Fact #66681
When:
Short story:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience release their debut single, Hey Joe, in the UK. Hendrix also undertakes a photo session, a Radio Caroline interview and plays a gig at Chislehurst Caves, Old Hill, Chislehurst, Kent, UK.
Full article:
Chris Stamp (co-manager, JHE) : As it turned out, Jimi's first record was released on the Polydor label because the Track label wasn't actually ready, though the deal was. We wanted to release it before Christmas to catch that market and coincide with one of the dates we had set for Ready, Steady, Go!
I wasn't absolutely sure that this was going to be, you know, a hit record. But we were going to sort of … if it didn't go into the charts, we were gonna buy it in.
We would give Them (chart-riggers) money to just go to, like, stores that we knew returned chart returns. They would just go into stores and buy records.
Mike Nesmith (Monkees) : I was having dinner in London with John Lennon, Eric Clapton and a group of people. In the middle of dinner, John produced this portable tape player and requested that the restaurant turn down the piped-in music. He then proceeded to play Hey Joe on his recorder saying 'You guys gotta check this out.' Everyone was reverential… like everybody said 'Gee, if we could really play music like that, we would!'
Mark Knopfler : The first time I heard Hey Joe on the radio, I completely freaked and immediately ran out and bought the record. I didn't even have a record player at the time.
Paul Bradley (star of UK soap Eastenders) : I was 12 and, in those days, record shops had listening cubicles. Me and my mates all piled in to listen to the record, but they played it at 33 instead of 45rpm. I was thinking 'When's he going to start singing?' I bought it anyway, for seven shillings and sixpence.
David Nash (fan) : I was just seventeen, and some of my mates asked me to come along to Chislehurst Caves to see this guy. I knew nothing about him. We got some bottles of Merrydown cider and downed them before we went in. It was an amazing place, ancient deep underground caves where they used to take people round on tours, but the higher level was sometimes used for gigs.
It was incredibly atmospheric, dank and gloomy.It was croweded and smoky and they had utility lighting, the bare bulbs with the wire frame round them, strung along the walls. The stage was very small, set back in a natural hollow in the cave wall. There were huge iron gates blocking you off from the deeper levels of the caves but, during the gig people were climbing up onto them.
To my amazement, when he went on, I recognised the drummer, Mitch, because I'd seen him in other bands, but I also recognised Hendrix. I'd actually seen him trucking down Shaftesbury Avenue a few days earlier with his guitar case. At that point, I had no idea who he was but I just thought he was the most amazing-looking man I'd ever seen. Then, suddenly, there he was on the stage, making this incredible music. I was at the back, so I had to stand on tiptoe to see him over people's shoulders, but I was completely blown away.
Roger Mayer : I went there (Chislehurst Caves) and brought some of my devices, such as the Octavia. He tried them out backstage and was thrilled. When I had met Michael Jeffery, he was the type of person that I made out very quickly that I didn't want to deal with. I just wanted to make sure that I received expenses for research and development - I never got salary, I just got paid for making the things. I did things for Hendrix, but not for Jeffery.
Jimi Hendrix : Blues, man. Blues. For me that’s the only music there is. Hey Joe is the blues version of a one-hundred-year-old cowboy song. Strictly speaking it isn’t such a commercial song and I was amazed the number ended up so high in the charts.
(source : not known)
Kathy Etchingham : People will argue with me, but I tell you, that guy was a bluesman. That’s where his heart really lay. Anybody who tells me he would have become a jazz musician – well, balls to them. What he really liked, and what he really played at home, was blues.
(Source : interview by James Rotondi in Guitar Player)
Dave Gregory (guitarist, XTC) : I was fourteen years old, living in Purton, Wiltshire, I’d been playing guitar for about three months, when I first heard Hendrix. When I first heard Hey Joe on the radio, I thought it was a bit of a dirge. I thought it was a soul singer with a doom-laden backing chorus. When I finally got hold of the 45 some months later, I turned the disc over and there was Stone Free on the b-side, which was another thing entirely, the wildest guitar playing I’d ever heard.
I was so dazzled by his brilliance that, at the time, I didn’t identify his playing as being blues. Listening back to it later I could see that he’d taken the blues to places where no-one had gone before.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, January 2015)
Stephen Dale Petit (contemporary blues guitarist and acclaimed genre expert) : The perception that Hendrix was a psychedelic guitarist more than a blues guitarist was partly down to how he was packaged. Psychedelia was the burgeoning trend and Hendrix in those flamboyant clothes was ready-fit for it, so it’s not surprising a lot of fans didn’t see him as a bluesman, but you can bet your life that guys like Clapton and Beck knew exactly where Hendrix was coming from. They were under no illusions about Hendrix being the personification of everything that every English blues musicians aspired to. He was also their worst fear, because he wasn’t 60 years old and from the plantation. He was the same age as them but what they’d learned second-hand he had learned organically, on the circuit, playing with the originals.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, January 2015)
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I wasn't absolutely sure that this was going to be, you know, a hit record. But we were going to sort of … if it didn't go into the charts, we were gonna buy it in.
We would give Them (chart-riggers) money to just go to, like, stores that we knew returned chart returns. They would just go into stores and buy records.
Mike Nesmith (Monkees) : I was having dinner in London with John Lennon, Eric Clapton and a group of people. In the middle of dinner, John produced this portable tape player and requested that the restaurant turn down the piped-in music. He then proceeded to play Hey Joe on his recorder saying 'You guys gotta check this out.' Everyone was reverential… like everybody said 'Gee, if we could really play music like that, we would!'
Mark Knopfler : The first time I heard Hey Joe on the radio, I completely freaked and immediately ran out and bought the record. I didn't even have a record player at the time.
Paul Bradley (star of UK soap Eastenders) : I was 12 and, in those days, record shops had listening cubicles. Me and my mates all piled in to listen to the record, but they played it at 33 instead of 45rpm. I was thinking 'When's he going to start singing?' I bought it anyway, for seven shillings and sixpence.
David Nash (fan) : I was just seventeen, and some of my mates asked me to come along to Chislehurst Caves to see this guy. I knew nothing about him. We got some bottles of Merrydown cider and downed them before we went in. It was an amazing place, ancient deep underground caves where they used to take people round on tours, but the higher level was sometimes used for gigs.
It was incredibly atmospheric, dank and gloomy.It was croweded and smoky and they had utility lighting, the bare bulbs with the wire frame round them, strung along the walls. The stage was very small, set back in a natural hollow in the cave wall. There were huge iron gates blocking you off from the deeper levels of the caves but, during the gig people were climbing up onto them.
To my amazement, when he went on, I recognised the drummer, Mitch, because I'd seen him in other bands, but I also recognised Hendrix. I'd actually seen him trucking down Shaftesbury Avenue a few days earlier with his guitar case. At that point, I had no idea who he was but I just thought he was the most amazing-looking man I'd ever seen. Then, suddenly, there he was on the stage, making this incredible music. I was at the back, so I had to stand on tiptoe to see him over people's shoulders, but I was completely blown away.
Roger Mayer : I went there (Chislehurst Caves) and brought some of my devices, such as the Octavia. He tried them out backstage and was thrilled. When I had met Michael Jeffery, he was the type of person that I made out very quickly that I didn't want to deal with. I just wanted to make sure that I received expenses for research and development - I never got salary, I just got paid for making the things. I did things for Hendrix, but not for Jeffery.
Jimi Hendrix : Blues, man. Blues. For me that’s the only music there is. Hey Joe is the blues version of a one-hundred-year-old cowboy song. Strictly speaking it isn’t such a commercial song and I was amazed the number ended up so high in the charts.
(source : not known)
Kathy Etchingham : People will argue with me, but I tell you, that guy was a bluesman. That’s where his heart really lay. Anybody who tells me he would have become a jazz musician – well, balls to them. What he really liked, and what he really played at home, was blues.
(Source : interview by James Rotondi in Guitar Player)
Dave Gregory (guitarist, XTC) : I was fourteen years old, living in Purton, Wiltshire, I’d been playing guitar for about three months, when I first heard Hendrix. When I first heard Hey Joe on the radio, I thought it was a bit of a dirge. I thought it was a soul singer with a doom-laden backing chorus. When I finally got hold of the 45 some months later, I turned the disc over and there was Stone Free on the b-side, which was another thing entirely, the wildest guitar playing I’d ever heard.
I was so dazzled by his brilliance that, at the time, I didn’t identify his playing as being blues. Listening back to it later I could see that he’d taken the blues to places where no-one had gone before.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, January 2015)
Stephen Dale Petit (contemporary blues guitarist and acclaimed genre expert) : The perception that Hendrix was a psychedelic guitarist more than a blues guitarist was partly down to how he was packaged. Psychedelia was the burgeoning trend and Hendrix in those flamboyant clothes was ready-fit for it, so it’s not surprising a lot of fans didn’t see him as a bluesman, but you can bet your life that guys like Clapton and Beck knew exactly where Hendrix was coming from. They were under no illusions about Hendrix being the personification of everything that every English blues musicians aspired to. He was also their worst fear, because he wasn’t 60 years old and from the plantation. He was the same age as them but what they’d learned second-hand he had learned organically, on the circuit, playing with the originals.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, January 2015)