A Paisley-clad rebellion: How Jimi Hendrix influenced punk
The late Jimi Hendrix was undoubtedly a pioneer of psychedelic rock. However, this only accounts for a small portion of his impact. While he was very of his time in that he used the influence of the formative bluesmen to create his heavy grooves and otherworldly sound, we often forget that outside of him trailblazing the late 1960s zeitgeist, his Paisley-clad rebellion was not just restricted to its era.
The counterculture was a rebellion in every sense of the word. Taking the philosophical and practical cues from the Beat Generation of the 1950s and early 1960s, the hippies delved headfirst into free love, unfettered drug experimentation, and artistic innovation as they strove to construct a world mirroring their expanding sensibilities. There’s no surprise that during those consequential ten years, popular music splintered off into various different forms, standards across society – not just the arts – were re-written, and feminism, anti-racist, and other socio-political movements rose up in such an emphatic, consolidated fashion that the established order had to take notice.
While Hendrix was very much symptomatic of his era, despite his natural genius and unique approach to music, his sonic insurgency, which was so refreshing that it made all the established guitarists jealous and pay close attention, including Pete Townshend, his efforts were so monumental that they paved the way for a host of axemen conjuring clangorous fire. It’s safe to say that without him, Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s searing 1969 effort, Everbody Knows This Is Nowhere, might not have had the room to exist. And indeed, much later alternative heroes such as Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Melvins and Nirvana wouldn’t have received the rackety blueprint, regardless of how rock would gradually cast off the influence of the blues as the years wore on.
He was the first alternative rock star, regardless of what people might say about this position being The Beatles or The Kinks’ to lose. His gritty distortion, crunching, furious chords, loud compositions, and generally fearless attitude – which had to traverse racial norms and many setbacks to find success – were punk in every sense. He wasn’t just the first alt-rock legend but the first punk, and unsurprisingly, his Paisley shirts and LSD anthems were influential on punk coming to fruition. It’s not all about aesthetics, you know.
Punk is, at heart, a countercultural movement. Although its leaders would later deny it when decked out in leather biker jackets and spiked-up hair, the first wave of punk emerged from the counterculture. One doesn’t have to look far to find pictures of Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon with long flowing locks or The Clash leader Joe Strummer with the same. Even Patti Smith, the ‘Punk Poet Laureate’ is very open about the fact that The Doors are her favourite band.
Perhaps more importantly, though, just like the counterculture before it, punk had one central motivation: to change the world and sweep away the status quo. Although the first wave would implode quickly, many offshoots, such as post-punk and hardcore, formed out of their ashes, with their original ethos then successfully adapted to the changing times, keeping the flame alive to this day.
Many pieces of evidence demonstrate just how central Hendrix was to the sound of punk emerging. The first is through Ron Asheton, the lead guitarist of the definitive and most influential proto-punk band, The Stooges. He wrote most of the material on their widely impactful first two albums, 1969’s The Stooges and 1970’s Fun House. Famed for his own gritty sound, he used the same Dunlop Fuzzface pedal as Hendrix and a Wah, with classics such as ‘1969’ stylistically similar to that of the Seattle legend.
This wasn’t incidental, either. According to bassist Mike Watt, who played with the band from 2003 after they reunited, Asheton took direct inspiration from Hendrix. Speaking to Premier Guitar in 2019, the Minutemen hero said that one night in the 1960s, Hendrix played at the Fifth Dimension in Ann Arbor, The Stooges’ hometown, and only 100 people were in attendance. No one dared to go up to the stage apart from Asheton. He wanted to see what Hendrix was using.
He explained: “He said he had these fuzz tones that were kind of harsh, but they were round. Plus he had a wah-wah, curly chords, and he said that Jimi was wearing a high school marching band jacket. Ronny was the only one who walked up and went to the front of the stage to see fucking Jimi Hendrix. What a trip.”
As The Stooges were a formative influence on the Sex Pistols, the foremost band of the first wave of punk, as well as several other key ones, including Ramones and The Damned, it’s safe to say that the genre might have lacked some of its key, guitar-based tenets without Hendrix. Yet, the story is not over there. The Sex Pistols never shied away from the fact that The Stooges inspired them and even covered ‘No Fun’, but the connection to Hendrix was not just by proxy.
Their lead guitarist, Steve Jones, once explained that hearing ‘Purple Haze’ coming through a neighbour’s window was like “a portal into another world”. He was so indebted to the 1967 track that in 1985, he covered it alongside none other than Stooges frontman, Iggy Pop.
Hendrix’s influence would continue to permeate punk’s later forms. Post-punk tastemakers John Ian McGeoch and Robert Smith are prominent fans, as are hardcore pioneers Black Flag and alternative rock titans such as Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Alice in Chains’s Jerry Cantrell. Like all genuinely pioneering musicians, Hendrix’s reach extends far outside of the time he is most closely associated with.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Punk Newsletter
All the latest Punk content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.