Paco Dennis
SF VIP
- Location
- Mid-Missouri
"It saddens me that we can’t see beyond the “disgrace” of his overdose and the corny image (which he told me he longed to retire) of the satyr-guitarist feigning sex with his instrument—that we can’t get to re-know him. Drug-taking notwithstanding, life back then had an innocence to it, a constant search for an epiphany, and, though the term didn’t exist yet, a multicultural idealism that cannot be described now without sounding silly and nostalgic. And Jimi Hendrix personified this entire—dare I say it—heady sensibility. When I met him, he had just named his new band Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, and in the house during my visit he and his group were playing what he called “cosmic music.” Later in his car, with our *Hair-*cast mélange—Jimi, Chinese-American Linda, Juma in his African threads, the English avant-garde pianist Michael Ephron, a beautiful blue-eyed black girl named Betty who practiced Islam and whose brother went to Amherst, and the little blonde Jewish writer from Beverly Hills—all flashed the peace sign (yes, really—the peace sign!) to passing cars full of an analogous collection of wandering souls. Peel back the many years of deserved parody and understand: this was America, where a Seattle street urchin who’d used a broom as an imaginary guitar had become a paratrooper all set to fight in Vietnam, a chitlin-circuit sideman, and then a psychedelic superstar—all by the tender age of 25. There was an awesome lesson in that sweeping journey: it was a sweet time and he was a sweet man, as awed by what he had helped create as everyone around him was."
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/09/remembering-jimi-hendrixs-vulnerable-side
I was awestruck when I first heard his solo in "All Along the Watchtower", ESPECIALLY when he plays with echoing slide. I saw him live at Winterland in SF, and he did the slide part of the solo with the Mic stand against his guitar fret board. Stunning.
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/09/remembering-jimi-hendrixs-vulnerable-side
I was awestruck when I first heard his solo in "All Along the Watchtower", ESPECIALLY when he plays with echoing slide. I saw him live at Winterland in SF, and he did the slide part of the solo with the Mic stand against his guitar fret board. Stunning.