Jimi Hendrix never learned to read music. He was left-handed, so he flipped a right-handed guitar upside down and taught himself by ear. He died at 27, and Rolling Stone still ranks him the greatest guitarist who ever lived.
Before any of that, he was a paratrooper in the US Army. 101st Airborne.
In August 1969 he closed Woodstock on a Monday morning, in front of a muddy field that had mostly emptied out overnight. And he played the national anthem. Through screaming feedback that sounded like falling bombs and air raid sirens, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Some called it a disgrace. Others called it the loudest protest of the decade.
In the video below, three weeks later, he sits down with Dick Cavett on national television. Before the show he had written out his own list of topics by hand. A museum in Seattle still keeps it.
Cavett brings up the anthem and calls it unorthodox.
Hendrix barely blinks.
He says he's American, so he played it. They made him sing it in school, so it was a flashback.
Then, quietly, he says he didn't think it was unorthodox. He thought it was beautiful.
That was the last time he ever appeared on American television.
One year later he was dead in London.
He played the anthem the way the country sounded that year. It took everyone else decades to hear it.
Was it a protest, or was he the most patriotic man on that stage?
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