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isolate him because they are driving him nuts. Jimi appeared torn
during each of his Seattle visits: While he enjoyed seeing his family, his
visits only reinforced how different a world he now lived in. In Seattle,
he was Buster Hendrix, who still deferred to his father; everywhere
else he was a self-made man, and a superstar.
Fiala had worked on other Experience shows but had never seen
Jimi as exhausted as he appeared that day. Jimi complained he had been
up all night. Everyone thought it was drugs, Fiala observed, but he
was really beat; he was even beat-up looking. He had been working way
too hard, going in the studio when he wasn t touring, and it was really
getting him. Jimi repeated the tale of his exhaustion to several people,
who urged him to take some time off. He was scheduled to fly to
Hawaii the day after the Seattle show, but rather than a vacation, the
trip was for a concert and to film a movie. Just a couple of days before,
Jimi told a San Diego reporter, I was like a slave, man. It was all work.
In the beginning it was fun, and now it s time to get back to having it
fun again. I m retiring now. It s going to be pleasure first. No more
work. The day after that interview, he was back on tour again.
Jimi spent most of the afternoon at Al s house, visiting with the
many neighbors and relations who had come by. He had a few drinks,
which soured his mood, and at one point he got into an argument with
Al, which greatly upset both of them. Jimi also felt somewhat sad be-
cause his brother Leon had to miss his visit: Leon was in jail for larceny
at the time, a turn of events that deeply disturbed Jimi. His spirits were
boosted slightly later in the day when he learned that his cousin Eddy
R OOM F UL L OF MI R R OR S 301
Hall Aunt Delores s youngest son had taken up the guitar. Delores
brought fifteen-year-old Eddy by, and his playing impressed Jimi. Jimi
asked my mom if he could take me on the road with him, Eddy re-
called. Delores turned down the offer; though she loved Jimi dearly,
she was afraid he would be a bad influence on her son.
At one point in the afternoon, there was an unexpected reminder
of the Hendrix family s fractured history when an eighteen-year-old
woman who lived down the street came by and asked for Jimi s auto-
graph: She said she was his sister. Jimi went out and discovered it was
Pamela Hendrix, who had been adopted by a family that didn t live far
from Al. Jimi had not seen Pamela for almost seventeen years. He gave
her an autograph and a hug. Perhaps the visit with his lost sister put him
in a reflective mood, as not long after it he called up his old Auntie
Dorothy Harding and invited her family to his show, arranging for a
limousine to pick them up. One of the Hardings was sick with pneu-
monia and couldn t attend, so Jimi called her several times that day to
inquire about her health.
Sometime that day, Jimi also sneaked away long enough to dial
one number he still knew by heart: It was to his high school sweetheart
Betty Jean Morgan. It had been years since I d heard from him, Betty
Jean recalled. It had been, in fact, eight years; Jimi s last conversation
with Betty Jean had occured when he d gotten out of the army in 1962
and called off their engagement. Betty Jean had since married, but had
split with her husband and was living back with her parents. A friend
had informed Jimi that she was single. As for his motivation for the call,
he never made it clear. Betty Jean was not a hipster, and though she
knew he was a star, she hadn t followed his career. He had headlined
Woodstock, played the Royal Albert Hall, had even met the Beatles; she
had gotten married out of high school and never left Seattle. They
shared almost nothing except a past history: walks home from school,
hands held on a porch, kisses behind a tree. She was the one girl he
loved so much he named his first guitar after her and had painted her
name on it now he hardly knew what to say to her. She asked if he
stayed in touch with his schoolyard pals. He told her that Pernell
302 C H A R L E S R . C R O S S
Alexander was around, but Jimmy Williams and Terry Johnson were
both in Vietnam. She said she hoped they came back safe, a sentiment
he echoed. And with that they ran out of things to talk about. It was a
short conversation, she recalled. Jimi ended the phone call telling her
that on his next visit, he d buy her the hamburger he d promised her
years before when he was destitute.
He then headed to Sick s Stadium, where an unseasonable down-
pour threatened to cause the cancellation of the concert. When Jimi
came onstage at 7:15 PM, the rain briefly let up. Some of the equipment
wasn t grounded, which was a concern to the promoters, who feared
that their headliner might be electrocuted, but Jimi insisted on going
on nonetheless. He began the show with what had become his standard
introduction over the last two years, but the words had an added
poignancy in his hometown: I want you to forget about yesterday and
tomorrow, and just make our own little world right here. Addressing
the soggy crowd, he said, You don t sound very happy, you don t look
very happy, but we ll see if we can paint some faces around here. With
that, the band launched into Fire.
As the song ended, a pillow was thrown onstage. When Janis
Joplin had played Sick s Stadium three weeks earlier, this same pillow
was tossed onstage; Joplin autographed it and threw it back. Jimi knew
nothing of this, but the idea of an object being hurled onstage upset
him. Oh, please don t throw anything up here, he said. Please don t
do that, because I feel like getting on somebody s head anyway. It was
a rare acknowledgment of his foul mood, and it got worse: Fuck you,
whoever put up the pillow. He kicked the pillow off the stage and
raised his middle finger to a crowd that included many of his friends
and relations. He acknowledged that he d had a few drinks of Scotch.
During Message to Love, he left the stage without explanation, forc-
ing Mitch to improvise a drum solo on a song that had never before
been given an extended instrumental break. Jimi returned two minutes
later and the show continued.
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