When Jimi Hendrix toured with The Monkees despite hating them
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The brother of Jimi Hendrix, Leon, reveals what the iconic guitarist was really like
The impact of Jimi Hendrix on popular culture cannot be understated. He is rightly hailed as one of the most influential musicians to have ever graced the planet. What he did for the development of rock ‘n’ roll was so monumental that we still hear his spirit alive and well today in many shapes and forms and a range of different genres.
Ostensibly, Hendrix was the first-ever shredder. He tore up the handbook of guitar-playing and set out on his own path, playing in the way he pleased and turning up his amp to unprecedented levels. His playing style was soulful in one part and visceral, making the six-string more potent than it had ever been before.
It wasn’t just a musical instrument anymore; it was a channel straight from the heart. Duly, the innovative inflexions he provided over Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell’s thunderous rhythm section were so refreshing that off the back of Hendrix breaking through with The Experience in 1967 arose a generation of guitarists that would continue to spread his gospel long after his tragic death in 1970.
Hendrix was and is iconoclastic to a fault. He subverted the norm, both musically and racially, and his ice-cool form of music was so enchanting that in the blink of an eye, he went from being an unknown musician on the New York club scene to a world beater who was topping the bills at some of the world’s most renowned music festivals. It’s reflective of the power of his work that it remains as astounding as it was at the time.
There never will be a guitarist as significant as Jimi Hendrix ever again. He reinvented the guitar for the modern era and raised the game of his most eminent peers, such as Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton, helping rock not accept complacency. It’s also no surprise that the best of the subsequent guitarists, like Tonny Iommi and Angus Young, who made the guitar even more aggressive, all namecheck Hendrix as a definitive influence.
Despite the luminosity of his genius and captivating on-stage persona, those who knew Hendrix the best have maintained that the uncontrolled spirit he espoused on record and stage was very different from the shy man behind the act.
Speaking on the BBC Breakfast TV show, Hendrix’s younger brother Leon shed some light on what the ‘Purple Haze‘ star was like and explained how he easily crossed the racial divide.
When asked by the presenter, Charlie Stayt, to take us right back to when Jimi was little, Leon responded: “OK, back in 1942… no, I’m playing. He was in the middle of (the) Black world and (the) white world, you know, so he kinda put ’em together, the soul music and the rock music, together with the clothing and the personality, and was able to come up this unique style. He was very timid and soft-spoken off-stage; he only went crazy on-stage.”
See the clip, below.
