Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Jimi Hendrix. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music".
Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at the age of 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US. The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970.
Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."
Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 100 greatest albums of all time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth greatest artist of all time.
I don't give a damn what others say. It's okay to color outside of the lines.
It's funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life.
I was trying to do too many things at the same time, which is my nature. But I was enjoying it, and I still do enjoy it.
Lots of the things we do are dangerous, but life itself is dangerous; nothing is really worth bothering with that isn't full of danger.
There was a period when I stopped talking so much, because I was just going through certain things. I just did the gigs and just stayed in, tried to stay away.
Well I stand up next to a mountain, and I chop it down with the edge of my hand.
I wouldn't say that I'm the greatest guitarist ever. I'd say probably that I'm the greatest guitarist sitting in this chair.
Freaks, they are very prejudiced. You have to have your hair long and talk in a certain way in order to be with them. In order to be the other way you have to have your hair short and wear ties.
The way I write things, I just write them with a clash between reality and fantasy mostly. You have to use fantasy to show different sides of reality; it's how it can bend.
You have to use fantasy to show different sides to reality. That's how it can bend.
Room Full Of Mirrors, that's more of a mental disarrangement. This says something about broken glass used to be all in my brain.
I get stoned, I can't get home, I'm calling long distance on a public saxophone. My head is achin', my back is breakin', feel I got run over by Captain Coconut and his dog named Rover.
Spiritually, it's always there. It gets better and better all the time. One of these days I'll just finally release all that out.
You're not the only one accused of hit and run. Tire tracks all across my back, well I can see you've had your fun.
She's a devil in disguise, I can tell by looking in her eyes, little Miss Strange.
The dollar bill is God in the States. All those Pelican people just believe in money and nothing else.
I'm a million miles away, and at the same time I'm right here in your picture frame.
Drifting, On a sea of forgotten teardrops, On a lifeboat, Sailing for Your love.
I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time... I'll give it right back to you, one of these days.
One time I said: maybe I should burn a guitar tonight. You know smash a guitar or something like that. And they said: yeah, yeah! I said: you really think I should? They said: yeah, that'd be cool. I said: well, ok.
Butterflies and zebras And moonbeams and fairy tales That's all she ever thinks about Riding with the wind.
the Grand Ole Opry used to come on, and I used to watch that. They used to have some pretty heavy cats, heavy guitar players.
Jesus shouldn't have died so early and then he could have got twice as much across. They killed him and then twisted so many of the best things he said. Human hands started messing it all up and now so much of religion is hogwash.
The one that rambles for a million miles, yes, I walk down this road searching for your love.
So you want to be married, oh baby, trying to put me on a chain, ain't that some shame? You must be losing your weak little mind.
Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand? I'm going out to find my woman, caught her messing around with another man.
The reflection of the world is blues, that's where that part of the music is at. Then you got this other kind of music that's tryin' to come around.
White collar conservative flashin' down the street,
Pointing that plastic finger at me,
Hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
But I'm gonna wave my freak flag high.
You don't have to be singing about love all the time in order to give love to the people. You don't have to keep flashing those words all the time.
Purple Haze all in my brain, lately things don't seem the same. Actin' funny but I don't know why. 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky.
Purple haze all in my eyes, don't know if it's day or night. You got me blowin', blowin' my mind. Is it tomorrow or just the end of time?
I want to get up in the morning and just roll over in my bed into an indoor swimming pool. And then swim to the breakfast table.
Please pass me the peace weed, and take some heed. Throw away all that mixed up speed.
Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space.
Have you ever been experienced? Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful.
Will the wind ever remember the names it has blown in the past? And with its crutch, its old age, and its wisdom, it whispers no this will be the last.
Music is going to break the way because music is in a spiritual thing of its own. It's like the waves of the ocean. You can't just cut out the perfect wave and take it home with you.
Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.
Longer Version:
Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction...All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland...I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around...Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.
The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar.
Technically, I'm not a guitar player, all I play is truth and emotion.
Who are you to judge the life i live
i know i'm not perfect and i don't live to be.
but before you start pointing fingers
make sure your hands are clean.
My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art.
I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.
See, that's nothing but blues, that's all I'm singing about. It's today's blues.
Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you'll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you're gonna be rewarded.
I don't have nothing to regret at all in the past, except that I might've unintentionally hurt somebody else or something.
In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.
When I played God Bless The Queen, I was wondering if they was gonna dig us, then quite naturally I'd go on and try to get it together.
To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?
I wish they'd had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would've been straightened out.
When things get too heavy, just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man.
When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.
Music is a safe kind of high.
Longer Version:
Music is a safe type of high. It's more the way it was supposed to be. That's where highness came, I guess, from anyway. It's nothing but rhythm and motion.
I used to live in a room full of mirrors; all I could see was me. I take my spirit and I crash my mirrors, now the whole world is here for me to see.
If it was up to me, there wouldn't be no such thing as the establishment.
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Quotes by Jimi Hendrix are featured in:
Peace Quotes
Words Of Wisdom Quotes
Wisdom Quotes
Love Quotes
Short Inner Peace Quotes