(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
It’s hard to find any artist from the 1960s who didn’t have some form of obsession with Jimi Hendrix. The power of word of mouth has always been palpable, but that was especially the case when Hendrix came to the UK and started playing music better than anybody had ever seen. As soon as people laid their eyes on him, they were enamoured with his captivating stage presence and the animalistic way that he played his guitar.
Jeff Beck was one of the greatest guitarists in the UK at the time. People loved how much emotion he could convey just using the guitar and felt as though he could create symphonies using the power of six strings. However, even he couldn’t deny the majesty of Hendrix the first time he saw him.
“I was embarrassed because I thought, ‘God, that should be me up there’,” he admitted when talking about seeing Hendrix live for the first time, “I just hadn’t had the guts to come out and do it so flamboyantly, really. He just looked like an animal, played like an animal, and everybody went crazy.”
Another musician who equally adored Jimi Hendrix was Patti Smith. She met him at the beginning of her career, when she was still finding her place in the industry and trying to perfect her sound. In an industry that can be cruel, Hendrix was a shining light, both musically and personally, as he showed that good people could be rock stars.
“He was everything you would want in your rock and roll star. He was beautiful, intelligent, hungry,” she said when reflecting on meeting Hendrix. Her love for him and his artistry has only developed with time. “When I was younger, I just loved him, I loved his songs, I’d daydream about him. But at this time in my life, as an artist, I appreciate him ever more deeply […] I never get tired; I’ve never outgrown him.”
Whether Smith was aware or not, Hendrix was certainly a fan of hers on some level. While Hendrix was renowned for his guitar playing ability, he also cared deeply about lyricism and wanted to be recognised as a writer and a guitar player. When you listen to his words, you can completely appreciate how much he cared about poetry, but so many of his lyrics were drowned out by his unwavering guitar-playing ability. Smith became renowned for her lyrical ability, and no doubt Hendrix will have been a big fan of hers.
“I got to talk to him once about 50 years ago. And for a young girl, he was everything you would want in your rock and roll star,” she said, “[He] loved poetry. He often spoke not in the most favourable way about his poetry. He didn’t think he was the greatest writer. He really admired Bob Dylan, but he was a wonderful poet.”
There are a number of songs that Smith liked for Hendrix’s lyricism, but two of her favourites were ‘Moon, Turn The Tides’ and ‘1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)’. “Any of his lyrics on that album,” she said, “They have such universal appeal. You have a sense of a mirror of our world at the time, but also expanding into the future.”
While she never confirmed which song was her favourite, we can assume it was ‘1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)’ as she used the lyrics from this song in one of her own pieces of music, an homage to Hendrix and his ability as a poet. “The last lines,” she said when discussing her song ‘Elegie’, “’I think it’s sad, just too bad, that all our friends can’t be with us today’ – are borrowed from ‘1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)’. I didn’t think Jimi would mind!”
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