Meeting Jimi Hendrix Was a Highlight of 1 Sci-fi Actor’s Life
Jimi Hendrix had a relatively short music career, but the world continues to feel his impact. The music remains, of course, but there was also the joint he smoked in 1968 that tied him to the 2022 World Series. One famous sci-fi actor said meeting Hendrix in 1968 was a lifetime highlight.
Jimi Hendrix was a guitar-wielding force of nature in the late 1960s
Hendrix had one of the biggest concerts of his life saved by a Pink Floyd member in 1970. That was after he took the world by storm in the late 1960s.
After winning over audiences in England, Hendrix broke through in his native United States with an unforgettable performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. That was the show where he lit his guitar on fire and seemed to summon the flames by wiggling his fingers. Hendrix’s first two solo albums dropped in the back half of 1967. The second, Axis: Bold as Love, hit shelves in December 1967. Hendrix put out Electric Ladyland in October 1968 and played one of the last sets at Woodstock in 1969.
Before he died at the age of 27 after fatally mixing alcohol and sleeping pills, Hendrix met Leonard Nimoy and provided the sci-fi actor with a major highlight in his life.
Hendrix and actor Leonard Nimoy crossed paths in Cleveland in 1968
Hendrix toured extensively between the releases of Axis and Electric Ladyland, including a late March 1968 stop in Cleveland.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience played two sets on March 26, but the guitarist arrived in town a day earlier and jammed with a local band, as Guitar World writes. He also appeared on an afternoon radio show with DJ Chuck Dunaway the day of his concerts.
Dunaway and Nimoy watched Hendrix perform with the local band on March 25. Then they adjourned to his hotel room and stayed up late into the night talking about everything but music. Noë Gold, the author of the Guitar World article, writes that Nimoy told him meeting Jimi Hendrix was a life highlight:
“Nimoy told me before he passed that spending those hours talking about politics and spirituality, musical influences, and philosophical touchstones was a high point of his career. He was struck by the dichotomy of Jimi: the wild man on the stage flying about in a purple haze versus the soft-spoken, sensitive guy who rarely raised his voice – and didn’t have to – in order to be heard.”
Leonard Nimoy recalls meeting Jimi Hendrix
Meeting the Spock actor might have also been a highlight for Hendrix. Gold writes that the guitarist’s music collection included an autographed Leonard Nimoy album.
Nimoy was a Hendrix fan who was saddened by his death
Hendrix tragically died not long after his 1970 Isle of Wight Festival appearance. Perhaps even sadder than his death was that he made a chilling prediction about it years before it happened.
Meeting Hendrix was a life highlight for Nimoy, and not just because he hooked up with a famous musician at the height of his fame. The actor understood the guitarist’s genius and his role in pushing music in new directions.
“I thought about it for a nanosecond, and I said sure, bring him in,” Nimoy said of the meeting with Hendrix, per Guitar World writer Gold. “He was charming and very nice, and we had our picture taken – he and Noel Redding and a half-dozen other people who rushed to get in the picture. He was a true genius – a great artist. A tragic end. He died much too soon, much too young.”
His untimely death robbed the world of a great musical talent, but meeting Jimi Hendrix was a life highlight Leonard Nimoy could always claim.
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