Jimi Hendrix Lays Wild Thing On Blackpool, 1967
Northern innocents have ears blown by psychedelic sonic attack.
IN THE CURRENT ISSUE of MOJO (238) Mark Paytress speaks to Andy Fairweather Low and The Nice's Davy O'List about the remarkable 1967 package tour that saw Pink Floyd share the bill with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. "Hendrix turned it all up," remembers Fairweather Low, "[but] his guitar wasn't built to do what he wanted to do with it, and it was fairly random if the set ended in tune or not. Sometimes Wild Thing was unbelievably wild!"
See for yourself in this remarkable clip of The Experience bowing out at Blackpool Opera House on November 25, 1967.
It begins with Hendrix wrestling with the tuning on his unruly guitar ("Oh God! Almost didn't make that one!"), before revealing a disarmingly charming side to his on-stage persona ("We really care for your ears. That is why we don't play so loud").
Dressed in tartan trousers, purple satin shirt and gold lamé waistcoat, Hendrix looks fantastic and does ALL the moves: playing on his knees, behind his back and machine-gunning his white Fender Stratocaster into the audience. However, fans of My Bloody Valentine should be making extra notes on how the Experience move from song structure to song fragments to sonic attack, destruction and chaos in a manner that's oddly reminiscent of MBV's own live "Apocalypse" revision of You Made Me Realise.