Jimi Hendrix’s Final Interview Animated (1970)

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Jimi Hendrix’s final inter­view, pre­served as an audio record­ing by NME’s Kei­th Altham, who sat down to talk with him on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970, one week before Hendrix’s death. Now, we bring you mul­ti­me­dia org Blank on Blank’s ani­ma­tion of that interview—breezy, sur­re­al, fun­ny, and pro­found. As I wrote in our pre­vi­ous post, Hendrix’s “off­hand lyri­cism and frac­tal imag­i­na­tion” are on full dis­play here. It’s rare that a musi­cian is as inter­est­ing to hear speak­ing as play­ing, but Hen­drix was one of them. Take, for exam­ple, Hendrix’s response when Altham sug­gests that he invent­ed psy­che­del­ic music:

Jimi Hen­drix: [chuck­les] A mad sci­en­tist approach. The way I write things, I just write them with a clash between real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy most­ly. You have to use fan­ta­sy to show dif­fer­ent sides of real­i­ty; it’s how it can bend. As a word real­i­ty is noth­ing, but each individual’s own way of think­ing. Then the estab­lish­ment grabs a big piece of that.

Then there’s Hen­drix on destroy­ing gui­tars onstage:

Jimi Hen­drix: One time I said: maybe I should burn a gui­tar tonight. You know [laughs] smash a gui­tar or some­thing like that. And they said: yeah, yeah! I said: you real­ly think I should? They said: yeah, that’d be cool. I said: well, ok. So like I just worked up enough anger where I could do it, you know. But like I didn’t know it was anger until they told me that it was, like with destruc­tion and all that. But I believe every­body should have like a room where they can get rid of all their releas­es, where they can do their releas­es at. So my room is a stage. [laughs]

There are many more of these gems in the full inter­view that didn’t make the cut above, but the abridged Blank on Blank ver­sion appro­pri­ate­ly cap­tures the whim­sy and good humor of the late lament­ed genius.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness