{"id":813065,"date":"2026-03-08T21:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/813065\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T21:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T21:54:15","slug":"the-only-musician-prince-said-was-out-of-jimi-hendrixs-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/813065\/","title":{"rendered":"The only musician Prince said was out of Jimi Hendrix’s league"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Prince<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sun 8 March 2026 19:15, UK <\/p>\n

\u201cYou spanked Jimi Hendrix?\u201d Prince<\/a> recalled with complete and utter glee, quoting a line he\u2019d said to one of his ultimate heroes as he told a tale on a TV show decades later. <\/p>\n

One thing that\u2019s important to remember is that Prince was young. By the time he died, with 39 studio albums under his belt and a legacy that had been locked into and looming for decades before, he was only 57. That means a lot of work in a short amount of time, as he managed to convince Warner Bros to let him make his debut album completely solo<\/a> when he was 18, signing the contract for it then but starting on these beyond-his-years compositions long before. <\/p>\n

From then on, it was all guns blazing. In his prime, there was rarely a year when Prince didn\u2019t release a record, sometimes sharing two in quick succession or at least making it a double album. Even when he was older, and the music came out slightly slower, the quality didn\u2019t drop as the final albums from when he was alive, Hit N Run Phase One and Two, are still packed with intrigue. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to remember that Prince was young, not even so much for his achievements but for the simple matter of excitement. Prince was only a child in the golden age of the 1960s, and so those musicians who came to inspire him so much \u2013 they were his childhood heroes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

When he\u2019d then risen through the ranks and found himself standing alongside them, that giddiness never went away. After connecting with some of those heroes, the members of Sly and the Family Stone<\/a>, Prince did the inevitable, which was to beg to hear stories of their finest moments back in the days before Prince was even out of school.<\/p>\n

They offered him one \u2013 the story of May 10th, 1968, the night they supported Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore East in New York. \u201cRight then, I\u2019m shaking, can\u2019t wait to hear what went down,\u201d Prince said about the tale, forever the excited kid.<\/p>\n

However, this is less a story of the gig. Instead, it was a story of Larry Graham and Freddie Stone struggling to get there. \u201cOn the way to the gig, they pick up some of their amplifiers and their car is loaded with these amplifiers, right, so it\u2019s hard to see,\u201d Prince recounted. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey either hit this guy or a guy runs into them, but there\u2019s an accident, right? In the middle of the street in New York,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

Smiling to himself, he recalled on the show, \u201cLarry jumps out of the car, whoops this dude\u2019s backside.\u201d Delighted by this insane tale of the carnage of even just trying to get to the historic show, Prince almost forgot to ask about the actual event. <\/p>\n

\u201cI asked, and I said, \u2018So when you go to the gig, what happened? Who won the battle between you and Hendrix?\u2019 and Larry said, \u2018Oh, we spanked him.\u201d Which brings us back to Prince\u2019s first gleeful shout \u2013 \u201cYou spanked Jimi Hendrix?\u201d<\/p>\n

With nothing more to say, Prince just declared, \u201cThat\u2019s Larry Graham!\u201d, as if their boldness and their confidence didn\u2019t just come as no surprise but were utterly deserving, making it clear who he threw his love behind. <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sun 8 March 2026 19:15, UK \u201cYou spanked Jimi Hendrix?\u201d Prince recalled with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,28058,269,7794,4577,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-813065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jimi-hendrix","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-prince","12":"tag-sly-and-the-family-stone","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116195784812842018","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}