SW: Buchanan's?
Cross: Yeah.
Charles R. Cross
Charles R. Cross
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SW: Based on this, I have to say that's a little misplaced.
Cross: Yeah.
SW: How did Hendrix first hear the song?
Cross: There is a debate. [It's] one of the things that I really struggled with, that I had to just plain leave out, because we can't say definitively. Some people say it's the Leaves [who had a 1965 hit with it]; some people say it's Tim Rose. I had people telling me that Hendrix and Tim Rose were drug buddies together, and that didn't make sense. There were so many stories that I got that I couldn't put into the book 'cause I couldn't authenticate or they didn't smell right. But one of the stories is that Jimi heard "Hey Joe" on the jukebox at Café Wha?, and that's possible, but he probably heard it a little earlier is what I'm guessing. But who knows?
[Hendrix's manager] Chas Chandler had heard "Hey Joe" earlier himself and thought, "Wow, this would be a great hit in England." A record being released in America [then] meant nothing in the U.K. And not long after, he ran into Linda Keith, and she said, "I've met this guy; I need to find somebody to promote him." She had already struck out with three other people at that point. She brought Chas down to the basement of Café Wha?. The Café Wha? didn't serve liquor. It was an all-ages club way before there were all-ages clubs. Chandler was drinking a chocolate milk shake, heard Jimi break into "Hey Joe," and got so excited he spilled his milk shake on his lap. I literally was able to find their waitress, who was able to confirm their story. The reason she knew was because a guy walking in with a British accent stood out.
SW: Prior to Hendrix and even the Leaves and the Byrds doing it, "Hey Joe" had been associated with the folk scene. Was Jimi interested in folk music beyond Bob Dylan?
Cross: Bob Dylan was it for Jimi. It was like Einstein and the theory of relativity. Jimi discovered Bob Dylan, and the world was never the same. That began with Jimi's hair, with his approach to music, with lyrics, with his appreciation of his own voice. You know, he slept with girls different after listening to Bob Dylan. It changed everything. Food tasted different, the world opened up. Jimi Hendrix wasn't hanging out with the folk appreciation society people. It was mostly folkies and beatniks at the time in the Village. That was not Jimi's deal. He wanted to be a blues artist who looked like Bob Dylan.
Leadbelly: "In the Pines" (1942) from Folkways: The Original Vision (Smithsonian/Folkways)
Cross: OK, Nirvana . . .
SW: It's not Nirvana.
Cross: OK, it's Leadbelly.
SW: That's right.
Cross: I thought that you might have a bootlegged cassette of Kurt's.
I guess ultimately you pool these two characters together; in some ways, these are similar in that they are biographies of left-handed guitar players from Seattle who died at 27. That's pretty remarkable in and of itself. They both grew up in poverty, and though Hendrix knew race and racial poverty, Cobain's is also a story of class, and that's something that African Americans still today can understand. Class and race are things that define America today, and both of these men overcame that. I think that you have to understand what they came from and the barriers that they conquered to understand how sweet their victory was.
Hendrix's ancestors, like Leadbelly's, included slaves. On both sides of his family, his great-great-grandmothers were impregnated by their slave masters. I mean, it's rape in every other term, and, you know, that doesn't just affect one generation. That's something that stays with the family for years. [When] you go to Aberdeen and see where Kurt Cobain grew up, it ain't that different than where Jimi Hendrix grew up. And Cobain's options weren't that different than Hendrix's. At one point, Cobain considered going into the service, not unlike Hendrix, and chickened out at the last minute. But ultimately, these two men's stories are not that different. Addiction really played a different role in Kurt's life; everything Kurt experienced later in his life was through that lens of drugs. To Hendrix, drugs were more of a celebratory thing, but both careers were four years.
SW: And pretty much transformed . . .
Cross: Transformed music. I mean, it is kind of eerie. The joke is, who else can I write about? There are no more 27-year-old left-handed guitar players from Seattle.
mmatos@seattleweekly.com
Charles R. Cross reads at Barnes & Noble (2700 N.E. University Village, 206-517-4107), 7:30 p.m. Wed., Oct. 12. Free.
