Below is the first clip I want to offer. It starts out with a Joni Mitchell interview and ends with a weird video rendition of “Voodoo Chile.” Note how “Mitch” appears to know Italian. That’s impressive as hell.
Joni and Jimi were both on the rise in the late 1960s when they met. We all know how much Jimi revered the Beatles and Bob Dylan. It’s likely he respected a lot of the other innovators of that era as well. And there were many. Certainly by the time Jimi and Joni met, it was clear that Joni’s ability to mix complex melodies with real poetry (not just lyrics) was worthy of Hendrix’s attention.
Joni says that Jimi recorded her concert using a big reel-to-reel tape recorder and then messed around with the recording back at the hotel when he was hanging out with her. She also tells the interviewer that Hendrix confided that night that he was tired of the act he had made his name with — his guitar theatrics and the sexual way he played the guitar. He wanted to change. What Joni says about the change he wanted is interesting.
She also offers an important insight for all committed artists — poets, musicians, painters, novelists, etc. Moving from one message, one genre, or one persona, to another is part of the artist’s journey — otherwise “you’ll die inside.” Still, making that change can be quite difficult.
It sounds like Joni got some priceless revelations out of the great left-handed genius. Pay close attention to what she intimates about how he wanted to change. Other posts I plan to make bring up the same issue. Some people wonder whether making the changes he wanted to make might have saved Jimi.
What’s really important in this insight is that it comes from none other than Joni Mitchell, a woman who made so many dramatic changes in her art over the years that critics and fans alike often felt left behind. She started out as a folkie, just mimicking others of the era, but lit the sky on fire with her own personal song writing as the 1960s began to rush headlong toward a visionary future. Through the 1970s and 1980s she would shift to jazz in a huge way, and then to rock, and then, finally, into a realm that we can only call “Joni Music.”
Some people also wonder if anything happened between the two of them that night in the early spring of 1968. In his journal, Jimi wrote, “Went down to little club to see Joni, fantastic girl with heaven words.” Joni says they were staying at the same hotel. But according to other sources, they went to a party later that night and were seen hanging out together. The next morning they were spotted kissing each other goodbye — presumably in the hotel lobby.
Honestly, in this interview, it looks like it all stayed platonic — or she’s a damn good poker player. That said, what dyed in the wool male growing up in the late ’60s or the 1970s didn’t fantasize about going to bed with Joni Mitchell? I know I did. I’ve got a short story in the works about that very subject. If you hunt for it, you can actually find pieces of it online.
Jimi and Joni were the two most gifted American artists of that era (maybe Dylan can be slid in there, too, for some people). It’s a real treat to watch Joni’s face as she speaks about her friendship with the guitar legend, and to listen to the cadence of her words and the tone of her voice. Her radiance and beauty really shine through in this very short clip. If you aren’t already in love with her, you very likely will be once you watch this clip.
Lastly, note how some of the things she starts to say never fully evolve, and that that she kind of gets confusing as she tries to explain Jimi.
She was 24 to Jimi’s 25. Two weeks after they met in Ottawa, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. They would meet up again at an impromptu memorial jam session in NYC that included Buddy Guy, Al Kooper, BB King, and Ted Nugent.
This is the first in a series of about 10 special clips I’ve found online where great artists give their intimate thoughts on Jimi Hendrix. I wrote my novel, Beyond the Will of God, for many reasons. The main one, though, was to point to the deep level of creativity that music from that era offers us — creativity not just from musicians but from those who listen, dance, and just appreciate the soul of the amazing sounds that rose up in those early days of real artistic freedom and unbridled transcendence — days we seem, sadly, to have left behind.
Stay tuned for more.
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davidbiddle
View More PostsTrying to get beyond what is fake and what is real, cuz there's always something more. Look for my stories and essays here and online.
[…] Joni Mitchell Speaking About Meeting Jimi Hendrix […]
[…] Joni Mitchell Speaking About Meeting Jimi Hendrix […]
Howdy David: Just happened upon this article of yours. I’m a Hendrix appreciator myself, and your approach to interviewing musicians who had contact with Jimi is not only intriguing, but fills in necessary gap in his music- & personal bios. If you could send some links or access-points where I might find other articles you’ve written of “Jimi & Others”,
I’d appreciate it. Thanks again for this article. Peace, Joe Korona, Missoula Montana USA
A big old Western Howdy, David. I wanted to thank you so much for the fantastic stuff about Jimi — (and Joni!)
But I need to make sure you are aware of the fact that SOMEone, in 2010, released the Official London Report on Jimi Hendrix. of, course the corporate media (all 5 of them) ignored it. because it layed bare the fact his death was a homicide that was covered up by MI5. The testimony of the two ambulance attendants is included, of course. I am sure you have heard the disparaging myth of how THEY killed him by placing him in the back of the ambulance in a seated position with his head back so it was impossible to clear his airway as he aspirated his vomit due to barbituate intoxication.
The reality was that the ambo arrived HOURs after he had died – he was lying in a pool of dried blood on the bed, the sheets stained red all around him from when they held him down and poured bottles of red wine into him.
The patholigist remarks repeatedly on the copious amounts of red wine coming out of his esophagus and stomach. Because they did want to end up in a similar state, Eric Burdon and Monika Dannemann went along with the fiction.
My own two cents is that MI5 did a solid for their friends across the pond that were running COINTELPRO and eliminating or nuetralizing enemies of the State. Jimi was on Nixon’s Enemies List and the list of folks to be rounded up if the revolution caught fire. I am sure there are more than one replacement program in operation. Hw else to explain John Lennon’s death in 1980 by a “programmable killer”. The repetitive writing and zombie behavior of repeatedly pulling the trigger long after the gun was empty is exactly like Sirhan Sirhans behavior. he only wounded Robert F. Kennedy, as it was an off-duty cop working security that shot RFK behind the right ear as he collapsed to the floor.
Whatever changes Jimi was going to undertake was not going to change the fact that his playing benefits for the Black Panthers put the the Deep States’ gunsights on him.
Not that any of this changes the fact that he was taken from us. He’s just gone and we are the poorer for his loss. I will never forget the day. Never. As time goes on, I just miss him all the more. People will be playing his music 200 years from now and be just as knocked out by it. There hasn’t been ANYone before him and NOone after him that is even close — in the modern era, that is. Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, Hendrix. Paul McCartney says he is still processing seeing Jimi for the FIRST time. That his memories of Jimi are the most powerful of his life. I’m sure you know about the Hendrix set he plays at his shows and the stories he tells about his friend. How can anyone ever top Jimi playing “Sgt. Pepper” first thing at the Saville 2 days after the album dropped — with Paul and one or two of the boys in the front rows? Paul says it was the highest honor he has ever received. Take that, Your Royal Majesty.
Oh my — look at the time.
Thanks for being so groovy, David. Please let me know if you would like me to get a 12 minute recording I pulled off the web 7 years ago, before Janies’ minions took it down. it is an amazing labor of love that is like Jimi’s story in 3 movements, Voodoo Child, Tax Free and One Rainy Wish. heavily sliced diced and processed to the point of mimmicking Jimi’s phrasing. It is all instumental with parts of Jimi in interviews layered in. It would be my honor.
Blessings
Lauren