Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child Page #5

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Hey Joe is really a blues arrangement

of a cowboy song.

It isn't quite a commercial song,

so I'm surprised

that it got so high in the hit parade.

I'm just wondering

how people are going to take the next one,

because it's so different.

I had this thing on my mind

about a dream I had

that I was walking under the sea.

It's linked to a story I read in a science

fiction magazine about a purple death ray.

It's called Purple Haze.

I don't consider it

the invention of psychedelic music,

it was just asking a lot of questions.

The way I write things, they are just

a clash between reality and fantasy.

You have to use fantasy

to show different sides to reality.

A lot of people think

what I do with my guitar is vulgar,

but I don't let them hang me up.

I play to the people

and I don't think our actions are obscene.

Music is such a personal expression,

it's bound to project sex.

What is so wrong about that?

Is it so shameful?

I play and move as I feel.

It's not an act, but a state of being.

I consider ourselves to be

some of the luckiest cats alive,

because we're playing just what we want

to play, and people seem to like that.

You must remember that Jimi Hendrix USA

didn't really have a chance to do anything,

because he was playing behind people.

Then this happened.

When Chas saw me

in Greenwich Village,

he said it would all happen

just like it has.

The first night of the "Walker Brothers Tour"

was when I started to worry.

This was an audience

who'd come to see the Walker Brothers,

Engelbert Humperdinck

and Cat Stevens.

We'd step outside the stage door

where the teenyboppers were,

and think, "They won't bother about us",

and then get torn apart.

I don't know how it happened

so suddenly,

but our records began to sell

at an incredible rate.

In England,

you have to keep releasing records.

They have very quick minds

and they get bored easily.

We are calling our album

Are You Experienced.

This is a very personal album,

just like all our singles.

I guess you could call it an ad-lib album,

as we made so much of it up on the spot.

I don't want people to get the idea

it's a collection of freak-out material.

Imagination is the key to my lyrics,

and the rest is painted

with a little science fiction.

What I like to do

is write a lot of mythical scenes.

You can write your own mythology -

like the history of the wars on Neptune

and the reason Saturn's rings are there.

Britain is our station now.

It's not my home

but it was our beginning.

They took us in like lost babies.

We'll stay here probably

until around the end of June,

and then we'll see

if we can get something going in America.

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