The Jimi Hendrix song that turned Billy Gibbons “upside down”
The story of Jimi Hendrix and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons is well-known. The pair were great friends, kindred spirits who ranked amongst the very finest guitarists of their day, sharing a great deal of mutual respect for one another both personally and artistically.
The story of Hendrix is the stuff of legend. After being discovered by Chas Chandler when playing in a New York club, the Seattle native was promptly taken to England, and before too long, his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, were assembled.
Together, they released their debut album Are You Experienced in 1967, and off the back of singles such as ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘Hey Joe’, the group quickly rose to prominence. By the end of the year, Hendrix was confirmed as one of the most significant figures of his generation, and the cultural shifts he had enacted via his genius and iconoclasm were manifold. Tragically, he passed away in 1970, but the impact of his small body of work was so great that he will forever be remembered as one of the finest of all time.
As for Billy Gibbons, he first made his name in the psychedelic blues band The Moving Sidewalks, and it was in this early outfit that he first met Hendrix, a time when they opened for The Experience for four dates in 1968. Although he formed ZZ Top late the following year, it was with them that he would crystallise his status as one of the all-time greats. The life-changing experience of touring with Hendrix was one of Gibbons’ most cherished moments, with Hendrix teaching him a thing or two about the six-string, which proved to be invaluable.
Famously, Hendrix was a great fan of Gibbons’ work. Per the accounts of many close to Hendrix, The Moving Sidewalks man was his favourite guitarist. “I’ve heard the before,” Gibbons once responded when informed that Hendrix thought he was the best. “We were good friends,” he added, “Very good friends. I still got fond memories of our time together and hope that someday we can ring it out.”
Gibbons had great respect for Hendrix, and one song of his turned him and his Sidewalks bandmates “upside down”. When speaking to Rolling Stone in 2015 to discuss his life in songs, the Hendrix cut he picked was 1967’s ‘Red House’ from Are You Experienced.
Looking back on first hearing the track, Gibbons said: “A buddy said, ‘There’s a song that you oughta hear’. He was talking about ‘Red House’ by Jimi Hendrix, and that completely turned us upside down. It was blues taken beyond. Then the Sidewalks got hired to join the Experience tour in 1968.”
He concluded: “We didn’t have enough material for 45 minutes, so we started doing ‘Purple Haze’. I looked over and Hendrix was in the wings, wide-eyed, grinning. We had seen his showman antics from older blues guitarists. But he had a vision and aura. I remember him tiptoeing across the hall at the hotel: ‘Come in here. Do you know how this is done?’ He was learning chops off Jeff Beck’s first record, Truth“.
