UNITED STATES
OpEd News
By
Joey Piscitelli
Forty-two years ago this month, the legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix mesmerized a crowd of devoted and hypnotized fans, at the Berkeley Community Theater in California, on May 30 th , 1970. I was one of those fortunate spectators in attendance that evening, and his performance changed my perspective of not only music and culture; but it corrected my confused spirituality as well.
His lyrics to his last title performed that evening are fittingly dauntless:
” If I don’t see you no more in this world, I’ll meet you in the next one, and don’t be late”.
He was born in Seattle, Washington in 1942, and named Johnny Allen Hendrix, a name I was not familiar with at the time. I also did not know I was attending his last performance in California; he died unexpectedly in London three and a half months later.
The astonishing truth about Hendrix was that he was left-handed, and at an early age he acquired a right handed guitar; and taught himself to play the guitar upside down- and backwards. This astounding capability led way to the capturing of a distortion of sound effects that were manipulated by the unequaled artist; light years ahead of his peers, and able to seduce the observer into a spellbinding trance. Jimi ultimately perfected this exceptional gift into an ostentatious result that was unprecedented in the music industry.
I was 15 years old when I witnessed the art and passion of the greatest guitarist of all time; and I have never been able to replace that experience with a comparable appreciation of surrealistic musical talent — and I don’t think I ever will.
Perhaps it was a fusion of my adolescent craving for a purpose as a survivor of clergy abuse – and my intrinsic hope for an escape to a spiritual world of grandeur. Whatever the reason, or the psychological diagnoses; I was transcended magically into a world of euphoria, intoxicated by the genius who used his guitar to propel me into the atmosphere.
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