Starting At Zero (11 page)

{JIMI FLEW TO LONDON ON AUGUST 10, 1967, AND THE EXPERIENCE RETURNED TO EUROPE FOR TV APPEARANCES AND CONCERTS.}

Everywhere I go I always try to meet people. People to talk with, to laugh with and to make music with. The one thing that’s very important is people to talk with. But since I first came
to Europe I’ve met one in a hundred people who let me talk about what I want to. Everybody asks me how old I am, if it’s true I have Indian blood, how many women I’ve had, if
I’m married, if I have a Rolls-Royce, or more of those jokes. The people who dig me don’t want this at all. They want something different. They want to feel something inside, something
real – revolution, struggle, rebellion. They know where you’re at without asking questions. They know from the music. But there’s no point in talking like this. I just stand about
and wait for the next question, and people usually misconstrue my answers.
I know what I mean, but I can’t form the words.

I
T SEEMS LIKE THE PEOPLE IN SCANDINAVIA just aren’t ready for the way we look. In Sweden they moved us out of the hotel lobby just because
Princess Alexandra was coming through! I guess the guy at the hotel thought we were a bit scruffy and tried to tidy the place up for the Princess. He was real cool. He invited us to have a drink.
We play about ten places here, I guess. I’m not sure because I don’t keep up with that. I just play. We’re going to take a vacation soon, right after this Scandinavian tour.

We’re working very, very hard now. Once you’ve made a name for yourself, you are all the more determined to keep it up. In any case, I don’t believe you’ve really made it
until you breathe your last breath. So what we are trying to do is to be more and more progressive, to make our music and our act more varied and exciting, so that all age groups can enjoy it.

{IN NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 1967, THE EXPERIENCE HEADED A PACKAGE TOUR OF BRITAIN, SUPPORTED BY THE MOVE, PINK FLOYD, AMEN CORNER, OUTER LIMITS, THE NICE AND EIRE APPARENT.}

Although I wasn’t scared starting my first big tour, we did wonder how they would accept us, there being so many different acts and us probably the most extreme of all. In the clubs they
would just come to see us, but on this tour you get all kinds and all ages. Like always, we go out to play and please the public, and so far it’s been wild, really wild. In Blackpool the
police slipped Mitch and Noel in through side doors and took me ’round the block five times before helping me in. I lost some hair, but I might have lost the lot if they hadn’t been
guarding me!

It’s the best tour I’ve been on. Sometimes, while you’re into your music, you might hear little teeny-weenies – little piglets – squealing out there. Sometimes they
scream in the wrong places, like when I cough. I feel funny then. It’s like,
“Uh-oh, here they go.”
It’s a little hard to explain what really bugs
me about that scene. I mean, you don’t perform according to how they scream.

The Nice are my favorite group on this tour. Their sound is ridiculously good – original, free, more funky than West Coast. You don’t have the West Coast scene in Britain, at least
not out in the open. The Underground is where it’s in the groove. And over here if it’s not Engelbert Humperdink, it’s Underground.

“Strange Brew” (Cream).
Oh, I know who that is all right, by the first note! Ooh, that’s nice. Was that a horn in the background?
Those voices and the guitar sound so well together. It has a strange kind of West Coast and San Francisco sound. Eric’s guitar is sounding funkier and more relaxed. He’s gradually
changing, but with a cat like that you can never tell when he’s going to settle down. It could be disastrous if he did. This is a nice blues song that you can dig between Engelbert and Cat
Stevens on the radio. I like this record, but I don’t know about the little kiddies. The Cream shouldn’t worry though, because they are playing what they like. Groups like Cream,
Traffic and Family are so deeply interested in their music that they are creating a culture. Their music is so important to them.

“Loving You” (Billy Fury).
Is that an English guy singing? It’s not Billy J. Kramer? Not whatshisname – Billy Fury? He
sings very nicely, and it’s the sound I used to like when I was a little boy. It could have been a stronger arrangement to help him out. That’s an old Elvis Presley song. At least Billy
is getting his name back. It’s nice.

“Come To The Sunshine” (Harpers Bizarre).
That’s an English group too? Weird little voices. Who could it be? Oh, what was that
sound? I don’t know, that’s almost like a fairy tale, a theme for a children’s movie. You can take it off now if you want to. That’s not for me, but there’s no
telling. It might sell twenty million. It’s one of those goody-goody records with a completely commercial sound, no feeling, no nothing. It’s just made to sell records.

“What Good Am I?” (Cilla Black).
It sounds like a female Tim Hardin. Now it’s changed complexion. God, it must be Cilla Black.
Now it makes me think of Sonny and Cher. Yes, I like that. Her voice sounds like controlled feedback, it’s so powerful. Now she sounds like Dionne Warwick! God, what’s happening
nowadays? Yes, there’s a nice feeling on this.

“Here Come The Nice” (Small Faces).
I’ve heard these voices somewhere before. The lead singer sounds very nice. That has to be
the Small Faces. I was going to ask if they had a girl in the group! Their music is very funky, but it sounded like a girl’s voice at the beginning. This has a very good beat. The backing
voices and the drumming give it away. God, what’s happening there? They are doing one of those Mrs. Miller tricks, slowing down the speed. That’s slowed-down soprano! It’s pretty
hard to say if that will be a hit. I’ve met the little cats in the group. They’re all so little. When I first came here they were really happening, but now they don’t seem to be
doing too much. I hope they come through all right because they are a very good group, especially image-wise. They should feature their lead singer more. I’d like to try and write some songs
for them.

“She’s Leaving Home” (Beatles).
Who’s that? It’s not the Beatles, it’s too commercial. The voices are a little
more steady, and they’ve got echo on the violins. It’s an English group trying to sound like the Beatles. Sounds like Ringo to me. Ringo hasn’t gone solo, has he? This is one of
the most commercial songs on the album. The Beatles LP is standard equipment for all the groups at the moment. Everybody is so worried about the Beatles and where they are going. It’s so
silly. Just take the music for what it’s worth. I wish we could end up like them!

I
T SEEMS TO ME LIKE MUSIC GOES IN A BIG CYCLE, and it’s coming back to more of a true form of music now. During a certain
age, which was past not so long ago, they started getting really superficial and junky. This was because the music started getting too complicated. In order to get into that you have to be really
true to yourself, and none of those cats were doing that. The idea is not to get as complicated as you can but to get as much of yourself into it as you can. I feel everything I play. It’s a
release of all my inner feelings – aggression, tenderness, sympathy, everything. Same with Noel and Mitch. It’s a wedding of our feelings in music. We all three have our own little
scene as far as music goes. One of us is in a rock bag, another is just jazz, while I’m in the blues. We are all doing our separate things together. This way everything’s a very natural
progression.

Music has to go places. That’s why we make something new. It’s hard for me to think in terms of blues anymore. The content of the old blues was singing about sex
and booze. Now people are saying so much more with music. Motown isn’t the real sound of any Negro artist singing. It’s so commercial, so put together, so beautiful, that I don’t
feel anything from it. All they do, and this is my own opinion, is put a very hard beat to it, a very good beat. Then they put about a thousand people on tambourines, plus a thousand horns and a
thousand violins, and then a singer overdubs his voice millions of times, and to me it comes out so artificial. “Synthetic Soul” is what I call Motown.

I really don’t like the word “soul” in connection with the Experience. A Spanish dancer has soul. Everybody has soul. Music is nobody’s soul.
It’s something from somebody’s real heart. It doesn’t necessarily mean physical notes that you hear by ear. It could be notes that you hear by feeling or by thought or by
imagination or even by emotions. I like the words “feeling” and “vibration.” I get very hung up on this feeling bag.
The sounds of a funky guitar just thrill me, go all
through me. I can get inside it almost. I’m not saying that I play that good; I’m just explaining my feeling towards it and the feelings towards the sound it produces.

I’ve got about eight guitars,
but the two I use are the Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Flying Angel, which is shaped like a letter A and is extremely rare in
Britain. I play a Fender Stratocaster because it gets used pretty hard in the act and it’s the only one which will stand up to it. Everybody’s screaming about the seven-year-old
Telecaster and the twelve-year-old Gibson and the ninety-two-year-old Les Paul. They’ve gone into an age bag now, but it’s nothing but a fad. The guitars nowadays play just as good. You
know, the salesman is always telling you that Chuck Berry took this one to the bathroom with him and he didn’t have any toilet paper, so watch out for the pick guard. §
I tried the
Telecaster
, and it only has two sounds, good and bad, and a very weak tone variation. The Guild guitar is very delicate, but it has one of the best sounds. I tried one of the new Gibsons, but I
literally couldn’t play it at all, so I’ll stick with my Fender. §
The Stratocaster
is the best all-round guitar for the stuff we’re doing. You can get the very bright
trebles and the deep bass sound. I use light-gauge strings, and I put them on slightly higher so they can ring longer. I don’t like to use mikes. To get the right sound it’s a
combination of both amp and fretting. It’s a simple trick. I turn the amplifier knob really fast once, twice. That gives the singing, whistling tone – the electronic tone. The trick
then is to control this tone with the fingers. It doesn’t make any difference what size the amps are as long as I know I have it.
I’m not necessarily trying to be
loud. I’m just trying to get this impact.