Jimi Plays Monterey (1986)
John Phillips: Narrator
Quotes
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Narrator : Pete Townsend and Jimi almost came to blows backstage; because, neither of them wanted to follow the other. So, I flipped a coin - and Pete won. Jimi jumped upon a chair and yelled if he was gonna follow The Who, he was gonna pull out all the stops and blow everybody away. And that's the way it started.
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Narrator : Right away, he was a celebrity - even before his first record hit. All the big musicians were intrigued by him - especially the guitar players, like Clapton and Townsend. I guess they felt a little threatened. They'd all been brought up on Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry and thought they knew all about Rhythm and Blues. But, this was different. It was blues all mixed up with feedback and weird noises he seemed to pull out of the air. Nobody had ever heard anything like it. I mean, the crazy thing was, you could watch him like a hawk, but you could not figure out how he did it.
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Narrator : Lou and I invited him to the festival - so everybody in the States could hear him. And back he came. It was the beginning of the Summer of Love.
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[first lines]
Narrator : The first time I ever saw Jimi play was here in the Village, in the sixties. I think it was down in the basement of the old 'Cafe Wha?'. He played with pickup bands. He called himself Jimmy James then. Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. Everybody was talkin' about this guy and his crazy Stratocaster. He had it strung right-handed, he was playing it lefty. Hell, he was playing it every which way, upside down, backwards, sometimes with his teeth. But, knocking out great blues.
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Narrator : People started coming down just to watch him. People like The Animals, The Rolling Stones. One of The Animals, Chas Chandler, hauled him back to London, put Noel Redding behind him and Mitch Mitchell and he was The Jimi Hendrix Experience. By the time we got him to play at Monterey, he was the hottest act around. A couple of years later he was dead. He just went like a fireball, once he hit London.
