Dostoyevsky Got a Reprieve from the Czar’s Firing Squad and Then Saved Charles Bukowski’s Life

in Literature, Poetry | November 25th, 2014

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured Charles Bukowski’s first-ever record­ed read­ings. Per­haps you found them, in their way, inspi­ra­tional, but for me the feel­ing of inspi­ra­tion always leads to a ques­tion — who inspired my inspir­er? In the case of Bukows­ki, the poet has, in his work, clear­ly named one of his main inspi­ra­tions: the work of 19th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian nov­el­ist Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky. The author of Crime and Pun­ish­ment might at first seem to have lit­tle in com­mon with the author of Ham on Rye, but often the most res­o­nant inspi­ra­tions don’t involve much direct resem­blance. And as Bukows­ki remem­bers in the poem he gave Dos­toyevsky’s name (albeit in one of the oth­er stan­dard spellings), his ances­tor in the world of let­ters did more than just get him writ­ing:

Dos­to­evsky

against the wall, the fir­ing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
sup­pose they had shot Dos­to­evsky?
before he wrote all that?
I sup­pose it would­n’t have
mat­tered
not direct­ly.
there are bil­lions of peo­ple who have
nev­er read him and nev­er
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the fac­to­ries,
past the whores,
lift­ed me high through the night
and put me down
in a bet­ter
place.
even while in the bar
drink­ing with the oth­er
dere­licts,
I was glad they gave Dos­to­evsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look direct­ly at those
ran­cid faces
in my world,
death point­ing its fin­ger,
I held fast,
an immac­u­late drunk
shar­ing the stink­ing dark with
my
broth­ers.

You can also lis­ten to “Dos­to­evsky” read aloud at the top of the post. Those with a work­ing knowl­edge of its name­sake’s life might think back to Dos­toyevsky’s time in prison, recount­ed briefly in the “Siber­ian exile (1849–1854)” sec­tion of his Wikipedia page. Arrest­ed on trumped-up charges of con­spir­a­cy for sim­ply read­ing the wrong books, he was sen­tenced to “eight years of exile with hard labour at a kator­ga prison camp in Omsk, Siberia, fol­lowed by a term of com­pul­so­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice.” Today, any of us can read Bukowski’s rough-and-tum­ble verse to get us through hard times; we can also, as Bukows­ki did, read Dos­toyevsky (see our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks). But Dos­toyevsky him­self, con­sid­ered par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous by his jail­ers, was “per­mit­ted to read noth­ing but his New Tes­ta­ment.” Hard times indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 130 Min­utes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Record­ed Read­ings (1968)

A Read­ing of Charles Bukowski’s First Pub­lished Sto­ry, “After­math of a Lengthy Rejec­tion Slip” (1944)

So You Want to Be a Writer?: Charles Bukows­ki Explains the Dos & Don’ts

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

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

Tim Burton Directs Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1986)

in Film, Television | November 25th, 2014

How do you fol­low up on mak­ing a children’s movie clas­sic? If you’re Tim Bur­ton, you spin a tale of sex, mur­der and con­cep­tu­al art.

On the heels of his fea­ture debut Pee-Wee’s Big Adven­ture, Tim Bur­ton adapt­ed Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” (1944) for an episode of the ‘80s reboot of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents. In Bradbury’s sto­ry, a fail­ing farmer buys a jar with a curi­ous thing float­ing in it. It is described as “one of those pale things drift­ing in alco­hol plas­ma … with its peeled, dead eyes star­ing out at you and nev­er see­ing you.” This thing, how­ev­er, has a pecu­liar charis­ma. Peo­ple come for miles to gawk at it, strange­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by its uncan­ny charm. Well, almost every­one. The farmer’s cheat­ing wife, how­ev­er, loathes it to the pit of her mar­row and when she tries to get rid of it, things take a vio­lent turn.

Bur­ton gives the sto­ry a decid­ed­ly Rea­gan-era twist. Instead of being a down-and-out farmer, Knoll (played by Grif­fin Dunne) is a fad­ing star of the New York art scene. The episode opens with a crit­ic sav­aging Knoll’s new open­ing, which is filled with large, pre­pos­ter­ous con­cep­tu­al pieces. The artist flees the show and his belit­tling harpy of a wife in favor of the local junk­yard. There, he pries the tit­u­lar jar from the trunk of a 1938 Mer­cedes. Float­ing inside is what looks like a Dr. Seuss crea­ture drown in Windex. Knoll is both fas­ci­nat­ed and repulsed by it. So, nat­u­ral­ly, he places it at the cen­ter of his show. The results are mixed. Sure, Knoll starts to sell art again but his wife also starts to get stab­by with a kitchen knife.

The episode is deli­cious fun. From the eye-pop­ping col­or palette to the crisp, graph­ic direc­tion to the painful­ly ‘80s hair­styles, this work feels very much a part of the same world as Burton’s next movie, Beetle­juice. In fact, com­pos­er Dan­ny Elf­man and screen­writ­ers Michael McDow­ell and Lar­ry Wil­son worked on both. You can watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films

Vin­cent, Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Read Online Key Documents from the Ferguson Grand Jury: Witness Testimony, Forensic Evidence & More

in Current Affairs | November 24th, 2014

Tonight, a St. Louis Coun­ty grand jury decid­ed not to bring crim­i­nal charges against Dar­ren Wil­son, the white police offi­cer who shot to death Michael Brown, an unarmed African-Amer­i­can teenag­er, in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri this past sum­mer. Fol­low­ing the con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion, St. Louis Pub­lic Radio start­ed to upload key doc­u­ments from the grand jury pro­ceed­ings to its web­site. The doc­u­ments include grand jury tes­ti­mo­ny, foren­sic evi­dence, med­ical reports, and law enforce­ment inter­views. View it all here and be sure to check back for updates.

via Gawk­er

The Crazy, Iconic Life of Nico; Andy Warhol Muse, Velvet Underground Vocalist, Enigma in Amber

in Film, Music | November 24th, 2014

There’s no deny­ing that train wrecks make great doc­u­men­tary sub­jects.

Not that Abra­ham Lin­coln doesn’t, but watch­ing some­one come unglued is a whole ‘nother sort of com­pelling. Upset­ting, even.

Docs in this genre usu­al­ly require the sub­ject to have left the build­ing in order to reach a sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion. The final word belongs to an assort­ment of friends, col­leagues, admir­ers, enemies…some of whom may be har­bor­ing ulte­ri­or motives.

Sure­ly Ger­man chanteuse Nico’s appear­ance fac­tored into Andy Warhol’s deci­sion to ele­vate her to Fac­to­ry super­star sta­tus. (See his video of her imme­di­ate­ly above.) She was a mod­el after all, arrest­ing enough to have appeared as her­self in La Dolce Vita. She romanced rock gods, film direc­tors, and movie stars, many of whom have their say in Susanne Ofteringer’s doc­u­men­tary Nico-Icon, view­able in its entire­ty up top.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing, cau­tion­ary por­trait, but as the back­seat psy­cho­analy­sis mount­ed, I found myself want­i­ng to hear from the sub­ject more.  With apolo­gies to Neil Dia­mond fans, we decid­ed  it was only fit­ting to show you Nico hav­ing her own say.

Maybe she was a night­mare. For­mer key­boardist, James Young, wrote a book about his time on tour with her. He’s in the doc­u­men­tary, of course. Aspir­ing icons, you’ve been fore­warned:

When I worked with her her looks were gone and she wasn’t this Chelsea Girl crea­ture, this per­ox­ide blonde Mar­lene Diet­rich moon god­dess vamp. She was a mid­dle aged junkie.

Nice. You reck­on he might have gone eas­i­er on her, had she been one of John Waters’ super­stars, the late Edith Massey or the still-thriv­ing Mink Stole?

For­get sticks and stones. It takes a lot more hero­in and hard liv­ing to kill the looks of any­one with her bone struc­ture.

Did Nico real­ly have such lit­tle use for anyone’s approval but her own? The art she made after her icon­ic work with the Vel­vet Under­ground con­vinces me that her embrace of ugly–what Chelsea Girls direc­tor referred to as her “stu­pid Ger­man perversity”–was sin­cere.

She’s still an enig­ma trapped in amber. She’ll be your mir­ror.

Find 200 free doc­u­men­taries in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico Reunite, Play Acoustic Vel­vet Under­ground Songs on French TV, 1972

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Literary Remains of Gabriel García Márquez Will Rest in Texas

in Literature | November 24th, 2014

Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez’s notes for The Gen­er­al in His Labyrinth (1989) via The Ran­som Cen­ter & The New York Times

Quick note: The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, a human­i­ties research library at UT-Austin, announced this morn­ing that it has acquired the archive of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez, the Nobel Prize-win­ning, Colom­bian nov­el­ist who passed away ear­li­er this year. His lit­er­ary remains include “orig­i­nal man­u­script mate­ri­als for 10 books …; more than 2,000 pieces of cor­re­spon­dence, includ­ing let­ters from Car­los Fuentes and Gra­ham Greene; drafts of his 1982 Nobel Prize accep­tance speech; more than 40 pho­to­graph albums doc­u­ment­ing all aspects of his life over near­ly nine decades; the Smith Coro­na type­writ­ers and com­put­ers on which he wrote some of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s most beloved works; and scrap­books metic­u­lous­ly doc­u­ment­ing his career via news clip­pings from Latin Amer­i­ca and around the world.”

All of this mate­r­i­al, The Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter goes on to say, will con­ve­nient­ly site along­side archives of oth­ers authors who inspired Gar­cía Márquez — most notably, Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkn­er and James Joyce.

The New York Times has a small gallery of images show­cas­ing pho­tos in the new­ly acquired col­lec­tion. Take a quick spin through it here.

via The New York Times

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Car­los Fuentes: “You Have to See the Face of Death in Order to Start Writ­ing Seri­ous­ly”

Shelf Life: American Museum of Natural History Creates New Video Series on Its 33 Million Artifacts

in Biology, History, Museums, Science, Video - Science | November 24th, 2014

I once spent a sum­mer as a secu­ri­ty guard at the Children’s Muse­um of Indi­anapo­lis. A won­der­ful place to vis­it, but my work­day expe­ri­ence proved dread­ful­ly dull. By far the high­light was being pulled off what­ev­er exhib­it I hap­pened to be guard­ing to assist in col­lec­tions, a cav­ernous back­stage area where untold trea­sures were shelved with­out cer­e­mo­ny. The head con­ser­va­tor con­fid­ed that many of these items would nev­er be sin­gled out for dis­play. The thrift store egal­i­tar­i­an­ism that reigned here was far more appeal­ing than the eye-catch­ing, edu­ca­tion­al sig­nage in the pub­lic area. From the obliv­ion of deep stor­age springs the poten­tial for dis­cov­ery.

How grat­i­fy­ing to learn that the 200 plus sci­en­tists employed by the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry feel the same. As palen­tol­o­gist Mike Novacek, puts it in Shelf Life, the museum’s just launched month­ly video series:

You can make new dis­cov­er­ies in Col­lec­tions just like you can out in the field. You can walk around the cor­ner and see some­thing that no one’s quite observed that way before, describe a new species or a new fea­ture that’s impor­tant to sci­ence.

The insti­tu­tion can choose from among more than 33,430,000 good­ies, from ancient objects they’ve been care­ful­ly tend­ing for more than two cen­turies to the sam­ples of frozen tis­sue and DNA com­pris­ing the bare­ly 13-year-old Ambrose Mon­ell Cryo Col­lec­tion for Mol­e­c­u­lar and Micro­bial Research.

Gems and mete­orites!

Arrow­heads and gourds!

Ver­te­brates and inver­te­brates!

There’s tru­ly some­thing here for…

Wasp enthu­si­asts (you know who you are) can thrill to the sev­en and a half mil­lion spec­i­mens in sex researcher Alfred Kinsey’s Cynip­i­dae col­lec­tion. (They’re ready for their close up, Mr. DeMille. Famous as they are, the first episode passed them over in favor of a more pho­to­genic mock bee from the genus Criorhi­na.)

Future episodes will call upon in-house ichthy­ol­o­gists, pale­on­tol­o­gists, anthro­pol­o­gists, astro­physi­cists, and her­petol­o­gists to dis­cuss such top­ics as spec­i­men prepa­ra­tion, tax­on­o­my, and cura­tion. Stay abreast (and — bonus!- cel­e­brate Nero’s birth­day with tur­tles) by sub­scrib­ing to the museum’s youtube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Panoram­ic Vir­tu­al Tour of the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry

Down­load the Uni­verse: A Dis­cern­ing Cura­tor for Sci­ence eBooks

How to Make a Mum­my — Demon­strat­ed by The Get­ty Muse­um

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She goes into more detail about her short-lived stint as a muse­um secu­ri­ty guard in her third book, Job Hop­per. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Hear 130 Minutes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Recorded Readings (1968)

in Poetry | November 24th, 2014

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We enjoy the work of Charles Bukows­ki here at Open Cul­ture, but recent­ly we’ve weight­ed our atten­tion toward his late work. And I mean his very late work, like the last poem he ever faxed. So today we turn to the very back of Bukowski’s back pages, for 130 min­utes of the can­tan­ker­ous yet odd­ly hope-filled poet and nov­el­ist’s first-ever record­ed read­ings, all avail­able at Ubuweb. They come, as the site says, “culled from tapes made by Bukows­ki at his Los Ange­les home in 1968 for biog­ra­ph­er and rock crit­ic Bar­ry Miles, long before the author had begun reg­u­lar pub­lic read­ings.” Few would expect the behav­ior of a shrink­ing vio­let from the likes of Bukows­ki, but this occa­sion found him “so shy he insist­ed that he record alone. He reads both poet­ry and prose, gets thor­ough­ly drunk dur­ing the record­ing, and bitch­es about his life, his land­lord, and his neigh­bors.”

This mate­r­i­al all comes the album At Ter­ror Street and Agony Way, com­mer­cial­ly issued in 2000 but now out of print. Now that it has made its way to the inter­net, you can enjoy such vin­tage, lean Bukows­ki cuts  as “The State of World Affairs” (“The Hol­ly­wood hills stand there, stand there, full of drunks and insane peo­ple and much kiss­ing and auto­mo­biles”), “I Can­not Stand Tears” (“There were sev­er­al hun­dred fools around the goose who broke his leg, try­ing to decide what to do, when the guard walked up and pulled out his can­non”), and “I Want­ed to Over­throw the Gov­ern­ment” (“The weak­ness was not Gov­ern­ment but Man, one at a time, that men were nev­er as strong as their ideas, and that ideas were gov­ern­ments turned into men; and so it began on a couch with a spilled mar­ti­ni and it end­ed in the bed­room”).

You can hear the whole thing, in all its spir­it­ed (in both sens­es of the word) glo­ry on Ubuwe­b’s Bukows­ki page, which also offers such choice record­ings as 1969’s 70 Min­utes in Hell, 1973’s Poems and Insults, and 1980’s Hostage.

Find more of Bukowskis’s 1968 record­ings at Ubuweb.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Read­ing of Charles Bukowski’s First Pub­lished Sto­ry, “After­math of a Lengthy Rejec­tion Slip” (1944)

Lis­ten to Charles Bukows­ki Poems Being Read by Bukows­ki Him­self & the Great Tom Waits

So You Want to Be a Writer?: Charles Bukows­ki Explains the Dos & Don’ts

The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

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

A Cabinet of Curiosities: Discover The Public Domain Review’s New Book of Essays

in Books | November 23rd, 2014

Many of the reg­u­lars to the glo­ri­ous pages of Open Cul­ture might be famil­iar with The Pub­lic Domain Review project, hav­ing been fea­tured on OC a fair few times. From six­teenth-cen­tu­ry wood­cuts on how to swim to hand-col­ored pho­tographs of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan, you will have seen links to all sorts of his­tor­i­cal odd­i­ties and delights that we’ve gath­ered from var­i­ous archives and high­light­ed on The Pub­lic Domain Review. In addi­tion to these short­er col­lec­tion posts, since we start­ed in 2011, we’ve also pub­lished a steady stream of long-form essays on sim­i­lar won­ders from the his­tor­i­cal record. It is with great plea­sure this week to announce that The Pub­lic Domain Review has com­piled a selec­tion of these essays into a brand-new beau­ti­ful book!

Spread across six themed chap­ters – Ani­mals, Bod­ies, Words, Worlds, Encoun­ters and Net­works – the col­lec­tion includes a total of thir­ty-four essays from a stel­lar line up of con­trib­u­tors, includ­ing Jack Zipes, Frank Delaney, Col­in Dick­ey, George Prochnik, Noga Arikha, and Julian Barnes.

There’s a whole host of weird and won­der­ful top­ics explored: from the case of Mary Toft, the woman who claimed to give birth to rab­bits, to William Warren’s search for the coor­di­nates of Eden; from Thomas Browne’s odd litany of imag­ined arte­facts, to the phrase­books of the invent­ed lan­guage Volapük; from the strange lit­er­ary fruits of the “it-nar­ra­tive” fad, to epic verse in praise of a cat named Jeof­fry; from a his­to­ry of the paint­ed smile, to the bizarre world of medieval ani­mals tri­als.

The col­lec­tion is not all obscu­ri­ties and unknown tales. We have some big hit­ters in there too. Great essays on fig­ures you will no doubt have heard of — the Broth­ers Grimm, Proust , Flaubert, Joyce — but all approached from new angles and illu­mi­nat­ed by unfa­mil­iar lights.

With 146 illus­tra­tions, more than half of which have been new­ly sourced espe­cial­ly for the book, this is very far from sim­ply the web­site in print form. It is a beau­ti­ful object in and of itself, lov­ing­ly designed by writer and design­er Nicholas Jeeves.

Any­how, I hope I’ve enticed you all suf­fi­cient­ly to check out the page on the site for more details, and per­haps even to place an order or two! If you would like to grab your­self a copy then do make sure to put your order in before mid­night on Novem­ber 26th as up until then we’ll be offer­ing the book for a spe­cial dis­count­ed rate and also ensur­ing deliv­ery by Christ­mas.

Adam Green is the co-founder and edi­tor of The Pub­lic Domain Review.

French Couple Sings an Achingly Charming Version of VU’s “Femme Fatale”

in Music | November 23rd, 2014

Day in, day out, we rum­mage around the inter­net, look­ing for new mate­r­i­al to bring your way. I start search­ing, and I nev­er quite know where the search will take me. Some paths lead to dead ends, oth­ers to inter­est­ing side streets. Speak­ing of inter­est­ing side streets.… Yes­ter­day a trip through some old Vel­vet Under­ground mate­r­i­al (more on that tomor­row) led me to this small, unex­pect­ed delight. Above, we have Math­ieu and Pauline, two young French musi­cians, singing an aching­ly charm­ing ver­sion of VU’s “Femme Fatale”. There’s so much beau­ty and youth in it, it kin­da hurts. Below, see them sing a cov­er of Serge Gains­bourg’s “Elisa.”

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots the Only Col­or Film of The Vel­vet Under­ground Play­ing Live in Con­cert (1967)

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The Jimi Hendrix Experience Plays “Hey Joe” & “Wild Thing” on The Band’s Very First Tour: Paris, 1966

in Music | November 21st, 2014

Jimi Hen­drix lived fast, and I don’t just mean to evoke a rock star cliché, but to get at the speed at which his career moved. He arrived in Eng­land near the end of Sep­tem­ber, 1966, at the ten­der age of 23. In less than a month, he and his man­ag­er Chas Chan­dler had recruit­ed Noel Red­ding and Mitch Mitchell into the Expe­ri­ence and booked the band’s first gig on Octo­ber 13 across the chan­nel in Évreux, France, one of four French book­ings as a sup­port­ing act for The Black­birds and John­ny Hal­ly­day. They played most­ly cov­ers, includ­ing Howl­in’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor,” Otis Redding’s “Respect,” Don Covay’s “Mer­cy, Mer­cy,” and Chris Kenner’s “Land of a Thou­sand Dances,” and tra­di­tion­al song “Hey Joe,” soon to become the band’s first sin­gle. It’s unclear whether any­one record­ed that first gig, but we do have some audio of the fourth, on Octo­ber 18 at the Olympia in Paris. Just above hear them play “Hey Joe” from that night, and below, they do The Trog­gs’ “Wild Thing.”

Hen­drix was already a high­ly sea­soned per­former by this time, hav­ing blown minds all over the South while tour­ing with, among oth­ers, the Isley Broth­ers, Lit­tle Richard, and King Cur­tis in the ear­ly six­ties. He had been high­ly in demand as a back­ing and ses­sion play­er, but he grew tired of stand­ing in the back and want­ed to go solo. He met man­ag­er Chan­dler, then bassist for the Ani­mals, while fronting his own band in New York. Chan­dler, writes PRI, “knew just what to do with the young gui­tarist” upon their arrival in Eng­land.

Six days after the short tour through France, the band played its first offi­cial show in the UK, at the Scotch of St. James, where the Bea­t­les had a pri­vate booth. Hen­drix pro­ceed­ed to blow minds all over Eng­land, includ­ing, of course, those of all the British gui­tar greats: “Everyone’s eyes were glued to him,” remem­bers then girl­friend Kathy Etch­ing­ham, “He looked dif­fer­ent. His gui­tar play­ing was superb. Peo­ple in Eng­land hadn’t seen any­thing like it before. It was quite… out of this world.”

Peo­ple in the U.S. hadn’t seen any­thing like it either. While Hen­drix had honed many of his sig­na­ture stage tricks on the soul cir­cuit, by the time he appeared at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in 1967, he had ful­ly come into his own as a charis­mat­ic singer as well as a “near mirac­u­lous” gui­tarist. But in his move from R&B to rock and roll, he nev­er lost his blues roots. “Hen­drix wasn’t a typ­i­cal pop or rock musi­cian,” says Hen­drix schol­ar and Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Joel Brat­tin. He “was an impro­vis­er. So, if there are 100 dif­fer­ent record­ed ver­sions of Pur­ple Haze, it’s real­ly worth lis­ten­ing to all 100 because he does some­thing dif­fer­ent each time.” The same can be said of the songs he cov­ered, and made his own. Just above, see them play “Hey Joe” at The Mar­quee for Ger­man TV show Beat Club just months before the release of their 1967 debut album. And below, Hen­drix exhorts the crowd to sing along before launch­ing into “Wild Thing,” in a Paris appear­ance one full year after the record­ing above at the Olympia. Com­pare, con­trast, get your mind blown.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock: The Com­plete Per­for­mance in Video & Audio (1969)

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view Ani­mat­ed (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness