- Are you ready?
- Ask the road manager. Are we ready?
- Yeah, everything's ready.
- OK. Ready.
You say "Billy Cox on bass,
Mitch Mitchell on drums."
And, you know,
"Whoever's gonna be playing guitar."
OK?
- We call it the "Blue Wild Angel."
- The what?
The "Wild Blue Angel" music.
Yeah, right, hit it.
I sensed the crowd.
It was overwhelming. It was monstrous.
Even though we couldn't see,
it was night-time,
but, you know, we could...
it was by lights
and more by audio than video.
You know, we heard it,
it was humongous!
I've read the specs and they say
600,000 people were there.
"Woodstock" was 300,000.
That's double "Woodstock."
For me, I went to the Isle of Wight
for my holidays when I was a kid.
Going to the Isle of Wight after going there
on my school holidays was like...
I was just, I guess, surprised.
The Isle of Wight
was an unusual place for a festival
because you had to get there by a boat.
It happened to be
one of the strangest islands in history
to ever have a festival,
a counterculture festival,
because it was a very conservative
vacation place
for middle-class British.
I love it. Room for everybody here.
Yes, all are welcome.
Yes, indeed. I love them!
Fun. Nice.
Life. Youth.
Beautiful!
But this isn't only just hippie fun.
Behind it is Black Power.
Behind that is communism.
What was the controversy about
the national anthem?
I don't know, man, all I do is play it.
I'm American, so I played it.
I used to have to sing it in school,
they made me sing it at school.
It was a flashback, you know.
This man was in the 101st Airborne,
so when you write your nasty letters in...
Nasty letters?
When you mention the national anthem
and talk about playing it
in any unorthodox way,
you immediately get
a guaranteed percentage of hate mail
- from people who say, "How dare..."
- But that's not unorthodox.
- It isn't unorthodox?
- No, no. I thought it was beautiful.
But there you go, you know.
Don't you find that there's
a certain mad beauty in unorthodoxy?
My first playing with Billy was,
well, obviously,
the Woodstock situation.
But as it got slimmed down
to a three-piece situation,
things were looking a lot better.
The band with Jimi and Billy and myself,
I'd say, from a musical standpoint,
that was possibly
the best band that we had with Jimi.
Some of those gigs
leading up to the "Isle of Wight"
were really, really pleasant.
The "Isle of Wight"
was something that...
...you know, Jimi got talked into...
when... at a time
when he was writing better.
Jimi loved being in the studio.
I proposed that we could build a
recording studio that was like a nightclub.
That it would be a place
that he could entertain his friends
and open for private parties and
that would be an artist-orientated room.
One of the great things
about Electric Lady was...
not only was it his new home,
he was secure.
Nobody could interfere,
he was isolated from the rest of the world.
Electric Lady provided us
a place where we could...
It was our laboratory. The place
where we could go in and experiment.
I think that the record
was coming together.
I remember watching him
writing up some of the song titles.
"That would make a good Side A,
this will make a good Side B,
"we have enough for Side D and Side C."
And I think that was...
that was pretty cool,
to see all the effort of the last two years
just coming together.
You could see the end in sight.
I remember just before
Jimi took off for Europe,
Jimi was lying in the chair and talking
about, "Oh God, I gotta go to Europe
"and make some money
so we can support the studio,
"whereas what I really wanna do is be
in the studio and finish these records."
He was quite apprehensive, because he...
He said, "I don't know if
they're gonna accept me or not.
"I've been gone so long,
they've forgotten about me."
So he had anticipated disaster.
I don't think he was that keen to do it,
it was very disorganized.
We're really behind schedule, you know.
I don't imagine
Jimi Hendrix wants to be playing with his...
5,000-watt guitar
while it's raining, you know?
I don't wanna film this, I'm serious. We
haven't got a f*cking stage for this festival
Forget the film, man, all right?
Can you get this thing out of here?
I'm not worried about the film,
I've got a f*cking stage to build, right?
I've got the sound people coming down.
I got Jimi Hendrix's road manager
coming tomorrow.
If he sees that stage,
he's gonna blow Jimi Hendrix.
I think that the promoters felt it was
extraordinarily important
to land Jimi Hendrix.
Did you say you have this contract?
I'm just looking for it now.
I'm sure I sent it back to him.
And then, of course,
his manager, I suppose, not him,
insisted on being the headliner
in all the promotion and advertising,
which got them into a lot of trouble,
because it was supposed to be
alphabetical billing, equal size.
You know, I mean,
the whole thing is being degenerated
since Hendrix insisted
on going at the top.
Up until then we'd use alphabetical order
for everybody and nobody could complain.
Everybody's contracts from the States
that I worked out
were alphabetical order and
you don't have them as alphabetical order.
I think there was a time when they said
we should play the show for free
and stuff like that,
which was, of course, never on the cards.
The whole thing against capitalistics
is absolutely ridiculous.
I don't think they're very true
about their cause.
Maybe I'm a bit cynical living in the States.
What price can you put on the pleasure
that Jimi Hendrix gives people?
None, that's what they say.
I think we had a little disagreement
over money,
but I remember going into the tent
where they had the box-office takings,
it was a big pile of cash
in the middle of the table
so you had to go through the frustration of
fighting for every dollar, you know?
They get cash before they go on.
So they have got bags of money.
As someone said, it's
hard to sing the blues
when you're making that kind of money.
This assumes that you can't be unhappy
and have a lot of money.
Sometimes it gets to be
really easy to sing the blues
when you're supposed to be making
all this much money.
'Cause, like, money is getting
to be out of hand now, you know.
And, like, musicians,
especially young cats,
they got a chance to make all this money
and they say, "This is fantastic!"
And like I said before, they lose themselves
and they forget about the music itself.
They forget about their talents,
they forget about the other half of them,
so therefore you can sing a lotta blues.
It was England
where the "love, peace" festival bit
had never taken off really in the '60s.
They weren't fighting a w*r,
you know,
there wasn't the racial tension over there.
And that's what "Isle of Wight" was,
a lot of people getting there
and breaking down the fences
and getting in for free.
Come on, lads! Bring them all down!
- Bring them all down!
- Down! Down!
I wanna clear something with you.
I heard you use the expression "an
electric church" as an ambition you had.
Was this speaking metaphorically
or poetically?
- Or do you really wanna...
- Honestly, I don't know.
It's just a belief that I have,
you know, it's...
We do these electric guitars,
everything, you know,
is electrified nowadays, you know.
So therefore the belief comes
through electricity to the people.
That's why we play so loud.
Because it doesn't actually
hit through the eardrums
like most groups do nowadays.
They say, "We'll play loud too,
'cause they're playing loud."
And they got this real shrill sound
and it's really hard.
We're playing for our sound to go
inside the soul of the person, actually,
and see if they can awaken
some kind of thing in their minds,
'cause there are so many sleeping people.
The kids felt that Hendrix was like the god.
And they were all looking forward
to that moment.
There was an enormous
sense of anticipation
of Hendrix coming to smooth it down
because of the power of his music,
which I think is what happened.
It was partly 'cause it was late at night,
but I think the crowd
really just was mesmerized.
It's good to feel, you know,
when there's a good band there
and everybody's listening to that band,
that you've got, for a few moments,
the reality of about...
f*ck knows how many people.
100,000 people, depends on that one note.
Everybody's in it, you're there, together.
That's good.
When Hendrix is going up
and you know there are
hundreds of thousands
of other people all going up with you,
and those guys up on the hill, don't forget
you can't fly, stuff like that. It's good.
I had a road manager
that was working with Cream,
who offered to drive me
to this out-of-the-way airport
to get me to the Isle of Wight.
There'd been equipment problems,
certain pieces of my drum kit were lost,
I couldn't replace them
as it was a public holiday...
It was just a strange feeling.
Mitch had got back to England.
Gerry Stickells and I,
four, five days later, went to London.
We flew over - the usual thing on Air India.
So we got plenty of curry.
You flew on the Air India thing
because that's how
they got royalties out of India,
because it was a blocked currency,
so you always flew on Air India
at that particular time.
That was my first trip into Europe
and Gerry says, "Get your sleep, Billy."
I didn't know what jet lag was about.
Well, I did more talking than sleeping
and when I got to England,
maybe a couple of hours later,
maybe five or six hours,
I found out what jet lag was.
And it's a terrible thing.
Flew in, then we took a small plane
over to the Isle of Wight
and it was a little bad in that...
obviously one had crashed there
like the day before, or a few days before,
'cause it was still at the end of the runway,
broken in pieces when we landed.
So, that wasn't a very good start to the day,
if you know what I mean.
And then Jimi followed
us on, I think, the 27th.
Flew in, went to this little hotel,
it was like a bed and breakfast,
if I remember rightly.
I couldn't actually place
whereabouts we were
on the Isle of Wight, to be frank with you.
Got to the gig, don't even remember
how we got there, probably a car.
I do recall, like, all these trailers,
the usual trailers
behind the backstage area.
It's the usual chaos,
the usual, to be expected chaos.
- Pardon? Say it again.
- How do you get your inspiration?
- From the people.
- From French kids?
- From French kids?
- Yes, we are French!
Yeah, right. From the people.
When they really show
that they're really, you know,
there for a genuine purpose to enjoy
themselves and which I
have done the same.
As long as they don't be too critical.
Then they lose the thing.
It's not gonna hurt me anyway.
OK.
I got a gig waiting for me
in the laundromat.
Please leave an aisle. Please.
I'll be in the caravan right down here.
- OK. Right.
- All right.
Can we have everybody at the front
and around the edges sitting down?
- Are we going on now?
- Yeah.
- I thought I said...
- What's that?
That's the guitar.
'Cause it's outside.
'Cause when you're playing outside
it's always f*cking sticking.
Oh, do we have a guitar pick?
Do you have a guitar pick?
- Hold on to this, chief.
- OK.
Put it on top.
How does God Save The Queen go?
I've forgotten.
God save our old tomcat.
They won't get uptight if we do that?
All right. Is it on again?
No, it's off.
Power's going. Just see
if the power's going.
No, no, no. They just fixed it now.
Hendrix! Hendrix! Hendrix!
- Can we stay and watch him?
- If you want to, yeah.
So that means we don't have to rush off.
You can watch him
but after that I'd like to get away,
because otherwise we'll
be stuck for hours.
Where do we sit?
Anything in particular you'd like me to say?
Is it all right now?
You say "Billy Cox on bass,
Mitch Mitchell on drums."
And, you know,
"Whoever's gonna be playing guitar."
OK?
- We call it the "Blue Wild Angel."
- The what?
The "Wild Blue Angel" music.
Yeah, right, hit it.
- Are you ready?
- Ask the road manager.
- Are we ready?
- Just a sec, they've lost the power again.
All right?
Everything cool there?
- Where's my tie?
- I'll check on it.
I'll get Roland to check on it.
Do you have microphones in front of
the amplifiers? Are they recording it?
OK, now, we have to get permission.
Are we gonna...
We'll get it taken care of,
don't think about it.
It's the guy who recorded the
Albert Hall tapes last year.
But when are we gonna get them, though?
I'll try and get them.
But if not, there's an injunction on them,
they can't use them.
- What, they can't use them?
- No. Nobody can.
Yeah, OK. But it's our tapes.
All right. I'm ready.
OK, ready. Tell the MC to go, then.
OK, here you go.
A bit more volume on this one, Charlie.
It's gonna need it.
Let's have a welcome
for Billy Cox on bass.
Mitch Mitchell on drums.
And the man with the guitar, Jimi Hendrix.
Yeah! Thank you very much
for showing up, man.
Y'all are really beautiful and out of sight.
Thanks for waiting.
It has been a long time, hasn't it?
That does mean peace, not this.
Peace.
OK, give us about a minute
to tune up, all right?
Give us about a minute to tune up.
It's so good to be back in England.
We'll start off with a thing
that everybody knows out there.
You can join in and start singing.
As a matter of fact,
it'd sound better if you stand up
for your country and your beliefs
and start singing.
And if you don't, f*ck you.
As I said before, thanks a lot for coming.
Wanted to get into another song
that we did about in the year of 1833
and I think it's pretty true still today
if you can dig it.
We're having a tiny bit of trouble. Hold on
one more second. Buy your hot dogs.
Yeah, we'll do that towards the...
Next time.
There's a whole lotta head games going on
and sometimes they leak out,
that's the word they use,
the powers and so forth
and play their own head games
on other people, which we call w*r.
And so I can dedicate this one
to all the soldiers
that are fighting in Birmingham,
all the skinheads, all the...
Yeah, well,
you know what I mean, you know.
Yeah, right, you know.
All the soldiers fighting
in Bournemouth, London...
Oh, the soldiers in Vietnam.
I almost forgot, so many wars going on.
We'll start all over again.
Hello, how you doing England?
Glad to see you.
We're doing a thing called Freedom.
What was that?
What?
Oh yeah, someone wants
the people in the front row to sit down.
I think it's coming from the hills.
Don't forget you can't fly
up the top of those hills, don't forget that.
One, two, three.
This is dedicated to Linda,
to the cat right there with the silver face,
dedicated to Kirsten, Karen,
and that little four-year-old girl over there
with the yellow balloon.
I wanna say thank you
for the last three years,
one of these days we'll get together again.
Thanks for showing up, you're outta sight.
If you want the same old songs,
we can do that.
You all wanna hear all those old songs?
Damn, man, we're just trying to get
some other things together.
I just woke up about two minutes ago,
was recording some little things,
but I don't think... I don't know...
I think we'll play something
a little more familiar.
'Cause I ain't came yet myself,
I don't know about you, but I ain't came.
There I came. Thank you.
Thank you for being so patient.
Maybe one of these days we'll join again.
I really hope so. All right.
Jimi Hendrix At The Isle Of Wight (1991)
Moderator: Maskath3