Discovering Jimi Hendrix

When I was 8 years old my step-father had just moved in with us and there were boxes of books, clothes, vinyl and cassettes and other things laying around the house.  I was fortunate enough to have a large bedroom all to myself, but as we organised the house I had a single bed with a few mattresses stacked on top stored in the centre of my room.

I remember one day my cousin was over.  We were more like best friends growing up and we used to spend so much time together playing out on our bikes or playing in the woods out the back of my house.  One afternoon we were rummaging through one of the numerous cardboard boxes in the house and flicking through the stacks of vinyl.  We dismissed the rather staid looking classical music and sneered at the jazz albums, but as I turned over the various cassette cases an almost magical face peered up at me and my interest was captured.

Wearing a purple velvet jacket and a wide brimmed black hat with turquoise buckles on it the soulful eyes of Jimi Hendrix looked out at the camera as smoke billowed around him.  This was different to anything we had come across up to now.

The album was called ‘Voodoo Child’ and it was another Hendrix compilation album (although I didn’t know that at the time).  I slipped open the case and pulled out a white plastic cassette tape and put it into my simple stereo player.  I pressed play and the raw, powerful introduction to ‘Voodoo Chile (slight return)’ came out of my tiny, tinny speakers.  The effect was galvanising and my cousin and I looked at each other in wonder.  We played the song through and then rewound the tape back to the start and pressed play again.

This time as it played we both bounced up and down on the mattresses in the centre of the room in our young attempts at dancing.  I remember laughing as we did so and loving the music as it rushed through my system.  This was new to my ears and it cracked open my mind in a way that has never been shut since.

We continued to do this for some time.  Playing the song and bounce-dancing and then rewinding it to do it again and again.  We finally tired of this and went downstairs for a drink and to go out to play, but music was now something personal and my own.  I no longer had to listen to my parents musical choices anymore or the music my brothers played.  I had ‘found’ Jimi and it was my own music that no-one else in the family played.  My step-father didn’t even play it anymore, he had become strictly a classical man. 

Later on my real dad said that he used to play Hendrix around the house when I was a baby, but he left when I was 4 and I have no recollection of it.  But maybe it had subconsciously seeped into my psyche and when I heard it again at 8 it resonated within me and connected with me on some elemental level I was unable to comprehend at that young age.

The funny thing was I didn’t even play the rest of that tape until weeks later, but looking back I can see that it was a formative experience in my musical life and the start of something special and the start of my love with Jimi’s music that lasts to his very day.

I wonder if my cousin remembers it in the way I do?  I do know he is an amazing guitarist and tours with his band around Europe and is an incredible musician in his own right.   Who knows if Jimi was an influence.  I must ask him some time.

The depth of the music was hard to comprehend at that first listen and I only fully grasped it years later, but it sunk it’s hooks deep into my mind at that young age and I was deeply affected by the raw, powerful emotions of the music.  I can’t think of any better way to be introduced to an artist or helping in forming your own unique relationship with music that will last the rest of your lifetime.  I still get an urge to bounce on my mattress whenever I hear that song and just maybe one day I’ll give in to it and relive a happy memory.