When was the first time Jimi Hendrix burned a guitar?
There was a bit of nervous tension backstage as the Jimi Hendrix Experience prepared to take the stage at the Finsbury Park Astoria on March 31st, 1967. It was the first date on Hendrix’s tour, and there were murmurs of uncertainty about how the audience would react.
The band’s debut album, Are You Experienced?, was still two months away. If the crowd had heard any of Hendrix’s music, it would have been his cover of ‘Hey Joe’ or his recently released single ‘Purple Haze’.
Nobody knew how an audience of British psychedelic rock fans would react to a Black American bashing out the loudest music on planet Earth. There were concerns of discontent or possibly even violence. But worse than that, Hendrix’s manager, Chas Chandler, was afraid that nobody would react at all. It was determined that Hendrix would need a gimmick to dazzle the audience.
Hendrix had already established a few of his signature moves, including playing his guitar with his teeth and writhing around the floor while still churning out chords. But Chandler wanted something spectacular. That’s when NME journalist Keith Altham suggested, in jest, that Hendrix should light his guitar on fire. Before anyone could question the decision, road manager Gerry Stickells had already been sent out to acquire some lighter fluid.
“The guitar went up about halfway through Wild Thing,” Altham later recalled to Q Magazine, “With Jimi straddling his Fender and applying several matches before the instrument caught alight. There was a pathetic little pile of used matches on the stage afterwards. It was not exactly a towering inferno, but Jimi made the most of it by whirling the guitar around his head and throwing in a touch of the mad axeman for good measure.”
While lighting guitars on fire would later become second nature to Hendrix, the first attempt didn’t go as smoothly. “Jimi sustained a burned hand when his guitar accidentally burst into flames at the climax of his act,” Chris Welch wrote in a feature for Melody Maker. “Hendrix was lying on stage playing the guitar with his teeth when it suddenly burst into flames. Jimi leapt backwards and ran off stage followed by his group.”
“The guitar was left burning dangerously near the closed curtains, and compere Nick Jones ran and tried to pick it up, burning his hand in the attempt,” Welch added. “An attendant rushed on stage with a fire extinguisher and put out the flames, which were leaping 10ft in the air.”
How many times did Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire?
The image of Hendrix setting his most valued tool alight is a powerful image, and it is one that is seared into our collective consciousness. Hendrix kneeling down to the burning instrument and praying like he is at an altar. But he didn’t perform the act as many times as you might think.
Hendrix actually burned the guitar on three separate occasions, but that depends on different accounts. While the Astoria show is in the books, and his most famous burning came at the Monterey Pop Festival in the same year, some believe he performed the same flame-riddled trick at the Miami Pop Festival too.
