“What have I become?”: How and why Jimi Hendrix grew to hate his stagecraft
A one-man rock revolution, Jimi Hendrix first set foot on UK soil in 1966, but as far as audiences of the time were concerned, he may as well have arrived on a rocket ship from the outer cosmos.
Even in the rapidly evolving psychedelic landscape of swinging sixties London, nothing came close to resembling Jimi Hendrix and his arsenal of mind-bending, era-defining riffs. It wasn’t long, however, before his act of psychedelic defiance was utilised as a marketing tool.
Throughout musical history, record executives and industry officials have always been adept at turning every rejection of the mainstream into a mainstream product. It only took a matter of months, for instance, for the major labels of the 1970s to take the subversive, DIY ethos of punk rock and sell it back to audiences at an inflated price. After all, those same labels had learned the ropes the decade prior, during the era of hippie counterculture and Jimi Hendrix.
Immediately following his psychedelic rebirth in 1966, Hendrix wasted no time in making a name for himself through his anarchic and wildly unpredictable live shows – whether he was setting his guitar alight, playing with his teeth, or thrashing out an impromptu Beatles cover, those who were lucky enough to witness the guitarist live and in the flesh never quite knew what was coming next. As word spread about this new rock god, though, that stagecraft became an expectation, spurred on by his management.
Someone who got to witness that declining excitement in the performer’s live shows was Kevin Ayers, who toured with Hendrix as a member of the prog pioneers Soft Machine during the tail-end of the 1960s. As he recalled to Classic Rock in 2008, “They were making him do things that had been spontaneous, like fucking his amps and masturbating the guitar.” Eventually, that lack of creative control caused some resentment for Jimi Hendrix against his own stagecraft.
“The ‘act’ became written into his contract,” Ayers continued. “I could see his face, how he’d grit his teeth at the pain of what he’d become.” What he’d become was a lauded guitar hero and rock legend, but with the expansion of his reputation and stardom came the loss of the exciting spontaneity and lack of expectations of his early years.
“He’d have three roadies behind the amps to hold them up, and afterwards he’d come off and say: ‘Man, this is so sick. What have I become? Why am I doing this shit?’”
Kevin Ayers on Jimi Hendrix
Nevertheless, Hendrix’s wild onstage antics persisted, despite having lost the spontaneous authenticity of those earlier gigs. However stilted they were, though, those legendary shows helped to carve out a reputation for Hendrix as a true icon of that era in rock music. In the end, very few musicians make it to the upper echelon of rock entirely on their own terms, even a performer as unique as Hendrix.
What’s more, the guitarist and his increasing disenfranchisement within the music industry managed to alter the existence of the aforementioned Kevin Ayers forevermore. In fact, following on from a tour with The Experience, the songwriter decided to abandon the music industry entirely, before eventually embarking on a solo career.
Anytime that his career was at risk of becoming too commercialised, though, Ayers shrank back into the shadows, perhaps for fear of treading the same path of alienation that he had witnessed in Jimi Hendrix years prior.
