The first electric guitar of Jimi Hendrix and Geordie Walker
The late Killing Joke guitarist Geordie Walker was one of the most distinctive players of his generation and inspired an array of famous faces with his unique, de-tuned style. Yet, according to him, things might not have been the same without the help of Jimi Hendrix.
While Walker remembered first picking up a stringed instrument in the form of a Ukelele one evening at a relative’s house when still in primary school, he wouldn’t play the guitar until much later. Strangely, and perhaps an influence on his penchant for haunting melodies, his “first proper instrument” was an electric organ. Then, aged 12, he was given a guitar, but even then, he wasn’t galvanised and, after a brief dalliance, let it collect dust, and all the strings snapped off as a result.
A few years later, after Walker had moved school, he told his parents that he wanted to pick up the six-string again. They consented and offered to buy him a guitar if he was serious about learning the instrument. Unfortunately, the folk guitar class that taught staples such as ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ was at capacity, so Walker was forced to take classical guitar lessons, where he was taught by the Aston Martin DB5-driving, handmade guitar-playing son of Lord Cadman. Once a week, he would have sessions, and as the fresh-faced aristocrat was always tardy, this would allow the young Walker to practice hits of the early 1970s such as Mud’s ‘Tiger Feet’, which, of course, when Cadman finally arrived, he was appalled by.
After a while, Walker started finding his feet as a guitarist. One Christmas, he pursued the electric guitar further and looked around shops to find an affordable instrument with a modest budget of £90. One Saturday afternoon, he was in a shop in Northampton, and there he would see it, his first proper axe. This is where Jimi Hendrix comes into play. Although the ‘Purple Haze’ legend had been dead for several years at this point, by proxy, he would help Walker on his way to becoming a guitar hero.
The Killing Joke guitarist told Heavy Music in 2016: “My Mum had seen Jimi Hendrix in 1967. She went to see Engelbert Humperdinck, but he was on the same bill. There was this record company that billed seven acts, and she saw Jimi Hendrix, and she knew about it. The guitar in the shop was a 1969-70 Les Paul Deluxe Sunburst, just the same as Pete Townshend’s, who I was into at the time, and I just couldn’t believe it.”
He continued: “My Mum said, ‘Just try that one’, and all the cool kids in the shops, Saturday morning like that, and I could hardly play anything. My Mum said, ‘We want that one.’ My dad went pale. We went to a cafe around the corner, calmed him down, and my Mum told him. So yeah, at the age of 15, because my parents were by no means rich, they paid £318 for a brand new Gibson, and the fucking thing played itself, you know those ’70s are just such thin necks; it’s just an absolute dream. Still got it.”
Listen to Geordie Walker tell the story below.
