[Slowhand] Macca story on EC & Hendrix

[Fabio Dwyer]

Hello old friends:

 

my 2 cents about Paul's story on Hendrix & Clapton:

 

I heard this story maybe 20 years ago, told by Sir Paul himself (not Sir yet back then) in a MTV documentary called Great Guitarists or something like that. He told exactly the same story. DeltaNick, if you haven't heard this story in 40 years, you're not the same anymore, you're old, lazy, out of your game, you don't research about music with the same feeling and technique you used to in the past, but I still respect your work as researcher in the mid-60's, although you became a 'pop' pro-tools music researcher lately (lol) 

 

One of my first posts to this list, around 1998 was asking about this very same story. Someone back then told me that when Jimi asked: "Eric, please tune this shit for me", he was refering to Eric BARRETT, his roadie, and people misleaded for Eric CLAPTON, who was already in the audience. This explanation seems very possible to me, the only problem is that I never was able to confirm that Hendrix roadie's name at that time was really Eric Barrett, I don't know if this fellow existed already... If he was really referring to Clapton, probably was a nice way to compliment EC.

 

Dennis, you said: "What? Hendrix didn't know how to tune??? C'mon..."

 

You reeeeally want to know this answer? I warn you can hurt your feelings. Let's go: the answer is NO! Hendrix wasn't able to tune his guitar, at least in maybe 20 or 30 live bootlegs, and even some official live releases from Alan Douglas management scam-era, where even recordings of Jimi singing in the shower were overdubbed with other musicians and sold to people as real Jimi performances. 

 

My point is: of course Jimi could tune his guitar, but ONLY when he wasn't too stoned. I heard cd's from Jimi where he neither could sing in tune very well, nor tune his guitar (after that heavy usage of the tremolo arm Sir Paul refered to, some trashy performances from a clearly too-high-to-be-onstage musician. In the studio, Jimi was AMAZING, and when he was relatively sober, not under the nasty effects of drugs, he could be a monster live, but there are just too many bad performances of a stoned Hendrix out there.

 

IMHO, Clapton could keep himself together better under drugs or alcohol effects than Jimi; there are concerts, specially from 74/75' tour, Bangladesh concert, Rainbow's Concert and Old Whistle Test, for instance, where Clapton is playing some good guitar, but when he opened his mouth anyone can tell he was clearly drunk. But he could play in tune, at least, even if George Terry had to back up him sometimes. The only Clapton recordings I remember that I heard and thought "God, it s*cks, he's really out of control here" is that Crossroads version from Crossroads 2 boxset, if I remember correctly is in Scotland in 78'. He sings completely out of the beat, it's really annoying. The other is any Little Queenie performance from the encore in 74', all of them a real mess!

 

That's my 2 cents.

 

Cheers, 

Fabio