Jimi Hendrix: Electric Church

Jimi Hendrix!

Jimi Hendrix made every night a magical moment.

And the "Atlanta Pop Festival" had the greatest acts.

I mean, more than "Woodstock."

it was amazing, bigger than "Woodstock."

Three days of some of the most incredible music

from the Allman Brothers, B.B. King, Bob Seger, Grand Funk Railroad.

You never knew what was going to happen next.

This rock festival phenomenon was something really special.

I had to have Jimi Hendrix.

Somebody should shoot this thing, it's gonna be big.

Four hundred thousand people, you can't control it.

It was July the 4th and they were gonna hear The Star-Spangled Banner, by God.

The way he performed, the way he wrote songs,

the way he played his guitar...

Some people are bigger than the instrument they're playing.

Hendrix, he certainly falls in that category.

There weren't any boundaries with the way he played,

and in the way that his playing made me feel.

He was always pushing the envelope.

He was the real deal, and he had star power.

The 1970 "Atlanta Pop Festival" was the last of the great pop festivals.

A little pecan grove in Atlanta was one of the places

where he could have his concert.

All I heard about was people taking their clothes off

and jumping into each county creek.

We were all making it up as we went along.

And the film sat undeveloped in my barn for 30 years.

Jimi represented a new freedom.

The fact that Jimi was not afraid to be different,

put him out front, separate from his contemporaries.

He was one of a kind.

It was a most unique presentation

of anybody in contemporary music, black or white, at the time.

There was an air of mystery about him.

We didn't know where he came from, because no one else looked like that.

Part of Jimi's appeal was the fact that the way that he dressed,

and he did not do a lot of interviews.

He did a few, but not in depth, and that was a mystery about him,

because the way he carried himself,

the way he smoked his cigarettes, the way he played his guitar,

and his movements on stage, which...

He had the whole ball of wax

when it came to a unique guitar player.

If you think about the way he dressed, it was unique,

totally different than his contemporaries.

People in blues and R&B,

like Muddy Waters, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, etc.,

they all had these very shiny, sharp suits.

Jimi's look was totally his own, nobody had anything going like that at all.

He was more than familiar with what we call the norm,

having played with Little Richard, sat in with Wilson Pickett,

lsley Brothers and so on, he knew what the convention was.

To me, he almost seemed like a movie star.

He was very charming. He was very handsome, very good looking.

He had a confidence about him, a certain air. And you could tell he'd been through it.

He was finally coming in the front door.

I think his stint in England gave him the confidence.

We were all worshipping him. How could he not have confidence?

The first awareness that I had of how big Jimi was becoming,

was the fact that the audiences got larger.

And by the end of that '68 tour,

the places were packed and it was standing room.

The initial thing in America of the two shows a night,

49 cities in 52 days, was just complete burnout territory.

We went from doing the "Fillmore", or the small clubs, small theaters,

to getting on the kind of stadium thing,

and then the festivals really kind of started,

with loads and loads of acts on it.

It was really only myself, the two roadies, Jerry Stickies and a truck driver,

and one 19-foot rental van that carried everything.

Everything we did with Hendrix,

the musical instruments, the sound system, the guitars,

the merchandising, all fit in a 19-foot truck, which leads me to my corollary

that the amount of talent you have is inversely proportional

to the number of trucks it takes to put your show on the road.

We looked for the biggest buildings in the biggest cities,

because the demand for Jimi Hendrix, I guess, was that big.

We needed the biggest facilities.

Yeah, Jimi was the big star. He was the big kahuna.

He could command a $100,000,

which was a hell of a lot of money in those days.

Jimi felt each of his concerts was a milieu as well as a spiritual experience,

and I think he wanted people to feel that they were either in his living room,

or, later on, as he said, "in a church,"

and that we were experiencing this event together.

And when he was really on to that,

there was an exciting exchange between the audience and the trio on stage.

That's what the exciting part about a Hendrix concert was,

that it was a really give-and-take between him and the audience,

and I think the audience really felt that.

But I also think that's probably why the mystique of Hendrix is still here today,

was that those people who were fortunate enough to have seen him,

still remember the fact that

they were part of a concert, as well as being in the audience.

That exchange

is as potent as it gets.

I heard you use the expression "An electric church,"

as an ambition you had.

Was this speaking metaphorically or poetically, or do you really wanna...

Honestly, I don't know. It's this... It's just a belief that I have.

And as we do use electric guitars, everything is electrified nowadays.

So, therefore, the belief comes through electricity to the people, whatever.

That's why we play so loud,

because it doesn't actually hit through the ear drums

like most groups do nowadays.

They say, "We're gonna play loud, too, 'cause they're playing loud."

And they got this real shrill sound and it's really hard.

We plan for our sound to go inside the soul of the person, actually,

and see if they can awaken some kind of thing in their minds,

because there's so many sleeping people. You can call it that, if you want to.

How're you doin'? You feelin' all right?

- Yeah! - Yeah, right. Here we go.

I think the most important thing he was concerned about

was people coming together and being a part of the music.

The sky church was the concept of,

maybe if you couldn't have the bleachers and etc.,

you can have them comfortably sitting under this humongous tent,

almost like the tent revival.

I think people connect so strongly with Jimi

because he really, truly loved what he did.

And when you really love something that much,

and you have a gift and it comes out, it touches people.

When Jimi Hendrix took the stage, there was a certain relationship that he had.

It was almost transcendent.

Not only was he a fantastic guitar player,

but it was almost like a spiritual experience going to one of his concerts.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

The people loved him.

They really loved his persona, the music, the songs,

and he could do nothing wrong.

That purity of intention

that he seemed to use to approach his music,

his songwriting, his recording, I mean, everything,

I think that's what translated.

Just 'cause he was such a fine player.

You know, we all played guitar, we all knew a bit,

but he seemed to know more than us.

In the light of the day, the purity holds up.

The other stuff just does not. It doesn't last.

When something's real, it's gonna last.

It's gonna last as long as people are listening.

Music has a lot of influence on a lot of young people today.

Politics are getting... Well, I don't know. You know, how they're getting.

A cat that talk on TV, and a cat in Mississippi,

a farmer in Mississippi, you can't barely understand him,

except when he says, "America," so then he's gonna vote for him.

But through music, it's all true, either true or false.

And, like, such a large gathering of people with music,

it shows that music must mean something.

Before the times of King, Dr. Luther King, there's been a whole lot of changes.

But some people after the excitement, or the backwash of the change slows down,

they say, "Yeah, that was groovy. Let's see, what else can we feast upon now?"

One of them things. It's whole lot a changes happening,

but now it's time for all these changes to connect,

to showing that it's leading up to love, peace and harmony.

Matter of fact, what we're trying to stress also is, like,

music should be done outside, in a festival type of way.

Just like they do it anywhere else.

Because a lot of kids from the "ghetto," or whatever you want to call it,

don't have enough money to travel across the country,

to see these different festivals, what they call "festivals."

'Cause I'd like for everybody to see these type of festivals,

have everybody mix together.

You wouldn't believe it, you really wouldn't.

Atlanta was a very isolated city from the national music scene.

Not in terms of talent,

but in terms of having connections to the music business.

This festival culture was beginning to develop.

There was a sense in which,

"Wow, there's a lot of young kids who like this music."

Alex Cooley was the preeminent promoter in the southeast.

In Atlanta, he was the man.

We started hearing a radio station

talking about the second "Miami Pop Festival."

And it was all the groups I wanted to see, things that never came to Atlanta.

And I decided that's what I wanted to do with my life.

So, I came back to Atlanta

and I put together a partnership with 17 guys.

We pooled our money and did the first "Atlanta Pop Festival."

We didn't make money, but we did okay.

They all dropped away. That was enough.

And I kept doing it, and so, I did the second "Atlanta Pop Festival."

I think Alex knew that if he wanted to have a bigger success than the previous year,

he needed a headliner, not just a popular artist.

Not just an artist popular there in Atlanta, he needed an international headliner.

There was nobody bigger than Jimi Hendrix at that point.

Hendrix playing at a festival like that was a very significant event.

Part of the power and part of the originality that Jimi had,

had to do with his vision.

He took a very pedestrian type of guitar

that was primarily used by, like, surf bands and country musicians,

and he turned it into a lethal weapon,

a very, very lethal weapon.

When Alex Cooley put together the "Pop Festival" in late May and June,

our director of photography, John Butterworth, went to Alex and said,

"Somebody should shoot this thing. It's gonna be big."

And Alex said, "There's not much time."

And John said, "Well, we just happen to be in town,

"and we just happen to be in the business of shooting rock 'n' roll music, live."