Jimi Hendrix’s Final Interview on September 11, 1970: Listen to the Complete Audio

There’s not much left to say about Jimi Hendrix’s last days. The end­less stream of com­men­tary sur­round­ing his life and death threat­ens to bury the man and his music in music-press fetishiza­tion, urban leg­end, and fawn­ing mythol­o­gy. When I’m able to total­ly tune out the hype, Hendrix’s pol­ished work stands the time-test, and some of the more raw releases—the bootlegs and demos that appear every few years—at least doc­u­ment musi­cal roads not tak­en and pre­serve moments of stun­ning genius, if not ful­ly-real­ized com­po­si­tions.

And Hendrix’s intrigu­ing persona—revealed in casu­al inter­views and conversations—still cap­ti­vates, with his off­hand lyri­cism and frac­tal imag­i­na­tion, qual­i­ties on full dis­play in his final press inter­view, to NME’s Kei­th Altham, on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970, just sev­en days before the artist’s death. (Lis­ten to the YouTube audio above, or Sound­cloud below.) Hen­drix is breezy, con­tem­pla­tive, a lit­tle eva­sive, reveal­ing his own sense of being between things, not sure where he’s head­ed next. As all those late-Hen­drix bootlegs and demos tes­ti­fy, he could have done any­thing and made it work with the right band and a bit more time…

But enough what-ifs. Nobody’s bet­ter on Hen­drix than Hen­drix, so lis­ten to the inter­view. You can find a full tran­script and much more Hen­drix-on-Hen­drix and music-press chat­ter in a recent (and quite inex­pen­sive) Kin­dle pub­li­ca­tion called Jimi Hen­drix: Inter­views and Reviews 1967–71. Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock calls the final inter­view the “most inter­est­ing thing about the book from a his­tor­i­cal stand­point,” and this may be true.

Final­ly, if you don’t make it all the way to the end of the audio, Hen­drix leaves on this vivid and quite fun­ny note:

ALTHAM: Do you feel per­son­al­ly that you have enough mon­ey to live com­fort­ably with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly mak­ing more as a sort of pro­fes­sion­al enter­tain­er?

HENDRIX: Ah, I don’t think so, not the way I’d like to live, because like I want to get up in the morn­ing and just roll over in my bed into an indoor swim­ming pool and then swim to the break­fast table, come up for air and get maybe a drink of orange juice or some­thing like that. Then just flop over from the chair into the swim­ming pool, swim into the bath­room and go on and shave and what­ev­er.

ALTHAM: You don’t want to live just com­fort­ably, you wan­na live lux­u­ri­ous­ly?

HENDRIX: No! Is that lux­u­ri­ous? I was think­ing about a tent, maybe, [laughs] over­hang­ing … over­hang­ing this … a moun­tain stream! [laugh­ter].

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appear­ance, and His Last as a Back­ing Musi­cian (1965)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness.

Ken Robinson Explains How to Escape the Death Valley of American Education

Right now, you can find 1,520 TED Talks com­piled into a neat online spread­sheet. That’s a lot of TED Talks. And the most pop­u­lar one (in case you’re won­der­ing) was deliv­ered by Sir Ken Robin­son in 2006. If you reg­u­lar­ly vis­it our site, then chances are you’re among the 20 mil­lion peo­ple who have viewed Robin­son’s talk on why Schools Kill Cre­ativ­i­ty. There’s also a good chance that you’ll want to watch his new­ly-released TED Talk, How to Escape Edu­ca­tion’s Death Val­ley. Filmed just last month, this talk takes aim at Amer­i­ca’s test-cen­tric edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, a sys­tem that increas­ing­ly treats edu­ca­tion as an indus­tri­al process and bleeds cre­ativ­i­ty and curios­i­ty out of our class­rooms. You get that prob­lem when you put tech­nocrats and politi­cians, not teach­ers, in charge of things. And you’re only going to get more of it (sor­ry to say) as com­put­er sci­en­tists start putting their stamp on Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion­al future.

Fol­low us on Face­bookTwit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Kiss My Ass”

HemingwayFitz

So every­one knows Hem­ing­way was a bruis­er. Some of the best sto­ries of his macho pos­tur­ing involve fel­low writ­ers. There was, of course, that time he and Wal­lace Stevens slugged it out in Key West. I’ve been told Stevens asked for it, drunk­en­ly telling Hemingway’s sis­ter Ursu­la that her broth­er wrote like a lit­tle boy. I don’t know whose ver­sion of the sto­ry this comes from, but by all accounts, Hem­ing­way knocked the bear of a poet down sev­er­al times. The two made up soon after. Then there’s the sto­ry of Hem­ing­way and James Joyce; the diminu­tive Irish writer appar­ent­ly hid behind his pugna­cious friend when trou­ble loomed.

There are many oth­er such yarns, I’m sure, but one I’ve just learned of shows us a much more pas­sive-aggres­sive side of Papa H. As the John F. Kennedy Pres­i­den­tial Library blog informs us, Hem­ing­way once sent F. Scott Fitzger­ald a type­script of A Farewell to Arms. Fitzger­ald sent back ten pages of edits and com­ments, sign­ing off with “A beau­ti­ful book it is!” You can see Hemingway’s first reac­tion above (signed EH). In lat­er drafts, it seems, he took some of Fitzgerald’s advice to heart.

via @matthiasrascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sev­en Tips From Ernest Hem­ing­way on How to Write Fic­tion

F. Scott Fitzger­ald in Drag (1916)

James Joyce in Paris: “Deal With Him, Hem­ing­way!”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low  him @jdmagness

The Poetry of Bruce Lee: Discover the Artistic Life of the Martial Arts Icon

In the final months of his short life, Bruce Lee wrote a per­son­al essay, “In My Own Process” where he said, “Basi­cal­ly, I have always been a mar­tial artist by choice and actor by pro­fes­sion. But, above all, I am hop­ing to actu­al­ize myself to be an artist of life along the way.” If you’re famil­iar with Bruce Lee, you know that he stud­ied phi­los­o­phy at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, and even when he audi­tioned for The Green Hor­net in 1964 (and showed off his amaz­ing kung fu moves), he took pains to explain the phi­los­o­phy under­ly­ing the mar­tial arts.

Lee was­n’t just a philoso­pher. He was also a poet and a trans­la­tor of poet­ry. In the book, Bruce Lee: Artist of Life, John Lit­tle has pub­lished 21 orig­i­nal poems found with­in Lee’s per­son­al archive. The poems, Lit­tle writes, “are, by Amer­i­can stan­dards, rather dark — reflect­ing the deep­er, less exposed recess­es of the human psy­che… Many seem to express a return­ing sen­ti­ment of the fleet­ing nature of life, love and the pas­sion of human long­ing.” Above, you can see Shan­non Lee, the daugh­ter of Bruce Lee, read a poem pub­lished in Lit­tle’s col­lec­tion. It’s called “Boat­ing on Lake Wash­ing­ton.” Imme­di­ate­ly below, she reads “IF” by Rud­yard Kipling, a poem her father loved so much that he had it engraved on a plaque and mount­ed on the wall in his home.

Final­ly, we leave you with Lee’s trans­la­tion of anoth­er favorite poem, “The Frost” by Tzu Yeh. The video fea­tures pieces of his hand­writ­ten trans­la­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee: The Lost TV Inter­view

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

Bruce Lee Plays Ping Pong with Nunchucks

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Henry Miller Talks Writing and the Expat Life with Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Durrell, and Others (1969)

Brook­lynites, be apprised: Big Sur Brook­lyn Bridge, Williams­burg’s week-long cel­e­bra­tion of all things Hen­ry Miller, began yes­ter­day and will run until May 19th. If you can’t make it out there, I sug­gest you instead sit down to watch The World of Hen­ry Miller: Reflec­tions on Writ­ing (part two, part three, part four). Shot in the late six­ties by the doc­u­men­tar­i­an Robert Sny­der, oth­er­wise known for his award-win­ning films on Michelan­ge­lo and the world of insects, the film fol­lows Miller, enter­ing his final decade, as he retraces his steps through the lit­er­ary places he’s known, and has rem­i­nis­cence-inten­sive con­ver­sa­tions with the lit­er­ary peo­ple he’s known, reflect­ing all the while on how both shaped his writ­ing.

Alexan­der Nazaryan’s New York­er post, “Hen­ry Miller, Brook­lyn Hater,” writ­ten for the occa­sion of Big Sur Brook­lyn Bridge, goes into some detail about the Trop­ic of Can­cer author’s loathing for his birth­place. Though he would ulti­mate­ly find a kind of peace in Big Sur, only on the move in the thirties—especially as an expa­tri­ate in France, where he worked for the Chica­go Tri­bune’s Paris edi­tion, and Greece, where he stayed with British nov­el­ist Lawrence Durrell—did his writ­ing take its true shape. Miller him­self tells it that way in Reflec­tions on Writ­ing, to friends like Dur­rell, famed diarist Anaïs Nin, and Lawrence Clark Pow­ell, the UCLA librar­i­an Miller thought “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all that is best in the Amer­i­can tra­di­tion.” Though Sny­der also includes footage of Miller read­ing his work aloud, you can see a bit more in the clip of a Black Spring read­ing just above, and hear half an hour more of the book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Tom Schiller’s 1975 Jour­ney Through Hen­ry Miller’s Bath­room (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Creativity, Nature and Religion in Rare 1957 Audio

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most admired and influ­en­tial archi­tects of the 20th cen­tu­ry. He was a flam­boy­ant, unabashed­ly arro­gant man who viewed him­self from an ear­ly age as a genius. Oth­ers tend­ed to agree. In 1991, The Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects named Wright the great­est Amer­i­can archi­tect of all time.

Wright believed that the adage “form fol­lows func­tion” was some­thing of a mis­state­ment. “Form and func­tion should be one,” he said, “joined in a spir­i­tu­al union.” A sense of spir­i­tu­al union ran all through Wright’s work. He iden­ti­fied God with Nature (which he spelled with a cap­i­tal “N”) and strove to design build­ings that were in har­mo­ny with their nat­ur­al sur­round­ings. “No house should ever be on a hill or on any­thing,” Wright wrote in his 1932 auto­bi­og­ra­phy. “It should be of the hill. Belong­ing to it. Hill and house should live togeth­er each the hap­pi­er for the oth­er.”

Wright spoke about life and the cre­ativ­i­ty of man in mys­ti­cal terms. In this rare record­ing from June 18, 1957, a 90-year-old Wright describes his phi­los­o­phy. “Man is a phase of Nature,” he says, “and only as he is relat­ed to Nature does he mat­ter, does he have any account what­ev­er above the dust.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Gas Sta­tion Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

Falling­wa­ter, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Cre­ations, Ani­mat­ed

The Art of Sylvia Plath: Revisit Her Sketches, Self-Portraits, Drawings & Illustrated Letters

sylvia-plathself-portrait

Sylvia Plath’s poet­ic tal­ent should go unques­tioned, but as Plath fans will know, she first intend­ed to become a visu­al artist, and some of her ear­li­est work—illustrated child­hood let­ters like the adorable dog below—remained hid­den away in the fam­i­ly attic until 1996. Edi­tor Kath­leen Con­nors includ­ed this juve­nil­ia in a 2007 col­lec­tion of Plath’s work enti­tled Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visu­al, which also fea­tures sketch­es, pho­tographs, and portraits—such as the brood­ing 1951 self-por­trait above—that rep­re­sent Plath’s work while an art stu­dent at Smith Col­lege.

Plath-dog

Much of the art-school work is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Plath’s best. While she made the dif­fi­cult deci­sion at age 20 to aban­don aspi­ra­tions for an art career and focus on her writ­ing, Plath con­tin­ued to make visu­al art. For exam­ple, at 23, she pro­duced a con­fi­dent­ly-ren­dered series of pen-and-ink drawings—such as the fish­ing boats below—while she and Ted Hugh­es hon­ey­mooned in Paris and Spain.

sylviaplathdrawings1

The Tele­graph has a gallery of thir­ty of these draw­ings, which were on dis­play at London’s May­or Gallery between Novem­ber and Decem­ber of 2011. Plath’s writ­ing has always been remark­ably visu­al, her deft han­dling of some­times star­tling imagery giv­ing her work so much of its abil­i­ty to seduce, enthrall, and unset­tle. As in her poet­ry, the images of her­self seem to attract the most inter­est. There are oth­er pieces of Plath self-por­trai­ture, but none con­trasts so much with the youth­ful paint­ing above, I think, as the accom­plished pen­cil draw­ing below, with the poet’s fear­less side­long stare and bare shoul­ders express­ing both her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and con­sid­er­able per­son­al and cre­ative pow­er.

sylvia plath self portrait 2

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On 50th Anniver­sary of Sylvia Plath’s Death, Hear Her Read ‘Lady Lazarus’

Sylvia Plath Reads “Dad­dy”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Daft Punk’s New Album, Random Access Memories, Streaming for Free on iTunes for a Limited Time

daft-punk-random-access-memories

A quick heads up: Daft Punk’s fourth album, Ran­dom Access Mem­o­ries, will be released on May 21. But, right now, you can hop over to iTunes and stream it for free on your com­put­er or iPad (for a lim­it­ed time).

To access the stream, sim­ply click this link, tap the “View in iTunes” but­ton, and then click the “Lis­ten Now” but­ton.

If you like what you hear, you can always pre-order the album on iTunes and Ama­zon.

PS If you need iTunes soft­ware, you can down­load it for free here.

Find us on Face­bookTwit­ter and Google Plus and we’ll make it easy to share cul­tur­al media with your friends!  

Carl Jung Explains His Groundbreaking Theories About Psychology in a Rare Interview (1957)

Here’s an extra­or­di­nary film of the great Swiss psy­chol­o­gist Carl Gus­tav Jung speak­ing at length about some of his key con­tri­bu­tions to psy­chol­o­gy. Jung on Film (above) is a 77-minute col­lec­tion of high­lights from four one-hour inter­views Jung gave to psy­chol­o­gist Richard I. Evans of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton in August of 1957. In “Sit­ting Across From Carl Jung,” an arti­cle for the Asso­ci­a­tion of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, Evans explains how the inter­views came about:

I was teach­ing a grad­u­ate sem­i­nar called Approach­es to Per­son­al­i­ty when it seemed like an inter­est­ing idea to have the grad­u­ate stu­dents in the sem­i­nar role-play in front of the class and pre­tend to inter­view the var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ty the­o­rists that I was pre­sent­ing. Carl Jung was one of those the­o­rists, and dur­ing the sem­i­nar, I learned that he had nev­er agreed to an exten­sive record­ed inter­view except for a brief exchange on the BBC. I wrote a let­ter to Dr. Jung to request an inter­view because I believed that filmed inter­views of emi­nent psy­chol­o­gists would encour­age stu­dents to read their work.

Jung, who was 82 years old at the time, agreed to the inter­view and set aside an hour a day over a four-day peri­od. Evans met with Jung in Zurich at the Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, or ETH. In the excerpts above, Jung talks about his ear­ly asso­ci­a­tion with Sig­mund Freud and how he came to dis­agree with Freud’s fix­a­tion on the sex dri­ve as the pri­ma­ry influ­ence in men­tal life. He talks about his the­o­ry of per­son­al­i­ty types and about uni­ver­sal arche­types, includ­ing the ani­ma and ani­mus. He talks about the inter­play between instinct and envi­ron­ment, and about dreams as man­i­fes­ta­tions of the uncon­scious. At one point he stress­es the urgency of under­stand­ing psy­chol­o­gy in a world where man-made threats, like the threat of the hydro­gen bomb, are greater than those posed by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. “The world hangs on a thin thread,” says Jung, “and that is the psy­che of man.”

Note: You can down­load sem­i­nal works by Carl Jung as free audio­books if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audible.com. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Carl Gus­tav Jung Pon­ders Death

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can­not Stand a Mean­ing­less Life’

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938

Watch Isabella Rossellini Embody the Animal Kingdom’s Most Shocking Maternal Instincts in Mammas

Moth­er’s Day can elic­it com­pli­cat­ed emo­tions in the human ani­mal. Not so Moth­er Ham­ster. While you were out to brunch, she was mat­ter-of-fact­ly devour­ing the run­ti­est of her lit­ter. And not because he failed to present her with a bou­quet and flow­ery card. “It’s a good morsel to recoup some of the vit­a­mins and pro­tein that are lost dur­ing child­birth,” she explains with a shrug.

This heart­warm­ing vignette is but one of the rev­e­la­tions in Mam­mas, the lat­est web series from the inquis­i­tive and extreme­ly game Isabel­la Rosselli­ni. Hav­ing embod­ied a vari­ety of insects, arach­nids, and marine life in the sci­ence-based Green Porno and its fol­low-up Seduce Me, the moth­er of two is cur­rent­ly suit­ing up to play some of the Ani­mal King­dom’s most noto­ri­ous moth­ers, from the oppor­tunis­tic Cuck­oo to the self-sac­ri­fic­ing Aus­tralian sub­so­cial crab spi­der (Diaea ergan­dros).

The com­i­cal­ly inven­tive cos­tumes are an added bonus, par­tic­u­lar­ly for any human moth­er (or father) with an aver­sion to dress­ing their ani­mal-lov­ing off­spring in store bought dis­guis­es, come Hal­loween. Catch the com­plete series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wild King­dom: Brought to You by Mutu­al of Oma­ha (and YouTube)

Film­ing a Sprint­ing Chee­tah at 1,200 Frames Per Sec­ond

Rainn Wil­son Talks About Life’s Big Ques­tions in His Web Series Meta­phys­i­cal Milk­shake

Ayun Hal­l­i­day thinks Isabel­la Rosselli­ni is the bee’s knees, espe­cial­ly when her glass legs are filled with beer. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Genius of Brian Eno On Display in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

Four years ago, I expe­ri­enced musi­cal poly­math, rock pro­duc­er, “drift­ing clar­i­fi­er,” and high-tech painter Bri­an Eno’s gen­er­a­tive-art instal­la­tion 77 Mil­lion Paint­ings in Long Beach. I also saw him give an enter­tain­ing talk there on his obser­va­tions of and ideas about sound, images, and cul­ture. This year, he brought the show to New York City, giv­ing it the largest stag­ing yet, and then sat down for an equal­ly enter­tain­ing 80-minute Q&A for the Red Bull Music Acad­e­my. Per­haps it sounds a lit­tle odd that a cre­ator who has based the past few decades of recent solo work on qui­etude, reflec­tion, and men­tal recep­tive­ness would appear at such length in a forum spon­sored by an ener­gy drink, but hey, we live in inter­est­ing times, and Eno has inter­est­ing thoughts, no mat­ter where he voic­es them.

Sit­ting back on a sofa (whose side table comes stocked with cans of Red Bull), Eno dis­cuss­es com­pos­ing music for hos­pi­tals after meet­ing a great many chil­dren born to his 1975 album Dis­creet Music; the ama­teur cho­rus he runs and with whom he some­times invites famous singer friends to sit in; “sce­nius,” or the spe­cial kind of genius that emerges when large num­bers of enthu­si­asts cohere into a scene; the DJ as cul­tur­al “lubri­cant”; his love of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian paint­ing; what makes pop­u­lar music, from Abba to Bey­on­cé, sound pop­u­lar; the impor­tance of dead­lines; and his new iPad app Scape, which, to his mind, should soon dis­place the tire­some con­ven­tions of Hol­ly­wood film scor­ing entire­ly. While this pro­vides a stim­u­lat­ing intro­duc­tion to Eno the intel­lec­tu­al, long­time fans will want to catch up with his lat­est thoughts on sev­er­al favorite sub­jects, such as the val­ue of sur­ren­der in not just expe­ri­enc­ing but cre­at­ing art, and the coun­ter­in­tu­itive bursts of cre­ativ­i­ty that come when work­ing with few­er options, not more.

H/T goes to Heather

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Day of Light: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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