Jimi Hendrix died in September 1970, tragically preventing him from seeing psychedelic, blues-driven rock ‘n’ roll evolve in the years to come. Yet, even before his death, Hendrix seemed to have a finger on the pulse of what was to come. Even if he wasn’t around to see it come to fruition, he had a clear idea of what kind of music was going to take over in a global sense.
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Melody Maker published its interview with Hendrix just days before he died. In one of his final print conversations, Hendrix correctly predicted the rise of a British psychedelic rock band from underground cult heroes to international rock stars. And he was right.
Jimi Hendrix Called This Band “Mad Scientists” In 1970
The tail end of the 1960s proved especially tumultuous for iconic guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Between his substance abuse issues and his rollercoaster of a rock career, Hendrix was slowly buckling under the immense weight of his celebrity. He would only see nine months of the following decade, dying of a drug overdose at St. Mary Abbots Hospital in London on September 18, 1970. Thirteen days earlier, Melody Maker published an interview with Hendrix where he predicted the state of rock ‘n’ roll in the years to come.
“People like you to blow their minds,” the guitarist said. “But then we are going to give them something that will blow their mind, and while it’s blown, there will be something there to fill the gap. It’s going to be a complete form of music. It will be really druggy music.” He continued, “It could be something on similar lines to what Pink Floyd are tackling. They don’t know it, you know, but people like Pink Floyd are the mad scientists of this day and age.”
By the time Hendrix sang Pink Floyd’s praises in 1970, the British psychedelic band had already seen the departure of original frontman and co-founder Syd Barrett and the arrival of guitarist and co-vocalist David Gilmour. The band had released three albums: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, and Ummagumma. Their fourth album, Atom Heart Mother, came out one month after Hendrix’s Melody Maker interview. Interestingly, Hendrix seemed to have a keen sense of Pink Floyd’s upcoming success years before they would release massively commercially successful albums like Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here.
The Admiration Was Mutual Among The Rockstars
Before he became one of the most well-known bassists of all time, Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters was a student at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture. At the end of his final semester, before he transitioned to pursuing music full-time, Waters attended an end-of-term concert that featured Cream and their “friend from America,” Jimi Hendrix. Waters recalled the moment he first saw Hendrix in a 2010 essay for Rolling Stone.
“Two-thirds of the way through [Cream’s] set, one of them said, ‘We’d like to invite a friend of ours from America out on stage.’ It was Jimi Hendrix. That was the first night he played in England. He came on and did all that now-famous stuff, like playing with his teeth. That ticket cost a pound or so. It might have been the best purchase I ever made.”
Cream guitarist Eric Clapton later described Hendrix’s performance, saying, “He played just about every style you could think of and not in a flashy way. I mean, he did a few of his trucks, like playing with his teeth and behind his back, but it wasn’t an upstaging sense at all, and that was it. He walked off, and my life was never the same again.”
We suppose it just goes to show that it takes a mad scientist to know a mad scientist.
Photo by -/Svenska Dagbladet/AFP via Getty Images
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