My First Time

Get you mind out of the gutter!  This is not a dissertation on my first voyage into the pleasures of the buck nekkid female body, it's about attending my first concert.  I'm speaking here of a 'real' concert, not seeing your older buddies playing Gloria in your cousin Clem's basement.  You know, big time big-name bands in a large venue.

We now live in a jaded era when we've seen it all, experienced it all, lived it all right there in our living rooms and bed rooms courtesy of MTV and VH1.  All is presented for maximum effect, from every angle, and perfect in every detail.  We even have rock stars who lip-sync to their hits at their live concerts.  Hell, they even finger-sync to their music in some cases for God's sake!  What I am asking you to do is to take yourself back in time to a place where it was all new and exciting and the glitter hadn't fallen off the belief in rock-n-roll as something that could save the world.  A place where real people played real guitars and live drummers smacked on actual drums.  Picture being a bright-eyed kid again for just one brief minute.  It'll do you good.  Trust me on this.

For me, it happened in March or April of 1969.  I was just shy of my 14th birthday and I had my first real band Albatross together.  Check out the pics to see what I looked like then!  I had just gotten turned on to Jimi Hendrix the year before.  Yeah, I know he busted out big time in 1967, but I lived in Wynne, Arkansas don't forget!  Anyway, Hendrix was coming to play two shows on the same night in Memphis at the Auditorium North Hall, and after much wrangling with my our parents, we managed to get tickets to the earliest of the two shows.  Only the $5.50 tickets, not the 'expensive' $6.50 ones.  Those prices really date me, don't they?  We were placed up in the first balcony.

The day of the concert came, and I was almost out of my ever-lovin' teenage mind with feelings of excitement mixed with apprehension, ecstasy, and fear.  Kinda like the high that drugs promise but never quite deliver.  My mom and one of her friends loaded us up in the family station wagon and transported us to the gig.  They were going shopping or something while we did the concert thing.  One look at all the hairy people standing in line outside and my mom made me promise not to talk to any of the hippies lest I be slipped heroin or LSD or be spirited away to some commune.  After strict instructions to meet at an exact spot after the concert, we were cut loose.  I remember Mom's look of apprehension as I got out of the car.

We found our place in line, got inside, and with the help of the nice usher lady found ourselves directed to our balcony seats.  I had been worried that we would be too far from the stage and wouldn't be able to see anything, but unlike the stadiums that would become the concert venues in the near future, the Auditorium North Hall was set up along the lines of an opera house or theater and even the nosebleed sections above us had a fairly decent view.  The curtains on the stage were closed and I could only imagine what kind of magic lurked behind them.  Music was playing (not blasting, as I remember) through the large PA system.  There was a quality to the sound that I hadn't ever heard in the sound systems of the local dance bands.  The bass seemed really good.  I was so excited that I thought I was gonna pee in my pants so I made a quick trip to the bathroom, afraid the whole time that I was gonna miss something.

Looking around the place, I was enchanted by the people.  There were all kinds;  straight-looking adults, nerdy kids like us, and what we called the Hippies.  The were the most interesting of all.  They seemed the most free with their long hair, and I just loved to look at the girls not wearing bras.  It was a glimpse into my future.  I didn't think life could get any better.  We gawked and gee-gawed while we waited for the band to show up.

The opening band was to be Fat Mattress, the band fronted by Hendrix' bass player Noel Redding.  I read much later that it was the only way Redding would do this last Experience tour.  I also read that this gig was where Jimi re-connected with his buddy Billy Cox, who was down from Nashville, to put together the Band of Gypsys.

The band was late and we heard that their plane had been delayed.  I can't remember if it was a rumor or if they announced this from the stage.  I don't know how long we waited, but it seemed an eternity.  Finally, a group of musicians ran down the aisle and disappeared behind the stage and we knew that we were finally going to get some action.  You can bet Hendrix didn't run down through the crowd, but we knew it was at least the guys from the opening band.  Looking back, I wonder why they didn't just come in the stage door at the back.  Probably wanting to get some excitement started.

As it turned out, they needed it.  When Fat Mattress finally hit the stage we were greatly underwhelmed.  You have to remember that not only were we young and impressionable, but this was our first time to experience the 'wall of sound' that a concert presents.  We should have thought they were the greatest thing we ever heard.  They must have really sucked for us to think they sucked back then.  No wonder Hendrix called them 'Thin Pillow!'

After enduring the mercifully short Fat Mattress set, the curtains closed and Noel Redding presumably went back to change into his Experience clothes, and we were faced again with an interminable wait.  It probably wasn't all that long. There were after all two shows that night so they most likely moved it on along at a fairly quick pace.  But all of us were waiting on none other than the King of the Guitar himself and we just couldn't stand it!

Finally the house lights dimmed again, and a roar went up from the crowd. The inevitable radio disc jockey, George Klein buddy of Elvis and in his pre-racketeering bust days, in an orange (or green) Nehru jacket came out to ask the stoooopid question, "Are you ready for Jimi Hendrix!!!???"  The crowd roars again.  From behind the stage curtains an eerie electronic 'woooo' began, at first not so loud, but climbing quickly to brain shaking intensity and enveloping every harmonic in the spectrum until it affected all present from the hair on our heads down to our feet, and even shaking the fillings in our teeth.  The curtains began their teasing trip to the outer edges of the stage, but before they were even finished with their journey out from behind them floated the purveyor of the monstrous sound, Jimi Hendrix.

He was dressed from head to toe in royal purple, with a backless bell-sleeved shirt.  Anyone who thinks Prince invented the 'purple' thing never saw Hendrix.  He wore a pink chiffon scarf tied around his head as a headband, and another one just above one knee.  His afro by this time had been trimmed in a shorter style, I was told because he had burnt his hair off lighting one of his guitars on fire (not true), and he wore the most stunning collection of turquoise rings, bracelets, and assorted jewelry on his wrists, hands, and around his neck.  The pure white Stratocaster he was playing was actually part of the outfit as it reflected the brilliant spot lights back on on the mesmerized crowd dazzling us, and causing us to shield our eyes from it's gleam.  We gazed at it in awe as primitives would a shining sword in the hand of a Roman legionnaire.

Jimi beat out a few quick half-chords on the Strat, then flipped his hand over and ran it down the neck making a colossal 'ZOOM' sound, the drums and bass thundered in, and they were off an running on Spanish Castle Magic from the Axis: Bold as Love album.  The sound was thick and dense and simply unbelievable for three people.  There were more amps and cabinets on stage than I had ever seen in one place in my life.  Everyone was on their feet as the band slammed out the song, Mitch Mitchell flailing away on the drums, Redding shaking the floor with the bass and Jimi flying over top of it all like a bird of fire.

My almost-fourteen-year-old brain was simply stunned.  I think this experience (pardon the choice of words) was for me something like it must have been for the Buddha when he received Enlightenment, or for a person who meets God first-hand on a lonely road.  Not that Jimi was God, it was the power of the music that was god-like, and it moved me like I had never been moved before.  I hate to conjure up that over-used expression "swept away" but that describes it perfectly.  It was a wave of energy that somehow transformed into godliness along the apogee of it's flight.  If you have felt this, you know exactly what I mean.  If you have never had a similar experience, all the words in the world cannot convey one-hundredth of it's meaning.

Caught up in the moment, all of us in the crowd along for the ride, we let Jimi and his band take us to where ever he was going.  I don't believe he even had a plan, he was riding the cosmic wave of sound that began in the depths of his soul, traveled through his fingers and out through the amps to our ears and reaching the collective soul of his audience.  I know myself I had no conscious thoughts of my own for the first couple of numbers anyway.

Like a swimmer whose body finally gets adjusted to the cold water of a lake, I began to look around and notice things, and catalog them in my brain.  I saw that Jimi was playing out of no less than three Marshall 100-watt stacks, and had some extension cabinets on Redding's side.  Redding had a pile of Sunn bass amps with an extension cabinet or two on Hendrix' side.  Mitch Mitchell had a pyramid of Sunn's behind his drums, and I wonder to this day how they miked him through them without humming feedback, but that's what appeared to be happening.

At this point in his career, Jimi was still doing his 'show' routine, playing with one hand, with his teeth, behind his head, standing on his guitar while pulling the neck up like he wanted to tear it off.  When one went too far out of tune for him to deal with, his roadie would hand him one of the other three pristine white Strats that waited on stands beside his amp stack, like swords for a King. 

Another thing that will shock younger concert goers:  back then there were no restrictions on cameras in the hall.  I had brought my little 127 film brownie flash camera and wanted to get a close-up of Jimi.  I knew that I from the balcony he would come out ant-sized, so I had to get down on the floor.  I made my way down to the bottom level where the door was guarded by a man checking tickets.  I explained what I wanted to do, and he just smiled and said to go ahead, but to take a few pictures and come on back.  As I was a nice boy who always followed the rules, that's just what I did. Hell, I should have stayed down there for the whole concert!

I slowly walked down the descending aisle towards the presence of the King.  I walked humbly and with a certain fear, much like the travelers in the Wizard of Oz approach the great unseen wizard.  He was between songs, rapping with the audience and tuning his guitar.  As I took my place at the front of the stage directly before him, he broke into Hey Joe.  I took three quick pictures and hurried back to my place in the balcony.

The rest of the show was a blur.  I can remember several scenes in my mind, see a drumstick flying through the air, see Jimi hunching his guitar up against one of the Marshall stacks.  It always sounded as if at least two guitarists were playing, and sometimes more.  I can't remember what number he ended the concert with,  but at the end of the song he took off his guitar and threw it as high as he could directly over his head.  As the guitar made it's return flight to earth and looked as if it would hit him squarely on the head, Jimi took one step forward.  The guitar planted itself into the stage and screamed and howled in pain.  Hendrix raised a hand above his head and spoke gently in to the microphone, "Thank you.  Goodnight."  The closing curtains swallowed him up and he was gone.  The guitar quit it's screaming a couple of moments later when someone presumably turned off the power to the amps.

The house lights came up and we knew we had to go back to our little lives that awaited us outside this temple.  I can speak for myself and probably others when I say that I knew my world would never be the same again.  When you catch a glimpse of the divine nothing and no one can make you forget it.  I saw my future, knew what I wanted to do, what I had to do.  My life has been one big pursuit of those fleeting moments of enlightenment and perfection.  If I am extremely lucky I touch the godhead at least once a night when I play.  

People always ask me why I still do this.  This is my reason.

JimmyR  9/2002