DEF LEPPARD Guitarist Phil Collen On JIMI HENDRIX - "He Was The Perfect Musician"
December 31, 2006, 17 years ago
Classicrockmagazine.com has posted the following JIMI HENDRIX tribute by DEF LEPPARD guitarist Phil Collen:
"I was obviously very aware of Jimi Hendrix in the early 1970s. My cousin had got me into rock music, and he was like: 'Hendrix is fucking great!' And I did like him, but it wasn’t until much later – until way after I’d started playing the guitar – that I really started to appreciate him. It wasn’t just because of the guitar thing. Everything about Hendrix went against the grain. Everything about him was a contradiction to your standard rock stereotype. Even from a fashion point of view, Hendrix was different. And his stagecraft – that’s the kind of shit that makes you want to become a musician, especially when you’re a kid. Plus, the fact that he was a black man playing what was basically white music was, again, very different. You don’t get anything like that now. Maybe Prince has crossed over here and there, but not like Hendrix. That was much more pure. The thing is that I didn’t actually realise all this until years later, when I was suddenly like: 'Fucking hell – the penny’s dropped!' Then I started to appreciate him properly. So I went back and listened to him playing live and listened to what he was actually doing. And it wasn’t just the standard bollocks that everyone else was doing. It was completely different, and far deeper. As a musician, I found it amazing what he did; the way he left gaps in his playing; the way it was rhythmic and melodic; based around the vocal and the song. To me, he was the perfect musician."Read more location.
