October 2013
Sonic Shocks - Issue 17
Page 15
INDIGO HAZE
Leon Hendrix remembers brother Jimi on the 43rd anniversary of his death
Springs after I leave to the commemorative celebration then to Seattle next weekend, I’m not in mourning because he seems to be omnipresent with me – everywhere I go Jimi’s there. People even call me Jimi by accident when they’re doing interviews or his old friends – all his London friends and I have to go ‘Dude my name’s Leon!’ You must have shared the most with him… Yeah and he’s still looking after me to this day – even though we’ve seen any money Tomorrow is the anniversary of Jimi’s not the Hendrix esdeath, how do you keep memory of that from tate he’s looking out for day? me because I get to go Well it’s unforgettable – I’ve got to go to Palm out around the world and play: I’m going to Russia next month, just got back from Brazil. Dutch television just did a movie on me as well – following relatives when their big brother star dies but you know it’s just been awesome. I’m very happy in my old age. How much did he influence you as a musician? He didn’t because when he was playing guitar as a teenager I asked my dad for one when I was 13 and he said ‘No, I already got one idiot playing the guitar.’ So that stuck in my head and I didn’t pick up the guitar until after I was 50, he’s never influenced me musically because I can’t play that – never practised it. When I play my own music – I have a couple of albums out on CD Baby - I try not to copy Jimi because you can’t touch it so I try to stay away from it as far as possible and even when people do request ‘Foxy Lady’ I put a twist on it. I enjoy it, it’s fun when they say ‘Play Jimi Hendrix’ – I AM playing Jimi Hendrix! I couldn’t believe he started by playing the ukulele with 1 string! That’s how you start – you As the world remembers the death of the most influential guitar player ever born, music fans get a new insight into the life of Jimi Hendrix, thanks to a new Director’s Cut of poignant documentary ‘The Guitar Hero’ by Jon Brewer (BB King – The Life of Riley). A double DVD narrated by Slash and published by Universal unveils five hours of never seen footage, including exclusive interviews with Chris Squire, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Paul Rodgers and more. Some of the most fascinating stories are brought to us by Jimi’s own little brother Leon: tales of their youth, ukuleles and broken radios, but also the fame and misfortune and some quite revealing documents from CIA and FBI indicating Hendrix as a threat. We managed to get some of these stories first hand directly from Leon, here it is…
can play any song ever written on 1 string if you have the patience because remember 1 string is all the chords up to neck, you just have to be pretty quick on the chord changes though. He’d tune it down or up to get different tones and notes, he was just a pioneer, an explorer of the music. Jimi seemed to express his inner turmoil and emotion through the guitar, before then was there anything else artistically to express himself? I’ve heard you mention drawings in the past. He was like a Michelangelo – a good artist, also a sculptor. There’s a few of them at the museum in Seattle and online. He was an artist first because he didn’t know there was a guitar out there when he first started being creative then he got hold of music and that was it. He took a radio apart once? Yeah – he was wondering how Radio City would play it in New York and he could hear it in Seattle. Was he disappointed when he opened up the radio? He was more curious [laughs] because he wanted to find it – see what it was all about. You said how he wanted to write symphonies and be a conductor – do you think he’d be doing that now? Yeah because he had them in his head, he told me how he heard all these instruments and liked classical artists like Mozart , Beethoven , Wagner and Tchaikovsky. He was curious about music and how they made it sound with loads of instruments so that’s what he wanted to do – write music. I don’t know whether he’d call it Symphony MUSIC if he’d done it but there’s a lot of conflict on what