On February 4, 1970, a day so cold and snowy that all the cabs in New York were occupied, John Burks (then managing editor of Rolling Stone, more recently with Focus, City, Newsweek, American Kite, and the San Francisco Examiner), shivering in his California clothes, trudged and skidded through frozen slush to a chic midtown apartment to conduct what proved to be one of Jimi Hendrix' last major interviews. In attendance were Jimi, Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell, various management personnel, and Baron Wolman, the well-known photographer/journalist for Rolling Stone, Rags, etc.). The meeting had been initiated by Hendrix' management primarily to trumpet the reunification of the original Jimi Hendrix Experience, which turned out to be a short-lived regrouping that ran concurrently with the Band Of Gypsys.

Burks and Wolman remember sensing an anxiety on the part of the interviewees. "Though the setup was like you do for a fan magazine writer," John recalls, "they knew they could not manipulate the interview for their own publicity purposes because they were dealing with Rolling Stone. Moreover, that particular time jag contained memories of a disturbingly dull concert in January at a peace rally at Madison Square Garden, at which an uninspired Jimi had simply stopped playing. Nevertheless, it is difficult to make a case for a depressed Hendrix, for if Madison Square had been a bummer, he also had the memory of a concert with the Band Of Gypsys that rock promoter Bill Graham described as the finest he'd ever heard at Fillmore East. Whatever the initial mood, cognac, a warm fire in the fireplace, and a relaxed pace of questioning loosened things up."

No, I just try to have some time by myself so I can really write some things. I want to do more writing.

I don't know. Mostly just cartoon material. Make up this one cat who's funny, who goes through all these strange scenes. I can't talk about it now. You could put it to music, I guess. Just like you can put blues into music.

Well, I want to get into what you'd probably call "pieces," yeah pieces, behind each other to make movements, or whatever you call it. I've been writing some of those. But, like, I was into writing cartoons mostly.

Yeah, in the head, right. You listen to it, and you get such funny flashbacks. The music will be going along with the story, just like "Foxey Lady." Something like that. The music and the words go together.

When you put together a song, does it just come to you, or is it a process where you sit down with your guitar or at a piano, starting from 10 in the morning?

The music I might hear, I can't get on the guitar. It's a thing of just laying around daydreaming or something. You're hearing all this music, and you just can't get it on the guitar. As a matter of fact, if you pick up your guitar and just try to play, it spoils the whole thing. I can't play the guitar that well to get all this music together, so I just lay around. I wish I could have learned how to write for instruments. I'm going to get into that next, I guess.

It all depends. On "Foxey Lady," we just started playing, actually, and set up a microphone, and I had these words [laughs]. With "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," somebody was filming when we started doing that. We did that about three times because they wanted to film us in the studio, to make us [imitates a pompous voice] "Make it look like you're recording boys" - one of them scenes, you know, so, "Okay, let's play this in E; now a-one and-a-two and-a-three," and then we went into "Voodoo Child."

Well, that's because that's where it's coming from - the drumming.

Yeah, when we went to Sweden and heard some of those cats we'd never heard before. These cats were actually in little country clubs and little caves blowing some sounds that, you know, you barely imagine. Guys from Sweden, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, or Stockholm. Every once in a while they start going like a wave. They get into each other every once in a while within their personalities, and the party last night, or the hangover [laughs], and the evil starts pulling them away again. You can hear it start to go away. Then it starts getting together again. It's like a wave, I guess, coming in and out.

I like after-hours jams at a small place like a club. Then you get another feeling. You get off in another way with all those people there. You get another feeling, and you mix it in with something else that you get. It's not the spotlights, just the people.

I get more of a dreamy thing from the audience - it's more of a thing that you go up into. You get into such a pitch sometimes that you go up into another thing. You don't forget about the audience, but you forget about all the paranoia, that thing where you're saying, "Oh gosh, I'm onstage - what am I going to do now?" Then you go into this other thing, and it turns out to be almost like a play in certain ways.

You don't kick in many amps anymore or fight guitars on fire.

Maybe I was just noticing the guitar for a change. Maybe.

Oh, I don't know. It's like it's the end of a beginning. I figure that Madison Square Garden was like the end of a big, long fairy tale, which is great. It's the best thing I could possibly have come up with. The band was out of sight, as far as I'm concerned.

It was just something where the head changes, just going through changes. I really couldn't tell, to tell the truth. I was very tired. You know, sometimes there's a lot of things that add up in your head about this and that. And they hit you at a very peculiar time, which happened to be at that peace rally, and here I am fighting the biggest war I've ever fought in my life - inside, you know? And, like, that wasn't the place to do it, so I just unmasked appearances.

How much part do you play in the production of your albums? For example, did you produce your first [Are You Experienced]?

No, it was Chas Chandler and Eddie Kramer who mostly worked on that stuff. Eddie was the engineer, and Chas as producer mainly kept things together.

The last record [Electric Ladyland] listed you as producer. Did you do the whole thing?

No, well, like, Eddie Kramer and myself. All I did was just be there and make sure the right songs were there, and the sound was there. We wanted a particular sound. It got lost in the cutting room, because we went on tour right before we finished. I heard it, and I think the sound of it is very cloudy.

You did "All Along The Watchtower" on the last one. Is there anything else that you'd like to record by Bob Dylan?

Oh yeah. I like that one that goes, "Please help me in my weakness" ["Drifter's Escape"] . That was groovy. I'd like to do that. I like his Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited. His country stuff is nice too, at certain times. It's quieter, you know.

Your recording of "Watchtower" really turned me on to that song when Dylan didn't.

Well, that's reflections like the mirror. [Laughs.] Remember that "roomful of mirrors"? That's a song, a recording that we're trying to do, but I don't think we'll ever finish that. I hope not. It's about trying to get out of this roomful of mirrors.

[Imitates prissy voice] Well, you see, I'm going through this health kick, you see. I'm heavy on wheat germ, but, you know what I mean [laughs] - I don't know why [takes a pencil and writes something].

You're not what I'd call a country guitar player.

Thank you.

It would be if I was a country guitar player. That would be another step.

Yeah, we used to go and jam, actually. We'd say "rehearsing" just to make it sound, you know, official. We were just getting off; that's all. Not really 18 hours - say about 12 or 14 maybe. [Laughs.] The longest we [the Experience] ever played together is going onstage. We played about two-and-a-half hours, almost three hours one time. We made sounds. People make sounds when they clap. So we make sounds back. I like electric sounds, feedback and so forth, static.

Are you going to do a single as well as an LP?

We might have one from the other thing coming out soon. I don't know about the Experience, though. All these record companies they want singles. But you don't just sit there and say, "Let's make a track, let's make a single or something." We're not going to do that. We don't do that.

Creedence Clearwater Revival does that until they have enough for a record, like in the old days.

Well, that's the old days. I consider us more musicians. More in the minds of musicians, you know?

But singles can make some bread, can't they?

Well, that's why they do them. But they take it after. You'll have a whole planned out LP, and all of a sudden, they'll make, for instance, "Crosstown Traffic" a single, and that's coming out of nowhere, out of a whole other set. See, that LP was in certain ways of thinking; the sides we played on in order for certain reasons. And then it's almost like a sin for them to take out something in the middle of all that and make that a single, and represent us at that particular time because the think they can make more money. They always take out the wrong ones.

s often as we three agree to it. I'd like for it to be permanent.

No, it shouldn't be. Maybe I'm the evil one, right [laughs]. But there isn't any reason for it to be like that. I even want the name to be Experience, anyway, and still be this mishmash mooshmash between Madame Flip-flop And Her Harmonite Social Workers.

It's a nice game. No, like, about putting other groups on the tour, like our friends - I don't

know about that right now; not at a stage like this, because we're in the process of getting our own thing together, as far as a three-piece group. But eventually, we have time on the side to play with friends. That's why I'll probably be jamming with Buddy [Miles] and Billy [Cox]; probably be recording, too, on the side, and they'll be doing the same.

I like Stevie Winwood; he's one of those dozen people. But things don't have to be official all the time. Things don't have to be formal for jams and stuff. But I haven't had a chance to get in contact with him.

Oh, yeah. Well, I heard Duane Eddy came into town this morning [laughs]. He was groovy.

Larry and I had, like, swift jams down at The Scene. Every once in a while we would finally get a chance to get together. But I haven't had a chance to really play with him - not lately, anyway. I sort of miss that.

I like Larry Coryell, yeah.

Oh, not better. Who's this other guy? I think I've heard some of his things.

Sounds like someone we know, huh [laughs] ?

Oh, yeah. I had a jam with him at Ronnie Scott's in London, and I really got off. It was great. It was really great. I was so scared! It's really funny. I mean Roland [laughs]. That cat gets all those sounds. I might just hit one note, and it might be interfering, but, like, we got along great, I thought. He told me I should have turned it up or something.

He seems like a cat you might record particularly well with. I hear these bands like Blood, Sweat, And Tears and their horns, and CTA [Chicago Transit Authority, later known as Chicago], though I haven't heard them in person.

Oh yeah, CTA. In person, listen, that's when you should hear them. That's the only time. They just started recording, but in person. The next chance you get, you should check them out.

It's there. They got their own thing together that takes you a certain place. Takes you where they want to go [laughs], you know. Where they want to. They play their things onstage exactly how they play it on record.

Astronaut! [Laughs.] Fly in space! We have one called "Captain Coconut." No, well, you know. I'm trying to get the guitar together, really.

In New York, it's more of a violent climate. It's very violent, actually. They don't know it, really. But Texas is really fine. I don't know why. Maybe it's the weather, and the feeling of it. I dig the South a little more than playing in the North. It's more of a pressure playing in the Midwest, like Cleveland or Chicago. It's like being in a pressure cooker waiting for the top to blow off. The people there are groovy, but it's just the atmosphere or something, you know? But the South is great. New Orleans is great. Arizona is great. Arizona's fantastic. Utah.

[Laughs. I Well, once we're offstage, it's another world, but, like, the people are great. But when we played at the gigs, they were really listening; they were really tuned in some kind of way or another. I think it was the air.

This is all I can play when I'm playing. I'd like to get something together, like with Handel, and Bach, and Muddy Waters, flamenco type of thing [laughs]. If I can get that sound. If I could get that sound, I'd be happy.

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