Free Starting At Zero by Jimi Hendrix Page B

I’d just finished painting the guitar that day and was really into it. I sprayed lighter fluid on it and then stamped out the burning pieces. It
     went over pretty well, so in Washington, D.C., I destroyed my guitar again. When we played the Hollywood Bowl they were waiting for us with fire
     extinguishers!
     
    T HE SMASHING ROUTINE BEGAN BY ACCIDENT. I was playing in Copenhagen, and I got pulled off stage. Everything was going great. I threw my guitar back
onto the stage and jumped back after it. When I picked it up there was a great crack down the middle. I just lost my temper and smashed the damn thing to pieces.
    The crowd went mad – you’d have thought I’d found the “lost chord” or something. After that, whenever the press was about or I got that feeling, I just did the bit
again. But it isn’t just for the show, and I can’t explain the feeling. It’s just like you want to let loose and do exactly what you want if your parents weren’t
watching.
    I’m not really a violent man, but people got the impression I was because of the act. You do this destruction thing maybe three or four times, and everybody thinks you do it all the time.
We only do it when we feel like it. You feel very frustrated, and the music gets louder and louder, and all of a sudden, crash, bang, it goes up in smoke. Some nights we can be really bad. If we
smash something up then, it’s because that instrument, which is something you dearly love, just isn’t working that night. It’s not responding, so you want to kill it. It’s a
love-hate relationship, just like you feel at times when your girlfriend starts messing around. You can do it because the music and the instrument can’t fight back.
    It’s just the bad bits coming out in me. I mean, no matter how sweet and lovely you are, there are black and ugly things deep down somewhere. I bring mine out on stage, and that way no one
gets hurt. And we find that it works for the audience too. We try to drain all the violence out of their systems. We mostly build on bar patterns and emotion, not melody. We can play violent music,
and in a way it releases their violence. It’s not like beating it out of each other, but like violent silk. I mean, sadness can be violent.
    Maybe after people dig us presenting some violence on stage they won’t want to leave and destroy the outside world. Feeling vibrations and letting loose at a place like that is a
soul-bending type of thing. It’s better than bending your soul in riots. You should never get to that point.
    {THE SUMMER OF 1967 WAS MARRED BY THE WORST RACIAL VIOLENCE OF THE DECADE. THE EXPERIENCE PLAYED IN DETROIT ON AUGUST 15, SHORTLY AFTER RACE RIOTS HAD DEVASTATED MUCH OF THE
CITY AND LEFT FORTY-TWO DEAD.}
     
    T HE NEGRO RIOTS IN THE STATES ARE CRAZY. Discrimination is crazy. I think we can live together without these problems, but because of the violence
these problems aren’t solved yet. There’s a lot of silly talk on both sides. Quite naturally I don’t like to see houses being burned, but I don’t have too much feeling for
either side right now.
    There is no such thing as a color problem. It is a weapon for the negative forces who are trying to destroy the country. They make black and white fight against each other so they can take over
at each end. That is what the establishment is waiting for. They let you fight, they let you go out into the streets and riot. But they’ll still put you in jail. I wish they’d had
electric guitars in the cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would have been straightened out, not just for the black and white, but I mean for the cause.
     
    L OOK AT THE SKY TURN A HELL-FIRE RED , L ORD
    S OMEBODY’S HOUSE IS BURNING
    DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, DOWN .
     
    W ELL , I ASKED MY FRIEND ,
    “W HERE IS THAT BLACK SMOKE COMING FROM ?”
    H E JUST COUGHED AND CHANGED THE SUBJECT AND SAID ,
    “U H, IT MIGHT SNOW SOME .”
     
    S O I LEFT HIM SIPPING HIS TEA
    AND I