The Biography of Jimi Hendrix

1. 0:00 – 3:31

   Why Hendrix: Practice Habits and the Book's Origins

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      To all intents and purposes, this book has been written by Jimi Hendrix. But since it has been compiled after his death, it seems only fair to offer an explanation as to how the final text was arrived at. It evolved out of a film biography of him that I was working on. Not wishing to put words into Jimi's mouth, we began experimenting with dialogue culled from records of things he had actually said. An enormous dossier was compiled from all the sources that could be definitively authenticated. There was a superabundance of material, since during his four years in the spotlight, he was constantly giving interviews. He was also a compulsive writer, using hotel stationery, scraps of paper, cigarette cartons, napkins, anything that came to hand. Funny, Jay-Z did the exact same thing when he was young as well. That's episode 238 if you haven't listened to, uh, the, uh, the podcast I made on Jay-Z's autobiography. On reading through all the available material, it is clear that Jimi left behind his own remarkable and comprehensive account of himself. We felt it imperative that Jimi should be allowed to offer his own personal version of his life and music. The fact that Jimi's speech patterns are so rhythmic and his turns of phrase so visually rich serve to enhance this approach. In a remarkable and haunting way, the book took on a life of its own. He always claimed that for him, life and music were inseparable. As the book progresses, it becomes less an account of external events and more an exploration of an internal journey. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Jimi Hendrix: Starting At Zero, His Own Story. Real quick before I jump back into the book, I wanna tell you what got me excited and interested in reading a book about, a biography about Jimi Hendrix. Over the years, I'd heard about his obsessive practice habits. This has become a main theme that you and I talk about over and over again because you see it in every single life story of history's greatest entrepreneurs or anybody that reached the top of their profession. And you and I define practice as all the things that you do to get better at your job. And so in Jimi's case, he got paid to make albums, so record albums in the studio, and perform. What made those events, both the albums he made and the performances that he performed, valuable was everything he did when he was not technically working. And so people that played in the bands with Jimi all said the same thing, that he would always be playing his guitar. He'd walk down the street playing the guitar. He would fall asleep playing the guitar. If he was in the back of the cab, he would start playing his guitar. And Jimi's career, from the time he became well-known to the time he died of a drug overdose, was only four years. He'd been trying to break through a few years before that, but somebody that knew him during this entire time, this guy named Billy, says that he, that Jimi put in 25 years' worth of guitar practice into five years. And so when I hear stories like that, I'm like, "Okay, that's a, that's a person I can learn a lot from. Let me go find a book about him," and that's how we arrived, uh, at this, this, with this book in my hand. So I'm gonna jump right into, all of these words are Jimi's words. And so it starts ver- uh, most of, most of the highlights I have and most of the book is, covers, like, his four-year career, how he was thinking about it, and a few years right before he breaks through. Uh, but there is an overview of his early life that I think is extremely important, uh, to start with. And so he says, "I was born in Seattle, Washington, on November 27th, 1942, at the age

2. 3:31 – 5:56

   Early Life in Seattle and the Desire to Be Different

   1. DSDavid Senra3:31

      of zero." That's why the book is called Starting At Zero. "Dad," he talks about his parents. His, his mom is gonna die, uh, r- really early on, unfortunately, at an early age. Says, "Dad was very strict and level-headed, but my mother used to like dressing up and having a good time. She used to drink a lot and didn't take care of herself, but she was a groove, groovy mother. There were family trouble between my mother and father. They used to break up all the time, so I stayed mostly at my aunt's house and my grandmother's." And the reason I'm reading this section to you is because one main theme, uh, I'm gonna tie together, uh, with what we just learned last week, uh, with Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One. Jimi in- liked being different. He intentionally be- uh, was different. Part of the, the, l- what led him to be different is he had a unique upbringing. And he says, "I used to spend a lot of time on her reservation in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is just a really bad scene." Now, this is gonna be interesting 'cause he talks about, uh, the drug abuse, the alcohol abuse that he was seeing as a y- as a young person, and what, what makes me sad about reading this book is the fact that everybody knows he's part of the 27 Club, these, a collection of these young, talented people that, through alcohol and drugs, died decades, decades before they should have, and as a result, the world was robbed of th- they were robbed of their, you know, their, the 40 or 50 years into the future, the, the, the life that, that was taken from them, that they took from themselves, really, is the way to think about that, but the world was also robbed of their gifts. And he s- what's, what's heartbreaking to me is he sees this. He knows this behavior is not beneficial, and as the g- the book progresses and you get closer to his death, it gets more and more hectic, which we'll go into as well. But he sees this as a young person, and he's like, "They're..." You know, he says, "It's a really bad scene. Half of them are down on Skid Row. They're drinking. They're completely out of their minds, and they're not doing anything." And yet he was unable to learn from that experience and realize, "Hey, I should stay away from drugs and alcohol." So then he goes back to, uh, th- the influence that his grandmother had, and that she gave him a little d- uh, Mexican jacket with tassels, "And I wore it to school every day in spite of what people might have thought because I liked it. I liked to be different." And that is another main theme of the book, so I'm gonna talk about a few things here. So back on episode 259, I covered The Autobiography of Bob Dylan. If you have not listened to that episode, highly recommend you listen to it. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. It's one of the greatest books that I've ever read because of j- just his mastery of language. The reason I tie this into this is 'cause

3. 5:56 – 9:32

   Differentiation: Dylan, Peter Thiel and Bourdain's Tokyo Comparison

   1. DSDavid Senra5:56

      Jimi talks about... He mentions a lot of people in the book. He doesn't mention anybody else as much as he mentions Bob Dylan. They knew each other. He says w- like, he was inspired by Bob Dylan. And what Bob and Jimi have in, in, um, in common is they practice all the time, right? J- uh, but also they created music. There was nobody else in their genre that put out the same product as them. So reading from Bob Dylan's autobiography, uh, "Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music scene. I told him, 'Nobody.' I really didn't see myself like anybody." Another quote from Bob Dylan's autobiography, "What really set me apart in those days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the players." That is a goal you and I should be shooting for, isn't it? "There was a lot better musicians around, but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing." And so how does that relate to what you and I have been talking about? Bob Dylan intentionally set out to build... He did not wanna build an undifferentiated commodity business, right? What did Peter Thiel say, tell us last, last week? If you wanna create and capture lasting value, you cannot build an undifferentiated commodity business. He repeats that over and over again. In another part of the book he says, "Monopoly businesses, unique businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors." There's another example on how this applies to Jimi Hendrix. It actually came from, uh, I was, uh, I've told you before, I was a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain when he was alive. I've, even after he, he, uh, died unfortunately, I've watched a bunch of his stuff. I've read his books. Uh, that's episode, I did his biography on episode 219, if you haven't listened to that either. But in one of the episodes where Tony Bourdain goes to Tokyo, he, and this is what makes Tony such a, such a unique, in- uh, interesting person, and why I think a lot of people love the content he, that he produced over the years, is he's in Tokyo, and he compares his experience of going to Tokyo for the first time to what it must have been like if you were alive in, in England in the late 1960s and you encountered Jimi Hendrix. I'm gonna read from the transcript of this episode. And this is Tony speaking. He says, "I often compare the experience of going to Japan for the first time, going to Tokyo for the first time, to what Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend must have gone through." So these are, you know, other people in, in Jimi's industry, per se. And yet you have this guy who is, who he just says from a very early age, "I like to be different. I wanna be different. I do not wanna build..." He's not saying these words, but you and I are gonna imply the meaning for, uh, for us. I do not wanna build a commodity, un- un- undifferentiated commodity business, right? And so he says, "Hey, I went to Tokyo for the first time to s- to what Eric Clapton and Pe- Peter Townshend must have thought, w- uh, who were the reigning guitar gods of England at the time," this is still Tony talking, "what they must have gone through the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town. You hear about it. You go see it. A whole new window opens up into a whole new thing, and you think, 'What does this mean? What do I have left to say? What do I do now?'" And even if Jimi's goal was not to make the most money, right, he intuitively understood Peter Thiel's idea that the monopoly profits are the value, in his case, of just a, a stronger fan base and really just g- uh, getting as many, as many... His goal was getting as many people, uh, like, to feel something in his music, to... He co- he compares it to, like, a religious experience, church a lot. We'll talk about that. Uh, that was his goal. Like, maximize how many people have this experience, have this feeling through the music that I'm producing. But he intuitively understood that the idea that monopoly profits are, come from differentiated businesses only. You and I are talking about Jimi Hendrix 50 years, half a century after he died. That doesn't happen if you're just putting out the same product as everybody else.

4. 9:32 – 12:06

   Mother's Death, Strict Father and Leaving Home

   1. DSDavid Senra9:32

      Okay, so then we go to the early death of his mother, unfortunately. Uh, it says, "His parents were divorced in December of 1950. Jimi and his younger brother, uh, remained with their father." Why is that? Jimi saw his mother for the last time in January of 1958. She died the following month. This is Jimi talking. "There's a dream I had when I was real little about my mother being carried away on these camels. It was a big caravan, and you could see the shadows of the leaf patterns across her face. You know how the sun shines through a tree? Well, there were these green and yellow shadows." See, what they were talking about, it's like he's very, speaks very rhythmically, almost poetically. You're gonna see the same thing if you've read the Bob Dylan, uh, autobiography as well. And she's saying to me, "Well, I..." He's talk- still talking about the dream. Think about this. "Well, I won't be seeing you s- too much anymore, you know. So I'll see you. About two years after that, she died. I will always remember that one. I never did forget. There are some dreams that you never forget." And then he talks about how strict, uh, h- and reli- like, he was, he was raised in, like, a strict and religious upbringing, and he wanted to rebel from that. He wanted to be different. He did not wanna fit in. "Mostly my dad took care of me. He was religious. He taught me that I must respect my elders and that I couldn't speak unless I was spoken to first by a grown-up. So I've always been very quiet, but I saw a lot of things. A fish," this is something, a lesson from his dad. "A fish wouldn't get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut." And so it does not sound like an environment that Jimi wanted to be in. And you know that through his actions, 'cause later on, once he leaves Seattle, he doesn't wind up... He winds up having, like, a, a half-sister. Uh, he doesn't come back home for, like, seven years, and his half-sister's, like, six years old the first time he meets her. And I don't think he ever goes back to Seattle after that. So you, you can read through his actions whether, you know, what he thought of his home life. Uh, Jimi dr- uh, not that he didn't, you know, love his dad. He, there's a lot of letters. A lot of the book is letters he wrote to his dad, but, you know, he, he chose not to, to visit and stay in his hometown. Jimi dropped out of high school at the age of 17. "Lots of kids have it tough. Jesus, I couldn't stand it at home. I ran away a couple times because I was so miserable. I don't think my dad ever thought I was going to make it. I was the kid who didn't do the right thing." And so his life changes, just like when Bob Dylan has that almost religious experience when he hears the, the words of Woody Guthrie, just like Jeff Bezos r- ran around with Sam Walton's book and gave it, and had, gave highlighted copies to all the people in Amazon at the very beginning, just like, just like Steve Jobs talked about visiting Edwin Land was like a shrine. We see that happening again. In this case, it's this guy named Muddy Waters who changes Jimi's life forever. Listen

5. 12:06 – 16:08

   Self-Taught Guitar and the Scarcity of Information

   1. DSDavid Senra12:06

      to how he describes this. This is wild. The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his records when I was a little boy, and it scared me to death. That's a crazy response, right? Wow, what is this all about? And so he just starts playing a bunch of different instruments. My first instrument was a harmonica. Next, it was a violin. I always dug string instruments, and I liked the piano, but I wanted something I could take home or anywhere, and I couldn't take home a piano. So think about that, something that he can always... travels with him, he ca- carries it all the time, that's gonna fu- fuel his practice habits. You know, sitting there waiting for the plane to, like, take off, I'm playing the guitar. I'm in bed playing the guitar. I'm walking down the street to get coffee, I'm playing the guitar. And so he says, "So then I started digging guitar," so he could take it everywhere. One night, my dad's friend was stoned, and he told me... or excuse me, he sold me his guitar for $5. I was about 14 or 15 when I started playing. I learned all the riffs I could. He's, uh, completely self-taught. Completely self-taught. How many entrepreneurs have you and I sp- talked about? About, like, the pow- like, if you take a, a, an ambitious, driven, intelligent person, especially today, imagine how hard it was to get information. And we know this. Again, I'm gonna tie down the, tie back to the Bob Dylan, um, to the Bob Dylan podcast 'cause it was so, uh, just so impactful on me. If you listen to it, I almost, like... I might have even started crying on that podcast 'cause I was having, like, a religious experience while I was reading it. I was in, um, I think it's called the Central Library in Austin, Texas, visiting family. Um, and I'd go there every day and read that book, and I'm surrounded by quotes of how impactful reading and, and, and books, the technology of, you know, books have been to the human species. And I'm going through that exact same experience while I'm reading about Bob Dylan, who's going through that exact same experience in New York, trying to make it, and going through his friend's library and just reading biography after biography after biography. One thing Bob talks about is just how difficult it was for him to get access to other music. He'd had, he'd have to go to, like, a record store, and they'd let you hang out there all day, but you're supposed to, like, sample the music before you buy it. And he would just sit in the booth all day. He'd make friends, and then go through their entire, like, go to their house and go through their entire record collection. Uh, just a complete sponge of information. Again, he's applying that to music. Other people apply it to building businesses. Jimi's doing the exact same thing, but he's doing it in an environment where it's just information. Like, there is a scarcity of information, where you and I have the exact opposite problem right now. It's just an abundance. And so you could take some driven, intelligent person, and you give him access to the internet, you give him access to all the world's knowledge through all the books and whatever he want. It's like you, that, that person is going to be unstoppable. And you know this because you see that same personality type throughout history, and what they would do when it was so hard to get the information. What they would go, the, the, the lengths they'd go through to get it is just remarkable. So he says, "I learned all the riffs I could. I never had any lessons. I learned guitar from records and the radio. I loved my music, man." Love, soul in the game, church, religion. These are the main themes when I... Yeah, like, I'm gonna compare it. I think I have notes later on in the book. I, I've said this to you before. It's just like if you go back and actually read, you know, the longest single book that I've ever read for the podcast was a biography on Enzo Ferrari. I think it's, like, episode 98 or 99, something like that. It's, like, 1,000 pages. And Enzo Ferrari described his product, which are cars, the way you describe your lover. That's how Jimi thinks about his music. He loves it. Uh, so he says, "I love my music, man." That's the first time. I'm still really early in the book. We're in trouble 'cause I got a bunch of highlights. He's gonna repeat that over and over again. Uh, you see, I wasn't ever interested in other things, just music. I was trying to play, like, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. I was trying... This, I, I didn't even see this highlight from what I was just saying to you before, but this is exactly the point I was trying to make. I was trying to learn everything and anything. Now, keep in mind, this guy is going to eventually play in front of, he's gonna have number one records, gonna be one of the most famous people in the world. He's gonna play in front of 500,000 people. What is his first gig? My first gig was at an armory, which is a National

6. 16:08 – 18:39

   "Just Keep On": Belief Before Ability

   1. DSDavid Senra16:08

      Guard place, and we earned 35 cents apiece and three hamburgers. That's incredible. It was, I think Bob Dylan was, there was a similar story of Bob Dylan, uh, where he was playing at, at an armory too. [laughs] And I don't think he was making much money. Uh, so then this is, uh, Jimi talking about this. It was so hard for me at first. I knew about three songs, and when it's, when it was time for us to play on stage, I was all shaky. You get so very discouraged. You hear different bands playing around you in the gar- guitar players always seem like he's so much better than you are. And this is so important. I put a gigantic exclamation point on this paragraph. Most people give up at this point, but it's best not to. Just keep on. Just keep on. Sometimes you're going to be so frustrated that you'll hate the guitar, but all this is just part of learning. I'm gonna read that again. Just keep on. Th- th- uh, most people give up at this point, but it's best not to. Just keep on. Just keep on. Sometimes you're gonna be so frustrated you hate the guitar, but all of this is just part of learning. If you stick with it, you are going to be rewarded. If you're very stubborn, you can make it. And imagine the self-confidence. M- like, this is not a cocky person. In fact, later in the book, which, which, which you find, uh, most interesting is he's got a quote on how he deals with everybody suddenly telling him, "Hey, you're the best guitarist in the world. You're the best. You're the best." And he says, "I don't consider myself to be the best, and I don't like compliments. They distract me." His whole thing is like, "I just wanna play a guitar. I wanna get paid." Like, obviously, I wanna make money, but if I can just play the guitar as a living for the rest of my life, I will be happy. But we see an insight into his mindset when he's playing gigs for 35 cents and three hamburgers. Belief comes before ability. When you talk to normal people, right? Not people, non-founder mentality people that maybe have a hard time understanding how entrepreneurs think, they think it's the reverse. They think you're able to do something, and then you have, now you believe you can do it because you just proved you could do it. It's like, no, no, no. There is no reason on Earth that Jimi believed what he's about to tell us he believed when he's playing gigs for 35 cents and three hamburgers. I had very strange feelings that I was here for something, and I was going to get a chance to be heard. I got the g- guitar together because that was all I had. Oh, Daddy, one of these days I'm gonna be big and famous. I'm gonna make it, man. I think at that point he's a 17-year-old high sc- broke high school dropout. Think about that. That's incredible. And now n- as the future's, uh, the future, what's gonna take place in the future of, uh, your life and my life is unpredictable.

7. 18:39 – 23:44

   Army Service and Homeless Years in the South

   1. DSDavid Senra18:39

      So he's like, "I'm gonna make it," but first he's gonna get arrested, and then he's gonna have to go serve in the Army. So it says, "Jimi was arrested for riding a stolen car. He was given a two-year suspended sentence after the public defender told the judge that Jimi was going to enlist in the Armed Forces." This is 1961. He says, "I was 18 and I didn't have a cent in my pocket." So then this part of the book is a lot of the letters that Jimi is writing home to his dad while he's serving in the Armed Forces, and he talks about, like, the, the, the, the intense training, how difficult it was, how a lot of people are quitting. And I just, I'm just gonna skip over a bunch of that. I want to just pull out one line here because it gives you an insight what he just told us. He's like, "Man, this is the point where a lot, a lot of people quit. I'm telling you, don't quit. Keep going. It's part of the learning process. You're gonna be rewarded if you don't quit." You and I talk about this over and over again. Time carries most of the weight. What does Jimi say here? "I made up..." He's talking about all these people dropping out, all these people crying next to him during, uh, all the, the, the training he's doing in the military. He says, "I made up my mind that whatever happens, I'm not quitting." And what was he doing when he was, when he had any downtime in the Arny, Army, right? He says, "In the Army, I'd started to play guitar very seriously, so I thought all I can do is try to earn money playing guitar." That is his, uh, he has one goal. It's like, "I just wanna earn enough money so I can play guitar." There's no way he could have predicted when he was at this point in his life that he's gonna be one of the most famous, uh, you know, some people say he's the greatest guitar player of all time, whatever the case is. Like, but he's no doubt one of the most famous guitar players to ever live. So he winds up, like, breaking his ankle, and I think he either hurt his back or he, like, he faked a back injury to get out of, uh, the Army. And so now he's completely broke. He's homeless. This is, this is Bob Dylan all over again, right? Same story here. Completely broke, homeless, just doing any kind of gig that he could possibly do. And so we're gonna see another giant exclamation point on this paragraph. "I went down south. I played in cafes, clubs, and on the streets. It was pretty tough at first. I lived in very miserable circumstances. I slept where I could, and when I needed to eat, I had to steal it. I started a group called The King Kasuals with a fellow named Billy Cox, who played funky funky bass." Billy's that guy I quoted earlier that said Jimi put in 25 years of guitar practice into five years. And so now he's traveling all over the South. Again, he is homeless. That is not an exaggeration. He goes, "I went to Nashville. I lived in a big housing estate that they were building." So in a con- th- like, you know, you travel in the neighborhood you live in or whatever, there's a house that's under construction. Well, you're not supposed [chuckles] no one's supposed to be in there. You're gonna find Jimi Hendrix sleeping in there in the 1960s. "They hadn't put in the floor yet, and there was no roof. We, so we had to sleep under the stars." This was wild. "We used to go downtown to watch the race riots." So he talks about, uh, in the background of this, this book, obviously, is all the, this is 1960s America. It's crazy. Even though he blows up, he gets really famous in England first, actually. Uh, "We would take a bis- a picnic basket because they wouldn't serve us in the restaurants." So obviously, being African American in the South, couldn't even go into a lot of the restaurants, unfortunately. Uh, "One group would stand on one side of the street and the rest on the other. They'd shout names and talk t- about each other's mothers, and every once in a while, they would stab each other. That would go on for a couple hours, and then we'd go to the same club, and we would get stoned." And so people were like, "Why aren't you involved in all this?" And he says, "I had more important things to do, like playing guitar." So we see this singular focus. He doesn't like, obviously, agree with what's going on, but he's like, "I'm only focused on what I can actually control, and it's gonna be playing the guitar. I want to make money playing the guitar." And he felt it was beneficial to be where he was at this time because so many guitar players were in Nashville. He says, "In Nashville, everybody knows how to play guitar. This is where I really learned how to play." And so he's gonna list a bunch of people that when he's not playing, he's studying the people that came before him that, that created great work that he admired to see if there's ideas. He names them Elmore James, Ho- Ho- Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters again, Robert Johnson, Albert King, Albert Collins. It's, you see this with, with Bob Dylan. You, I mean, you really see it with every entrepreneur, but specifically Bob Dylan was doing the exact same thing. "Most of the guitarists come from the South. Down south at some funky club, one cat there starving to death might be the best guitar player you ever heard, and you might not even know his name. I started traveling all around, playing around the South. It was one of the har- it was one of the hardest audiences. Guys must play really good because for these people you can't play less." And so he becomes famous later in life for playing guitar with his teeth. There's videos on YouTube of this. I don't even understand how that's possible. But he learned that idea, you know, a decade before playing these gigs. He says, "The idea of playing guitar with my teeth came to me in a town in Tennessee. Down there, you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot. There's a trail of broken teeth all over the stage. I traveled all over the States playing in different groups. Oh, God, I can't even remember all their names. Bad pay, lousy living, and getting burned. That was those days." And so what he means by getting burned is that a lot of the promoters would fail to pay you, or they'd say, "Hey, we're gonna pay you, you know, 15 bucks for this gig," and he'd get, like, two bucks or no money at all. And so I spent a lot of time in this book, or in, in this part of his life, in this part of the book as well, because there's note after note after note on, on these next few pages. It's like,

8. 23:44 – 28:16

   How Bad Do You Want It: Backup Gigs and Little Richard

   1. DSDavid Senra23:44

      how bad do you want it? You could say that you want X to happen in your life. Jimi did everything he possibly c- uh, could to allow, to, like, prepare himself to have a lucky break. "I lived in very miserable circumstances. Sleeping among the garbage cans between all the tenements was hell. Rats would run across your chest at night. I ate orange peel and tomato paste. People would say, 'If you don't get a job, you're just gonna starve to death,' but I didn't want to take a job outside of music. Then one of the Isley Brothers," so this, this is one first big break. Isley Brothers are obviously well-known musicians. "Heard me playing at a club and said he had a job open." And so the very beginning for he's got a few years before he makes it on his own where he's gotta play backup to more famous people. And in that case, he's told what to do and what to play. He's like, I, there's no p- no part of my personality. Eventually he's just like, "I can't do this anymore. I have to... I have something inside of me that the world has to s- that has to get out. I want the world to see." And so he, he gets to play. He's making a little bit of money, but he's still homeless. "I had to sleep in the clubs where we were playing, and there were a lot of cockroaches and rats. Those bastard animals were all over you during the night." But as a result of going on tour and being around people that were already successful in the music business, J- uh, the, I, I referenced, uh, the autobiography of Jay-Z at the very beginning. He d- he said the exact same thing. He learned so much by other rappers or other people in the music industry just by being around them. Some of them gave them opportunity to go on tour, and so he obviously would try to, to repay that, um, once he got famous and successful to, to people up and com- uh, to more people up and coming. But we see this in Jimi's life, too. After a couple months, there was a soul package coming into town with Sam Cooke, Solomon Burke, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, B.B. King. He's just listing name after name, so I think you get the point. And he says, "I got a little job, uh, playing in, in their backup band. I learned an awful lot of guitar picking behind all those names every night. I then met Little Richard." So Little Richard winds up being a bastard to him. "I met Little Richard, so I started playing with him for a while. He wouldn't let me wear frilly shirts on stage." So you know, uh, maybe you don't know this, but if you Google Jimi Hendrix and you look at pictures of him, you're gonna see him dressed [laughs] as only Jimi Hendrix would dress. So that was really important to him. Goes back to that, that, um, that memory he has from childhood. You know, his grandmother giving him, you know, this, some Native American clothes or some, some clothes made in Mexico, and he's wearing it in Seattle, Washington, and people are like, "What the hell's wrong with you, kid?" And he just loved to stay out or stand out. It says Little, Little Richard said, "Brothers, we've gotta have a meeting. I am Little Richard, and I am the king of rock and rhythm, and I'm the only one who's gonna look pretty on stage." So he's like, "Jimi, you cannot look pretty on stage." "He had another meeting over my hairstyle." Imagine working for somebody like this. Come on, man. "He had another meeting over my hairstyle. I said I wasn't gonna cut my hair for nobody. 'That'll be a $5 fine for you,' Little Richard said. If one, if our shoelaces were two different types, we'd get fined $5. Everybody on that tour was brainwashed." And so then he, he quits the bra- band, but he doesn't have anything to fall back on. And all he has f- to fall back on is a wish sandwich. This is what he says. "I had nothing but a wish sandwich, two pieces of bread wishing I had some meat between." Moving a few pages ahead, we see this theme. How bad do you want it? It go, it continues on and on and on, and it comes from this idea. He's like, "I don't wanna play backup on somebody else's team. I have my own ideas that I have to bring to life, and I'm willing to sacrifice my comfort to do so." So he's writing a letter home. "I just want you, to let you know that I'm still here in New York trying to make it. Although I didn't, although I don't eat every day, everything's going all right for me. I still have my guitar, and as long as I have that, no fool can keep me from living." And he's trying to put things into perspective. He says, "It could be worse than this, but I'm gonna keep hustling and scuffling until I get things to happening like they're supposed to be." There's that r- that relentless self-belief, right? Belief comes before ability. He's homeless. He's not eating every day. And he's like, "That's fine. I'm just gonna... It could be worse. I'm gonna keep hustling, and things will be how they're supposed to be." And so he talks about, now he's telling us, like, "Why'd you quit? You had a gig. Like you, you were getting paid. You may have to deal with this, you know, this jerk or whatever." And he says, "I just got tired, man. I can't stand it anymore. I can't tell you the number of times it hurt me to play the same notes, the same song. It was just kind of a shadowy... I was just kind of a shadowy fingor- figure up there, out of sight of the real meaning. I wanted my own scene, making my own music. I had these ideas and sounds in my brain. So I just went down to the Village," this is in Manhattan, "and started playing like I wanted." That's exactly where Bob Dylan went. And we see that here because

9. 28:16 – 32:19

   Greenwich Village, Dylan, and the Break in England

   1. DSDavid Senra28:16

      this is the first mention of Bob Dylan, first of many times. He's gonna talk about Bob Dylan throughout the entire book. "When I was down in the Village, Bob Dylan was also starving down there. I saw him one time. Both of us were stoned out of our minds. We were both stoned and just hung around laughing. Yeah, we just laughed." And then he knew like everybody else knew, it's like, oh, this, this cat is different. Like Bob Dylan is on his own. What did Bob Dylan say? He's like, "Listen, there's a lot of other musicians that may have been better than me, but no one was doing what I was doing." And Bob Dylan was building an undifferentiated career, right? "I used to get bored so quickly by anybody and everything. That's why I went towards Dylan, because he offered me something completely new. He used to have a pad with him all the time to put down what he saw around him." And so Jimi uses that idea later on where it's just like, "Where do your songs come from?" He's like, "It comes from everything I experience. Like the world is my classroom. I just write down the stuff I see, and then over time, that stuff turns into songs." And so this is where he gets his m- his, uh, biggest break. He gets invited to go play in England. He says, "My big slice of luck came when, uh, this little English friend, uh, persuaded some guy named Chas Chandler," who was a bass player of this, this successful group called The Animals, "uh, to come down and see where, where we were gigging and give me an ear." So that's his way of saying, "Hey," my friend told him, "Come down and watch this Jimi guy." Chas asked if I would come over to England and start a group there. And then listen to how Jimi makes his decision. "I'd never been to England before. I said I might as well go because that's the way I live my life." So he gets to England, writes his dad, "I'm in England, Dad. I met some people. They're gonna make me a big star." This is where his career goes parabolic. Is that... I think that's the right word. Just completely a straight line all the way up. Uh, so he says, "We don't want to be classed in any category. My music isn't pop, it's me. We're trying to create our own personal sound." So then he talks about, again, I wrote this on this page as well, Bob Dylan, Peter Thiel, unique product. [laughs] The, the English people hear Jimi and they're like, "What the hell is this?" And so he says, "The first time we played there, they sat open-mouthed and didn't know how to accept us, but they still listened. The club managers think that we were in a Bob, Bob..." This is so important too, man, why you can't listen. How many times have you and I talked about critics don't know shit, right? And the reason I use terminology like that so it sticks in your brain is like, it doesn't matter whether you're good or you're bad, that's, that's irrelevant. You're going to be-- If you're doing anything, you're going to be criticized. And in story after story after story in these biographies, hundreds of them now, we're almost up to 300, right? You see this over and over again. And all that matters is not the people that don't like what you're doing, just focus on the customers that love what you're doing, or they get value out of what you're doing, or that find your work solve some kind of problem for them. That's the only-- I love, um, what, uh, the way Jeff puts this, Jeff Bezos puts this in the most s- like, the, the most, like, uh, I guess the least words possible. I'm saying most, I mean the least words possible. "Obsess over customers." That's it. And we see this with Jimi, where it's like the club owners and the critics, they don't like us, but guess who loves us? The listeners. That's all that matters. The club managers thought we were an abomination, but the public thinks it's awesome, meaning the, the work we're doing is awesome. And so then he starts meeting other super famous people. He says, "The Beatles used to come and see me sometimes. The Beatles and The Stones are all such beautiful cats off record, but it's a family thing that sometimes it all begins to sound alike." Sometime- Remember, st- the very first page or I think the second page of the book is, "I like to be different." Jimi uses that theme throughout his entire life, uh, that sometimes it all begins to sound alike. Sometimes you don't wanna be part of the family. "I believe soon all the English records will all sound alike, just like Motown all sounds alike. That's nice in a way, but what happens if you have your own thing going?" And so this difference, going back to what Tony Bourdain said, right? What must, what, what must have they thought the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town? You hear about it, you go see it, a whole new window opens up to this whole new thing, and you think, "What does this mean? What do I have left to say? What do I do now?" And as a result, if you're doing that, right, you're getting people's attention. There's gonna be people that hate it, but people that love it, and this is the end result. "I don't know how this happened so suddenly, but our records began to sell at an incredible rate. We never thought it would be this big." And

10. 32:19 – 37:23

    Gratitude, Building for Yourself and Munger's Anti-Model

    1. DSDavid Senra32:19

       so that's great. He's getting to play, his records are selling, he's making money, but there's also headaches. Uh, you know, you, you-- Now he becomes world famous. We're gonna talk a lit- later on about how he would isolate, self-isolate in hotel rooms, just like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant talk about in their biographies. There's people trying to, like, steal your sound. Uh, you're gonna get sued. But what I liked, you know, I'm gonna skip over a lot of that 'cause I, I liked his perspective. This is Jimi Hendrix on gratitude. Jimi, if you think about it, Jimi found what he loved to do. You and I just spent how many weeks going over Paul Graham's essays, right? Uh, I did three separate podcasts on them, and one thing that sticks out in Paul Graham's essays is, like, really trying to help you think through, like, how do you find work that you actually love? And Paul says a line in that, those, those essays that's just fantastic. He's like, you know, this is obvious. You know it's hard because you're talking about out of billions of people that live, a few hundred thousand actually achieve that goal, finding work that they love to do. Jimi was one of those people. And so his whole point is just like, "I don't give a damn, so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I wanna play. That's enough for me. I consider ourselves to be some of the luckiest cats alive because we're playing just what we wanna play, and people seem to like that." You know how hard it is to-- And, you know, this is still, like, maybe a year into, two years into massive success. That sense of gratitude has gotta be unbelievably difficult and, you know, counter to human nature to maintain that sense of gratitude as your success increases. And you see this as, like, people get richer and richer, and it's like, "Okay, yeah, I got, maybe I have $100 million now," or whatever it is, "but I gotta get to a billion," or, "Now I got to a billion, now I gotta get to two billion." And, you know, I, I think, like, uh, Bill Walsh's perspective on this was like the score takes care of itself as long... Like, if you make that much money, that's fantastic, but you've lost the, the thread somewhere in life if you start out just wanting to start a business, get successful, build a business people love, you get wealthy as a result of that, which is, which is, you know, h- as it should be. But then you, you're somehow discontent or unhappy because there's not some kinda number. It's just like, no, let's center. It's like I get to choo- I get to build my own business, build my own world. I get to choose who I spend my time with. I have complete autonomy and control. You know how rare that is in life? And in Jimi's case, it's just like, I just wanted to get paid to, to play the guitar, and now I've, I've overshot that goal so much that, you know, I'm building, making millions and millions of dollars. He says later in the book, he's like, "I could just buy... If I really wanted to, I'd just buy a, a house in Beverly Hills and chill and do nothing." But he's like, "I don't wanna do that. I wanna continue-- What did I start out as? Like, I started just wanting to be able to play the guitar and get paid for it, so I'm just gonna keep doing that." And I think key of him, like, centering himself on that, a few pages later, he talks and he's like, "What am I do- Like, what am I making?" And this is gonna relate to another thing that Paul Graham said, that you need to build a product that you would use. Uh, it made me think of also with Stephen King when I read his autobiography, what he said. He's like, "I'm the first reader," right? Which means that, yeah, I'm, I'm the writer, but I'm the first reader. If I wrote something and I'm reading it and I don't like it, that means I shouldn't publish that book. Steve Jobs used the same exact idea that Jimi's about to say here. So that's Paul Graham, Stephen King, Steve Jobs. He's like, "Listen, we made the iPod and all the, all the devices we're making 'cause, like, we made it for us." And so Jimi's saying that exact same thing. "Listen, this is self-satisfaction," Jimi says. "We're playing for the audience, but I have to entertain myself too." And that just reminds me that when I get to that section, it's like, man, this is why... And I think you, you learn this from Charlie Munger. If you go and listen to him, he's like, "Listen, like, you gotta just..." The, the, his idea of inversion is just genius in its simplicity. It's like go and identify the, the, the bad things that happen to people, and you'll find-- He talks about a bunch of his friends that he grew up with. I think they were childhood friends, if I remember correctly. And he's like, you know, most, uh, mo- almo- there was like three or four guys, I can't remember the exact number, but it's like, hey, you know, they all had problems with alcohol. Two of them are dead. One of them is, like, you know, bankrupt or, you know, not doing well. So what did Charlie-- He's like, "Well, okay. Well, I'll just not have a, not become an alcoholic." And the reason that's important here is because Jimi didn't learn that lesson, right? So as a m- Like, that attitude where it's like I'm playing f- I have to entertain myself too. I'm building the product that I wanna see. It's like that is part of the key to longevity. And so we just went over the fact that he's doing it, he's building something that he wants to see in the world. He's gra- grateful for the opportunity. These are traits that, that people have that can do the, do great work for decade after decade, which is, you know, our end goal. And yet that's not enough because you can get caught up in, uh, you know, in his case, he was taking pills. He's, he gets caught with heroin. He says it's not his. He swears up and down in the book. He's like, "I don't, I'm scared of needles. I would never inject." Uh, but he did, he, he does talk about, you know, that he had a p- a problem with alcohol. He would get violent with alcohol. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of alcohol in his system, in his system when he also took those pills and unfortunately died. And so I look at Jimi's example, there's a ton of other examples, you know, up and down my family tree. I've talked to you about this before. It's just, you know, uh, pills and alcoholism and cocaine, and I don't have problems with any of that stuff because I take it as an anti-model. It's like that person's an idiot. And what does that idiot do all day? That idiot wakes up and starts drinking. That idiot wakes up, drinks, and takes pills. So I'm

11. 37:23 – 40:25

    Overwork, Fame's Toll and Working Twice as Hard

    1. DSDavid Senra37:23

       just not gonna do that. And I think that's part of one of the gifts that Charlie Munger gives to the world because he tells... He's great with aphorisms, and he's great with stories, and that's how these ideas really get lodged into your brain so then you can use them and, and take them with you. It's just like look at the behavior of people you dislike or you don't respect and do the opposite. So then he talks about the pace, and this is what really start, uh, in my reading of the book, I'm like, man, you gotta, you really should try to optimize for consistency over intensity 'cause this guy really worked himself to death. And I think how tired and mentally f- it also has to be disorienting going from being completely unknown, sleeping in clubs that you're playing in with rats and cockroaches over, uh, crawling over you to f- to three years later, two years later, being one of the most famous people in the world, can't go anywhere. Uh, you know, who knows what, what, um, that, that experience is like. And so that's why you see, uh, Rick Rubin talked about this a lot, where, um, you know, he's worked with, um, a ton of artists and musicians for decade after decade, and he's like, they, they don't know how to deal. They feel the same, they're the same person. Their, the, the external world is treating them completely different, and a lot of people, you know, medicate, and a lot of those people that medicate, they use substances that kill them. He talked about working with Mac Miller, uh, which is the, the rapper who, uh, died of an overdose as well, and I think he was... I don't know if he was 27, but he was in his 20s. And so this is where he's, Jimi's pace and intensity just skyrockets. Um, he says, "We just p- we've played about 10 place, 10 places." The gigs happen, like, every day, too, which is crazy. Uh, "We played just about 10 places here, I guess. I'm not sure because I don't keep up with that. I just play. We're working very, very, very hard now. Once you've made a name for yourself..." This is actually important. "Once you've made a name for yourself, you're all the more determined to keep it up." And so I was listening to a, it might've been in The Defiant Ones documentary on HBO, but it was a, uh, it was either that documentary or an interview with Eminem, right? And he said, you know, he gets in, he had years of struggle. Dr. Dre was already very, very successful, discovers Eminem, and, and completely catapults Eminem's career. And at the very, the, one of the very first things Dr. Dre said to Eminem when they were working on their first album was, "Once you get it, you have to work twice as hard to keep it." And Eminem was smart because he listened to that. Here you have Dr. Dre, right? This guy, I, I, I should see if there's a book on him 'cause, uh, maybe a lot of people don't know, like, his career. Like, Dr. Dre has been in his industry f- for four decades. He starts off selling beats with a beeper. This is decades before there was such a thing as a cell phone, right? He literally sold beats using a beeper. Starts off selling beats with a beeper. 30 years later, sells Beats to Apple for billions. And his advice, "Once you get it, you have to work twice as hard to keep it." Then he goes back to his process. He's like, "Listen, when you're first starting out, you're gonna c- it's normal to copy other people, uh, that are doing the same thing you're doing, but then eventually you take their, their ideas, combine them with yourself. I listen to everybody, but I don't try to copy anybody. If you try to copy them note for note, your mind starts wandering. You sh- therefore, you should dig them and then do your own

12. 40:25 – 46:00

    Freedom, Inner Scorecard and Disappointment with Success

    1. DSDavid Senra40:25

       thing. Music is very serious to me. It is my way of saying what I want to say. I hear sounds, and if I don't get them together, nobody else will." So that's another theme throughout the book. He repeats very, very different variations of this. He's like, "There's something inside of me that has to come out. I have to bring this to the world." And then he does interviews throughout the book, and a lot of the transcripts are, are printed in this book. And it was very interesting that he talks about, like, the importance of... He starts out with, "Hey, I just wanna get paid to play the guitar." And really it's, uh, he's, he's yearning for freedom. This is something you and I have talked about over and over again, the main motivators of entrepreneurs is independence and control. And Jimi says, "Freedom is the key word to this whole thing. Everybody has their own ways. They can do exactly what they want. When it's time for you to die, you've got to do that all by yourself. Nobody is going to help you." And so as I go through this book, or any book rather, I tr- I don't r- I try not to think. It's just, like, all instinct. It's like, okay, that part seems interesting to me. I'm gonna highlight it, and then I'm immediately going to write down what comes to mind, and I can't necessarily explain why two quotes came to mind when I read that. So I'm gonna read that to you again. "Freedom is the key to the whole thing. Everybody has their own ways. They can do exactly what they want. When it's time for you to die, you've gotta do it by yourself. No one's gonna help you." The first quote that, that popped in my mind was from Naval Ravikant, and he says, "The reality is life is a single-player game. You're born alone. You're going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All of your memories are alone. You're gone in three generations, and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It's all single player." And so to me, the way I interpret what, why Naval is saying that is that it's importance of having an inner scorecard as opposed to an outer scorecard. Just do what you feel is right, what you truly believe in your souls what you should be doing as opposed to worrying about, oh, what will this person think or what will that person think? And then the second was a quote from George Lucas' biography, which I covered all the way back on Founders 35. I gotta, I, I'm shocked that I have not reread. I need to re- reread that book 'cause it's one of my favorite books I've ever read. And where Jimi's like, "Hey, everybody has their own ways. They can do exactly what they want." Th- there's a quote in George Lucas' biography that just gives me chills, and it's like He's talking about this way before he was successful. I'm pretty sure he's saying this when he was struggling. And so it says, uh, "It was the importance of self and being able to step out of whatever you're in and move forward rather than being stuck in your little rut," Lucas said in 1971. "People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They're people in cages with open doors." So on the very next page, this jumps out to me. He's asked a question by a reporter. "Why do you carry two dimes in your shoe?" Jimi's, uh, answer, "That was all I had when I landed in this country." "What do you do in your spare time?" "If I'm not working, I rarely leave the flat. Mostly I sit at home playing, uh, records. I don't like having to dress up and go to social parties. Me, I'm just trying to get my music together." Another question, "Has money-making changed you?" "I don't give a damn, so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I wanna play." "Where do your songs come from?" "From the people, from the traffic, from everything out there. The whole world influences me." And then this is one of the first times that he's gonna mention just not being able to handle what's happening to him. Think about this. This guy's becoming so world famous. There's a lot of like, um, not only is the money rolling in, the records are doing well, he's selling out shows. He's talking about all the, like, the women, like, are obviously flocking all over him and everything else, and yet he's like, "Man, like, I'm envious of the people that get to dig ditches." Think about how crazy that is, right? How it's so hard sometimes for us to see things as it's happening to us. Like, you gotta be able to step out of yourself. "This business, music business is so much harder than people think. It's nerve-wracking and mind-bending. The people who dig ditches for a living don't know how lucky they are. We are constantly under pressure, and the workday is 24 hours a day. I often get depressed. I need to slow down." And then he's looking at some of the records. Like, once he cuts a record, it's out there. He can't go back and change it. And, uh, James Dyson talks about this. I think it's in his second autobiography. But he talks about, like, uh, just being-- There's like a co- constant, like some percentage of him, I can't remember what percentage, maybe 10% or 15%, always a little discontent that everything can always be a little better. And we're seeing Jimi say that too. Uh, this is the first time he mentions it, but he mentions it men- many times in the book, that as he goes back and, and looks at his past work, he's always, like, disappointed in himself. "Above all, our records will become better, purely from the point of viewing our, uh, from the view of our recording technique. We have not been happy with a single one." Keep in mind, he's selling tons of them. Everybody loves him, and Jimi's like, "Ah, I'm not-- They're not good enough." Uh, "We're cutting, w- we're now cutting a new record between our tours. There'll be maybe two tracks from the new Bob Dylan album on it." Dylan goes his own way. He is just getting more and more of a songwriter. He mentions Bob Dylan, like I've said, a lot. He's really admired Bob Dylan. And there's also these weird, um, like almost like premonitions of his death. Uh, at the very end of the book, he talks about, like, "I don't think I'm gonna make it to 28." Um, and this is the first example where he's like, "Yeah, Seattle's beautiful, but the next time I see it I'm gonna be in a pine box. Uh, no city I've ever seen is as pretty as Seattle. All the water and the mountains, it's beautiful. But I couldn't live there. You get restless." He, his whole point is like he didn't wanna live anywhere. He just wanted to, like, roam the Earth. "You get restless, and before you know it, you're too old and you haven't seen any of the world. You've gotta get this great big fat old world here." Or excuse me, "You've got this great big fat old world here, so who wants to live in the same place forever? The next time I go to Seattle, it will be in a pine box."

13. 46:00 – 50:21

    Redlining: Exploitative Promoters, Guitar Burning and Electric Church

    1. DSDavid Senra46:00

       I'm gonna go to the next page, and this is redlining life. Main theme here is just slow down. Consistency over intensity. "Tomorrow we end our Italian tour. Then I fly to New York for a day to sign a contract. In four days, four days later, I'll be in Switzerland. Then I'll have a vacation in Spain. We really need one. We are simply overtired. We cannot continue at this pace for this long." And he talks about, again, mentions just how difficult the business is. "They squeeze something until it is completely dry." He will be dead two years later. He brings up the fact that a lot of his promoters and these partners wind up stiffing him, something that, uh, you know, you and I have spent a few weeks talking about. I think Peter Thiel talked about the importance of having, like, co-founders having some kind of prehistory together. Uh, Paul Graham talks about, hey, on the Y Combinator application we ask about the prehistory of co-founders more than any other single thing. Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett, I can't remember which one, says you can't do a good deal with a bad person. And so these people are just chewing Jimi up and spitting him out. They don't really care about him as a person. They only care about what money they can ma- the money they, he can make them. Uh, the m- these promoters think that you're a money-making machine, and they have no faith in you. It's a dog, it's dog-eat-dog world constantly. I can always tell the artificial people from the real music people, the ones who care about the music and what the musicians are doing. The trouble is, in this business, there are so many artificial people. This is a tale as old as time. They see a fast buck, and they keep you at it until you're exhausted, and so is the public, and then they move on to other things. "I am so tired I could drop, but I find the relaxation comes from thinking about music. Nothing else moves me. I hear music in my head all the time." A few pages later, he picks up that same idea. "I get a little deep at times, and I don't talk, but that's because I'm thinking about my music. I've got notes in my mind, so I can't kill them, but I can't kill them by talking. I guess I could do without people. In fact, sometimes I'd rather be alone. I like to think. I can really get lost thinking about my music. But then I think so much I have to get out among people again." A few pages later, more soul in the game. "I care so much about my work. I record stuff I believe is great." So on some of his shows, he would just-- He's really big into improvisation, and so he started having this idea. He's like, "Man, I, I wanna sacrifice..." He, he goes to this, like, church religious thing. He's like, "You have to sacrifice things you love. I love my guitar." So he starts, at the end of shows, starts burning guitars. The problem is he realized that that got so-- Like, the press started talking about it. People would start coming to his shows not for the music, but for the theatrics, and he's like, "Oh, I, I can't do this anymore." And so he's got this idea that you can't prostitute your own thing. And I told you last week that I've been re- uh, reading a lot of my highlights from Andrew Carnegie. I, I'm glad I was doing that at the same time I was reading this book because this made me think of something that Andrew Carnegie said. And he says... This is, this is Andrew Carnegie, you know, speaking, what, maybe 150 years ago, maybe even longer. "The judge within sits in the Supreme Court and can never be cheated." He's talking about himself, like how you view about yourself, right? "Hence the grand rule of life, your own reproach alone do fear. This motto, adopted early, uh, adopted by me early in life, has meant more to me than all sermons I ever heard." And so that's what popped into my mind when I read this paragraph by Jimi Hendrix. "We haven't burned any guitars lately. Those little things were just added on like frosting, but the crowd started to want them more than the music. The more the press would play it up, the more the audience would want it, the more we would shy away from it." Do you see where all of that fits? You can't prostitute your own thing. You can't do that. And then I really like this part because he's saying, you know, the way my music is described, the way other people talk about it, it's like that's not how I feel about it at all. They call it like pop music at the time. And so it says, uh, he's asked the question, "How do you see the future of pop music?" "I don't know. I'm not a critic, and I don't like the word pop." So the follow-up's like, "Okay, well, how, how do you like your music to be described then?" And he says, "We're trying to play real music. We call our music electric church music because it's like a religion to us." And then we see, uh, it goes back to like having a good sense of gratitude, understanding that this is... Like you're d- he's doing things for the right reason. And so at this point, he's at, at the, essentially the apex of his career, and they're- he's asked the question like, "How has success changed you?" And he says, "It depends on what you think is success. I don't consider myself even started yet. I'm always just trying to get better and better."

14. 50:21 – 54:46

    Final Year: Arrest, Breakdown and Death

    1. DSDavid Senra50:21

       This is where he gets arrested trying to get into Canada with, uh... This is a, a year and a half before he dies. Uh, on May 3rd, 1969, Jimi and The Experience arrived in Canada for a performance. Everyone had been warned to take extra care because of Toronto's reputation for strict customs checks. A jar containing packets of heroin and a metal tube with hash resin were found in Jimi's flight bag. And so he's going to eventually get acquitted of that. Um, they said, you know, a fan gave it to him, put them in his bag, and he swears that he, he never used heroin 'cause he's afraid of needles. Th- this is just one of many problems. Towards the end of 1969, numerous problems were building up in Jimi's life. A lawsuit over an old contract, failure to deliver a new album to Warner Brothers for over a year, financial problems due to building his Electric Lady Studios, and pressure from his management to keep on touring. And another note to myself is too much, too fast. And again, if management actually cared about him, it's like you... Clearly, this guy's got too much going on. Taking a year off, six months off, not... Like just stop 'cause that pressure has to be released somehow, and unfortunately, he chose to release it through, you know, drug and alcohol abuse. And so he talks about this. This is a year before he dies. And, uh, well, let me read it to you, and then I'll read the note I left myself. "I don't know what's happening. I'm so exhausted. I have no time for my music. I just wanna relax and think about myself and my music for a while. I wanna bring my guitar, walk on stage, play, and then vanish. I wanna get away from questions and people. I am very tired. Not physically. I'm mentally. I'm mentally tired. My head's in a position now where I have to take a rest, or else I'll completely crack up pretty soon. Nervous breakdowns, I've had three of them since I've been in this business. I can't help but isolate myself from the world. Sometimes I just wanna be left alone." This is what I mentioned earlier. In both their biographies, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan talked about that, like the fame and the pressure and everything wearing so, so much on them that they spend most of their time when they're not practicing and playing, uh, just alone in hotel rooms. And so when I get to this point, it's like this is very shortsighted by, you know, Jimi's team in trying to push him 'cause it's like if you push him, he could break. And to me, it's like the important thing in my life is like I need to avoid anything that interrupts the compounding. It is survival at all costs. And this is where the book gets darker and darker, and you... And it, it's in chronological order as he's giving these, uh, these interviews. And so like this is just one example of that. "We all wanna be respected after we're dead. Who doesn't wanna be remembered in history?" Another, um, interview. This is, this is the year he dies. Uh, "There are certain things that I would like to do, and it's very possible that I will destroy myself in my attempt to achieve these things." And then this is 12 days before he dies. "I'm so tired of everything. I lose myself. I can't play anymore. I've been working very hard for three years. I sacrifice part of my soul every time I play. Direction is the hardest thing t- for me to find now. I can't even try and think about how this life has affected me. Somehow, I must have changed, but I can't know how. The moment I feel I don't have anything more to give musically, that's when I won't be found on this planet. I'm not sure I will live to be 28 years old. The world owes me nothing. I tell you, when I die, I'm gonna have a jam session. It's funny the way people love the dead. You have to die before they think you were worth anything. When I die, just keep on playing the records. The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye." And then on the last page, it says, "London, September 18th. Jimi Hendrix, the American rock star whose passionate, intense guitar playing stirred millions, died here today of unknown causes. He was 27 years old." And that is where I'll leave it. I also, in addition to reading the book, I also rented a documentary that loo- that is very similar to this book. It's called Jimi Hendrix Voodoo Child, and that's available on Apple. It's almost like watching the book. But if you want the full story and the book, if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you wanna use the same app that I use to store all of my highlights for all my books and all of my notes, I use Readwise. They'll give you 60 days free to see if you like the Readwise app as much as I do. readwise.io/founders. That is 280 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.

Episode duration: 54:47