Starting At Zero Page 2

  Most people give up at this point, but it’s best not to. Just keep on, just keep on. Sometimes you are going to be so frustrated you’ll hate the guitar, but all of this is just a part of learning. If you stick with it you’re going to be rewarded. If you’re very stubborn you can make it.

  I used to see the numbers one, nine, six, six in my dreams. I had very strange feelings that I was here for something and I was going to get a chance to be heard. I got the guitar together because that was all I had. Oh Daddy, one of these days I’m gonna be big and famous. I’m gonna make it, man!

  A LITTLE BOY INSIDE A DREAM

  JUST THE OTHER DAY

  HIS MIND FELL OUT OF HIS FACE

  AND THE WIND BLEW IT AWAY.

  A HAND CAME OUT FROM HEAVEN

  AND PINNED A BADGE ON HIS CHEST

  AND SAID GET OUT

  THERE, MAN,

  AND DO YOUR BEST.

  [IN MAY 1961, JIMMY WAS ARRESTED FOR RIDING IN A STOLEN CAR. HE WAS GIVEN A TWO-YEAR SUSPENDED SENTENCE AFTER THE PUBLIC DEFENDER TOLD THE JUDGE THAT JIMMY WAS GOING TO ENLIST IN THE ARMED FORCES.]

  Jimmy to the judge:

  “Yes, Sir.

  I’ve been thinking about being a Screaming Eagle.”

  I was eighteen. I didn’t have a cent in my pocket. I’d just spent seven days in the cooler for taking a ride in a stolen car, though I never knew it was stolen. I figured I’d have go in the army sooner or later, so I walked into the first recruiting office I saw and volunteered. I was thinking about playing then. I was slightly playing. I knew about four songs on the guitar. You know, the usual rumble. I wanted to get everything over with before I tried to get into music as a career, so they wouldn’t call me up in the middle of something that might be happening.

  I had no musical training, so I couldn’t sign up as a musician. I figured I might as well go all the way, so I joined the airborne. I did it because I was bored, but the army taught me what boredom is. There’s nothing more monotonous than spending a whole day peeling potatoes.

  I hated the army immediately.

  {SOME TIME AFTER LUCILLE’S DEATH, A FRIEND OF AL’S, WILLENE, MOVED INTO THE HENDRIX HOUSEHOLD, TOGETHER WITH HER DAUGHTER, WILLETTE.}

  LETTER HOME, JUNE 1961:

  Dear Mr & Mrs James A. Hendrix,

  Well, I know it’s about time for me to write. We had a lot of things to do down here though. How’s everybody up there? Fine, I really hope. The weather here is pretty nice except that it’s pretty windy at times because the ocean is only about 2 miles away. I can’t say too much because we have to clean the barrack up a little before we go to bed. I just wanted to let you know that I’m still alive, although not by very much. All, I mean all, my hair’s cut off and I have to shave. I’ve only shaved two times so far counting tonight since I’ve been here. I won’t be able to see you until about 2 months from now – that’s if I’m lucky. We’re going through Basic training, that’s the reason. Although I’ve been here for about a week, it seems like about a month. Time passes pretty slow even though we do have a lot to do. How’s the gardening business? I hope it’s doing fine. I believe it’s more expensive being in the army than living as a civilian. So far we had to get two laundry bags $1 each, a block hat $1.75, two locks 80 cents each, 3 towels 50 cents each, stamping kit $1.75, haircut $1, shoe polish kit $1.70, shaving razor, blades and lather $1.70, insignias 50 cents. So I guess this isn’t all that good financially, as I first thought …

  We don’t get paid until June 30th 1961, so I would like to know if you can send me 5 or 6 dollars. They only gave us $5.00 when we first came and all that’s gone except $1.50 and that isn’t going to last a minute around here. I can and will pay you back at the end of this month when we get paid if you could send it. After we get situated things will be way better. It’s just this first mixed-up month that messes us up. So I really must close now. Please, if you have time, write back and tell me what’s going on up there.

  Give everybody my love – Grandma, Gracie, Willie May, Uncle Frank, Betty, etc., etc.

  From James, with love.

  p.s. Please if you can send a few dollars as soon as you can

  – thank you.

  The training was really tough. It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through. They were always trying to see how much you could take. There was one thing we used to call the “hanging agony.” You would be left hanging in a harness on a rope with your feet just a few inches from the ground. You’d be like that an hour some days, and if the harness was slightly in the wrong position it was hell. And they only gave you about three seconds to put the harness on. They tried to make us tough – so we had to sleep in the mud. The whole idea was to see how much you could take. I took it. I was determined not to crack.

  LETTER HOME, OCTOBER 1961:

  Dear Dad,

  I just received your letter and I’m so glad to hear that you’re doing OK and that Leon and you are together. That took me by surprise and I really am so happy about that, because I know it does, or should I say it did, get lonesome around there by yourself. That is the way I feel when I start thinking about you and the rest – and Betty. Tell Leon to do what he’s supposed to because, just as you used to tell me, it pays off later in life. I’m so happy too about you getting a TV, and I know that you’re fixing the house up “tuff.” Keep up the good work and I’ll try my very best to make this AIRBORNE for the sake of our name. I’m going to try hard and will put as much effort into this as I can. I’ll fix it so the whole family of Hendrix’s will have the right to wear the Screaming Eagle patch of the US Army Airborne (smile)! Take it easy and when you see me again I’ll be wearing the patch of proudness. I hope.

  To Daddy Hendrix from from your son, love James

  p.s. Please send my guitar as soon as you can – I really need it now – it’s still over at Betty’s house.

  FROM ANOTHER LETTER HOME:

  There’s nothing but physical training and harassment here for two weeks. Then when you go to jump school, that’s when you get hell! They work you to DEATH! Fussing and fighting everything you do. You have to do 10, 15 or 25 pushups – pushing Tennessee around all day with my hands – exercising in wet sawdust in temperatures six degrees below zero. They really make the sparks fly, and then half the people quit. That’s how they separate the men from the boys. I pray that I will make it on the men’s side.

  I had to buy two pairs of jump boots and four sets of tailored fatigues, plus twenty Screamin’ Eagle patches. You know what that represents? The 101st AIRBORNE DIVISION, Fort Campbell, Kentucky – yes, indeedy!

  LETTER HOME, NOVEMBER 1961:

  Well, here I am, exactly where I wanted to be, in the 101st Airborne. We jumped out of a 34-foot tower on the third day we were here. It was almost fun. We were the first nine out of about 150 in our group. When I was walking up the stairs to the top of the tower, I was walking nice and slow, just taking it easy. There were three guys who quit when they got to the top of the tower. They took one look outside and just quit. You can quit any time. And that got me thinking as I was walking up those steps, but I made up my mind that whatever happens I’m not quitting on my own.

  When I got to the top, the jump master snapped these two straps onto my harness and slapped me on the butt and said right in my ear “Go, Go, GO!” I hesitated for a split second, and the next thing I knew, I was falling. All of a sudden, when all the slack was taken up on the line, I was snapped like a bullwhip and started bounding down the cable … While I was sliding down I had my legs together, hands on the reserve, my chin tucked into my chest. I ran smack dab into a sand dune. Later they’ll show us how to go over it by lifting our feet, of course. But my back was to it. Oh well, it was a new experience.

  love James

  That was about the best thing in the army – the parachute drops. I did about twenty-five. It’s the most thrilling thing I ever did before. It’s just as much fun as it looks, if you can keep your eyes open.

  When you first jump it’s re
ally outasight. Like you’re in the plane, and some cats just NEVER been in a plane before. Some people were throwing up in a big bucket, you know, a big garbage can sitting in the middle.

  It was great!

  And then the plane was goin’

  RRROOOAAARRRR!!! Just roarin’ and shakin’ and you can see the rivets just jumpin’ around.

  Talk about what am I doing here?

  You’re just there at the door and all of a sudden,

  flop!

  rush!

  For a split second a thought went through me like,

  “You’re crazy!”

  Physically it was a falling over backwards feeling,

  like in your dreams.

  And it’s almost like blanking,

  and it’s almost like crying, and you want to laugh.

  It’s so personal, because once you get there

  everything is so quiet.

  All you hear is the breeze – ssssshhhhhhh – like that.

  It’s the most alone feeling in the world.

  You’re there all by yourself,

  and you can talk very low or you can scream or do anything.

  And then I thought how crazy I was for doing this thing,

  but I loved it anyway.

  Then you feel that tug on your collar, and you’re

  supposed to look up and see if your chute is open. Every time

  you jump you’re scared that maybe this time it won’t open.

  And so you look up, and there’s that

  big, beautiful,

  white mushroom above you.

  That’s when you begin talking to yourself again,

  and you just say,

  “Thank the Lord.”

  But the army’s really a bad scene. I was stationed in Kentucky. Kentucky’s right on the border of North and South, and in that camp were some of the orneriest, most boot-licking guys. Some of the officers, man! It was terrible! They wouldn’t let me have anything to do with music. They tell you what you are interested in, and you don’t have any choice. The army is more for people who like to be told what to do.

  I was in for fifteen months, but I got injured on a jump and hung up on the discipline. One day I got my ankle caught in the skyhook just as I was going to jump, and I broke it. I told them I’d hurt my back too. Every time they examined me I groaned, so they finally believed me.

  I was lucky to get out when I did, with Vietnam coming up.

  {JIMMY WAS DISCHARGED FROM THE ARMY IN JULY 1962.}

  ONE MORNING I found myself standing outside the gate of Fort Campbell on the Tennessee-Kentucky border with my little duffel bag and three or four hundred dollars in my pocket. I was going back to Seattle, which was a long way away. But there was this girl I was kinda hung up on.

  So I thought I’d have a look in at Clarksville, which was near, stay the night and go home the next morning. I went to this jazz joint and had a drink. I liked it and stayed. People tell me I get foolish good-natured sometimes. Anyway, I guess I felt real benevolent that day. I must have been handing out bills to anyone who asked me. I came out with sixteen dollars left! And it takes more than that to get from Tennessee to Seattle, because it’s two thousand miles. So no going home!

  I first thought I’d call long distance and ask my father to send some money, but I could guess what he’d say if I told him I’d lost nearly four hundred dollars in just one day. Nope. That was out. In the army I’d started to play guitar very seriously, so I thought all I can do is try to earn money playing guitar. Then I remembered that just before I left the army I’d sold my guitar to a cat in the unit. So I went back to Fort Campbell, found the guy and told him I just had to borrow the guitar back.

  IT TOOK ME SOME TIME to get better from the injuries I had, and then I went down South. I played in cafes, clubs and on the streets. It was pretty tough at first. I lived in very miserable circumstances. I slept where I could, and when I needed to eat I had to steal it. I earned some money, but I didn’t like it at all. Then I started a group called the King Kasuals with a fellow called Billy Cox who played funky, funky bass.

  In Clarksville we worked for a setup called W & W. Man, they paid us so little that we decided the two W’s stood for “Wicked and Wrong.” This one-horse music agency used to come up on stage in the middle of a number, slip the money for the gig into our pockets and disappear. By the time the number was over and I got a chance to look in the envelope, I’d find they’d only slipped us a couple of dollars instead of ten or fifteen.

  Then we got in with a club owner who seemed to like us a lot. He bought us some new gear. I had a Silvertone amp, and the others got Fender Bandmasters. But this guy took our money, and he was sort of holding us back. So I moved about some more.

  I went to Nashville, where I lived in a big housing estate they were building. They hadn’t put the floor in yet and there were no roofs, so we had to sleep under the stars. That was wild.

  Every Sunday afternoon we used to go downtown to watch the race riots. You were supposed to call up some of your friends and say,

  “We’re going to be shoutin’ at you down

  there tonight, so be there.”

  We’d take a picnic basket because they wouldn’t serve us in the restaurants. One group would stand on one side of the street and the rest on the other side. They’d shout names and talk about each other’s mothers and every once in a while stab each other. That would go on for a couple of hours, and then we’d all go to some club and get stoned. Sometimes, if there was a good movie on that Sunday, there wouldn’t be any race riots.

  I used to have a childhood ambition to stand on my own feet, without being afraid to get hit in the face if I went into a “white” restaurant and ordered a “white” steak. But normally I just didn’t think along these lines. I had more important things to do – like playing guitar.

  In Nashville I played all kinds of stuff, even some rockabilly. In Nashville everybody knows how to play guitar. You walk down the street, and people are sitting on the porch playing more guitar …

  That’s where I learned to play, really.

  WHEN I FIRST STARTED PLAYING GUITAR it was way up in Seattle, and they don’t have too many of the real blues singers up there. When I went down South, all the cats there were playing blues, and that is when I really began to get interested in the scene. I just listened to the way people played blues guitar, and I dug it.

  I adore “folk blues.” “Blues” to me means Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. I like Robert Johnson. He’s so cool. That sort of music gets the message over and comes through so easily. It doesn’t necessarily mean that “folk blues” is the only type of blues in the world. You can have your own blues. Everyone has some kind of blues to offer, you know.

  In Atlanta and Georgia there are some great guys, like Albert King and Albert Collins. Albert King plays completely and strictly in one way – just straight funk blues, new blues guitar, very young, funky sound – which is great. One of the funkiest I’ve heard. He plays strictly that way, so that’s his scene.

  Most of the guitarists come from the South. Down South at some funky club one cat there starving to death might be the best guitar player you ever heard, and you might not even know his name.

  NASHVILLE USED TO BE A FUNNY SCENE, with all those slick managers trying to sign up hillbilly singers who’d never been in a big town before. It was like a game, like one big put-on all the way. Everybody trying to take everyone else. But once you knew how to watch out for yourself it could be a lot of laughs.

  I met a guy called Gorgeous George in Nashville, and he got me on some tours. So I started traveling around, playing around the South. It was one of the hardest audiences. Guys must play really good because for these people you can’t play less. They’ll recognize this. They hear it all the time. We played in bars on top of the platform, and it was really hot and the fans wanted more and more. Cats used to jump on the guitar, and there used to be cats playing behind their head
s or playing with their teeth or elbows. Sometimes they’d switch instruments, just for fun.

  Some cat tried to get me to play behind my head because I never would move around too much. I said, “Oh, man, who wants to do all that junk?” And then, all of a sudden, you’d start to get bored with yourself, because those people were really hard to please. The idea of playing guitar with my teeth came to me in a town in Tennessee. Down there you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot! There’s a trail of broken teeth all over the stage.

  After that I traveled all over the States, playing in different groups. Oh God, I can’t remember all their names. I used to join a group and quit them so fast! There I was, playing in this Top 40 R&B Soul Hit Parade Package, with the patent leather shoes and hairdo combined. But when you’re running around starving on the road, you’ll play almost anything. I got so tired of feeding back on The Midnight Hour. I didn’t hear any guitar players doing anything new, and I was bored out of my mind.

  I learned how not to get an R&B band together. The trouble was too many leaders didn’t seem to want to pay anybody. Guys would get fired in the middle of the highway because they were talking too loud on the bus or the leader owed them too much money – something like that. Bad pay, lousy living, and gettin’ burned – that was those days.

  I STAYED IN BUFFALO for about a month or two, but it was too cold up there. Seattle has a different type of cold. It’s a nice coldness, not so cutting as Buffalo. Anyway, there’s this girl up there trying to work “roots” on me, trying to work this Voodoo stuff, keep me there, you know? There’s different things they can do. They can put something in your food or put some little hair in your shoe. She put a lock of hair in the heel of my shoe. Crazy cat! But she must have tried it half-heartedly, because I was only sick in the hospital for two or three days.