Hendrix on Letterman - The Monday Morning Memo

After being arrested for joy-riding in a stolen car in Seattle, Jimi Hendrix enlisted in the Army in May 1961, and became a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division, the legendary Screaming Eagles. He was honorably discharged due to an ankle injury at the end of a jump on May 31, 1962.

Jimi died on Sept 18, 1970.

He was a self-taught guitar player who never learned to read music.

“I write backward — I write the music first and then I write the words. Most people write the words first and then they write the music. Keith Richards was explaining his method of songwriting. He calls it ‘vowel movement.’ They come up with a riff, and it’s like sounds, and whatever sound . . . like ‘start me up’ — ‘up’ works because it has a consonant at the end of it, but if you go ‘take me home,’ it wouldn’t have worked. I kind of subscribe to that. It has to sound right sometimes even more than being a poetic lyric. It’s a struggle to fit words onto music, and I want it to be really, really good, so I take a long time. I love having written, but I hate writing.”

- Billy Joel, to Andrew Goldman in The New York Times, May 24, 2013

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