Wailers guitar icon Junior Marvin has recalled meeting Jimi Hendrix when he was just 17 – and says that, despite the fact that Hendrix had just blown away a star-studded audience, including members of the Beatles and Rod Stewart, the guitar hero was too shy to speak to him.
Graham Nash once said that if everyone who said they were at Woodstock was really there, “the planet would've tilted!” And sometimes it feels you could say the same about Jimi Hendrix’s first gigs on the London club scene.
One person who was there, however, was a young Junior Marvin. The Wailers guitarist was only 17 at the time of Hendrix’s first UK shows and, in the new issue of Guitarist, recalls catching one of those seismic club appearances – and even meeting the shy guitar hero.
“He’d play clubs and speakeasies at midnight, and all the musicians would hang out there,” recalls Marvin.
“I was underage, but my manager at the time would get me in for free to watch, though I couldn’t drink any alcohol. One night, I was there and Jimi came in to jam at around two o’clock in the morning.
“I can still remember the audience being filled with people like Rod Stewart, The Beatles, members of the Small Faces – all of them were silent when Jimi was done. I said to myself, ‘Now there’s a guitar player. I want to play guitar like that.’”
The British rock royalty in attendance at those shows have often spoken of the stunned and wordless reactions that greeted Hendrix.
Marvin, however, reveals that he felt he had plenty to say, but the burgeoning guitar icon was so shy he could barely look him in the eye, let alone hold a conversation.
“I went right up after he was done, met him and shook his hand. But Jimi was so shy and wouldn’t even look at me to say hello,” says Marvin.
“It was crazy: here was this guy who was just up on stage playing guitar behind his neck and [now he’s] barely even talking to me. He was like two different people. But I got to shake Jimi Hendrix’s hand – I was very proud of that.”
Another player who had the fortune to meet Hendrix, albeit three years later, was Robert Fripp, though by that point the King Crimson star was meeting a somewhat transformed version of the guitar hero – one who had earned a little more confidence.
As Fripp recalled earlier this year, Hendrix was reportedly so impressed by a King Crimson show, he told him: “‘Shake my left hand, man, it's closer to my heart.’”
To read Junior Marvin's full interview, alongside war stories from Scott Gorham and a huge celebration of 130 years of Gibson, pick up Guitarist issue 513 over at Magazines Direct.
