Jimi and Eddie

I was blessed to see & meet the two players who changed my life! Jimi & Eddie! I saw Jimi in 1970 at the New York Pop Festival at Randalls Island, and got to shake his hand! I met and hung with Eddie in 1989 and in 1990 when the Spyz opened for the P-Funk All Stars!

The first time was a funny one! We were doing soundcheck when I noticed all the P-Funk cats coming in and checking us out I was waiting for my hero to walk in and when he did, we kicked into Jimi'z Jam and I figured I'd show him my skillz! When we were done, I put my guitar down and walked up to him and introduced myself and told him it was an honor to meet him. His response to me was "Aww, Fuck You Man!". And he walked away from me! I was devastated! My hero just told me to fuck off! So I went to our tour bus and tried to figure out what had just happened! After flipping out a bit, I finally decided to find what happened! I go back in to the soundcheck, where they are now onstage. When they finish, Eddie walks up to me and I say, what did I do to piss you off? He started laughing and says,"Man, I was just fucking with you"! Every town we go to, people come up to me night after night and say wow, Eddie! Your son's band was just here and they were amazing"! You must be so proud! He's a killer guitarist! He said he got tired of having to explain to everyone that I was not his son! We had a big laugh behind that!

The second time was different. He had recently gotten out of the hospital and was clean & sober. He looked great! We talked for a bit and he told me that every night felt like a competition, with all the guitarists in the All Stars trying to play louder than each other. He would just turn his amp down and stay in the background. I told him I love all the cats, but you're the one that I want to hear! That night, armed with just a telecaster and a rented marshall stack, he played the most stellar version of Maggot Brain that had been the highlight of a really horrible show. People were crying when he played, knowing he was in fragile health. It was almost like he knew he was not going to be with us for long and wanted it understood that he a genius. I cried too, you could feel all his pain and emotion in his playing. His health continued to decline and of course, we lost him.

One last coda in my EH story was when I moved to Cali, Spacey T invited me over and said he had something to show me. He had a videotape of a band he put together called "Crunchy" with Eddie sharing the guitar duties! The tape was from a Hendrix Tribute show, and the first song they played was"John Connelly's Theory", from our Gumbo cd! I smiled, and said what an honor! My hero, playing a Spyz song!

Well, there's my story! I had to leave out some parts, my fingers are tired!

Jimi Hazel, HMS4L!