I had known for a while that Jimi Hendrix had played in Hackensack but I was never sure where.
Here's something I just found out in
The Record today: before he played in Hackensack, Jimi lived in Englewood for two years with the Isley Brothers family.
http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/celebrities/106500483_Isley_brother_reflects_on_Jimi_Hendrix_s_Englewood_days.html?page=allIsley brother reflects on Jimi Hendrix's Englewood daysTuesday, November 2, 2010
Last updated: Tuesday November 2, 2010, 8:57 AM
BY JIM BECKERMAN
The Record
STAFF WRITER
WHO: Ernie Isley, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, Living Colour, Billy Cox, Steve Vai, Robert Randolph, Eric Johnson.
WHAT: The Experience Hendrix Tour.
WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday.
WHERE: Community Theatre at Mayo Center for the Performing Arts, 100 South St., Morristown; 973-539-8008 or mayoarts.org.
HOW MUCH: $67 to $125.
Everyone knows the Jimi Hendrix who reinvented the electric guitar with his screaming, howling, mind-bending solos.
But only Ernie Isley knows the Jimi Hendrix who used to play the "Three Stooges" theme while everyone in their house in Englewood broke up.
"Everybody would just start laughing," recalls Isley, then an 11-year-old youngster born into the famous Isley Brothers ("Twist & Shout," "Shout") musical dynasty.
Between 1963 and 1965, Hendrix was not only the Isley Brothers' guitarist, he also lived in the back room of the Bergen County house that Ernie shared with his mom, his older brother O'Kelly and younger brother Marvin (both now deceased).
When 10-year-old brother Marvin wanted a new Pez dispenser for his collection, Jimi went to the store with him. When the family gathered at the TV to watch the Beatles on the historic Feb. 9, 1964, "Ed Sullivan Show," Jimi was in the living room with them. "Marvin was sitting on one side of him, and I was sitting on the opposite side," Isley recalls.
Guitarist Isley, a 1992 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, will channel those memories, as well as some great music, when he appears with an all-star musical lineup that includes Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Jonny Lang, Living Colour, Billy Cox and Steve Vai in the Experience Hendrix tour, coming to the Community Theatre in Morristown on Wednesday.
"It's kind of like I get to be 11 years old again," Isley says. "The thing about Jimi Hendrix is that the majority of people just automatically go to the icon. And he was not that. He became that. He was a person."
Long before "Purple Haze," "All Along the Watchtower" and "The Wind Cries Mary," there was already a buzz about Jimi Hendrix. In spring 1963, the Isley Brothers had gone to the Village to track down an amazing guitarist they'd heard about. According to Ernie Isley, the conversation went down something like this:
O'Kelly: You got this reputation. Play something for me.
Hendrix: I can't.
O'Kelly: Why not?
Hendrix: Because I pawned my guitar. It's in the pawn shop.
(Later, after getting the guitar at the pawn shop.)
O'Kelly: Play something for me.
Hendrix: I can't.
O'Kelly: Why not?
Hendrix: I don't have any strings on my guitar.
When Hendrix eventually did play a solo, the brothers hired him on the spot. Then it was:
O'Kelly: We got rehearsals in New Jersey the day after tomorrow.
Hendrix: I can't make rehearsals in New Jersey.
O'Kelly: Why not?
Hendrix: I don't have a place to stay.
That's how Hendrix came to live with the Isleys during two formative years in which he honed a style that, a few years later, was to change the face of rock-and-roll. "Before he came to the house for the first time, Kelly got him a brand-new guitar," Isley says. "We went to Manny's [the New York music store] and got a brand-new white Strat [Stratocaster] at his request. His very first one."
That guitar, Isley recalls, was never very far from Jimi. "It was always within arm's reach," Isley said. "He would drink orange juice and play guitar."
Hendrix, then about 21, became an older brother to the two young Isleys. They would watch TV together: "Super Chicken," "Beany and Cecil," "Bonanza," "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom."
But always, Hendrix was practicing, practicing. "We had a full-length mirror near the front door of the house, and he would be playing the guitar and looking at himself in the mirror to see how he looked," Isley says. "He would flip it behind his back, or under his leg. You never saw anybody interact with an instrument like that. Like it was a yo-yo."
By the time Hendrix left the Isleys in 1965, he was already a breakout star. And by the time he stopped back in Englewood for a visit, arriving from England and on his way to the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, he had morphed into Jimi Hendrix, rock god.
"Marvin looked at him and said, 'Is that Jimi?' " Isley recalls. "Cause he had this rainbow of colors on him. Hat, bracelets, rings on every finger, belt, sash, velvet bell-bottom pants. This was before Carnaby Street and psychedelia had hit the United States. When he walked down the hallway, he [was] like [movie gunslinger] Shane."
Like all the artists in the "Experience" show, touring regularly since 1995, Isley has been influenced by Hendrix.
He transformed the electric guitar from a mere amplified instrument into a whole new medium of expression, Isley says — by producing sounds that no one had heard before.
"If he was the president, he'd be George Washington," Isley says. "He'd always be first."
E-mail: beckerman@northjersey.com
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