Starting At Zero (17 page)

Oh, I’ll be around, don’t worry ...
doing this and that. I’m not going solo, I’m just going to be
a little different. I want to do a Super Group album with guests like Clapton, Winwood and Mayall. People I really dig. But we’ll still keep on with the Experience. We’re together as
long as we want to be.

Dear Sirs,

Here are the pictures we would like for you to use anywhere on the LP cover. We would like to make an apology for taking so very long to send this, but we have been working
very hard indeed, doing shows AND recording. And please send the pictures back to Jimi Hendrix Personal & Private, c/o Jeffrey & Chandler, 27 East 37th St., NY, NY, after you finish with
them. Please, if you can, find a nice place and lettering for the few words I wrote named ... ‘Letter to a Room Full of Mirrors’ on the LP cover. The sketch on the other page is a rough
idea of course … but please use ALL the pictures and the words. Any other drastic change from these directions would not be appropriate according to the music and our group’s present
stage – and the music is most important. And we have enough personal problems without having to worry about this simple yet effective layout.

Thank you.

Jimi Hendrix

{
ELECTRIC LADYLAND
HAD BEEN RELEASED IN THE U.S. IN OCTOBER 1968. IT WAS IN THE CHARTS FOR THIRTY-SEVEN WEEKS AND REACHED #1, THE ONLY EXPERIENCE ALBUM TO ACHIEVE TOP
BILLING.}

I
’M KIND OF PROUD of
Electric Ladyland
because I really took the bulk of it through from beginning to end on my own, so I can’t
deny that it represents exactly what I was feeling at the time of production. It was really expensive to produce, about sixty thousand dollars, I guess, because we were on tour at the same time,
which is a whole lot of strain on you. It’s very hard jumping from the studio onto the plane, doing the gig and then jumping right back into the studio.

We were having to always go back in the studio again and redo what we might have done two nights ago. We wanted a particular sound. We produced it and mixed it and all that mess, but when it
came time for them to press it, quite naturally they screwed up, because they didn’t know what we wanted.

There’s a 3-D sound being used on there that you can’t even appreciate because they didn’t want to cut it properly. They thought it was out of phase. See, when you cut the
master, if you want a really deep sound, you must almost remix it again right there at the cutting place, and 99 percent don’t do this. They just say, “Oh yeah, turn it up there, make
sure the needle doesn’t go over there, make sure it doesn’t go under.”

We didn’t get a chance to complete it because we were on tour again. When I heard the end result I thought some of the mix came out kind of muddy. Not exactly muddy, but kind of bassy.
Then the engineers retaped the whole original tape before they pressed the record for Britain, so much of the sound that existed on the American album was lost. Now I’m learning more about
this kind of thing so that I can handle it myself.

I care so much about my work. I record stuff I believe is great. The only time I get uneasy is when I know that the pop critics and writers are waiting for me to fail so they can jump all over
me. This is how pop is. You have a hit record and, gee, they love you, but you have one failure and they kill you.

It’s like a tightrope.

T
HE NEW ALBUM,
Electric Ladyland
, seems to have got me into a bit more trouble with people. It seems that folks in Britain are kicking
against the English cover. Man, I don’t blame them. I had no idea they had pictures of dozens of nude girls on it. I wouldn’t have put that picture on the sleeve myself, but it
wasn’t my decision.

Over here there’s just a picture of me and the boys. First I wanted to get this beautiful woman, Veruschka. She’s about six-foot-seven, and so sexy you just want to,
hmmm
. .
. We wanted to have her leading us across the desert and have these chains on us. But we couldn’t find a desert because we were working, and we couldn’t get hold of her because she was
in Rome. Then we had this one photo of us sitting on
Alice In Wonderland
, a bronze statue in Central Park, and we got some kids and all.

I didn’t know a thing about the English sleeve. Still, you know me, I dug it anyway. Except I think it’s sad the way the photographer made the girls look ugly. Some of them are nice
looking chicks, but the photographer distorted the photograph with a fish-eye lens or something. That’s mean. It made the girls look bad. But it’s not my fault. It’s the other
folks, you know, the people who are dying off slowly but surely. Anybody as evil as that dies one day or another.

I’ve got a lot to offer pop, but pop has less to offer me back because it is run by people who only talk about what is commercial. All these record companies, they want singles, because
they think they can make more money. But you don’t just sit there and say, “Let’s make a single.” We’re not going to do that. I consider us more musicians, more in the
minds of musicians. You’ll have a whole planned-out LP, and all of a sudden they’ll make, for instance,
Crosstown Traffic
a single. See,
Electric Ladyland
was in a certain
way of thinking, and the sides were played in order for certain reasons. It’s almost like a sin for them to take out something in the middle to represent us at that particular time. They
always take out the wrong ones. It shows you how some people in America are still not where it’s at.

You don’t even have no friend scenes. I walked into a store and saw this record with my name on it. When I played it I discovered that it had been recorded during a jam session I did in
New York when I was a backing musician with a group called Curtis Knight and the Squires. We had only been practicing in the studio, and I had no idea it was being recorded.

That album was made from bits of tape, tiny little confetti bits of tape. Somebody has taken their scissors from Sears and Roebuck and spliced a few seconds of tape and put it on there.
It’s a whole lot of hogwash. I’m only on about two tracks. I didn’t sing on
Hush Now
. That was dubbed on later by Knight trying to copy my voice. On the other,
Flashing
, all I do is play a couple of notes, and the guitar was out of tune, and I was stoned out of my mind.

Man, I was shocked when I heard it. It was just a jam session, and here they just try to connive and cheat and use. It’s a really bad scene. Somebody trying to capitalize on
somebody’s name. They never told me they were going to release that crap. That cat and I used to be friends. That’s the real drag about it.

{JANUARY 4, 1969, THE EXPERIENCE APPEARED ON THE LULU SHOW ON BBC TV. JIMI UPSET LULU AND THE BBC BY ABRUPTLY SWITCHING FROM
HEY JOE
INTO
SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE
AS
A DEDICATION TO THE RECENTLY DISBANDED CREAM.}

It was the same old thing with people telling us what to do. They wanted to make us play
Hey Joe
. I was uptight about it, so I caught Noel’s and Mitch’s attention, and we went
into
Sunshine Of Your Love
. If you play live, nobody can stop you or dictate what you play, beyond setting a time limit. I dream about having our own show.

Say, wouldn’t it be great to take over the studio like they do in Cuba!

We’d call it
The Jimi Hendrix Show – Or Else!
And there will be no smoking in the gas chamber while we’re on!

We’re planning to promote our own concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on February 18 and 24. We’ll do two shows ourselves and book some nice groups. We’d like Jim Capaldi’s
new band and Spike Milligan. We’d like him to be the compere. He’s my sort of comedian. They don’t have
The Goon Show
in America. They’re masterpieces. Those are
classics. They’re the funniest things I’ve ever heard, beside Pinky Lee. Remember Pinky Lee? They are like a whole lot of Pinky Lees together. Just flop them out together. I used to be
a Pinky Lee fan. I used to wear white socks.

{FOR THE REST OF JANUARY THE EXPERIENCE TOURED EUROPE, PLAYING IN SWEDEN, DENMARK, GERMANY, FRANCE AND AUSTRIA.}

It’s nice to be back in Stockholm. I like Sweden. I wanted to give everything to get them into my music, but I failed. We haven’t played in so long that it takes a while to get into
the groove of it. It made me desperate. The worst of it was the staring, lifeless faces in the front row.

We also played in Gothenburg, and many people wondered if it didn’t feel a little unpleasant to play there after the trouble with the broken window at the hotel last year. We stayed at
another hotel this time.