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Re: RE:OUT/IN



"Neal Trembath" <ntrembat@statsol.com> put forth:

> I believe a major reason Hendrix checked out was because he had
> lost touch with how to do something new, a spiritual/creative cul-de-sac.
> He was becoming a parody of himself.

I've understood for a while that there were a number of factors involved in
his death:

First off, Hendrix had gotten into a rut (from an outsider's standpoint)
that perhaps many of us have discovered - the ability to take more of a 
drug
than anyone else as an illusion of achievement or surpassment of others.
People were just discovering the aspects of getting "altered" on a
recreational level in numbers and ways never seen before; and in this
regard, all concerned confirmed to the effect that Jimi always took more
than anyone in the vicinity.  This is perhaps a kind of way for someone
who's insecure to achieve in a way that others cannot.  I find it sad that
this aspect of recreational drug use has never been really explored or
examined, but then USGovCo has never been interested in doing so with
anything it wants to discourage, in the false belief that merely banning it
should be sufficient.

Second, Jimi had just recently, I believe, been involved in the fracas
otherwise known as the Isle of Wight Festival.  All concerned who performed
there have regarded this as a truly upsetting experience - folks at the
front of the crowd disrupting performances by shouting at them about how
they were all money-grubbing elitists, that they weren't real artists, etc.
ad nauseam.  Combine this with some aspects of post-Woodstock thinking -
where it would have been quite natural to think of Woodstock (while being
there) as the apex of the process - and it could quite reasonably seem like
it was all not only downhill from there, but over with, period.

Third, Jimi had been slogging it out on the Chitlin Circuit for an awful
long time, and it was only in a short period that he attained such
notoriety, before his death.  The US was still in a period where black
people were openly treated badly by a broad range of non-black society.
Jimi had gone through all this and yet was still continuing to pave roads
for others to follow, which was one thing I was considering as to how his
death wasn't a suicide.  He was still being pimped by the record company, 
by
the promoters, you name it; political groups like the Black Panthers were 
on
his case because he refused to do political spokesperson stuff; and there
was an entourage of hangers-on sucking on him everywhere he went.  Yet 
while
alive he was only truly respected by musicians, as far as he was concerned,
with everyone else as either a listener or some kind of vampire.  Perhaps
this also made it easier for him to just let go, when the moment came,
instead of getting up and going for help.

Fourth and lastly, his girlfriend at the time went out for cigarettes.
While she was gone, he choked to death on his own vomit.  Perhaps if she
hadn't gone out, if she'd been there to help him turn over and expell it
all, we wouldn't consider Hendrix at being at the apex of his career just
then.  While a despicable PBS documentary lined up star after star to
deplore his use of drugs, and how they caused his passing - as if this was
the only element, that he took drugs - it's undeniable that there were
situations waiting for him back in the States that one can only moan to 
hear
about, that never happened.  I have to look at this last one as yet another
cigarette-related situation that unfortunately had a hand in Jimi's death.
I wonder, though, what ever happened to HER?

So I don't think it was Jimi's time to check out.  I think of it as a
combination of effects that took from us an innovator supreme, and not any
single aspect at all.  I think Jimi might have gotten into electric Jazz 
(oh
oh, that word!) - I remember hearing rumors about him coming back to NYC to
play with Miles Davis et al.  Most of all I think of him as the ultimate
victim of the music business' inappropriate (at best) behavior towards the
artists that enable them to make too much money - and a lesson for us all 
as
creative people.

Stephen Goodman
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