Hendrix Quotes

• In 1974, when I started working with the material that became Horses, a lot of our great voices had died. We'd lost Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and people like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

  Patti Smith

  Horse, Kings, Voice

  "Patti Smith: punk poet queen". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. May 25, 2013.

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• All my big heroes are literary, writers. I'd love to meet Jimmy Hendrix or John Coltrane, but I'd much rather meet Thomas Wolfe, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Words and books have always meant a lot to me. That someone can take words and string them together to where they will move me is just a hell of a thing. It's amazing to me; more amazing to me than music or painting. It's always been the written word or the spoken word, like a great lecture or a great lyric, or a great poem. To me it's just amazing. And I always aspire toward capturing that, or my version of it.

  Henry Rollins

  Moving, Book, Hero

  "Henry Rollins: Post-Punk Pundit". Interview with Gary Moskowitz, www.motherjones.com. July 25, 2007.

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• You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own fingerprints.

  Carlos Santana

  Children, Guy, Example

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• The best thing I ever heard was in the '60s. I heard Jimi Hendrix play 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow' after a rehearsal, and it was brilliant.

  Roy Wood

  Play, Rehearsal, Brilliant

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• When I started reaching teenage years, I listened to everything that was on the radio like everyone else did, which was Chuck Berry, Beach Boys and then of course The Beatles, Stones. And of course in the 60's, I was completely blown away like everyone else by Hendrix, Cream, Deep Purple, Jeff Beck and all of that... so those were my influences.

  Ronnie Montrose

  Beach, Teenage, Boys

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• I was very drawn to music of all types, from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix. There were musicians and composers who obviously were expressing a vision that was beyond the mundane.

  Frederick Lenz

  Vision, Musician, Rama

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• I guess my guitar heroes shifted from people like Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix to people like Johnny Marr or John Squire.

  Tad Kubler

  Hero, People, Jimmy

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• You know, there's a big lie in this business. The lie is that it's okay to go out in flames. But that doesn't do anybody much good. I may be wrong, but I think Hendrix was trying to come around.

  Stevie Ray Vaughan

  Business, Lying, Thinking

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• The quality of our lives is diminished every time we lose a great artist. It's a different world without Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Jones and the rest.

  Steven Van Zandt

  Artist, Quality, Different

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• I watched Janis one time - we opened for her - and that's the only time I ever saw her. We opened for Jimi Hendrix. I got to stand on the side of the stage and watch him for two hours and then he died. But I got the essence before they left.

  Stevie Nicks

  Essence, Two, Watches

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• You know I got kicked out of high school and I used to go to Hendrix concerts. I used to go see Marvin Gaye and B.B. King and so here I am on television as an actor playing the part of this really sweet wholesome all American boy. The reality was I had a much different kind of teenage life.

  David Cassidy

  Sweet, Kings, Teenage

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• I am the flying saucer man from another world trapped on yours until they come to rescue me. One day the saucer will land. Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane will open the hatch and tell me to get in before someone tries to blow up the ship. I'll just ask what took them so long. Within seconds we'll be out of here.

  Henry Rollins

  Blow, Men, Land

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• Music television is all about the media-oriented version of what it is to be a rock star; it's not about what Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix were about - which included great images, sure, but they had spiritual and political and revolutionary content, too.

  Patti Smith

  Spiritual, Stars, Rocks

  "American icon". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. June 14, 2003.

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• Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was the first person who made me think it might be good to be a singer and a guitarist - before that I wanted to be a footballer.

  Robert Smith

  Thinking, Singers, Might

  "Timeless tunesmith". Interview with Will Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. May 30, 2003.

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• Hendrix was back there with a few of the others who were like my training wheels ... hearing him as a teenager taught me to look at the guitar in a different way - and how to tap into that thing inside of me that was already leaning toward improvisation. You learn other players' licks at first; then you take off the training wheels and start using the licks as building blocks to make your own thing. That's how influences work. somewhere in whatever I do, there's a little bit of Hendrix - plus about a hundred others

  Junior Brown

  Music, Block, Teenager

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• People used to ask me, 'What do you reckon you'll be doing when you're 40?', and I told 'em 'rocking out and kicking ass!' Now it's 'What do you reckon you'll be doing at 60?' and the answer's exactly the same. I'm always going to love Jimi Hendrix - 'Purple Haze' will still give me a hard-on when I'm hooked up to a life-support machine. Hey, even when I'm dead, they're going to have a hell of a job nailing the coffin lid down.

  Steven Tyler

  Jobs, Purple, People

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• Junior told me once that he was very impressed by Jimi Hendrix, by the way he was very wild, and yet he was very controlled. He knew where everything was going in a solo, and he (Junior), I think tries for the same effect, and I think he hits it virtually every time.

  Mitch Mitchell

  Thinking, Trying, Juniors

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• I was very influenced by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. ...both of whom I had the pleasure of playing with and becoming friends with.

  Mick Taylor

  Friends, Eric, Becoming

  Log for The Artist Shop IRC Chat with Mick Taylor Sunday, www.artist-shop.com. April 18, 1999.

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• I'm the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.

  Kanye West

  Stars, Rocks, Breathing

  "Kanye West, the Transformer, on his New Album Yeezus and Kim Kardashian" by Christopher Bagley, www.wmagazine.com. June 19, 2013.

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• I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand, that Joplin had the last drunken throat, that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.

  Patti Smith

  Believe, Hands, Mind

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• But there's a thin line between songwriting and arranging. ... Recording at home enables one to eliminate the demo stage, and the presentation stage in the studio, too. ... And I think it's safe to say that the single very impressive figure to me was Merle Haggard. ... Dylan can do no wrong. ... Glenn Gould was my hero. Glenn Gould was my idol. I loved him. ... I loved Hendrix. I mean, really, really loved him. As if he were one of the great classical composers. And he was. That's how I saw him.

  Warren Zevon

  Hero, Home, Mean

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• I couldn't believe how good Jimi Hendrix was It was a really difficult thing for me to deal with, but I just had to surrender and say, 'This is fantastic.'

  Eric Clapton

  Music, Believe, Surrender

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• Music really influenced me when I was growing up. I did go through a Jimi Hendrix phase. My hair was naturally quite afro, and I wore low-slung jeans with very high heels. Siouxsie and the Banshees had a lot to answer for. I was in a top hat with peacock feathers and thigh-high black boots. I was 17 -- old enough to know better.

  Helen McCrory

  Growing Up, Hair, High Heels

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• He was Jimi Hendrix! He didn't sound like anybody else but himself. He was like Charlie Parker in his way of playing, he played well, he was a person that made waves. When you heard Jimi Hendrix you knew it was Jimi Hendrix, he introduced himself in his instrument... You know, many radio stations play records and a lot of the times they don't call out the names who you just listened to, but when they play Jimi Hendrix, you don't have to tell me, [you know] it's Jimi Hendrix.

  B. B. King

  Music, Play, Names

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• She’s the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome.

  John Green

  Growing Up, Winning, Twenties

  John Green (2013). “Paper Towns”, p.91, A&C Black

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