Hendrix's last interview (if you missed it)

Jimi's last interview:

Keith Altham: You were quoted prior to the Isle of Wight, that if it happened really big for you, you'd carry on for a while. Were you satisfied with the results of the Isle of Wight? (2nd to the last concert,16 days before he died)

Jimi: Well, I was so mixed up there and at that time it got so confused, like eh...I didn't have a chance to base any future on that one gig, you know. Except when I played "God Bless the Queen" ha ha ha...if you know what I mean.

K.A.: Do you intend to form another small unit or are you hoping to get something bigger together?

Jimi: It's hard to decide what I'll do next. I'd like to have a small group and a large one, and maybe go touring with one of them. It's hard to know what people want around here sometimes...

K.A.: Do you feel any compulsion to prove yourself as King Guitar, which is the kind of label that people have slapped on you?

Jimi: I don't know. Well, I was just playing loud, that's the only difference [laughs]. No, I don't really let that bother me, 'cause they say a lot of things, people, that if they let that bother them, they wouldn't even be around today, you know...King Guitar, now that's a bit heavy!

K.A.: (Exploring the fact that Jimi's onstage image had become less wild he wondered, "So the anger has naybe dispersed a little?")

Jimi: Oh, yeah, that's always happening, though. But like, I didn't know that was anger till they told me it was, you know, with destruction and all that. But I believe everybody should have like a room, where they get rid of all their...you know, all their releases...So my room was the stage [laughs]

K.A.: Do you personally feel the excitement has gone out of things?

Jimi: No, I was going like that before, because I was thinking too fast, you know. It seems like, you know, a person has a tendency to get bored, because like, you always want to try to do all these accomplishments, you know, like starting an idea or something like that and never quite finishing them, you know. Some people should just be let, you know, to start new ideas and others should carry them out.

K.A.: I remember Alvin Lee of Ten Years After some weeks ago said you'd never been truly appreciated or analysed as a writer. Do you feel you've never been truly critised as a songwriter?

Jimi: Well, probably it's a good thing, because I'm still trying to get that together, you know. All I write is just what I feel, that's all...I don't round it off too good. I just keep it almost naked, you know...But there again, I hate to be in one corner, I hate to be put only as a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap-dancer, or something like this [laughs]. You know, I like to move around.

K.A.: Is there any moral or political intent in the kinds of things you want to write?

Jimi: Music is getting too heavy, almost to the state of unbearable...I have this one little thing, when things get too heavy, just call me helium, the lightest gas known to man [laughs].

K.A.: Was your music originally intentionally psychedelic?

Jimi: I really don't know. I have to tell the truth. "Are You Experienced?", I just heard that recently...I said, "Damn, I wonder where my head was at when I said all of those things...But, like, I don't consider that...the invention of psychedelic, it is just asking a lot of questions...like most curious people do...And I just happened to put that on "Purple Haze". The way I write things, I just write them in...with a clash between reality and fantasy mostly. You have to use fantasy in order to show different sides to reality. That's how it can bend.

K.A.: Do you feel that you've got enough money to live comfortably?

Jimi: Ah, I don't think so, not the way I live. Because like, I want to get up in the morning and just roll over my bed into an indoor swimming pool and then swim into the breakfast table, you know, come up for air and maybe get a drink of orange juice or something like that, and then just flap over from a chair and swim into the bathroom, and you know, go on and shave and whatever.

K.A.: You don't want to live comfortably, you want to live luxuriously!

Jimi: Nooo, is that luxurious? I was thinking about a tent, overhanging...a mountain stream [laughs].