Fact #180820
When:
Short story:
At Madison Square Garden, New York City, USA, Jimi Hendrix, Judy Collins, The Rascals, Peter Paul and Mary, Blood Sweat And Tears, Richie Havens, Harry Belafonte, Dave Brubeck and others perform in the Winter Festival For Peace, a benefit for the Vietnam Moratorium Committee. When Hendrix staggers off-stage halfway through his set, manager Mike Jeffery fires drummer Buddy Miles.Full article:
Mike Jahn (reviewer, New York Times) : A capacity crowd of 21,000 was at Madison Square Garden last night to see performers ranging in style from East Harlem to Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, in a benefit for the Vietnam Moratorium Committee.
The program, "Winter Carnival For Peace", offered performances by Harry Belafonte, Richie Havens, Dave Brubeck, Judy Collins, the Rascals, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Peter, Paul and Mary, the cast of Hair, Jimi Hendrix, the Voices of East Harlem, and Mother Earth. Ticket prices ranged from $1000 to $4, and the members of the audience ranged from politicians to lower East Side teenagers.
The well run show, which began at 8:30 P.M. and seemed destined to go on until well into the morning was turned by the audience into an over sized revival meeting.
It shouted approval of an array of peace-oriented songs, clapped, stamped and sang along with Peter yarrow of peter, Paul and Mary, who led the house in a sing-along version of "Day Is Done", that folk group's recent composition.
The early parts of the evening were captured most easily by the simple and folksy. Richie Havens, the Bedford-Stuyvesant-born folk singer, brought the audience to its feet with versions of Maggie's Farm, the Dylan song, and two of his own. The Voices of East Harlem, a 20-strong group of black teenagers that has already given a very exciting performance at the Fillmore East, sang several gospel-oriented songs. The Voices are unpolished, fresh and loaded with joy and energy.
Noel Redding (bassist, Jimi Hendrix Experience) : I remember going to see him at Madison Square Garden where he was playing with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Somebody gave him a tab of acid just before the show. He was completely freaked.
Johnny Winter : When I saw him, it gave me the chills. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen. He came in with this entourage of people and it was like he was already dead. He just walked in and, even though Jimi and I weren’t the greatest of friends, we always talked. Always. And he came in with his head down, sat on the couch alone and put his head in his hands.
Mati Klarwein (artist) : We all got very stoned with him in his dressing room before he went on.
Billy Cox (bassist) : Buddy and I walked over to Madison Square Garden, went into the dressing room, and there was Jimi. He was not in the best shape. Jimi was sitting next to Jeffery, and we knew it wasn’t going to work.
Johnny Winter : He didn’t say a word to anybody and no-one spoke to him. He didn’t move until it was time for the show.
Gerry Stickells (road manager) : He didn’t want to do the show. I had to convince him to perform.
Billy Cox : We thought about not going out there, because someone was trying to make assholes out of us, but we did. We thought Jimi might be able to make it …
Bob Levine (Hendrix staff) : He was at his worst. He was out of it so badly … he never should have done the show in the condition he was in.
Buddy Miles (drummer) : I do remember Michael Jeffery giving Jimi two tabs of Owsley purples,” said a solemn Miles of the bad acid that he believed caused the performance breakdown. “It didn’t really make sense to anybody that was there, especially with the people that were stagehands, the people that were the crew, the people that had anything to do with the show. They didn’t know what went down. I didn’t even know what went down. Then I found out moments later that, when it came down to it, Jimi was sick. Nobody knew why he was sick. Nobody knew that Michael Jeffery slipped him acid. Nobody knew basically what was going on, but it did happen.
(Source : Goldmine magazine, http://www.goldminemag.com/tag/michael-jeffery)
Noel Redding : He freaked the audience and made a bad name for himself. He was rude to a girl in the audience and used bad language on stage. But he was tripping - spaced out. Very sad that was.
Steve Bloom (fan) : It was a weird show. They played for about 10 minutes and stopped. Fans were yelling ‘Foxy Lady!’ and ‘Purple Haze!’, but Jimi had steered in a new, more soulful direction, leaving the psychedelic style of his much-beloved Experience behind.
Johnny Winter : Right in the middle of a song, he just took his guitar off, sat on the stage - the band was still playing - and told the audience, ‘I’m sorry, we just can’t get it together.’ One of his people said he was sick and led him off the stage.
Steve Bloom : Hendrix and his Band of Gypsies never returned to the stage that night. Or any other stage for that matter. It was the last performance by the Gypsys.
Alan Douglas (producer) : When he came off the stage, he actually fell off the apron. At first I thought he was hurt, but he wasn’t.
Buddy Miles : The audience didn’t get their money back. I told Jeffery he was an out and out complete idiot and a fucking asshole to boot. And he was. One of the biggest reasons why Jimi is dead is because of that guy.
Mike Jeffery (manager of Hendrix) : Musically it wasn’t going down well between Jimi and Buddy … so I had the difficult position of getting rid of, removing Buddy from Jimi. Jimi felt it, but Jimi could never say no. Buddy was a friend of his in a non-musical sense. I told Buddy the trip was over. I did get the feeling that he took it very personally to me. We argued a bit and we shouted a bit. I think at that time, he felt he wasn’t getting his share from the group. He felt that he was a star too, and I regarded him as essentially a supporting man for Jimi.
Billy Cox : Buddy and I thought that because they had successfully marketed the Jimi Hendrix Experience as being these two white guys with Jimi in the middle, they didn’t want to change horses mid-stream and go with three black guys up there. Who knows? I saw that I wasn’t wanted, so I came back to Nashville and decided to do something else.
Jimi Hendrix : I figure that Madison Square Garden is, like, the end of a big, long, fairy tale. Which is great. I think it’s, like, the best ending I could possibly have come up with.
The Band of Gypsys was outtasite as far as I’m concerned. It was just … going through head changes is what it was. I really couldn’t tell. I don’t know. I was very tired. Sometimes, there’s a lot of things that add up in your head … and they might hit you at a very peculiar time, which happened to be at the Peace Rally … I’d been fighting the biggest war I ever fought. In my life. Inside, you know? And, like, that wasn’t the best place to do it.
(Sources : not known)
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The program, "Winter Carnival For Peace", offered performances by Harry Belafonte, Richie Havens, Dave Brubeck, Judy Collins, the Rascals, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Peter, Paul and Mary, the cast of Hair, Jimi Hendrix, the Voices of East Harlem, and Mother Earth. Ticket prices ranged from $1000 to $4, and the members of the audience ranged from politicians to lower East Side teenagers.
The well run show, which began at 8:30 P.M. and seemed destined to go on until well into the morning was turned by the audience into an over sized revival meeting.
It shouted approval of an array of peace-oriented songs, clapped, stamped and sang along with Peter yarrow of peter, Paul and Mary, who led the house in a sing-along version of "Day Is Done", that folk group's recent composition.
The early parts of the evening were captured most easily by the simple and folksy. Richie Havens, the Bedford-Stuyvesant-born folk singer, brought the audience to its feet with versions of Maggie's Farm, the Dylan song, and two of his own. The Voices of East Harlem, a 20-strong group of black teenagers that has already given a very exciting performance at the Fillmore East, sang several gospel-oriented songs. The Voices are unpolished, fresh and loaded with joy and energy.
Noel Redding (bassist, Jimi Hendrix Experience) : I remember going to see him at Madison Square Garden where he was playing with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Somebody gave him a tab of acid just before the show. He was completely freaked.
Johnny Winter : When I saw him, it gave me the chills. It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen. He came in with this entourage of people and it was like he was already dead. He just walked in and, even though Jimi and I weren’t the greatest of friends, we always talked. Always. And he came in with his head down, sat on the couch alone and put his head in his hands.
Mati Klarwein (artist) : We all got very stoned with him in his dressing room before he went on.
Billy Cox (bassist) : Buddy and I walked over to Madison Square Garden, went into the dressing room, and there was Jimi. He was not in the best shape. Jimi was sitting next to Jeffery, and we knew it wasn’t going to work.
Johnny Winter : He didn’t say a word to anybody and no-one spoke to him. He didn’t move until it was time for the show.
Gerry Stickells (road manager) : He didn’t want to do the show. I had to convince him to perform.
Billy Cox : We thought about not going out there, because someone was trying to make assholes out of us, but we did. We thought Jimi might be able to make it …
Bob Levine (Hendrix staff) : He was at his worst. He was out of it so badly … he never should have done the show in the condition he was in.
Buddy Miles (drummer) : I do remember Michael Jeffery giving Jimi two tabs of Owsley purples,” said a solemn Miles of the bad acid that he believed caused the performance breakdown. “It didn’t really make sense to anybody that was there, especially with the people that were stagehands, the people that were the crew, the people that had anything to do with the show. They didn’t know what went down. I didn’t even know what went down. Then I found out moments later that, when it came down to it, Jimi was sick. Nobody knew why he was sick. Nobody knew that Michael Jeffery slipped him acid. Nobody knew basically what was going on, but it did happen.
(Source : Goldmine magazine, http://www.goldminemag.com/tag/michael-jeffery)
Noel Redding : He freaked the audience and made a bad name for himself. He was rude to a girl in the audience and used bad language on stage. But he was tripping - spaced out. Very sad that was.
Steve Bloom (fan) : It was a weird show. They played for about 10 minutes and stopped. Fans were yelling ‘Foxy Lady!’ and ‘Purple Haze!’, but Jimi had steered in a new, more soulful direction, leaving the psychedelic style of his much-beloved Experience behind.
Johnny Winter : Right in the middle of a song, he just took his guitar off, sat on the stage - the band was still playing - and told the audience, ‘I’m sorry, we just can’t get it together.’ One of his people said he was sick and led him off the stage.
Steve Bloom : Hendrix and his Band of Gypsies never returned to the stage that night. Or any other stage for that matter. It was the last performance by the Gypsys.
Alan Douglas (producer) : When he came off the stage, he actually fell off the apron. At first I thought he was hurt, but he wasn’t.
Buddy Miles : The audience didn’t get their money back. I told Jeffery he was an out and out complete idiot and a fucking asshole to boot. And he was. One of the biggest reasons why Jimi is dead is because of that guy.
Mike Jeffery (manager of Hendrix) : Musically it wasn’t going down well between Jimi and Buddy … so I had the difficult position of getting rid of, removing Buddy from Jimi. Jimi felt it, but Jimi could never say no. Buddy was a friend of his in a non-musical sense. I told Buddy the trip was over. I did get the feeling that he took it very personally to me. We argued a bit and we shouted a bit. I think at that time, he felt he wasn’t getting his share from the group. He felt that he was a star too, and I regarded him as essentially a supporting man for Jimi.
Billy Cox : Buddy and I thought that because they had successfully marketed the Jimi Hendrix Experience as being these two white guys with Jimi in the middle, they didn’t want to change horses mid-stream and go with three black guys up there. Who knows? I saw that I wasn’t wanted, so I came back to Nashville and decided to do something else.
Jimi Hendrix : I figure that Madison Square Garden is, like, the end of a big, long, fairy tale. Which is great. I think it’s, like, the best ending I could possibly have come up with.
The Band of Gypsys was outtasite as far as I’m concerned. It was just … going through head changes is what it was. I really couldn’t tell. I don’t know. I was very tired. Sometimes, there’s a lot of things that add up in your head … and they might hit you at a very peculiar time, which happened to be at the Peace Rally … I’d been fighting the biggest war I ever fought. In my life. Inside, you know? And, like, that wasn’t the best place to do it.
(Sources : not known)