Picture the scene: it’s January 3rd 1966, in New York City, and a young Jimi Hendrix has just sent his father in Seattle an Empire State Building postcard admitting that the grass is not in fact greener on the other side and “every thing so-so on this big, raggedy city”. Although he doesn’t know it yet, Hendrix’s life is about to change seismically with the introduction of LSD.
Having spent four years residing in the Big Apple as a permanently broke musician, Hendrix had experienced his fair share of Black juke joints and clubs around the continent. Despite the gruelling nature of the ‘chitlin circuit’, comprising venues in the eastern, southern, and upper Midwest areas of the United States, Hendrix honed his craft by borrowing crowd-pleasing techniques from T-Bone Walker and Buddy Guy. A couple of these antics included the signature Hendrix trick of playing guitar behind his head and with his teeth.
It wasn’t until May 1966 that the future guitar-playing prodigy began to cause ripples on the surface of rock music, as he met with Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Each of them a blues enthusiast, the couple had travelled to New York to scour the city’s vast blues scene ahead of The Stones’ fifth US tour.
Accompanying Curtis Knight in his band The Squires, Hendrix’s voyeuristic guitar performance stunned Keith and her boyfriend as they witnessed the soon-to-be star entertain at the Cheetah Club on Broadway and 53rd Street. It would not be long until Keith made an impression on the young Hendrix, known by the name of Jimmy James at the time, as she showered him with compliments before inviting him to her apartment on 63rd Street.
Before LSD became illegal in the United States in 1997, the psychedelic drug was an A-lister’s gateway to a good time. Prior to that evening, Hendrix had only dabbled in class C drugs like marijuana and cheap speed. Little did he know that Keith possessed the key to mind-blowing new perspectives in the form of acid, and despite initially confusing acid to be a different drug to LSD, Hendrix didn’t hesitate when Keith offered it to him.
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Although substance use is not a proactive pastime and can have severe consequences if abused, it can’t be denied that the greatest musicians of the 1960s would not have produced the quality of sounds they created without the influence of drugs. It is a well-documented fact that The Beatles were connoisseurs of psychedelic substances during this time and began experimenting with the drug during the Rubber Soul sessions.
Just as the Liverpudlian quartet was led down the mind-bending pathways of various acid trips, Hendrix, too, became absorbed by the drug’s effects on his creativity. Upon taking the drug for the first time, he recalls looking in the mirror to see Marilyn Monroe smiling back at him. The red velvet velour decor of Keith’s New York apartment was also highlighted to Hendrix during this experience, and it became the focal point for his later song ‘Red House’ taken from Are You Experienced, released in 1967.
In the song, Hendrix sings, “There’s a red house over yonder / That’s where my baby stays”. In response to ‘Red House’, Keith played the guitar virtuoso Bob Dylan’s seventh studio album, Blonde On Blonde, which became a sonic reminder to Hendrix of his first visceral drug experience. A month later, Hendrix paid homage to his unforgettable first trip with Keith by covering Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ live.
This article originally appeared in Far Out Magazine.
