The 1968 psychedelic song Jimi Hendrix turned into a hit with one demand: “Play this motherf*cker”
Hard rock god Jimi Hendrix wasn’t the only person playing with fire in the late 1960s.
Hendrix’s reputation for explosive performances, especially after literally lighting his guitar on fire at the end of his set at the Monterey Pop Festival, was well established by the time most people heard his hit song ‘Fire’. First appearing on The Jimi Hendrix Experiences’ debut LP Are You Experienced, ‘Fire’ quickly became one of Hendrix’s most well-known songs.
Featuring an all-time drum performance from Mitch Mitchell, ‘Fire’ paired a pop-infused chorus with full-impact hard rock in ways that only Hendrix could conjure up. But elsewhere in the 1960s world, other artists were singing about the flames. The most infamous was perhaps Arthur Brown, a gonzo British singer who scored a hit with his own ‘Fire’ song, recorded with his band, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, in 1968.
One of the most striking examples came from Arthur Brown, whose theatrical approach to performance made his version of ‘Fire’ impossible to ignore. Fronting The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, he combined dramatic vocals with a flamboyant stage presence, famously performing with a flaming headpiece that turned the song into both a musical and visual spectacle. The track became a major hit in 1968, propelling Brown from underground curiosity to international recognition.
Despite the shared title, there was no rivalry between Brown and Hendrix. In fact, Brown later recalled that Hendrix actively supported the single, encouraging radio stations to give it airplay. While Hendrix’s ‘Fire’ became a staple of his catalogue, it was Brown’s version that achieved significant chart success, reaching the top spot in the UK and climbing high in the US, highlighting how two very different interpretations could coexist within the same musical moment.
“Play this motherfucker!”
Jimi Hendrix
“Everything opened up when ‘Fire’ became a hit, and I went from being an underground figure who was regarded as strange to singing and playing with people that were my influences and heroes, like John Lee Hooker and Frank Zappa,” Brown told NME in 2022.
He continued, “When the underground radio stations first turned the song down as not being a ‘hit’, the label took it to the major stations who saw somebody with flames coming out of his head and thought it was an outrageous novelty record that would do well in the summertime,” Brown added.
Even though they both had songs with the same name, Hendrix didn’t feel any competition toward Brown. In fact, according to Brown himself, Hendrix was promoting Brown’s ‘Fire’. “At the same time, Jimi Hendrix helped break ‘Fire’, because he was on the same US label as me, and took the record around the stations demanding: ‘Play this motherfucker!’” Brown claimed
Brown also claims that black R&B radio stations were the first ones to embrace ‘Fire’. “With the makeup I was wearing, nobody could tell where I was from or my race, so all the stations were playing it,” he said. Hendrix’s version of ‘Fire’ never landed on any pop charts, but Brown’s ‘Fire’ sure did. A number one hit in the UK, ‘Fire’ also managed to reach number two on the American pop charts, two feats that Hendrix never accomplished in his lifetime.
Check out both versions of ‘Fire’ down below.
