24

IN WHICH… I PUNCTUATE HENDRIX WITH GRAMMATICAL GRUMBLING

The Jimi Hendrix single, ‘Purple Haze’, used the spelling ‘Foxey Lady’, on the B-side of its US release, rather than ‘Foxy’. It was claimed this represented the accepted American way of spelling the word, which I don’t necessarily believe. More importantly, though – why was Hendrix’s debut LP, Are You Experienced, denied its question mark? What in tarnation happened there? In 2017, the website Morrison Hotel addressed this question whilst writing about the record’s 50th anniversary, and declared:

Hendrix originally wrote the title ‘ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?’, ending with a question mark. Hendrix said that the title was meant as a question and an invitation to become experienced through hearing his music. However, the printer missed this and left out the question mark.

Maybe. Sounds unlikely, though – Jimi must have seen proofs of the cover before it was released and would have had the opportunity to correct it.

During the writing of this book, I discovered another problem someone had with ‘Are You Experienced’ which struck me as a little out of the ordinary. In November 2017, US record hunter Gary Piazza told online how:

‘I found this (Jimi Hendrix record) at a yard sale a few weeks ago. I asked the lady if she had records and she pointed to a shelf in the garage, which had collapsed and there was water damage and mold (sic) everywhere. I was trying to look at the records but they were all stuck together because the paper had glued to each other. It was terrible, good titles too, Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin. Then I saw a box that was near the shelf, I looked inside and saw more records that were not molded, but did smell. The jacket’s (sic) cardboard (sic) were wonky and bent out of shape from being stored in the moisture in the garage all those years. I gasped when I saw Jimi Hendrix’s 1st in mono, record was really scratched but it plays fine. I need to get rid of the mold smell. Any of you reading THIS want to leave suggestions in the comments (vinegar? To kill any mold spores?) I’ll do my best to air this thing out and retrain the cardboard.’

‘Retrain’ the cardboard?! Good luck with that, I’d say, if my experience with the odd water-damaged record is anything to go by.

I was in Stoke Newington in early February 2018, after a pal, Graham B – a big Hendrix fan with some very early copies of his albums stashed up in his loft which he refuses to get out, even though I’ve told him what they may be worth – called me to say he’d walked past this shop and thought it might be of interest to me. I arrived at Lucky 7 quite early in the morning, passing the time of day with the pleasant, young female assistant, who was playing a series of tracks evidently from different LPs. The latest one caught my ear. Good guitar playing going on there.

‘Who’s this?’ I asked her.

‘Jimi Hendrix’.

‘Right. I don’t recognise it. Which album?’

She showed me. I was none the wiser. Hendrix on the Pickwick label? It was an American record.

‘How much?’ I asked.

She made a phone call.

‘The owner will be in shortly. He says he’ll talk to you about it.’

He came in shortly after. We shook hands.

‘Afraid I can’t sell you that Hendrix record. It is actually one of my own – I’ve had it some time – since I was seven, in fact. I know every mark and scratch on it, and they all mean something to me, but I’ll certainly see if I can order you another copy. I could get it for you for about twelve quid.’

By the look of him that would mean he’d got it at least 30 years ago, if not longer. I thanked him, but pointed out that as I’d made a special trip that morning just to check out the shop, I wouldn’t be in this neck of the woods again for some while.

Once home I began to search online for the Hendrix record. Initially I thought I’d cracked it when I found a copy offered at a fiver. Checking what the postage would be I also enquired about the condition of the cover, only to be told there wasn’t one. Delving a little further into murky cyberspace depths I was able to listen to a couple more of the tracks and then began to find threads discussing the record, some even doubting whether it was indeed Hendrix playing on it.

‘The cover does not mention Hendrix anywhere,’ claimed one poster, and another was adamant that it was someone else entirely. On the Discogs website, a French correspondent called fmhotte had recently posted: ‘I have a copy of these recordings from France 1982, it’s called: Super Hendrix on Musidisc #30 CO 1354. Most of these song are 100 per cent Fake Hendrix songs, he doesn’t even play anything on them, there (sic) from an Hermon Hitson solo album that never came out and Hitson plays all the guitar and voice and Hendrix is maybe a little on Go shoes.’ Further online probing produced the suggestion that: ‘“Free Spirit” is a 1966 song by blues session player Hermon Hitson (Philadelphia, 1943) which was mistakenly released as the title track of two albums of bootleg Jimi Hendrix recordings.’

I was, of course, aware, that Hendrix was rarely without guitar in hand during his short life and that an absolute deluge of albums have appeared in the years since he died, all claiming to be ‘recently discovered’ or ‘previously unknown’ recordings, some from before he burst into the public consciousness, when he made a living by being a backing musician. It all raised in my mind a similar question to the one often posed in the art world when the painter of a specific work is unclear. If it can be proved to have been by Picasso or someone of similar stature it becomes worth millions; if not, the value slumps to maybe a couple of hundred quid. All about provenance. But why? It is the same painting/music, whoever created it.

So, would you have persisted in wanting to buy the ‘Hendrix’ album, given the furore around its authenticity? I found a copy with a ‘very good’ cover which, with postage added, would cost me £15.83. Seemed reasonable, so I made the purchase and anticipated the record’s arrival, even though I could no longer remember what the track heard in the shop had sounded like. A few days later, my postie trundled down the drive with a parcel ‘all the way from Portugal’. It was very well wrapped but once free of packaging one of the slurs aimed at the record – that it does not mention the name Hendrix – appears to be borne out. Nowhere to be seen – on the front cover. But, take the disc out of its sleeve and there sits a rainbow-coloured ‘P’ for Pickwick logo, not far from which, in silver type, appears the single word ‘Jimi’, followed by two words: ‘JIMI HENDRIX’. I accept that this is not sufficient evidence to end the controversy over the contents, which will almost certainly never be categorically resolved one way or t’other, but as another illustration of the potential pitfalls of record ownership, I am more than happy to own a copy.

It is safe to say that even ‘Are You Experienced’ would almost certainly not have been the first to fall foul of the punctuation police.

And what about bands with an entire career behind them which are still operating without what one might have thought would be essential parts of their names? Who are they? The Guess Who… and The Who. Discussing the query quandary with Julian in Second Scene he came up with a blindingly simple reason for it, which I’d quite overlooked: ‘? and the Mysterians must have used them all up when “’96 Tears” was big.’

Also, wonderful though my purple vinyl reissue copy of the 1972 LP by one of the few groups of that generation from Jersey, The Parlour Band (or, as the fantastic gatefold cover has it, ‘the parlour band’) is, I cannot work out why they would decide to call it this: Is a Friend? Is a friend what, for heaven’s sake? What does that question mark signify?

Another example of an interesting use of punctuation was the decision by minor league mid-1960s band the Alan Bown Set to change their name, on their 1968 MGM single ‘Story Book’, to The Alan Bown! Yes, their new name included an exclamation mark. At one point Ultravox inexplicably appended an exclamation mark to their name, while there is some controversy over whether Leicester prog group, Pesky Gee who would morph into Black Widow, ever used an exclamation mark in their actual name, although that’s what their 1969 LP was called. Images of the now £200 disc suggest that they didn’t. But the 2020 Rare Record Price Guide and other respected reference books include the ‘!’ in the group’s entry.

Don’t get me started on other such matters like the missing apostrophe in the title of the Rolling Stones’ classic album, Beggars Banquet. I don’t mind whether the apostrophe should have come before or after the ‘s’, but can think of no good reason why it is entirely absent. When I first discovered the late 1960s ‘group’, Edwards Hand, I feared that here was another example of apostrophe aberration – until a little research revealed that the group was actually a duo – Rod Edwards and Roger Hand – so none was necessary.

You might expect that having survived and remained popular for 40 years, a band might know whether its name should contain an apostrophe, or not. And, for sure, whether that name should have a hyphen. Their website goes under the name gogos.com. Their Wikipedia page is headed The Go-Go’s. The picture sleeve single of ‘Head Over Heels’ uses their name as part of the design of the picture sleeve: GOGOS. The record itself says underneath the title of the A-side, GO GO’s. On the girls’ website is a quote: ‘The Go-Go’s music really makes us dance.’ If that quote is grammatically correct, then surely the band’s name is The Go-Go?

Punctuation problems are one thing, spelling mistakes another. It is difficult to understand how Desmond Dekker must have felt when the first copies of his 1969 ‘greatest hits’ album, released by his label, the much-admired Trojan Records, arrived with him, and at the shops selling it. There, proudly and prominently displayed on the front cover in large capital letters: ‘THIS IS DESMOND DEKKAR’.

I suppose if you are going to misspell a word writ large on an album cover you’re better off doing it with a title that most people may not even notice is wrong, which is the only saving grace for whoever okayed the proofs of the cover of an initially ignored but latterly almost deified record. Odessey And Oracle by The Zombies was released in 1968 to a torrent of indifference and disdain. The recently disbanded group were thus reassured that splitting up, which they’d done even before the record appeared, had been the right decision. According to Wikipedia, ‘The misspelling of “odyssey” in the title was the result of a mistake by the designer of the LP cover, Terry Quirk. The band tried to cover this up at the time by claiming the misspelling was intentional.’ By February 1969, ‘Time of the Season’, the single from the album, had hit the US charts, peaking at Number 3 and stimulating interest in the LP, which has never since waned, leading to its regular presence in prestigious lists of the best albums of all time. I was there at both the 40th and 50th anniversary concerts by the surviving original members of the band, celebrating the record, at the Shepherds Bush Empire and London Palladium respectively.

Shepherds Bush? Shouldn’t that name have an apostrophe…?