing the projections for Soft Machine out in the actual auditorium, so I knew you couldn't move.

All the aisles were packed and so on.

And I was thinking, "What do I do if someone suddenly stands up and points a gun at Jimi?"

Because we all thought that there was some kind of conspiracy going on to eliminate people who were seen as enemies of some kind of dream of America that had never really been and the killing of Kennedy and the killing of Martin Luther King were acts of that.

And it seemed to us that Hendrix, too, might be seen in that light, as representing this youth culture and Black culture that they seemed to hate so much.

But of course, I realized that there was nothing I could do if someone did stand up with a gun.

And then Soft Machine did a great set, and then Hendrix came out to enormous applause.

And then he said, "This number is for a friend of mine."

And he abandoned completely his original -- his normal set and just -- he the band played an improvisation, which was absolutely, hauntingly beautiful.

Immediately, everybody knew what this was about.

I mean, um, this was a lament for Martin Luther King.

And within minutes the whole audience was weeping, and the much-maligned old redneck stagehands came on to the side of the stage and they were standing there, too, with tears running down their face.

The music had a -- I describe it as having a kind of appalling beauty.

It was harrowing music.

And of course, when you tried to get a tape of it, for once, nobody was making a pirate recording.

There is no record of that thing.

And when he came to the end of the music, there was no applause.

He just put his guitar around.

The whole audience was sobbing.

And he just walked quietly off the stage, and we all got out and got into the Cadillacs and drove away.

The strangest thing for me was, I was never aware of how much dope they were putting down their throats.

[ "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" plays ] ♪♪ ♪ Now, the smiling portrait of you ♪ ♪ Is still hangin' on my frowning wall ♪ ♪ It really doesn't, really doesn't bother me ♪ ♪ Too much at all ♪ Jimi never -- never seemed to be high or anything.

I didn't find out until after we'd completed "Axis: Bold as Love."

But he'd been taking acid.

And this is a guy that was living in the same flat as me.

You just couldn't tell with Jimi.

He seemed to just cruise through anything that came along.

[ Indistinct singing ] ♪♪ Stamp: I mean, everyone was sort of involved with pot and stuff like that.

And LSD was very important at the time.

Everyone was either taking LSD, thinking about taking LSD.

There were the people who hadn't taken it and the people who had taken it, so to speak.

But that was an important drug.

But the actual hard drugs weren't important at all, and they weren't really around very much at all.

And, as you know, I mean, LSD is not a sort of drug you get strung out on.

I mean, it's not something one wants to take every day.

[ Chuckles ] We were playing in Kiel or somewhere near Hamburg, '67, and Hendrix had taken something or someone had given him something.

And we sort of wandered onstage, and I noticed that he was just standing there laughing.

Right?

Couldn't even -- he couldn't tune the guitar.

So I had to put the bass down, go across there, get the guitar off him, tune it backwards for him -- right?

-- hand it to him.

And he just sort of sat on the chair laughing 'cause he was tripping or whatever.

And he couldn't sing or nothing.

And in those days I couldn't sing.

I just did backing vocals or whatever.

But luckily I could speak a bit of German.

So we fumbled through a few songs, you know, without vocals.

And then in the end I had to sort of say in German that he's a bit ill. [ Speaking German ] And we split quick.

[ Chuckles ] [ Indistinct speaking ] Narrator: The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded only three studio albums -- "Are You Experienced?"

and "Axis: Bold as Love," both released in 1967, and the 1968 album "Electric Ladyland."

It was great in the studio, especially the early days, before we got into the "Electric Ladyland" album because it was so spontaneous.

Everything was done in one or two takes.

I mean, "Are You Experienced?"

the album -- I mean, when you really count up the hours, it was recorded and mixed in maybe 60 hours in the studio in total, "Axis: Bold as Love" maybe 80 hours in the studio.

I mean, in fact, when we did "Axis" Bold as Love," we brought the master tapes home this night from the studio, and Jimi went off to a party and took them with him to play them for some friends.

These are the masters.

Come back in the taxi, he lost the B side somewhere.

He got back with only the A side of the album.

So we had to go in, and we'd made arrangements for cutting time.

And we went back in the studio the next night and mixed the whole album, the whole album again in 4 1/2 hours.

The third album, "Electric Ladyland" -- that was mainly recorded in America.

That's when things got very sour.

He didn't give any thought to the amount of money that was being spent either on studios or limousines or anything else, you know?

And didn't appreciate that a producer's role, as Chas's was, was to bring things in on a budget.

It was like living in a circus at the end of the day.

Mike Jeffries, who was like my associate partner whatever, at the time -- he started taking a lot of LSD.

And Jimi and him became like acid buddies.

They were discussing the different concoctions, what to take one day after the other.

It was madness in the office, what with -- And Mitch and Noel were doing all sorts of things by -- Obviously I was aware they were doing drugs by this time.

Never realized just how much they were putting down.

But it was impossible to talk with these people.

There were always -- Somebody was always on a trip.

And trying to talk to your partner and the artist -- You know, you say to the artist one day, "You know, for God's sake, you got to stop this.

You're gonna do your brain in."

And 20 minutes later, your partner's coming in, and they're discussing what they're gonna take that afternoon.

And I just thought -- Well, I kept warning him if he didn't cool it out, I was gonna split.

And then sometimes we'd turn up and there'd be like 50 people in the control room.

And I'd be saying, "Excuse me, Could I sit somewhere?

I'm just the bass player."

[ Chuckles ] "Who are you, man?"

So, like, things got pretty hairy.

And there was a few heavy verbals between myself and Hendrix about that fact.

All the decisions were avoided.

I would say "That's it.

You know, it's done.

Take three.

That's it."

But he would want to go on to take 50.

And it just drove you mad.

I was sitting there straight as a die, having to suffer one track, you know, one performance after the other, which you could literally not tell any difference between except the longer it went on, the fire was seemed to be going out of the performance to me.

Yeah, the whole LP means so much.

You know, it wasn't just slopped together.

Every little thing that you hear on there means something, you know?

It's not no game that we're playing, trying to blow the public's mind or so forth.

It's the thing that we really, really mean.

You know, it's part of us, another part of us.

Chandler: It was in desperation.

I just said, "You know, hey, I've had it.

I'm off."

And I thought it was the only thing I could do to try and pull him out of it.

And that was it.

I just came back to England.

His courage came from his fantastic conviction that whatever he did was absolutely correct, you know?

And it wasn't -- I mean, it was never done in a malicious way.

He never meant anyone any harm, but he would do anything he felt like doing at any time, you know, irrespective of what it was supposed to be.

And that is -- Doing the -- I mean, going on supposedly to perform "Hey Joe" on the "Lulu" show and then dedicating that -- I mean, playing "Sunshine of Your Love" because The Cream have broken up.

I mean, it was actually the same day, I think, that he got the news and just decided to do that and sod everyone else, you know?

Prior to the show, which was live, we were all in the toilet having our bit of smoke, as they say.

And it fell down the sink.

[ Chuckles ] So, panic everywhere.

We were trying to open the bottom of the sink and everything.

So, we had to get a maintenance man from the BBC television.

We said, "We dropped a ring down the sink."

"Well, I'll get it back."

And I said, "No, no, give me the thing, and I'll do it myself."

So we got the bit of smoke back, and we were okay.

♪♪ We'd like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to The Cream.

Regardless of what kind of group they might be in, we'd like to dedicate it to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce.

[ "Sunshine of Your Love" plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ We're being put off the air.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Applause ] Hey!

[ Song ends ] It was meteoric for him.

He really shot up there very quickly and was constantly in demand.

And I don't think he ever really gave himself time to kind of unwind or do a lot of the things he wanted to do.

I mean, when you're at that kind of peak, you're just flashing everywhere, and life loses reality, you know?

And I think that may have been a bit disturbing for him towards the end, you know, in that he probably was hard put to find a good direction to go in, you know?

It was like just being shunted from pillar to post.

Yeah, once a band does become successful, I think that you're expected to do, as in Hendrix, the guitar smashing, the biting bit.

It used to put my teeth on edge.

And after a while, Hendrix did get a bit sick of the fact that he was expected to do this certain act, you know?

And that did get to him, you know?

It got to all of us, really.

Jimi, how much do you rely on gimmicks?

Gimmicks.

Here we go again.

Gimmicks, man.

I'm tired of people saying we rely on gimmicks.

What is this?

The world is nothing but a big gimmick, isn't it?

Wars, napalm bombs, and all that.

People get burned up on TV, and it's nothing but a gimmick.

Yes, we do.

♪♪ ♪♪ He had done, up to a certain point, what he wanted to do musically, really, which culminated in "Electric Ladyland" album.

The things he did after that, he felt himself that he was repeating certain things.

He wanted to go somewhere else musically.

He was very much trying to do this.

And this period was, for him, a period of frustration and probably a lot of unhappiness.

He may have got more involved with drugs during that period -- but, again, I don't think in a very sort of addictive, obsessive way.

What he was obsessive about was making the next musical change in his life.

The thing is, nowadays anybody can protest, you know, and anybody can write beautiful songs and all that.

But sometimes, if you have a talent or if people are noticing you enough, then you should really try to do as much as you possibly can with it, you know?

Like, what we're gonna do now is chop down the words now and try to make it really tight.

And what we're saying is not protesting, but giving the answers of some kind of solution.

♪♪ Narrator: By now, Hendrix, though apolitical himself, had become a potent symbol for America's radical youth movement at a time of mass civil rights rallies and anti-Vietnam demonstrations.

♪♪ ♪♪ Hendrix: Big deal.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ "The Star-Spangled Banner" plays ] ♪♪ Well, I think that is probably the curse of genius, that, you know, you are alone.

You know, no one can understand the depths that you go to when you reach down inside yourself to play or to express.

You can't take anyone with you to those places.

And it's -- Sometimes you find things that are very scary.

And I think you have to survive that on your own.

And that is a very lonely experience.

And it's not something you choose.

It's not something that you necessarily would go after.

It's something you inherit with your gift.

And he had it in aces, you know?

And it did make him very lonely.

And I don't -- I don't think, even with other musicians of his caliber -- And there weren't many.

And perhaps there weren't any, you know?

I mean, I tried to get close to him, but there was always a kind of barrier, you know, that wasn't of his making, I'm sure.

It's just that that's -- that's the way it is when you're that great.

Last gig.

June 1969.

Right.

Denver.

We arrived there, jumped on a plane from L.A. to Denver, and checked into the hotel.

I went upstairs, and there's some journalist in the restaurant at the the bar wherever I was having a meal or whatever.

And he said, "Oh, are you still with the band?"

I said, "What do you mean?

Of course I'm still with the band."

He said, "Didn't you read the paper?"

or something.

He said that Hendrix had announced to the press that he was gonna extend his band by adding brass and keyboard, et cetera, et cetera, and he was thinking of adding other members.

And I said, "What do you mean?"

You know?

Because Hendrix had said nothing to me.

So I did the gig and left.

That was it.

On the plane back to England, Narrator: The Experience broke up in June 1969.

For the next 15 months, Hendrix played with a succession of different musicians.

He played Woodstock with a pick-up group, including Mitch Mitchell, and then formed a band of gypsies, a short-lived experiment with an old Army friend, Billy Cox, on bass and Buddy Miles on drums.

Collaborations were also planned with Gil Evans and Miles Davis, but these came to nothing.

Hendrix: ♪ And you'll be going just the same ♪ ♪ Three times the pain ♪ ♪ And your own self to blame ♪ ♪ Whoa, oh, machine gun ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I heard that he was taking lots of dope of different varieties and becoming slightly unreliable or just kind of more -- more mysterious, you know, that he would be kind of -- he would disappear or he would just walk off or he would do unaccountable things.

♪♪ Narrator: Hendrix came back to England in August 1970 to play the Isle of Wight Festival.

♪♪ And then back in London -- it was was a Wednesday night -- he came to the flat.

And I was still -- I was still living in the flat that we'd shared.

And he came to see my son, who had just been born and was only a few months old at the time.

He'd never seen the child.

And he came up the flat and we sat talking and he asked us to come back and produce him again.

And we sat talking till 2:00 or 3:00 that morning.

He -- Discussing -- He said he felt that he hadn't -- wasn't satisfied with what he'd been been recording in the year, 15 months since we parted company.

And he couldn't really see what he'd done.

♪♪ And I said, "Well, I'm going up to Newcastle on Friday.

"You go to New York on Friday.

"Bring all your tapes back to London, "and we'll go into the studio and start sifting through them and find out what's on there."

♪♪ I was in bed after a very serious, heavy night in New York.

There was a phone call, and this girl I knew -- she said, A friend of yours is dead."

When I got off the train in Newcastle, my father was at the station.

And I thought, "Well, "what the hell are you meeting us off the train for?

I mean, I've been coming up Newcastle all these years."

He'd never met me off the train before.

I said, "What you're doing here?"

And he said, "Well, I thought I better meet you to get you past all the reporters."

I says, "What are you talking about, all the reporters?"

He says, "Well, don't you know?"

I says, "Don't I know what?"

He says, "Jimi's dead."

And it was just, "What?"

I just couldn't believe it.

We'd sat there on the Wednesday night and planned what we were gonna do in the future, and there he was dead.

I just stunned.

I was...

It was like running into a brick wall.

It's the first time in my life someone who I'd known had died.

Right?

So -- [ Exhales sharply ] And then I had all these women come into my room who wanted to commit suicide about Jimi.

They wanted to jump out of my window.

And they were serious about it.

And I was very shook up, so I sort of -- I'm not religious, but I went to a church.

And I took all these women to a cocktail bar, and we all got rotten.

And -- But I still think about it, and it still upsets me.

Yeah.

♪♪ Narrator: Jimi Hendrix spent the night of September the 17th, 1970, at the Notting Hill flat of his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann.

After a light dinner, they went to bed.

In the morning, Monika found him unconscious and called an ambulance.

Hendrix died shortly afterwards at St. Mary Abbots Hospital.

The coroner returned an open verdict.

The immediate cause of death was inhalation of vomit brought on by sleeping pills and alcohol.

There was no evidence of hard drugs.

His body was flown back to Seattle, where he was buried on the 1st of October, 1970.

He was 27 years old.

[ "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" plays ] ♪ I didn't mean take up all your sweet time ♪ ♪ I'll give it right back one of these days ♪ ♪♪ ♪ If I don't see you no more in this world ♪ ♪ I'll meet you on the next one ♪ ♪ Don't be late ♪ ♪ Don't be late ♪ ♪ I'm a voodoo child, voodoo child ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I don't know.

I just wish he was still here.

'Cause at the time, it just -- I mean, when you look back at it, it just seemed such a carefree life.

And for a disaster to happen like that was so unpredictable.

And when I -- I've told this before, but when he -- when they told me he was dead, I got fur-- I was f * *king angry as s * *t. I'd never been angry.

And I'm not an angry person.

But I was angry than I'd ever been 'cause I felt betrayed.

I felt like he'd let me down.

Although obviously it wasn't a conscious decision for him to die, I felt suddenly the loneliest person on Earth.

[ "Hear My Train A Comin'" plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Well, I wait around the train station ♪ ♪ Waitin' for that train ♪ ♪ Waitin' for the train, yeah ♪ ♪ To take me, yeah ♪ ♪ From this lonesome place ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Well, now a whole lotta people put me down a lotta changes ♪ ♪ My girl done called me a disgrace ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Dig ♪ If I think of Jimi, I always think of the smile on his face.

To me, the image and that that's been portrayed since his death is of this tragic character.

And Jimi's death was a tragedy, but his life was full of fun.

♪♪ ♪ Well, you know it's too bad, little girl ♪ ♪ It's too bad ♪ ♪ Too bad we have to part ♪ How did he turn out to be the way he was?

I mean, he's still leading everybody, you know, with what he's doing.

I don't think there's gonna be anybody that's gonna have that much importance as Jimi Hendrix has had for a long time to come.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hendrix: ♪ Gonna leave this town, yeah ♪ ♪ I got to leave this town ♪ ♪ Gonna make a whole lot of money ♪ ♪ Gonna be big, yeah ♪ ♪ Gonna be big, yeah ♪ ♪ I'm gonna buy this town ♪ ♪ Gonna buy this town ♪ ♪ And put it all in my shoe ♪ Might even give a piece to you.

♪ That's what I'm gonna do ♪ ♪ What I'm gonna do ♪ ♪ What I'm gonna do ♪ ♪♪ You think I'd do that?

[ Chuckles ] Can I just do one more time, though?

Can I just do it one more time?