Jimi Hendrix Arrives in London in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clapton Away: “You By no means Informed Me He Was That F-ing Good”
Jimi Hendrix arrived on the London scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smashing each British blues guitarist to items the moment they noticed him play. As vocalist Terry Reid tells it, when Hendrix performed his first presentcase on the Bag O’Nails, organized by Animals’ bassist Chas Chandler, “there have been guitar players weeping. They needed to mop the ground up. He was piling it on, solo after solo. I may see everybody’s fillings falling out. When he finished, it was silence. No one knew what to do. Eachphysique was dumbstruck, completely in shock.”
He solely exaggerates a little, by all accounts, and when Reid says “eachphysique,” he means eachphysique: Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Jeff Beck, Paul McCartney, The Who, Eric Burdon, John Couldall, and perhaps Jimmy Web page, although he denies it. Couldall recollects, “the thrill was out earlier than Jimi had even been seen right here, so people had been anticipating his performance, and he greater than lived as much as what we had been anticipateing.” Actually, even earlier than this legendary occasion despatched close toly each star classic rock guitarist again to the woodenshed, Jimi had arrived unannounced on the Regent Road Polytechnic, and requested to take a seat in and jam with Cream, the place he professionalceeded to dethrone the reigning British guitar god, Eric Clapton.
No one knew who he was, however “in these days anyphysique may rise up with anyphysique,” Clapton says in a latest interview, “if you happen to had been convincing sufficient that you could possibly play. He bought up and blew everybody’s thoughts.” As Hendrix biographer Charles Cross tells it, “nobody had ever requested to jam” with Cream earlier than. “Most would have been too intimidated by their reputation as the most effective band in Britain.” To listen to the story because it’s instructed within the clip above from the BBC documalestary Seven Ages of Rock, nobody else would have ever dared to get onstage with Eric Clapton. Clapton, because the famed graffiti in London introduced, was God. “It was a really courageous person who would do this,” says Jack Bruce.
Actually, it was Chandler who requested the band, and who additionally tried to prepare Clapton. Jimi bought onstage, plugged into Bruce’s bass amp, and performed a version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killin’ Flooring.” Eachone was “completely gobsmacked,” Clapton writes in his autobiography. “I remember assumeing that right here was a power to be reckoned with. It scared me, as a result of he was clearly going to be an enormous star, and simply as we’re discovering our personal velocity, right here was the actual factor.” Worry, envy, awe… all reasonin a position emotions when standing subsequent to Jimi Hendrix as he tears by “Killin’ Flooring” 3 times sooner than anyone else performed it (as you’ll be able to see him play it in Inventoryholm above)—whereas doing the splits, mendacity on the ground, playing together with his enamel and behind his head…
“It was amazing,” writes Clapton, “and it was musically nice, too, not simply pyrotechnics.” There’s no telling how Jimi might need remembered the occasion had he lived to write down his memoirs, however he would have been pretty modest, as was his means. Nobody else who noticed him felt any want to carry again. “It should have been difficult for Eric to handle,” says Bruce, “as a result of [Eric] was ‘God,’” and this unknown person comes alongside, and burns.” He places it slightly differently on the prime: “Eric was a guitar player. Jimi was some form of power of nature.”
Rock journalist Keith Altham has but a 3rd account, as Ed Vulliamy writes at The Guardian. He remembers “Chandler going againstage after Clapton left within the middle of the tune ‘which he had but to master himself’; Clapton was furiously puffing on a cigarette and telling Chas: ‘You never instructed me he was that fucking good.’” Who is aware of if Hendrix knew Clapton had struggled with “Killin’ Flooring” and decided to not strive it reside. However as blues guitarist Stephen Dale Petit notes, “when Chas invited Jimi to London, Jimi didn’t ask about money or contracts. He requested if Chas would introduce him to Beck and Clapton.”
He had come to fulfill, and blow away, his rock heroes. “Two weeks after The Bag O’Nails,” writes Classic Rock’s Johnny Black, “when Cream appeared at The Marquee Membership, Clapton was sporting a frizzy perm and he left his guitar feeding again towards the amp, simply as he’d seen Jimi do.”
Related Content:
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Jimi Hendrix’s Ultimate Interview Animated (1970)
Josh Jones is a author and musician based mostly in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
