Flesh Guitar

AN EXPERIENCE

Jimi slumps on a couch, unconscious, guitar in hand. The couch is decked out with throws and cushions, slices of crushed purple velvet, orange brocade and sequined chiffon. He looks so at home there, like a chameleon gone mad, cheesecloth and love beads, lizard-skin boots, a military tunic, tight cotton trousers patterned with multicoloured Op art squares. And even the guitar matches; an old Strat that’s been customized by some fan, some ‘psychedelic artist’ who’s drilled holes in the guitar body, sprayed it with red and black car paint and, while it was running and congealing, stuck rhinestones, rosary beads and silver glitter on to the surface. The process has rendered the guitar more or less unplayable, although Jimi has met a lot of unplayable guitars in his time, and he’s usually managed to wring something out of them, which is to say he’s used them to wring something out of himself.

Not that he’s in any state right this moment to do any playing. He’s sleeping the sleep, not of the just, but of the stoned, the sleep of the heavily sedated, the sleep of the totally fucked up. It would take a scientist, a pharmacist, or at the very least a police coroner to tell you what was the exact cause of Jimi’s condition. Call it a cocktail, call it a random sample. Jimi gets given all kinds of pharmaceutical treats these days, guys and chicks just lay this really cool stuff on him all the time, and if the precise history, the detailed provenance of most of these drugs is a little blurry, well, that’s OK, these people are genuine fans of Jimi. They love him and they love what he does, and they’d have no reason to give him bad shit, no reason to send him on a bad trip, into narcosis and coma. But even if by some mistake they did give him some bad stuff, well, Jimi’s feeling so strong these days, so big and powerful, so on top and above it all, that bad trips and bad chemicals just bounce off him like rain, or ping-pong balls, or bullets off Superman. Butterfly and bee.

Yeah, he often feels like Superman, or sometimes just a little like Clark Kent, and at other times like Adam Strange or Lex Luther or the Riddler. Funny the way they’re all white guys, but the times they are a changin’, and maybe he can even do something about that, a black superhero who ain’t Muhammad Ali. His dreams are certainly full enough of flying and super powers, of defeating nameless but vibrant-coloured dreads. They’re full of big ideas and big insights, heavy shit that you’re never going to be able to sit down and explain in words, but with a Strat and a Big Muff and a Uni-Vibe and a wah wah pedal and a Marshall two-hundred-watt stack, well, just maybe you’re going to be able to get the message across. So long as you get the right rhythm section.

And some of these dreams come when he isn’t even asleep. Like right now he half wakes up and there’s this chick standing in the room and he’s pretty sure he’s never seen her before but she’s here and that’s groovy, and he can’t be absolutely sure that she’s not a hallucination or some kind of sweet angel come down. And yeah, maybe she looks a little like Wonderwoman, and she’s playing a weird-looking guitar, not one of his, picking out a nice blues, and she looks up and says, ‘Now about this stage act of yours, Jimi …’

And he’s halfway into a conversation he doesn’t remember starting.

‘Huh?’ he says.

‘For example, when you mime cunnilingus in the show,’ she says, ‘or when you masturbate your guitar or bang it on the stage, or when you smash it up or set fire to it … what am I supposed to think about that?’

Cogs and cams click in his brain, connect up his speech centres, get the motor running, coming back from out there.

‘Well, you know, maybe it’s not about thought,’ he tries. ‘It’s about just digging it.’

‘No, Jimi, that’s just not good enough,’ she says bossily. ‘Of course we all understand the phallic significance of the guitar, but what’s the significance of beating your phallus against the stage until it breaks? What’s the symbolic value of trying to set your phallus on fire?’

‘Gee, I never thought about it quite like that.’

‘But I did, Jimi.’

Jimi’s face stiffens and she can see that he’s rummaging through the files in his head, files that have been chemically shuffled and singed.

‘Uh, maybe it’s a guy thing, a black thing,’ he says. ‘I dunno, chicks they don’t understand. Hey, why don’t you come over here, sit by me, mellow out and stop asking me such hard questions?’

‘Women here, women there, always trying to put you in a plastic cage, eh Jimi?’

‘Hey, no, I don’t mean that exactly. That’s just a song, y’know.’

‘Is that right? So you don’t really think you’re a “voodoo chile” or a “hoochie coochie man”?’

‘Well, maybe just a little.’

‘And are you really saying you’re not a “lover man”, Jimi?’

He smiles that shy, polite smile, eyes and head turned coyly down. He won’t deny it. ‘Lady’s man, cocksman, axe-man, whatever,’ he says.

‘I thought so,’ she says.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Jimi says. ‘It’s like a divining rod, maybe a fishing rod. It helps make you feel connected. It helps you make a catch.’

She doesn’t bother to ask whether he’s talking about his guitar or his penis. It doesn’t really matter which.

‘It plugs you into these, kinda, energies,’ Jimi says. ‘And you know out there in swingin’ London there’s a whole lot of sockets just begging you to plug into them.’

‘You always had a way with metaphor, Jimi.’

‘Thank you,’ he says, hoping he’s not being mocked.

‘You know,’ Jenny says thoughtfully, ‘I think that a man generally makes love the same way he plays a guitar solo. For example, some men are very hot and flashy but it’s all over in ten seconds. Some make a big noise and it gets the job done but it’s crude, simple stuff. Some men are always asking, when’s it going to be my turn to take a solo, my turn to perform, as though they’re really keen and really good, but when the chance comes and the spotlight’s on them they tend to shrivel and lose interest.

‘Some other men are very fancy, full of technique and finesse, as though they’ve read all the books and practised all the moves, but when it comes to the real thing there’s no passion there, just a lot of twiddling and showing off to no purpose. What do you think, Jimi?’

He smiles again, a little embarrassed by what he knows he’s about to tell her.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘personally, I like to jam and, basically, I’ll jam with just about anyone, and once I start jammin’ it just goes on and on, hour after hour, sometimes all night long. It gets very free form, very wild, very experimental. I like to get into whole new areas that I’ve never explored before. I like to try things that I never knew I was capable of. Sometimes it mightn’t work out exactly right, but that’s cool. I haven’t had too many complaints except maybe from the neighbours who start beating on the walls telling me to “keep it down in there”, whereas I just want to keep it up.’

He laughs a roguish, boyish laugh and Jenny’s inclined to go with it, to be gentle on him, but that’s really not what she’s there for.

‘On the other hand, Jimi, I’ve never seen too many women in your backing bands.’

‘Huh?’

‘You know, women keyboard players, women drummers, women bass players. Women who are good for something other than undressing and putting on your album cover.’

‘Like I say, I’ll play guitar with anyone.’

‘Anyone so long as they’ve got a dick. You’re not telling me you couldn’t find a woman who played bass better than Billy Cox, better than Noel Redding.’

‘Shit, I don’t know. Guys are good for playing in bands with. Chicks are good for other things.’

‘You know, Jimi, one day soon this kind of talk will sound very sexist.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It’s a seventies word, Jimi, a seventies concept, but not one that you’re going to have to worry too much about.’

‘Well, thank God for that.’

‘The seventies is going to be a very strange decade for Jimi Hendrix.’

She can see him bristle. Strange is normal where Jimi comes from. He wants the future to be less strange, more structured, more you know, composed.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘the seventies is going to be a great decade for me. I got big plans. I’m going to make some serious music, some serious collaborations, maybe work with Miles Davis, Gil Evans, maybe play with Jeff Beck and John McLaughlin (John’s a real spiritual cat), and Eric, of course. Going to make lots of albums, lots of money, put it all together, make a lot of number one hits.’

‘The number one hit, yes, you’ll have that,’ Jenny says cheerfully. ‘Thirteen weeks on the chart. The rest of it, I’m afraid not.’

‘What you talking about? Who are you to be afraid for me? Who are you anyway? You talk too much to be a groupie. You a fucking journalist or something? You trying to bring me down? You some kind of devil woman?’

‘As popularized in song?’ she says. ‘You and Robert Johnson, two of a kind. No, I’m no devil woman. I’m just someone who can see a bit further into the future than you can.’

‘You a clairvoyant?’

‘No.’

‘Or are you just part of a bad trip? You know, I heard there are drugs can give you crazy powers, like telepathy, like the ability to see the future.’

‘Drugs are going to kill you, Jimi.’

‘Nah, not me. The others. I’m strong. I can take anything.’

‘It’s OK,’ says Jenny. ‘A lot of people won’t mind you being dead at all. They’ll love you for being dead. The seventies, the eighties, the nineties, they’re all going to be good decades for James Marshall Hendrix. There’ll be lots of respect, adulation, big record sales. There just won’t be any more music. Not new music anyway, not by you.’

Jimi looks troubled. He’s talked to people who’ve taken acid and seen visions of their own death. ’Course they ain’t necessarily accurate, but it’s still scary.

‘But a lot of people are going to like that too,’ Jenny continues. ‘There’s nothing like a completed oeuvre to bring out the scholars. But it won’t only be scholars. Every guy who ever picks up a guitar is going to try to play the riff from “Purple Haze”, and the fact is an awful lot of them are going to get it note-for-note perfect. There are going to be people who spend their whole lives just trying to rip off your sound.’

‘You’re really starting to bring me down, you know that?’ Jimi says.

‘I can see how that might happen, Jimi, yes.’

He shudders. He feels a twinge as though someone has snapped a cold guitar string across his back. He doesn’t know who this woman is, whether she’s flesh or the product of his own mind, but he knows that in some vital sense she’s for real. She has a gift, the gift of prophecy, just like in the songs, the legends. This feels like a chillingly authentic blues moment, but also modern, all tuned in with drugs and outer space, stars spangling in the black velvet sky, dead stars, multiple moons. Shit, he’s starting to drift away. He hauls himself back.

‘You’re here to tell me I’m about to die,’ he says, just to get this whole thing absolutely clear.

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘And there’s nothing I can do about it, right? No penance. No restitution, no second chance.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Boy, that’s heavy,’ he says.

He thinks, then starts to giggle.

‘Hey, maybe you can answer some questions for me.’ And suddenly he’s wide-eyed and eager for information. ‘Is there sex after death? Are there guitars in heaven? Is music like the thing that makes sense of the universe?’

She hasn’t the heart to tell him she hasn’t the faintest idea, so she tries to be mysterious and says, ‘You’ll have the answers soon enough.’

Jimi is not deterred. He says, ‘Up there you can probably play like for eternity, right? Guitar solos can go on from now until the end of time. I’ll get to jam with Charlie Christian and Robert Johnson and all those great guys. Yeah, and new arrivals all the time. I’ll eventually get to jam with guys from the future. Play riffs that haven’t even been invented yet. Wow. Hey, I’m really getting into this.’

And he starts to laugh and laugh, gets the real giggles, the stoned version that makes no sense but keeps going till it hurts, the cosmic joke, the ultimate laugh track.

‘Hey,’ he says between bursts of laughter, ‘you know there’s not much you can tell me about death. I’ve played the Wolverhampton Gaumont. I’ve been on tour with the Walker Brothers and Engelbert Humperdinck. Hey, I think there’s a song in that, if I could just get this guitar in tune, if I could just get a piece of paper. If I could just wake up.’

Suddenly the room looks dark and he feels all alone. Wasn’t there something she was supposed to ask him? His advice for the aspiring guitarist. He has no answer. He knows it has to do with blackness and anger and sex and violence and Vietnam and the ghetto and, yeah, well maybe it’s as well she didn’t ask. He can tell there are going to be no more songs, no more jams, no guitar solos. Bile wells up in his throat, vomit comes heaving up from his stomach, fills his mouth, his nose, his very being. When he wakes up next morning he finds himself dead.