Jimi Hendrix, in his own words: 'I dig Strauss and Wagner – those cats are good' | Music | The Guardian 2013

This Just In From Seattle Music History!!! When I was 17 I formed this group with some other guys, but they drowned me out. I didn't know why at first, but after about three months I realised I'd have to get an electric guitar. My first was a Danelectro, which my dad bought for me. Must have busted him for a long time. But I had to show him I could play first. In those days I just liked rock'n'roll, I guess. We used to play stuff by people like the Coasters. Anyway, you all had to do the same things before you could join a band. You even had to do the same steps. I started looking around for places to play. I remember my first gig was at an armoury, a National Guard place, and we earned 35 cents apiece and three hamburgers. It was so hard for me at first. I knew about three songs, and when it was time for us to play onstage I was all shaky, so I had to play behind the curtains. I just couldn't get up in front. And then you get so very discouraged. You hear different bands playing around you, and the guitar player always seems like he's so much better than you are. Most people give up at this point, but it's best not to. Just keep on, just keep on. Sometimes you are going to be so frustrated you'll hate the guitar, but all of this is just a part of learning. If you stick with it you're going to be rewarded. If you're very stubborn you can make it. 23 September 1966. That's when I came to England. They kept me waiting at the airport for three or four hours because I didn't have a work permit. At one point there was talk of sending me back to New York until it was all sorted out. They carried on like I was going to make all the money in England and take it back to the States!I moved into a flat with Chas Chandler. It used to belong to Ringo [Starr]. In fact, they only took the drums away the other day. There's stereo all over the place and a very kinky bathroom with lots of mirrors. Immediately complaints started to pour in. We used to get complaints about loud, late parties when we were out of town! We'd come back next morning and hear all the complaints. Chas got real mad about it, but I didn't let it bug me. The first time I played guitar in England I sat in with Cream. I like the way Eric Clapton plays. His solos sound just like Albert King. Eric is just too much. And Ginger Baker, he's like an octopus, man. He's a real natural drummer. I couldn't work too much because I didn't have a permit. If I was going to stay in England I had to get enough jobs to have a long permit. So what we had to do was line up a lot of gigs. Chas knows lots of telephone numbers. He helped me find my bassist and drummer and form the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was very hard to find the right sidemen, people who were feeling the same as me. 18 June 1967. Monterey, California. Paul McCartney was the big bad Beatle, the beautiful cat who got us the gig at the Monterey Pop Festival. That was our start in America. Everything was perfect. I said: "Wow! Everything's together! What am I gonna do?" In other words, I was scared at that, almost. I was scared to go up there and play in front of all those people. You really want to turn those people on. It's just like a feeling of really deep concern. You get very intense. That's the way I look at it. That's natural for me. Once you hit the first note, or once the first thing goes down, then it's all right. Let's get to those people's butts! Jimi Hendrix, looking serious, leaning against railings at Montagu Place, London Jimi Hendrix: 'We made it, man, because we did our own thing. We had our beautiful rock-blues-country-funky-freaky sound, and it was really turning people on. I felt like we were turning the whole world on to this new thing'. Photographed in London, in 1967. Photograph: David Magnus/Rex Music makes me high onstage, and that's the truth. It's almost like being addicted to music. You see, onstage I forget everything, even the pain. Look at my thumb – how ugly it's become. While I'm playing I don't think about it. I just lay out there and jam. You get into such a pitch sometimes that you go up into another thing. You don't forget about the audience, but you forget about all the paranoia, that thing where you're saying: "Oh gosh, I'm onstage – what am I going to do now?" Then you go into this other thing, and it turns out to be almost like a play in certain ways. I have to hold myself back sometimes because I get so excited – no, not excited, involved. When I was in Britain I used to think about America every day. I'm American. I wanted people here to see me. I also wanted to see whether we could make it back here. And we made it, man, because we did our own thing, and it really was our own thing and nobody else's. We had our beautiful rock-blues-country-funky-freaky sound, and it was really turning people on. I felt like we were turning the whole world on to this new thing, the best, most lovely new thing. So I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of the song as a sacrifice. You sacrifice things you love. I love my guitar. Race isn't a problem in my world. I don't look at things in terms of races. I look at things in terms of people. I'm not thinking about black people or white people. I'm thinking about the obsolete and the new. There's no colour part now, no black and white. The frustrations and riots going on today are all about more personal things. Everybody has wars within themselves, so they form different things, and it comes out as a war against other people. They get justified as they justify others in their attempts to get personal freedom. That's all it is. It isn't that I'm not relating to the Black Panthers. I naturally feel a part of what they're doing, in certain respects. Somebody has to make a move, and we're the ones hurting most as far as peace of mind and living are concerned. But I'm not for the aggression or violence or whatever you want to call it. I'm not for guerrilla warfare. Not frustrated things like throwing little cocktail bottles here and there or breaking up a store window. That's nothing. Especially in your own neighbourhood. Jimi Hendrix - "Hear My Train A Comin'" on MUZU.TV. I don't feel hate for anybody, because that's nothing but taking two steps back. You have to relax and wait to go by the psychological feeling. Other people have no legs or no eyesight or have fought in wars. You should feel sorry for them and think what part of their personality they have lost. It's good when you start adding up universal thoughts. It's good for that second. If you start thinking negative it switches to bitterness, aggression, hatred. All those are things that we have to wipe away from the face of the earth before we can live in harmony. And the other people have to realise this, too, or else they're going to be fighting for the rest of their lives. Advertisement I hope at least to give the ones struggling courage through my songs. I experience different things, go through the hang-ups myself, and what I find out I try to pass on to other people through music. There's this song I'm writing now that's dedicated to the Black Panthers, not pertaining to race, but to the symbolism of what's happening today. They should only be a symbol to the establishment's eyes. It should only be a legendary thing. My initial success was a step in the right direction, but it was only a step. Now I plan to get into many other things. I'd like to take a six-month break and go to a school of music. I want to learn to read music, be a model student and study and think. I'm tired of trying to write stuff down and finding I can't. I want a big band. I don't mean three harps and 14 violins – I mean a big band full of competent musicians that I can conduct and write for. I want to be part of a big new musical expansion. That's why I have to find a new outlet for my music. We are going to stand still for a while and gather everything we've learned musically in the last 30 years, and we are going to blend all the ideas that worked into a new form of classical music. It's going to be something that will open up a new sense in people's minds. I dig Strauss and Wagner, those cats are good, and I think they are going to form the background of my music. Floating in the sky above it will be the blues – I've still got plenty of blues – and then there will be western sky music and sweet opium music (you'll have to bring your own opium!), and these will be mixed together to form one. And with this music we will paint pictures of earth and space, so that the listener can be taken somewhere. You have to give people something to dream on. Advertisement The moment I feel that I don't have anything more to give musically, that's when I won't be found on this planet, unless I have a wife and children, because if I don't have anything to communicate through my music, then there is nothing for me to live for. I'm not sure I will live to be 28 years old, but then again, so many beautiful things have happened to me in the last three years. The world owes me nothing. When people fear death, it's a complete case of insecurity. Your body is only a physical vehicle to carry you from one place to another without getting into a lot of trouble. So you have this body tossed upon you that you have to carry around and cherish and protect and so forth, but even that body exhausts itself. The idea is to get your own self together, see if you can get ready for the next world, because there is one. Hope you can dig it. People still mourn when people die. That's self-sympathy. All human beings are selfish to a certain extent, and that's why people get so sad when someone dies. They haven't finished using him. The person who is dead ain't crying. Sadness is for when a baby is born into this heavy world. I tell you, when I die I'm going to have a jam session. I want people to go wild and freak out. And knowing me, I'll probably get busted at my own funeral. The music will be played loud and it will be our music. I won't have any Beatles songs, but I'll have a few of Eddie Cochran's things and a whole lot of blues. Roland Kirk will be there, and I'll try and get Miles Davis along if he feels like making it. For that it's almost worth dying. Just for the funeral. It's funny the way people love the dead. You have to die before they think you are worth anything. Once you are dead, you are made for life. When I die, just keep on playing the records. This is an edited excerpt from Starting at Zero: His Own Story (Bloomsbury, £12.99). To order a copy for £14.99, with free UK p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

Jack Ely Was Promoted To The Heaven's Today!!! He & The Kingsmen Created A Sound & Turned A Little Known Cover Track "ALMOST" Into Thee Official State Song Of Washington With The Help Of A 1980's Local Comedy Show In Seattle Named "Almost Live"

This Just In From Seattle Music History!!!                                                                                                              PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — When he stood on his toes, leaned his head back and began to incoherently shout "Louie Louie" into a microphone 52 years ago, Jack Ely had no idea he was creating a rock 'n' roll classic.
    Or, for that matter, did the lead singer of The Kingsmen know he was laying the groundwork for one of the first federal investigations into dirty song lyrics, while simultaneously creating a tune so memorable that everybody from the Beach Boys to Nirvana would later record it.    Ely, who died Tuesday at age 71, had simply walked into a tiny Portland recording studio with his band one day in 1963 to cut an instrumental version of a song that had been a hit on Pacific Northwest jukeboxes — one that kids could dance to.

"Right out of his mouth, my father would say, 'We were initially just going to record the song as an instrumental, and at the last minute I decided I'd sing it," Ely's son, Sean Ely, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

When it came time to do that, however, Ely discovered the sound engineer had raised the studio's only microphone several feet above his head. Then he placed Ely in the middle of his fellow musicians, all in an effort to create a better "live feel" for the recording.

The result, Ely would say over the years, was that he had to stand on his toes, lean his head back and shout as loudly as he could just to be heard over the drums and guitars. It might not have helped, either, that the 20-year-old musician was wearing braces at the time, although Ely maintained that the real problem was trying to sing with his head tilted back at a 45-degree angle.

In any case, the end result was that about the only words anyone could clearly understand were contained in the song's first two lines: "Louie Louie. Oh no. We gotta go." But the driving, three-chord instrumental progression was maddeningly memorable, as were the song's opening lines, delivered with just the right amount of rebellious if slurry snarl.

It didn't hurt either that with people unable to understand what Ely was singing, some began to claim they were hearing lewd words about a girl the singer was to meet up with. Radio stations began to ban "Louie Louie," and the FBI launched an investigation, eventually determining the song was "unintelligible at any speed."

Sean Ely said his father got "quite the kick" out of that latter development. Meanwhile, everyone from the Clash, to Ike and Tina Turner began covering the song. Rhino Records released not one but two albums of cover versions, including one by The Rice University Marching Owl Band.

"First and foremost, it's a real easy song to play. Second, it's got a great beat. Third, it's got a lot of notoriety, meaning it must be naughty, so it must be fun," said Eric Predoehl, who is producing a documentary on the song's history called "The Meaning of Louie." He counts at least 1,700 cover versions, including numerous ones by garage bands. Frank Zappa even did one with shock jock Howard Stern.

The song, written and originally recorded by the late Los Angeles R&B musician Richard Berry, contained more of a calypso beat when it was first released. It would be recorded by others, most notably the Pacific Northwest group Rockin Robin Roberts and the Wailers, before Ely and his group discovered it.

The Kingsmen would follow it with a couple of other minor hits, "Money" and "The Jolly Green Giant," but nothing that compared with "Louie Louie." As for Ely, he left The Kingsmen in a dispute with other band members shortly after recording "Louie Louie."

He later trained horses in Central Oregon and, according to his son, was content with his legacy as a one-hit wonder — a massive one-hit wonder, to be precise. "He wanted to try on different occasions to pursue other endeavors in the music industry, but I think when it was all done and said he was pretty happy that he did 'Louie Louie.'"

J                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

• This was written by an R&B singer named Richard Berry in 1955. With his group The Pharaohs, he was also the first to record it, and it got some airplay in some cities in the Western US when it was released in 1957. Various garage bands heard it and started covering the song, until it became a phenomena with the Kingsmen's 1964 version. While much of the song's notoriety comes from the indecipherable lyrics, in Berry's original version words are quite clear: the song is about a sailor who spends three days traveling to Jamaica to see his girl.
• Dwight Rounds, author of The Year The Music Died, 1964-1972, writes: "The words to Louie, Louie are almost impossible to understand, and are rumored to be obscene. No question that this added significantly to the sales of the single. There was probably a leak somewhere that the lyrics were obscene; otherwise no one would have realized it. This was the most ingenious marketing scheme ever. The FBI tried to track down Richard Berry, The Kingsmen, and various record company executives. They were never able to determine the actual lyrics used. To this day, the Kingsmen insist they said nothing lewd, despite the obvious mistake at the end of the instrumental, where Jack Ely started to sing the last verse one bar too soon, and can be heard yelling something in the background. Ely also said that he sung far away from the microphone, which caused the fuzzy sound, and that the notoriety was initiated by the record company. The words sound much more like the official version seen below, especially the word "rose" instead of "bone." The lyrics rumor was a sham. The official lyrics are in plain print, and one of the many alternative versions are in ().
  
  Chorus: "Louie, Louie, oh no. Me gotta go. Aye-yi-yi, I said. Louie Louie, oh baby. Me gotta go."
  
  "Fine little girl waits for me. Catch a ship across the sea. Sail that ship about, all alone. Never know if I make it home.
  
  "Three nights and days, I sail the sea." (Every night and day, I play with my thing.) "Think of girl, constantly." (I f--k you girl, oh, all the way.) "Oh that ship, I dream she's there. (On my bed, I'll lay her there.) "I smell the rose in her hair." (I feel my bone, ah, in her hair.)
  
  "See Jamaica, the moon above." (Hey lovemaker, now hold my thing.) "It won't be long, me see my love." (It won't take long, so leave it alone.) "Take her in my arms again." (Hey, senorita, I'm hot as hell.) "Tell her I'll never leave again." (I told her I'd never lay her again.)
• Many bands in the Northwest US played this at their concerts. The Kingsmen lifted their version from The Wailers, a Seattle band who missed out on the song's success.
• This song was prominently featured in the film Animal House, starring John Belushi, despite the fact that it wasn't actually recorded until almost two years after the period of time in which the movie is set (1962). (thanks, Sam - Lincoln, NE)
• This cost $50 to record. The Kingsmen went to the studio after a radio station executive in Portland saw them perform it live and suggested they record it.
• Paul Revere and The Raiders, also on the Northwest touring scene, recorded their version the day after The Kingsmen at the same studio. Their version was superior musically, but was just regional hit as they could not generate the publicity The Kingsmen did.
• This was the only Kingsmen song with lead vocals by Jack Ely. Before this became a hit, he quit when band leader Lynn Easton assumed vocals and ordered Ely to drums. When this became a hit, Easton would lip-sync to Ely's vocals on TV performances.
• Ely tried to capitalize on the success of this by releasing similar songs on his own, including "Louie Louie 66," "Love That Louie," and "Louie Go Home."
• This became a national hit when a disc jockey in Boston played it and declared that it was the worst song he ever heard.
• Indiana governor Matthew Welsh was particularly offended by this song. He declared it "Pornographic" in 1964 and asked the Indiana Broadcasters Association to ban it.
• According to lead singer Jack Ely, the studio had a 19-foot ceiling with a microphone suspended from it. Ely claims that was the cause of the "garbled" lyrics, but Paul Revere and the Raiders recorded their version of "Louie Louie" in the same studio the day after the Kingsmen's session, and their partly ad-libbed lyrics are clearly heard. (thanks, Brad Wind - Miami, FL)
• On August 24, 2003, 754 guitarists played this at "Louie Fest" in Tacoma, Washington. The event was held to raise money for music programs. Dick Peterson from The Kingsmen was one of the guitarists.
• The "See" in the lyrics "See Jamaica" comes in one line too early and is repeated.
• This was used in the movie Down Periscope with Kelsey Grammer. As a submarine captain in a series of war games, Grammer and his crew sing this song loudly to confuse their pursuer's radar into thinking that they were a fishing trawler full of drunk fishermen. (thanks, Brandon - Peoria, IL)
• Iggy Pop recorded a version with new lyrics for his 1993 album American Caesar. His band The Stooges would often play the song and change the words to the supposedly offensive lyrics. This version of the song was the last one they played at their February 9, 1974 show at the Michigan Palace, which would be their last until a reunion in 2003. (thanks, Bertrand - Paris, France)
• According to Kenny Vance, who was the musical director on Animal House, John Belushi sang in a garage band that used to perform this song at fraternities. Belushi would sing his version of the dirty lyrics, which he did in the studio while recording his vocals for the movie. Sadly, the tape of Belushi singing his dirty version of the song was lost in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy wiped out Kenny's home in Queens. (Read more in our interview with Kenny Vance.)
• In the 1990 movie Coupe de Ville, Patrick Dempsey, Arye Gross and Daniel Stern star as brothers who have an argument over the meaning of this song. They debate if it is about lovemaking, or if it is a sea shanty. (thanks, Gordon - Jacksonville, FL)
• In 1966, The Sandpipers took this song to #30 in the US. Another notable cover: the West Coast Punk band Black Flag