When Jimi Hendrix shared a band with Tommy Chong
It’s 1967, and marijuana smoke fills a small club in England. Jimi Hendrix is in the neighbourhood and sniffs it out. On stage, Tommy Chong, soon to be of Cheech & Chong fame, sees what looks to be “God appearing” as the guitar hero enters with around 300 people in his wake. The pair have crossed paths before; they operate in similar circles, or perhaps more accurately, plumes.
At the time, Chong was playing in Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers. Motown Records founder had sent this outfit over to England to play a function, which was seemingly turning into a rather unsuccessful tour. That all changed in an instant. “Hey, Tommy,” Hendrix said to the familiar performer on stage, “How are you doing, man? Mind if I sit in?” Naturally, Chong was shocked and wondered whether he’d been toking on some strange hallucinatory British strand of smoke.
“[In] my comedic mindset, I wanted to say, ‘Sorry, man, but maybe the last set,’” Chong told KLPX Radio. “But I said, ‘Yeah, come on!’ And I handed him my guitar and he goes ‘No no, I want to play bass.’ So he played bass, and he played for the whole set.” Stranger still, he wasn’t even improvising the parts in a typical jam capacity; he knew them already!
“Hendrix told me that he was stationed in Seattle, and we had a club in Vancouver, Canada, and he used to come up almost every weekend and sit in our club and listen to us play,” Chong recalled. The virtuoso had simply been a fan of Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers all along. And it’s with great modesty that he decided not to tread on the lead guitarist’s toes and joined the rhythm section instead.
However, this keenness to ‘sit in’ was a characteristic that showcased Hendrix’s love for music. A year prior, the premiere blues band of the era, perhaps any era for that matter, Cream, were taking to the stage. It’s wild to think about, but Hendrix was an unknown entity at this stage. So, when he requested to jam with them, the band wondered whether he’d be good enough to keep up with them.
“In those days anybody could get up with anybody,” Eric Clapton told Planet Rock, “If you were convincing enough that you could play. He got up and blew everyone’s mind.” At the time, most were far too intimidated the risk jamming with Cream, but Hendrix’s confidence alerted them to the fact he might be good.
“You never told me he was that fucking good,” Clapton famously yelled at someone who had vouched for him after the show.
