Starting At Zero (22 page)

It may be of interest to you that Mark Stein’s case for possession of narcotics was tried on Oct. 24th in Montreal and he was acquitted. His was a more difficult case than yours. In
your absence yesterday I signed an agreement with Warner Bros. whereby if you fail for a period of three months to deliver an album to them as required under your contract, they may mix one from
your reels. There are two albums now due. One for Capitol and the other for Warner. The editor is subject to your approval as is the album itself, and you have the right to substitute from material
which you find unsuitable, but all this is under a tight schedule.

The legal expenses are rapidly becoming enormous ... The damage to the Woodstock house you rented came to $5,000 which also has to be paid. We do not have the money at this time to meet your
obligations, and a good part of what you will be receiving from Warner and Sealark will go to meet these expenses. I have repeatedly tried to get you to understand the serious situation in which
you find yourself and to urge you to cut down on your spending. I must repeat this is vitally necessary and I should like to take some of the money and invest it for you so that it is not available
for immediate spending ...

DECEMBER 8, 1969, JIMI RETURNED TO CANADA FOR HIS COURT CASE.

JUDGE:

What use could this aluminum tube have?

JIMI:

Probably a peashooter. I really don’t know what it is. Someone must have put it in my bag.

JUDGE:

Do your fans ever give you drugs?

JIMI:

All the time.

JUDGE:

Are you saying you’ve given up drugs entirely?

JIMI:

I’ve outgrown it.

JIMI WAS ACQUITTED ON ALL CHARGES.

I
FEEL GOOD, HAPPY AS HELL. Canada has given me the best Christmas present I ever had. Man, it’s a real game. But just don’t blow it.
Don’t blow it. The Canadian government was just doing its job. To each his own. Sometimes people are too sensitive, as I was. Look what could have happened to me, even when I don’t use
drugs anymore. It’s true, it’s true! I don’t take as much. That’s what I was trying to tell them.

Quite naturally, people don’t really need drugs. There are other things that you can actually benefit from. You know my song,
I Don’t Live Today – Maybe Tomorrow?
That’s where it’s at. Things were getting too pretentious, too complicated. People were singing about acid itself! Things start to rule you. Images, drugs. Everybody forgets what
happened to God. The soul must rule, not drugs. You should rule yourself and give God a chance.

The drug scene was opening up things in people’s minds, giving them things that they just couldn’t handle. The term “blowing someone’s mind” is valid. People like
you to blow their minds. Well, music can do that. You don’t need any drugs. Music is a safe type of high. It’s more the way it’s supposed to be. That’s where highness came
from anyway, I guess. It’s nothing but rhythm and motion.

Once you have some type of rhythm it can get hypnotic.

If you keep repeating it over and over again, most people will fall off after about a minute. You do that,

say for three or four or even five minutes, if you can stand it, and then it releases a certain thing inside of a person’s head.

So, all of a sudden, you can bring the rhythm down a little bit, and then say what you want to say
right into that little gap
.

A
S LONG AS YOU WANT TO BELIEVE THE WORLD IS A STAGE,

A
ND
I
SHALL PRODUCE UPON YOU AN

AND LET YOUR BODY THERE TREMBLE
–
BUT FORCE TO STAND
.

T
HE MIDDLE
,
AS CALM AS AN UNTOUCHED BABY
’
S BRAIN
.

AROUND THE EDGE OF THE BOWL

AND IN YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS EAR
I
SHALL SERVE IT
.

FROM MY LIMBS DIRECT

BUT BY PROXY
,
STRAIGHT FROM YOUR OWN SCRIPT
...

A
RE YOU SATISFIED OR DO YOU WANT TO STAY THE LIMIT
?

What’s happening is that there’s a sixth sense coming in. Everybody has their own name for it, but I call it “Free Soul.” That’s why everything is beyond the eyes
now. You have to know how to develop other things that will carry you further and more clearly. They say the speed of light is the fastest thing – that’s the eyes – but then
there’s the speed of thought, which is beyond that. For instance, you can get on the other side of this theme in a matter of thinking about it.
That’s why music is magic.

You can listen to anything that turns you on, anything that takes you for a ride. You have to ride with something.

People want to be taken somewhere.

When I’m playing, man,

I
T
’
S VERY FAR AWAY
,

H
ANG ON
,
MY DARLING
,

WITH JUST A LITTLE BIT OF
S
PANISH CASTLE MAGIC
.

It’s all in your mind.

{JIMI’S RECORD LABEL, WARNER BROS., REACHED A SETTLEMENT GIVING PPX AND ITS DISTRIBUTOR, CAPITOL RECORDS, THE RIGHTS TO JIMI’S NEXT ALBUM.}

C
APITOL RECORDS WERE PUSHING US FOR A NEW RECORD, so I got Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass. We spent twelve to eighteen hours a day
practicing this whole last week, straight ahead! We were just getting off, that’s all. We’d say “rehearsing” just to make it sound official. And then we went to a little
funky club and jammed down there to test it out and see how the air was. We’re calling it the Band Of Gypsys, because that’s what we are. That’s what all musicians are. The whole
world is their front porch.

Musically, we try to keep it together. That’s why the personnel in groups changes all the time – because they’re always searching for that certain little thing. The fact of
calling it Gypsys means it could even expand on personnel and so forth. I might not even be there all the time. Buddy might not even be there all the time. But the core, the whole, the child will
be there.

We’re just going to be laying down what we see today. That’s our theme. Not sad blues, blues today. We have one song called
Earth Blues
. It’s all bottom. It’s all
rhythm. Buddy is getting all the voices together so they will become another instrument. We do a thing called
Them Changes
, too. Buddy wrote this one, and I’d like to have him sing it.
And we do this one called
Message To Love
. Everybody’s rappin’ about love, so we’ll put in our two cents’ worth and see what it sounds like ...

WELL WORLD,

I SAID WE’RE TRAVELIN AT A SPEED

OF A REBORN MAN.

I’M TALKIN BOUT LOVE,

The background of our music is a spiritual blues thing. Now I want to bring it down to earth. I want to get back to the blues, because that’s what I am. When music goes too far out and is
in danger of becoming a technique, people always come back to basic honesty. That’s why the blues and country & western music are at the foundations of our popular music.

The blues are easy to play, but not to feel. You’ve got to know much more than the mere technicalities of notes. You’ve got to know sounds and what goes between the notes. Most
people believe that to be a good blues musician one has to suffer. I don’t believe this. When I hear certain notes I feel real happy. I just like the sound of the blues.
We
used to say a thing like, if you don’t have no blues with you, we’ll make some to take home.

Blues is part of America.

Blues will never die.

{TO SATISFY THE PPX-CAPITOL SETTLEMENT, THE BAND OF GYPSYS RECORDED THEIR DEBUT AT THE FILLMORE EAST IN NEW YORK.}

We went onstage New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at the Fillmore East. That first set was really tight. It was scary. Buddy’s going to do most of the singing. I’d rather
just play. In England they made me sing, but Buddy has the right voice, so he’s going to do the singing from now on. Anyway, I can’t do the screaming out and hollering bit much longer.
Music can make it for you, I know, but I’m not quite as good as Bing Crosby.

{ON JANUARY 28, 1970, THE BAND OF GYPSYS MADE THEIR FINAL APPEARANCE AT A BENEFIT CONCERT FOR THE VIETNAM MORATORIUM COMMITTEE AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. JIMI ABRUPTLY WALKED
OFF STAGE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SECOND NUMBER.}

It was just something where the head changes. Just going through changes, I really couldn’t tell you the truth. I was very tired. Sometimes there’s a lot of things that add up in
your head about this and that, and they hit you at a very peculiar time, which happened to be at that peace rally. And there I am fighting the biggest war I’ve ever fought in my life –
inside, you know? And that wasn’t the place to do it, so I just unmasked appearances.

I figure that Madison Square Garden was like the end of a big long fairy tale. It’s the best ending I could possibly have come up with. It’s like the
end of a beginning.