A week before Jimi Hendrix died, he sat down with Keith Altham for what would be his final interview. It was 1970, and the guitar legend already had three albums out with The Experience and one live LP with his Band of Gypsys. The PBS series Blank on Blank got their hands on the interview and worked their animation magic. Hendrix talks about his music in the clip, as well as his ideal living situation.
Altham kicks things off by asking about what the "Purple Haze" singer would consider "living comfortably" now that he has some money. Hendrix's response is a trippy thing of beauty.
"I want to get up in the morning, just roll over in my bed to an indoor swimming pool and swim to the breakfast table. Come up for air, get a drink of orange juice," he explains.
So that's more luxurious than comfortable, right Jimi?
"No, it's not luxurious. I was thinking about a tent overhanging a mountain stream," Hendrix adds, giggling.
Later in the chat, Hendrix explains how he creates music, downplaying his role as a psychedelic music innovator.
"The way I write things, the way I write is [a] clash between reality and fantasy, mostly," he says. "You have to use fantasy to show different sides of reality ... that's how it can bend. I don't really round it off too good. It's almost naked, you know? I just hate to be in one corner — I hate to be just a guitar player, or a songwriter, or a tap dancer, you know?"
The artist also talks about how he started to tone down some of his late 1960s style so people would concentrate more on the music at shows.
Blank on Blank uses old interview audio and new animation to bring some of entertainment's greatest minds back to life (they also do clips for living artists, too). The series has done shorts on Michael Jackson, John Lennon and Lou Reed, among many others. Check the videos out here.
