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"Neal Trembath" <ntrembat@statsol.com> put forth: > I believe a major reason Hendrix checked out was because he had > lost touch with how to do something new, a spiritual/creative cul-de-sac. > He was becoming a parody of himself. I've understood for a while that there were a number of factors involved in his death: First off, Hendrix had gotten into a rut (from an outsider's standpoint) that perhaps many of us have discovered - the ability to take more of a drug than anyone else as an illusion of achievement or surpassment of others. People were just discovering the aspects of getting "altered" on a recreational level in numbers and ways never seen before; and in this regard, all concerned confirmed to the effect that Jimi always took more than anyone in the vicinity. This is perhaps a kind of way for someone who's insecure to achieve in a way that others cannot. I find it sad that this aspect of recreational drug use has never been really explored or examined, but then USGovCo has never been interested in doing so with anything it wants to discourage, in the false belief that merely banning it should be sufficient. Second, Jimi had just recently, I believe, been involved in the fracas otherwise known as the Isle of Wight Festival. All concerned who performed there have regarded this as a truly upsetting experience - folks at the front of the crowd disrupting performances by shouting at them about how they were all money-grubbing elitists, that they weren't real artists, etc. ad nauseam. Combine this with some aspects of post-Woodstock thinking - where it would have been quite natural to think of Woodstock (while being there) as the apex of the process - and it could quite reasonably seem like it was all not only downhill from there, but over with, period. Third, Jimi had been slogging it out on the Chitlin Circuit for an awful long time, and it was only in a short period that he attained such notoriety, before his death. The US was still in a period where black people were openly treated badly by a broad range of non-black society. Jimi had gone through all this and yet was still continuing to pave roads for others to follow, which was one thing I was considering as to how his death wasn't a suicide. He was still being pimped by the record company, by the promoters, you name it; political groups like the Black Panthers were on his case because he refused to do political spokesperson stuff; and there was an entourage of hangers-on sucking on him everywhere he went. Yet while alive he was only truly respected by musicians, as far as he was concerned, with everyone else as either a listener or some kind of vampire. Perhaps this also made it easier for him to just let go, when the moment came, instead of getting up and going for help. Fourth and lastly, his girlfriend at the time went out for cigarettes. While she was gone, he choked to death on his own vomit. Perhaps if she hadn't gone out, if she'd been there to help him turn over and expell it all, we wouldn't consider Hendrix at being at the apex of his career just then. While a despicable PBS documentary lined up star after star to deplore his use of drugs, and how they caused his passing - as if this was the only element, that he took drugs - it's undeniable that there were situations waiting for him back in the States that one can only moan to hear about, that never happened. I have to look at this last one as yet another cigarette-related situation that unfortunately had a hand in Jimi's death. I wonder, though, what ever happened to HER? So I don't think it was Jimi's time to check out. I think of it as a combination of effects that took from us an innovator supreme, and not any single aspect at all. I think Jimi might have gotten into electric Jazz (oh oh, that word!) - I remember hearing rumors about him coming back to NYC to play with Miles Davis et al. Most of all I think of him as the ultimate victim of the music business' inappropriate (at best) behavior towards the artists that enable them to make too much money - and a lesson for us all as creative people. Stephen Goodman http://www.earthlight.net/Gallery.html - Online Cartoons & Illustrations http://www.earthlight.net/Studios * The free Loop of the Week! http://www.mp3.com/StephenGoodman * New MP3 Releases!