Where were you when Jimi died?

My life-long love affair with rock and roll started February 2, 1964 when I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.  Two minutes into the song I was screaming like the teens on TV.  My Grandmother was shocked and amused.  I was in Heaven.  From that point on I lived and breathed the Beatles.  I even had a Beatles lunchbox set.

Being a child of the radio, I was blasting WVON and WLS all my waking hours.  My Grandmama was constantly telling me to "turn that mess off".  Eventually she got used to it, but my Black friends were a different story.

July, 1964 I went to a picnic, radio was playing and a Beatles song came on.  I sang and danced and popped my nine year old fingers like they were singing to me.  My childhood buddies were appalled, "you a Uncle Tom, how you like white man's music, you a Tom".  It stung, but I did not care, I kept bopping and bobbing cause the Beatles spoke to my soul.  Back in the day to be called an "Uncle Tom"was worse than someone talking about your Mama, I was not affected by their scorn.  They had no idea what they were missing and I was too busy rocking to tell them.

Soon I was searching for posters, buying Teen Beat magazine and spending my allowance on 45's.  For my 10th birthday Mom gave me my own portable stereo and a whole bunch of records, I was transformed.  I'd sit in the middle of my bed, pajama clad and dizzy with anticipation play "Michelle" by the Beatles over and over and over again.

The sounds that issued from my stereo reverberated to my very core.  That music was magic.

James Taylor, CCR, Cream, OMG...Just thinking about them makes me happy.  

And then here comes Jimi Hendrix...I cut my hair off, start wearing it natural and listening to "All Along the Watch Tower" full blast while doing my chores.  

Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Funkadelics, Buddy Miles, Jethro Tull...I love each and every one of those artists and more.  Rock and Roll has seen me through some pretty rough times, helped me celebrate, mourn, love and lose.

Right about this time I discovered pot, pills and LSD, I was primed for mind expansion and possibly brain damage but I did not care.  I was tooking away, held in the sway of the world changing around me.

I started watching the news report on Viet Nam and getting involved in social issues, boycotting the A & P, going to Breadbasket meetings.  I was the change I wanted to world to be.

Then Jimi died, and I discovered that there are no end to the tears we shed for our heroes.  Stunned, tears dripping down my face, sipping BaliHi wine and moaning.  The charming, carefree world I lived in came to an end for me that day in 1970.  I wept like my brother had died.  And in a way he had.  Jimi lead me from youth to young adulthood, his guitar strumming the background strains of my life.

I will always be grateful to Rock and Roll....