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The World According to Jimi Hendrix

05/31/2011
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(Gibson) Though Jimi Hendrix was just 27 when he died in September 1970, he managed to secure the near-unanimous public opinion that he's the best guitarist who ever lived. Last year, Gibson.com readers voted Hendrix No. 1 in our Top 50 Guitarists of All Time poll, and he's topped similar lists by Rolling Stone and other music publications. Those that saw him play live say that Hendrix was even more magical and arresting in person than he is on his records and in film. In interviews, however, he had a soft-spoken, wry manner that can be difficult to reconcile with his loud stage presence. Hendrix didn't grant many interviews, but the ones he did reveal him to be obsessed with his craft, frustrated with and stifled by the music industry, and surprisingly self-depreciating and hilarious. Here are some choice quotes from Hendrix.

On Bob Dylan, as told to rock journalist Steve Barker in 1967.: "I saw him one time, but both of us were stoned out of our minds. I remember it vaguely. It was at this place called The Kettle of Fish in the Village. We were both stoned there, and we just hung around laughing � yeah, we just laughed. People have always got to put him down. I really dig him, though. I like that Highway 61 Revisited album and especially 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.' He doesn't inspire me actually, because I could never write the kind of words he does."

On his ideal lifestyle, when asked if he has enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life, as spoken in a 1970 interview with New Musical Express: "Not the way I'd like to live. I want to get up in the morning and just roll over in my bed into the indoor swimming pool and then swim to the breakfast table, come up for air and get a drink of orange juice. Then just flop over from the chair into the swimming pool and swim into the bathroom and shave and whatever." more on this story

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