(Credits: Far Out / Marjut Valakivi / Public Domain)
Wed 17 December 2025 20:00, UK
When Jimi Hendrix first emerged on the scene, it was like a musical alien had descended upon Earth. His virtuosic guitar style was like nothing that had ever been seen before, and it left masters of the instrument scratching their heads as to where he developed this skill from.
It was blues, hard rock and soul all combined into one, while still maintaining that crucial sense of melody that made the actual songs brilliant. Hendrix could descend into mind-bending guitar riffs and solos, but never to the detriment of the wider piece of music.
So when he barged his way into the music scene in 1967, with Are You Experienced, fans and musicians alike were trying to trace the lineage of his influence. Sure, music fans on the whole were becoming more accustomed to the idea of psychedelic music through the evolution of The Beatles, but nevertheless, Hendrix’s new world of music felt completely alien.
Billy Gibbons was granted a peek behind the curtain when his band, The Moving Sidewalks, was offered support slots on some of Hendrix’s early shows. From the wings, they would watch him and his band rip into classic songs from that debut album, such as ‘Purple Haze’ and ‘The Wind Cries Mary’, wondering how their own music could sound that good, and where they could harvest similar ideas.
It was a privilege for Gibbons, who had long admired Hendrix, especially one of the songs from that very debut album. “A buddy said, ‘There’s a song that you oughta hear.’ He was talking about ‘Red House’, by Jimi Hendrix. That completely turned us upside down. It was blues taken beyond,” he once explained.
But then, within the inner sanctum of the supporting opportunity, Gibbons was treated to a recommendation that would open up his own world of music. He recalled a specific memory where playing one of Hendrix’s own songs resulted in a memorable encounter with the great man himself, and a recommendation that would change it all.
He continued, “Then The Sidewalks got hired to join the Experience tour in 1968. We didn’t have enough material for 45 minutes, so we started doing ‘Purple Haze‘. I looked over, and Hendrix was in the wings, wide-eyed, grinning. We had seen his showman antics from older blues guitarists. But he had a vision and aura. I remember him tiptoeing across the hall at the hotel: ‘Come in here. Do you know how this is done?’ He was learning chops off Jeff Beck’s first record, Truth.”
Hendrix first got to know Beck and his work when he hopped across the pond and vibrantly entered the London blues scene. Beck, along with Clapton, was rightfully viewed as the top dog in guitar music, but it didn’t take long until the student became the master.
“I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating,” Beck said with respectful jealousy. “He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you,’ but he did it in such a good package with beautiful songs.”
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