THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2008

(part 66) HENDRIX, ZAPPA AND LEAVING NEW YORK


After seeing and hearing Hendrix on that muggy afternoon in the Village Frank took me to the Le Figaro Cafe nearby to introduce me to Jimi, but when we got there Hendrix was already at a table with two or three girls and otherwise occupied. The place was pretty empty so even from across the room you could see everybody who was in the place. At one point Hendrix looked up and caught sight of Frank and me and acknowledged Frank's presence with a smile and a wave. He was so loaded, that at best, it was a half hearted attempt to be cordial. I told Frank it was ok and that it was obvious that he was in no shape to meet the likes of me or anybody else at the time. "It's cool Frank," I said, "I don't think he needs to be interrupted right now." Frank agreed and we left the Le Figaro and I carried away my memory of Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and me, on that hot muggy afternoon in Greenwich Village, New York in 1967.

I remember hearing, as Frank and I walked and talked, about the Monterey Pop Festival a month or so earlier and some guy who had blown everybody's mind along with Janice Joplin. It was this guy I had just seen and heard with Frank, Jimi Hendrix. I always remembered what Frank said to me, "This guy's gonna be the next Elvis Presley." It stuck in my mind as an odd way for Frank to put it, but I never forgot it and in some ways it turned out to be true.

When I got back to LA I was all hyped up about writing new songs, promising myself, that what had happened in New York with Tom Wilson would never happen again. I started writing all kinds of heavy duty lyrics that were extreme versions of the opposing parallels I'd used in songs like "Sea Dawn" from "Color Him In". Somehow I got it in my mind that the point of "Sea Dawn" was right but that I needed to make the point more like a sledge hammer. Two of these songs were, as mentioned, "HOLY HOLY HOLY" and "HITLER AND JESUS". If you go to the links at the top of this page and click on Robert Parker Jameson you can hear two songs that I cut with JESSE ED DAVIS in the early 70's that are similar to what I am talking about here.

"JUNKIE JESUS" and "JESUS WAS AN OUTLAW TOO". Nobody was too sure about what I was doing but I just kept writing whether they liked it or not. I managed to convince STEVE CLARK, at the time, to record a couple of these songs probably telling him if he didn't TOM WILSON would. What ever it was that I told Steve it worked. I ended up in the same studio where I'd cut "COLOR HIM IN" with a 30 or 40 piece orchestra and recorded "HOLY HOLY HOLY" and possibly others. I say possibly because frankly I don't remember. "HOLY HOLY HOLY" was about the hypocrisy of the church and the priests in the church, according to me. We cut the track with no problem, but when it was time for me to put down the lyrics the engineer got up and walked out of the studio about half way through the song. (GO TO PARTS 96 and 97 FOR THE TWO SONGS REFERRED TO HERE.)

The session stopped and Steve went running after the engineer who we found out was a good Catholic. He told Steve that he couldn't be a part of something like that because it was blasphemy according to this guy's belief. After about 40 minutes or so Steve and the engineer came back in together and the session went on. I later asked Steve how he got the guy to come back and Steve said he reasoned with him that this was art and that I had a right to express my opinion, artistically, even if it offended some people. The guy thought about that and decided he agreed with Steve's reasoning and was willing to finish the session, but wouldn't do any more if they were like this. I thought that was pretty clever of Steve to bring up this particular point of logic which I fully agreed with.