Today I wanna talk about one of my heroes rather then an idol. Jimi Hendrix. When I was reading the literature of Timothy Leary in my younger days (it's unusual for youngsters I know, but I was an outlaw in my early nature already with 15) I learned that I needed to kill my Idols (of course not literally) in order to develop on my own. Never the less I learned the fundamental things from those early admired Idols, and I think I don't have to mention my parents was the first ones.

Now don't get me wrong, I got an enormous respect for my early Idols, and it is in my nature to love those Innovators, study them and take it from there to create the unseen and the unheard, call my Idols heroes, and never dare to be like them. I'm not a fan either..never was one, I consider myself to be a friend of those inspiring cats, for one reason or another.

Well Jimi was obviously one of my creativity smiths. My older brother had an awesome collection of records from bands of the late 60's and the 70's. I had a chance to listen most of them when he would allow me to be in his room under the condition of being quiet, listen, absorb and report later what was my favorite band so far. It always did end up to be Jimi, and my brother would always smile and ask why, and I had to explain, that his sound was so wild, electric and new, that it made me listen to it with more attention then the other bands, which.. they were excellent in their own way, there's no doubt about it.

I mean listening to Purple, Doors, Floyd or Zeppelin, wasn't giving me the electric goose bumps like Jimis music did, of course I loved their energy and character musically, but Jimi was so erratic with each song following, the only thing identical was his hypnotizing guitar sound that seemed to be the same, and yet it had that distinguished element from the previous tune. I knew my brother was proud of me, but I also felt that he was scared for a minute cause he probably thought I might end up being a hopeless dreamer, quit school and he would not want to be a bad influence on my early days of shaping. I was only 13.

As I discovered the blues for me later on, through music by Robert Johnson, then John Lee Hooker and B.B King, it always brought me right back to Jimi, cause in the meantime I started playing guitar myself, and being able to understand the pentatonic scales and the blue notes, it was a big reveal of the magician-ship, I suddenly knew what was going on. See...Jimi was always there..it didn't matter if I was later listening to Steve Ray Vaughan or Prince, I always felt his spell over me. Now since the band of Gypsies (Jimis Band), I fell in love with the Idea of having a band with three people in it, which I later had, and it was a blast of an experience that carried me through life and fed me with a know how, how to make music sound great with only three people. Of course later I loved bands like Rush and the Police in the 80's no question about it, but as usual it always brought me back to my roots..Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsies.

Here is an excerpt form Wikipedia about Jimi:

"..James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American rock guitarist, singer, and a songwriter.
Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division; he was granted an honorable discharge the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965.

He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who in turn interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager.[2] Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the U.S. after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the U.S.; it was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at the age of 27.

Hendrix was inspired musically by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in utilizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He helped to popularize the use of a wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock, and was the first artist to use stereophonic phasing effects in music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."

Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year, and in 1968, Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time..."

Here is an Artwork I did of Jimi..is a dandelion Jimi. The dandelion beauty reminds me of Jimis life..it was short, full of life and it flew away with only one blow.

James Marshall Jimi Hendrix

↓ For some of you that don't know about Jimi.. (which I heavily doubt..but you never know these days). ☺ ↓

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