Feedback and Fire

Today, we turn to a musician whose care there were moves separations long stretches were Jimmy simply simply had to figure things out on his own no one was buying but whose shadow is so long that every electric guitarist since has had to walk through it.

Jimi Hendrix.

He didn’t just play louder. He didn’t just play faster. He changed what the electric guitar meant. He changed the expectations for sound, for performance, for what a song could hold.

In this episode, I want to step past the posters and the legends—the burning guitar, the psychedelic clothes, the famous take on “The Star-Spangled Banner”—and really look at four things:

His background: the fragile, human story underneath the icon.
His influences: because Hendrix was not a meteor out of nowhere.
His effect on music: how he reshaped the instrument and the stage.
His life and his death: and the pressures and possibilities that surrounded him at the end.

At the end of this journey, we’ll eventually look forward—to some very different voices who were changing the sound of the 1960s in their own way: Diana Ross and The Supremes.

Transcript

My name is George Bartley, and this is Celebrate Creativity. Welcome to Episode [509] Feedback and Fire

Today, we turn to a musician whose care there were moves separations long stretches were Jimmy simply simply had to figure things out on his own no one was buying, —but whose shadow is so long that every electric guitarist since has had to walk through it.

Jimi Hendrix.

He didn’t just play louder. He didn’t just play faster. He changed what the electric guitar meant. He changed the expectations for sound, for performance, for what a song could hold.

In this episode, I want to step past the posters and the legends—the burning guitar, the psychedelic clothes, the famous take on “The Star-Spangled Banner”—and really look at four things:

His background: the fragile, human story underneath the icon.
His influences: because Hendrix was not a meteor out of nowhere.
His effect on music: how he reshaped the instrument and the stage.
His life and his death: and the pressures and possibilities that surrounded him at the end.

At the end of this journey, we’ll eventually look forward—to some very different voices who were changing the sound of the 1960s in their own way: Diana Ross and The Supremes.

But first, Seattle.

Jimi Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington. His father, Al Hendrix, would later rename him James Marshall Hendrix.

This is not a cozy childhood story. There was poverty. There was instability. His parents’ relationship was turbulent. There were moves, separations, long stretches where Jimi simply had to figure things out on his own. No one was buying him brand-new instruments or booking careful music lessons.

But there was the radio.    And there was rhythm.
Jimi listened obsessively. Blues. Early R&B. The first waves of rock and roll. Whatever was coming through that small speaker became his informal conservatory.

Before he ever held a real guitar, he walked around with a broom or a piece of wood, “playing” along with records. Teachers worried. Some adults thought it was odd. But for Jimi, that imaginary guitar was a doorway.

When his father finally came home with a real, beat-up acoustic guitar, Jimi didn’t treat it as a toy or a phase. He locked in. Hours and hours every day. No formal curriculum, no scales-on-a-page regime—just his ears and his restlessness guiding him.

And then there’s one quiet but important detail: Jimi was left-handed, and he usually played right-handed guitars flipped and restrung. That meant his physical approach to the instrument—string tension, pickup position, where his hands landed—was literally different than most people’s.

Even at the mechanical level, he was inhabiting the guitar at a slant.

Who shaped Hendrix?

It’s tempting to talk about Hendrix as if he descended fully formed in a burst of feedback at Monterey. That’s dramatic. But it’s lazy.

He was listening—deeply—to the musicians who came before him. Let’s trace a few of the key threads.

The blues

Muddy Waters. B.B. King. Howlin’ Wolf. Albert King.

From them, Hendrix took the bending of a single note until it sounded like a human voice; the sting and cry in a phrase; the idea that a solo isn’t just decoration, it’s testimony.

Underneath all his wildest sounds, Hendrix is still talking the language of the blues.

Rhythm & blues and soul

Curtis Mayfield was crucial.

If you listen to Hendrix play chords on “Little Wing” or “The Wind Cries Mary,” you can hear the echo of Mayfield: those soft, fluid chord voicings, those gentle hammer-ons and pull-offs inside the harmony. Hendrix didn’t just copy them; he internalized them and set them glowing inside a rock context.

Early rock & roll

Chuck Berry, of course—sharp, concise, riff-driven.
Buddy Holly—clarity, melody, the sense that the guitar line tells its own story.

Hendrix understood that a catchy guitar figure could be as memorable as a chorus.

Jazz guitar

Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, others.

He heard the richer harmonies, the smooth runs, the freedom up and down the neck. He didn’t turn into a jazz purist—far from it—but he carried some of that color back with him.

Bob Dylan

This one is less obvious musically and absolutely essential creatively.
Hendrix admired Dylan’s ability to use language freely—to be poetic, strange, political, spiritual, all in the same song. Dylan showed him that the voice didn’t have to be pretty to be powerful.
When Hendrix recorded “All Along the Watchtower,” he didn’t just cover Dylan. He translated Dylan into Hendrix, and even Dylan later performed the song more in Hendrix’s style. That says a lot.

The Black church and older traditions

Even in the wildest psychedelic moments, there’s a call-and-response, a moan, a shout, a stretched note that comes straight out of older African American musical life. That deep well never leaves him.

And around all this: science fiction, the space race, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, hair and fashion and art and protest. Hendrix didn’t float above his era; he soaked in it.

Apprenticeship: the sideman years

Before “legend,” there was work.

In 1961, Jimi enlisted in the U.S. Army and trained as a paratrooper at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. It was not a natural fit. He was injured; he was distracted; the guitar kept calling more loudly than the military.

What he did gain was a friend: bassist Billy Cox. That partnership would matter later. After leaving the army, Hendrix entered the world of the Chitlin’ Circuit—a network of clubs and venues where Black artists could perform. Long drives, low pay, audiences that demanded energy and honesty.

Here, Hendrix learned professional discipline: show up, play the part, support the singer, keep the groove. He also learned showmanship—especially from Little Richard: the theatrics, the clothes, the hair, the sense that a concert is an event.

But there was friction. Hendrix’s imagination was getting bigger. He stretched licks, slipped in extra notes, experimented with sound onstage. Some bandleaders didn’t like that. They didn’t want fireworks from the sideman.

That tension—between coloring inside the lines and repainting the whole picture—is one of the forges that heated Jimi Hendrix into Jimi Hendrix.

By 1966, Hendrix was in New York’s Greenwich Village, playing clubs, exploring ideas, but still far from a household name.

And then: Chas Chandler.

Chandler, former bassist for The Animals, heard Hendrix play “Hey Joe” and glimpsed what others had missed. He invited Hendrix to London—a decision that changed both their lives and, frankly, rock history.

In the United States, Hendrix was one more brilliant Black guitarist fighting a stacked system. In London, he arrived as a revelation. A shock.

Chandler helped him form The Jimi Hendrix Experience:

Jimi Hendrix – guitar and vocals
Noel Redding – bass
Mitch Mitchell – drums

Right away, word spread. Here was a player who could out-shred the guitar heroes, out-feel the blues bands, and still sing and write.

Within months came:
“Hey Joe.”
“Purple Haze.”
“The Wind Cries Mary.”

Then the first album: Are You Experienced. This wasn’t just a collection of songs. It was a statement of intent.

“Foxy Lady,” “Manic Depression,” “Fire,” “Third Stone from the Sun”—each track pushed at what rock could sound like. Feedback, reverse tape, panning, strange harmonies, lyrical fragments. But listen closely: underneath the experimentation is structure, groove, clarity.

It’s not noise for its own sake. It’s purposeful risk. Redefining the electric guitar

Let’s slow down and be specific about what Hendrix did to the guitar, because this is where his influence becomes almost impossible to escape.

Feedback as an instrument

Before, feedback was a mistake: the shriek when you stand too close to the amp. Hendrix tamed it. He made it sing. Long sustained howls, controlled swells—sounds that could feel like sirens, bombs, voices, or a held breath.

Effects as emotion

Wah-wah, fuzz, octave pedals, Uni-Vibe—all of these existed, but Hendrix made them feel human.

In “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” the wah-wah isn’t a trick; it’s a voice arguing, laughing, taunting. The sound itself carries meaning.

“Purple Haze” doesn’t sound dangerous just because of the lyrics; that chord literally is tension. Hendrix took these sounds out of the jazz club and planted them at the center of rock.

Lead and rhythm fused

Instead of thinking: “Now I strum chords, now I solo,” Hendrix weaves both at once—filling the space with chord fragments, inner melodies, slides. One guitar can sound like three.

Studio imagination

On Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland, he treats the studio as a collaborator:

Reverse guitar. Panning that makes the sound move around your head. Layered textures that feel like water, fire, sky.

Tracks like “If 6 Was 9,” “Bold as Love,” “1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” don’t just tell stories; they build sonic environments.

And wrapped around all this is the visual:

The flipped Stratocaster, worn low. The clothes. The hair. Playing behind his back, with his teeth, on his knees.

Easy to dismiss as gimmick—until you realize how precise the playing remains even in those moments. The showmanship rides on top of real control.

The burden of the image

Hendrix became, very quickly, a symbol:
The wild psychedelic genius.
The embodiment of late-60s rock excess.
The supernatural guitar hero.
But inside that symbol was a Black man navigating complicated territory.

He played music rooted in Black traditions to crowds that were increasingly white, especially in the U.S. He felt pulled between expectations: some wanted a bluesman, some a psychedelic icon, some an exotic spectacle.

Managers and promoters leaned into the most marketable version: set the guitar on fire, turn everything up, be larger than life.

Hendrix, by many accounts, could be shy, thoughtful, even gentle offstage. He loved to jam quietly for hours, talk about sounds, experiment in the studio. The gap between “Jimi the human” and “Jimi Hendrix the brand” widened.

That gap came with pressure—creative, racial, financial, personal. And it never really closed.

Now, two performances stand like bookends in the public imagination.

First, Monterey Pop Festival, 1967

For many American listeners, this was the real introduction. In a lineup full of strong acts, Hendrix needed to be unforgettable. He was.

He played with a fury that made other guitarists rethink their lives. And then—of course—the finale: kneeling over his Stratocaster, coaxing feedback, dousing it, setting it on fire.

It’s been parodied, flattened into iconography, but in the moment it was ritual: sacrifice, ceremony, spectacle. A way of saying: this instrument is not safe anymore.

Then, Woodstock, 1969

By Woodstock, Hendrix was a star. Through delays and chaos, he ended up performing on Monday morning, to a fraction of the original crowd.

And yet.

That performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” folded into his set, remains one of the most haunting musical statements of the era.

Bending notes into sirens. Explosions in the feedback. Fragments of the anthem emerging, breaking, re-forming.

No speech. No slogan. Just a guitarist using sound to show an America at war abroad and divided at home.

It is patriotic and critical, reverent and furious, all at once. That’s not a party trick. That is a profound artistic act.

Electric Lady and a new direction

By 1969–1970, the life of constant touring, legal battles, and image pressure was wearing him down. He wanted ownership—musically and literally.

So he built Electric Lady Studios in New York.
Not as a toy. As a refuge.
In that space, he could:
Shape the sound exactly as he heard it.
Explore longer forms.
Move toward funk and R&B grooves, political edge, and more collaborative playing.

With Billy Cox and Buddy Miles, he formed Band of Gypsys.
Listen to “Machine Gun” from those sessions: the Vietnam War, racial tension, grief, and fury, all channeled through guitar, bass, drums, and a voice that sounds both weary and determined.
This is Hendrix moving past “psychedelic poster child” into something earthier, Blacker, more explicitly engaged.

You can feel a next chapter forming.

And that’s part of what makes what happened next so hard to accept.

On September 18, 1970, in London, Jimi Hendrix died at the age of 27.

The official account: after taking a large dose of sleeping pills and drinking wine, he died in his sleep. In the years since, theories and rumors have multiplied. Accusations. Conspiracies. Retellings. We will probably never have a perfectly neat narrative.

He was exhausted.
He was pulled in too many directions.
He was surrounded by people with competing claims on his time, his money, his image, his future.
He was self-medicating in a world that made that feel normal until the moment it wasn’t.
And he was in the middle of trying to reclaim his art through Electric Lady, through new bands, through new sounds.

So what remains?

First, the obvious: every electric guitarist since 1970 has had to live in a world Hendrix altered.
Eddie Van Halen’s fireworks, Prince’s blend of funk, rock, and theater, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s blues power, Vernon Reid’s futuristic shredding, John Frusciante’s textured parts in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, countless metal, prog, indie, R&B players—all of them grow in soil Hendrix helped till.

He made it normal to treat distortion, feedback, and effects as expressive, not accidental.

Proved that a guitarist could be both a virtuoso and a songwriter and a bandleader.

Showed that rock could absorb blues, soul, jazz colors, and psychedelia without losing momentum.

Used sound itself as social commentary, from love songs to that Woodstock anthem.

And second, the less obvious but just as important:

His story continues to raise questions about how the music industry treats Black innovation—who profits, who gets marketed as a caricature, who gets to grow old, who does not.

Hendrix the icon is everywhere: t-shirts, posters, playlists.

Hendrix the working musician, the restless experimenter, the Black artist navigating a white-dominated rock marketplace—that Hendrix is the one worth wrestling with.
Because he reminds us that creativity isn’t just talent. It’s talent plus pressure, plus context, plus courage, plus, sometimes, self-destruction.

As we close this episode, I’d like to pivot from a left-handed guitarist setting his Stratocaster on fire to a trio of impeccably dressed young women in matching gowns, stepping onto the Motown stage with poise, choreography, and songs that seemed to float straight onto the radio.

Because while Jimi Hendrix was exploding the boundaries of rock from London clubs to Woodstock fields, The Supremes were redefining something just as powerful: What Black female success in mainstream American pop could look and sound like.

If Hendrix stretched the electric guitar into a wailing, shape-shifting witness of the late 1960s, The Supremes showed how elegance, discipline, and perfectly crafted singles could cross over every imaginable boundary while still carrying Detroit, church, and ambition in every note.

Two very different stories.
Two very different aesthetics.
One shared moment in history.

Next time on Celebrate Creativity, we’ll move from feedback and fire to polished harmonies and chart-topping control, as we explore the rise of The Supremes, the Motown machine behind them, and the ways they, too, changed what was possible.

This is George Bartley, and thank you for listening to celebrate creativity.