Guthrie As Hendrix On Puccini

In a recent dream I am watching a black-and-white documentary about Jimi Hendrix.

In one scene he is playing a keyboard which features some sort of pitch modulator that can at a touch of a button transform the note of any key he presses into a flat 7th, a flat 3rd, etcetera.

In a later scene, Hendrix and two bandmates are standing beside one another in front of some immense oak trees. There is a close-up of a bandmate who says “I think Jimi’s greatest strength is his skill as an actor.” The camera pans to Hendrix, who now looks like a cross between Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell and Woody Guthrie. “An actor!” he laughs. “That’s funny—an actor!”

This is followed by a montage of this Mitchell/Guthrie/Hendrix’s performance antics. From these glimpses, he certainly evinces a showman’s charisma—one shot shows him standing before a group of rapt children, wielding a violin as if it were a parade leader’s baton, a gleaming look of a conjurer on his grinning face.

Later, this same version of Hendrix is shown in a tight close-up, looking at his interviewer unblinkingly, saying “Of all the classical composers I’ve heard, Puccini is the only one who strikes me as truly crazy.”

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