RIP Owsley "Bear" Stanley

From Reuters:
Owsley "Bear" Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia on Sunday, his family said. He was 76.

The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco's Bay Area.

"He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor," former rock 'n' roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

Hendrix's song "Purple Haze" was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley's product, though the guitarist denied any drug link. The ear-splitting psychedelic-blues combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch.

Stanley briefly managed the Grateful Dead, and oversaw every aspect of their live sound at a time when little thought was given to amplification in public venues. His tape recordings of Dead concerts were turned into live albums, providing him with a healthy income in later life.

"When it came to technology, the Bear was one of the most far-out and interesting guys on the planet," Cutler wrote. "The first FM live simulcast could be, in part, attributed to his vision, as could the first quadraphonic simulcast on radio."

The Dead, a fabled rock band formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965 known for its improvisational live concerts, wrote about him in their song "Alice D. Millionaire" after a 1967 arrest prompted a newspaper to describe Stanley as an "LSD millionaire."

Steely Dan's 1976 single "Kid Charlemagne" was loosely inspired by Stanley's exploits...

Psychedelic icon Owsley Stanley dies in Australia
Sun Mar 13, 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/us-owsleystanley-idUSTRE72C3AF20110313

Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child named best guitar riff

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/6661438/Jimi-Hendrixs-Voodoo-Child-named-best-guitar-riff-of-all-time.html

Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child named best guitar riff of all time
Voodoo Child, by Jimi Hendrix has been named the greatest guitar riff of all time, more than 40 years after he first recorded the classic jam.
27 Nov 2009

Late guitar guru Hendrix, who topped the singles chart with the track in 1970, triumphed in a poll of musicians.

The track - full title Voodoo Child (Slight Return) - edged past Guns N'Roses song Sweet Child O'Mine which finished second in the poll by musicians' website MusicRadar.com.

When the site's sister magazine Total Guitar last conducted the survey five years ago, the list was headed by the G N'R song.

The list shows that the older riffs are the best. Just two from the past decade make it into the top 20 - Muse's Plug In Baby at 11 and The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army at 15.

Michael Jackson's Beat It, with its Eddie Van Halen guitar part, props up the top 20.

Voodoo Child - with its distinctive 'wah-wah' opening - was first released on Hendrix's Electric Ladyland album and led on from an earlier track, Voodoo Chile, which was a 15-minute blues jam. Confusingly, by the time it was released as a single in 1970 it too had been named Voodoo Chile.

MusicRadar.com's editor-in-chief Mike Goldsmith said: ''Nearly 40 years after his untimely death, Jimi Hendrix is still the undisputed heavyweight champion of rock guitar.

''Of the current generation of six-string stars, only Jack White of The White Stripes and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy feature in the higher echelons of our list. No surprise given both Bellamy and White share - or have inherited - Hendrix's unique blend of experimental instincts and white-knuckle showmanship.

''Above all though, our poll seems to indicate one thing - in 2009, classic rock still rules.''

More than 5,000 MusicRadar users took part in the poll.

The top 20:


1. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Voodoo Child (Slight Return)

2. Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine

3. Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love

4. Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water

5. Derek and the Dominos - Layla

6. AC/DC - Back In Black

7. Metallica - Enter Sandman

8. The Beatles - Day Tripper

9. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

10. The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

11. Black Sabbath - Paranoid

12. Muse - Plug In Baby

13. Eddie Van Halen - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love

14. The Kinks - You Really Got Me

15. The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

16. AC/DC - Highway to Hell

17. Led Zeppelin - Heartbreaker

18. Black Sabbath - Iron Man

19. Led Zeppelin - Black Dog

20. Michael Jackson - Beat It

Mitch Mitchell: The Jimi Hendrix Experience is over

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article5148758.ece

The Times
November 13, 2008
With the death of Mitch Mitchell, the Jimi Hendrix Experience is over
With the death of Mitch Mitchell, one of the finest bands of all is no more. Our correspondent says goodbye to the Jimi Hendrix Experience
Bob Stanley

It’s no coincidence that Jimi Hendrix was a jobbing session man, hired and fired regularly, before he moved to London and broke through with the Experience in 1967. In the British drummer Mitch Mitchell, he found a soulmate, a kindred free spirit who could make Hendrix’s style intensify, catch fire and burn you.

Before the band’s debut single, Hey Joe, in late 1966, Mitchell’s career had been as spotty as Hendrix’s. As a session drummer for the producer Joe Meek, he had such an abstract style that Meek was rumoured to have put a gun to his head and told him to “play properly”. His approach was closer to jazz than the more straight-ahead rock drummers. It was after a spell with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, the house band of the Flamingo club, that he did an audition for a wild-haired guitarist brought from America by the former Animal Chas Chandler.

Noel Redding, the bassist, got the Experience job largely because Hendrix thought that he looked the part (he had never played bass before), but Mitchell was hired because he was a perfect foil for Hendrix’s showier tendencies.

On many of the best Jimi Hendrix Experience recordings, such as Fire and Manic Depression, Mitchell is as much a lead musician as the guitarist, fizzing, roaring, shifting the songs like a racing driver going through chicanes. Just as it is hard to believe that there is only one guitarist on some of their cuts, Mitch Mitchell did the work of two drummers.

A classic “power trio”, along with Cream and Blue Cheer, the Experience were the only ones to produce a run of super-tough three-minute pop singles: Hey Joe, Purple Haze, The Wind Cries Mary, Burning of the Midnight Lamp and All Along the Watchtower all made the UK Top 20 and stand as a faultless run of vicious, caution-free, amped-up and genuinely psychedelic 45s. When Hendrix tired of the trio and 7in formats, his music — no longer grounded by Redding and Mitchell — lost its flash, straying into flabby selfindulgence and bluesy boredom.

Those who doubt Mitchell’s standing among contemporaries, seeing him merely as Hendrix’s foot soldier, should note that he was chosen as the drummer of the Dirty Mac, the supergroup assembled for The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV special in 1968, for which they recorded a scything take of the White Album track Yer Blues. His temporary bandmates that night were John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards.

Yet Hendrix was always the man Mitchell returned to, rejecting a job with the group that became Emerson, Lake & Palmer (and thus millionaire status) to play with Jimi once more on the 1970 Cry of Love tour. To the end he was celebrating the group’s legacy on the 2008 Experience Hendrix tour, travelling America coast to coast and playing to almost 50,000 fans.

The influence of the Experience is incalculable. It’s hard to imagine that the Beatles’ Helter Skelter would have been recorded without Hendrix’s band as a blueprint. Their reach can be felt most clearly in the pounding blues rock of Led Zeppelin, and more recently in My Bloody Valentine’s experimental, eardrum-testing noise and the sheer power of Kings of Leon.

The hardest and loudest group of the era, they now become the first to have all gone too soon. Mitch Mitchell was, along with Keith Moon, the most exciting and innovative of British drummers.

It is quite likely that without his empathy Jimi Hendrix would have remained a little-known session man.

Jimi Hendrix estate disputes sex tape

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hFAATNSXFYS2daBqiiAAI5hpdl8AD90DQ7V80

Jimi Hendrix estate disputes sex tape
By DERRIK J. LANG
5-3-8

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The estate of Jimi Hendrix says it questions the authenticity of a sex tape released this week allegedly starring the deceased musician.

"We strongly dispute the claimed authenticity and affirmatively state that Experience Hendrix is neither involved in, nor have we authorized the distribution of this film," Experience Hendrix, the company that controls the rights to Hendrix's music and likeness, said in a statement released Thursday.

Experience Hendrix called the distribution of the tape a "callous attempt to trade on the image and reputation of a deceased artist who is unable to defend himself against such an outrageous and baseless assertion. We are highly offended by the disgraceful portrayal."

In response, Vivid Entertainment co-chairman Steven Hirsch released a statement saying Experience Hendrix's statement "is not in any way a refutation of the authenticity of 'Jimi Hendrix the Sex Tape.' Vivid took considerable time and spent a substantial sum of money to authenticate the footage and we are very comfortable that this is the real thing."

The 11 minutes of footage, reportedly shot in a hotel room about 40 years ago, features a man who appears to be Hendrix engaged in various sexual acts with two women. Vivid released the footage online and on a 45-minute DVD, which also features interviews with women who claimed to personally know Hendrix.

Charles R. Cross, author of the Hendrix biography "Room Full of Mirrors," previously said he had seen the film and doubted the man is Hendrix. Cross said the face and nostrils of the man depicted in the video don't match the guitarist, and the man in the tape is wearing more rings that Hendrix was known to wear.

Hirsch said in his statement that "it's worth noting that the primary nay-sayer about the tape is so-called expert Charlie Cross. How can Charlie say it 'doesn't add up?' I'd like to know what he means by that since he told me personally that he only saw about 30 seconds at the beginning of the footage when Jimi was lying down with his face distorted."

When reached for comment about Hirsch's statement, Cross confirmed he had a conversation with Hirsch when he learned that Vivid Entertainment would release the footage. Cross said he told Hirsch that Hendrix owned a video camera, but he did not think it was Hendrix in the footage.

"It's a question of opinion," Cross told The Associated Press on Friday. "Is it him or not? You could look at it for 30 seconds. You could look at it for an hour. You could look at for 11 minutes. It's either him or it's not him. In my opinion, it's not him."

Buddy Miles, 60

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-miles28feb28,1,2356173.story

Buddy Miles, 60; drummer with Hendrix, voice of California raisins
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
February 28, 2008

Buddy Miles, the rock and R&B drummer, singer and songwriter whose eclectic career included stints playing with Jimi Hendrix and as the lead voice of the California Raisins, the animated clay figures that became an advertising phenomenon in the late 1980s, has died. He was 60.

Miles died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his home in Austin, Texas, according to an announcement on his website.

A massive man with a distinctive, sculpted afro, Miles hit his peak of popularity when he joined Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, which the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll called "the first black rock group." Miles had played with Hendrix on the guitarist's influential "Electric Ladyland" album released in 1968.

The Band of Gypsys made just one album, a live set recorded on New Year's Eve in 1969-70, and two of Miles' songs, "Them Changes" and "We Got to Live Together," were included on the album. He gave the recording a memorable drum riff on one of Hendrix's signature songs, "Machine Gun."

But, according to Miles, the Band of Gypsys association was brief and stormy. He told The Times in 1988 that Hendrix's management, not the guitarist himself, fired him within a month of the concert. He thought Hendrix's managers were leery of continuing with an all-black group.

"It had to be a racial thing," Miles told The Times. "I think it had to scare them because of the political aspect at the time."

Miles was born Sept. 5, 1947, in Omaha. He developed an interest in drums at an early age and by 12 was playing in his father's jazz combo. Within a couple of years he was in demand as a session player and a sideman, working with top-name R&B groups, including Ruby and the Romantics and the Delfonics. According to the Rolling Stone encyclopedia, he played on the session that produced the Jaynetts' 1963 hit "Sally Go Round the Roses."

While playing with Wilson Pickett in 1967, he was approached by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, who asked him to join the blues, rock and soul group Electric Flag. Miles played on three of the band's albums before forming his own group, the Buddy Miles Express, in 1968. Next came his association with Hendrix.

Over the years, Miles recorded two albums with Carlos Santana, one of which went platinum, and worked with other leading music figures, including Muddy Waters and John McLaughlin. He re-formed the Buddy Miles Express in the mid-1970s and had a hit with his song "Them Changes."

By the late 1970s, however, Miles' career came to a halt over convictions for grand theft and auto theft. He served time in the California Institution for Men at Chino and at San Quentin State Prison. He was incarcerated until 1985 and formed bands at both prisons.

After he was released, he sang with Santana's group and got the raisin gig while working on an album with the guitarist. The popular television commercials for the California Raisin Advisory Board featured a quartet of singing and dancing Claymation figures with Miles, as Buddy Raisin, doing the lead singing covering Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."

The commercial's popularity spawned a million-selling offshoot album of remakes of rock and soul oldies, "The California Raisins Sing the Hit Songs."