What is a “crazy” person? Why does it take a crazy person to change the world? In our humanities classes we have been looking at these questions in depth. Fundamentally, someone who changes the world has to be crazy. A persons crazy idea will be the one that makes an impact or the one that makes a change on the world in some way. With this information, everyone in PLP 10 chose someone from history. I chose Jimi Hendrix for the way he changed pop culture and music altogether. Here’s how he did it.  

 

James Marshall Hendrix, commonly known as Jimi Hendrix was arguably one of the most influential figures in rock music of all time. Although he is renowned for his great guitar playing skills, he didn’t actually pick up a guitar in his entire life until age fifteen. 

Jimi grew up in a very poor, divorced family in the suburbs of Seattle. Although he had never picked up a guitar, at age 12 he already had seemed to have an aptitude for it. He would go around his school halls pretending to play a guitar with a broom. When the school counselor saw she told Jimi’s dad to buy him a guitar. He refused. 

One day, he found a beaten up ukulele with one string in a trash bag while helping his dad at a job. He kept it. He repaired it as well as he could and he became very skilled with this ukulele. And this is what really started the fire for Jimi. Where he found his true passion.

 

In 1960 Jimi got his first guitar for 5$. It’s said that he would sit in his room for hours on end playing the guitar. Soon after this he joined with a different small time bands, skipping from gig to gig. The problem was, he would get kicked out of these bands. But, why would he get kicked out if he was so good? Well, it’s because the bands didn’t like his style. It was different from what they played and they didn’t like it he also was known to upstage his band at shows. 

 

Because of his raw talent, Jimi was picked up larger band called the isleys in 1964. That was around the time he started recording his own music to. His first recorded single was called “testify”. Even though the song would have been considered “pop” You could hear how Jimi influenced it in his own way and how it has been impacted by jimis style. 

His first studio album called “Are You Experienced” was when his musical talent really shone through to the rest of the world though. If you listen to the album you can hear the drastic differences between him and other rock bands. He almost puts a psychedelic, dark style in his music. There’s a large similarity between him and grunge. A trend that didn’t happen for a long time.

Jimi was ahead of his time, a revolutionary when it came to music. I’m sure lots of you have heard some of his later hits like “all along the watchtower” or “purple haze”. In these songs he shows how he is a crazy, unpredictable guitarist with a unique and unheard style. Some people hated him and some people loved him.

Throughout his life though Jimi did struggle with substances. In 1969 he was caught at the Canadian border with heroin and marijuana. Eventually he was let off in trial because he thought it was “medicinal” and a fan gave it to him. He would be known to spend 400 $ on drinks a night. He would often get violent and unlike his normal kind and chilled out nature. In September of 1970 Jimi Hendrix died of a drug overdose in his hotel. He took 19 times the actual pharmaceutical dosage.

 

 

Throughout his life, Jimi Hendrix seemed to look at music in a different way or at least he left a lasting impact on it in many ways. His use of dark, sound crushing guitar plugins changed the way his music sounded. His reverse handled guitar altered the way he played and this is apparent though his name being in the rock and roll hall of fame. with his rebellious nature and contrasting ideas, Jimi Hendrix was able to influence pop culture and change the way we think about music completely.

When someone changes the the world, they are crazy. Not crazy in a mentally insane way or crazy in a wild and trigger happy way (although they could be). They are crazy in their own way. Crazy in the way that they don’t comply to the rules of society, they don’t follow the rules given to you by the rest of the world, they think of things from different angles, out side the box and see things through a different lenses. These people like Jimi Hendrix change the world. With Jimis rebellious nature and contrasting ideas, he was able to influence pop culture and change the way we think about music completely.