Guitar greats honor Jimi Hendrix with tribute show
Written by drbob on October 23, 2010 – 12:17 am -By Rege Behe, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Billy Cox heard Jimi Hendrix before he saw or met him.
It was a rainy evening in 1961 at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, and Cox and a fellow soldier were walking by a service club where "the window was up maybe a couple of inches." From that small opening came a sound both men had never heard before.
"I told the guy next to me -- I didn't really know him -- that sounds incredible," Cox says. "He thought it sounded terrible. And to the human ear, maybe it did, but I wasn't listening to him. So I went in and introduced myself."
Thus was struck the friendship of a lifetime, one that Cox will revisit Tuesday during the Experience Hendrix Tour at the Benedum Center, Downtown.
Cox will join fellow musicians Steve Vai, Ernie Isley, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, Living Colour, Brad Whitford of Aerosmith, Eric Johnson, Cesar Rosas and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Chris Layton of Double Trouble and the Slide Brothers in performing songs from the Hendrix catalog.
Hendrix remains a touchstone for every musician who has picked up a guitar in the 40 years since his death. As Cox says, "there are two types of guitarists: There are those who admit to being influenced by Jimi Hendrix, and those who try to pretend they aren't."
Cox says Hendrix "was my best friend," but admits his bond with Hendrix was cemented by music. Before they met, Cox had played in bands in high schools, but stopped once he was in the Army. Hendrix convinced him to borrow a bass from the desk at the service club, and the pair ended up jamming for most of the night.
Cox immediately recognized his new friend was not long for obscurity.
"The cards are dealt to you at birth, destiny is what you do with those cards," Cox says. "He got those cards, and he knew that destiny was calling upon him. Like (William) Faulkner said, 'Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.' He constantly tried to be better than himself."
Hendrix was singled-minded in his pursuit of music, and had few, if any interests, to distract him. Cox says, "we didn't fish, we didn't go bowling," but bonded solely over performing together. But when the time came for Hendrix to go to England, where he would find favor not only with the British press, but with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, Cox was reticent. He wanted a bit more security, and decided to stay in the states.
Hendrix made one last effort to enlist his friend.
"He called me from New York, said, 'Billy, this guy is going to send me to Europe and make me a star, and I told him about you,' " Cox says. "I said Jim, I'm no longer with the group, I got three strings on my bass and the fourth one is tied with a square knot, and I'm renting an amp. He said, 'Dog, you've fallen on hard times. I'm going to go to Europe and make it, and when I do I'm going to send for you.' And that's what he did."
Hendrix made it big in England with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. But in 1969, when he felt that band had run its course, he summoned Cox when he returned to the states for a gig of historic proportions: Woodstock, where Hendrix was slated to close the festival.
Because of delays, the new band didn't take the stage until early Monday morning, when most of the estimated crowd of 500,000 had left. Cox remembers coming up from behind the stage and looking out at what remained of the crowd.
In the video footage, it appears to be a sparse audience, but Cox says the camera angle is deceiving. The people who were to the left of the stage had merged to center "to catch a glimpse of this guy" who knew how to seize the moment.
"Jimi opened the curtain and said 'Ohhh,' " Cox says. "In his infinite wisdom, this young man, 26 years old, said, 'Those people are sending a lot of energy onstage. What we'll do is take that energy they're giving us and throw it back to them.' And that's exactly what we did, with the help of some Blue Nun wine."
Cox's reunion with Hendrix was brief. A little more than a year after Woodstock, and after Hendrix had formed Band of Gypsys with Cox and drummer Buddy Miles, the guitarist was dead. He was only 27, but left a body of music that Cox compares to that of Beethoven or Brahms or Mozart, a legacy comparable to those of George Gershwin, John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
"Every now and then, a spirit slips through the portal of time into this reality," Cox says. "He came through that portal. He was one of those individuals who came to us with a lot of wisdom, and I still don't know where he got that wisdom and knowledge."
-- Jimi Hendrix's birth name was Johnny Allen Hendrix; he was renamed James Marshall Hendrix by his father. His childhood nickname was Buster; the moniker Jimi was given to him by Chas Chandler, the British musician and producer who brought him to England in 1966.
-- According to Leon Hendrix, one of the first songs his brother played was the theme song from "Peter Gunn" -- on a one-string ukulele the pair found in a garage they cleaned out.
-- The name of Hendrix's first band in Seattle was the Velvetones. His first electric guitar, purchased by his father, was a Supro Ozark 1560S.
-- After being discharged from the Army in 1962, Hendrix started working as a sessions guitarist under the name Jimmy James. He worked for Ike and Tina Turner, Sam Cooke, the Isley Brothers and Little Richard before starting his own group, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames.
-- Two days after the Beatles released the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1967, Hendrix opened a show at the Saville Theater in London with a cover of the title track. In the audience were members of the Beatles, including Paul McCartney, who sought out Hendrix after the show and told him he should play the Monterey Pop Festival.
-- Hendrix, upset at not having a more prominent slot at the Monterey Pop Festival, decided to use lighter fluid to set his guitar on fire. Mama Cass Elliott of the Mamas and the Papas turned to Pete Townshend of the Who and told him Hendrix was stealing his act. Townshend replied, "No, he's doing my act."
-- In one of the weirdest double bills of rock 'n' roll history , Hendrix opened for the Monkees for a few shows in 1967. Hendrix became increasingly upset at the reaction from fans -- notably all the cries for Davy Jones, the Monkees' charismatic singer -- and made an obscene gesture during a concert in Forest Hills, N.Y. In order to save face, Chas Chandler concocted a story that the Daughters of the American Revolution objected to Hendrix's theatrics, thus forcing the Monkees to kick him off the tour.
-- The band Hendrix threw together for Woodstock, featuring his longtime friend Billy Cox on bass, Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, and percussionists Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez, was called Gypsy Sun and Rainbows. That lineup was short-lived; soon after, Hendrix formed Band of Gypsys with Cox and drummer Buddy Miles.
Sources: www.jimihendrix.com; "Jimi Hendrix: The Guitar Hero," a film by Jon Brewer; "Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascos That Shaped America" by Martin J. Smith and Patrck J. Kiger.
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