“We’ll finish this later.” Ron stood up and cracked every one of his knuckles, a habit of his that used to drive me insane. “Where are you going after this?” he asked.
With a tilt of my head, I lifted my eyebrows. “Thatis a very good question.”
Woodstock
Day Four
Monday, August 18, 1969
8:55 a.m.
“Please, there’s been reports that due to wet mud underneath the towers, they are slowly moving downhill. The guy wires are getting a little tighter. Well, I am a little worried about my lamps on top of them—as well as you—and the people underneath. So if you’d be kind enough to come down, you’d save us a great insurance hassle. And perhaps broken bones. Please come down if you will.” Chip sounded mighty patient this morning.
“Damn,” said Ron, staring up at the jungle of monkeys on the towers. “I can’t believe that dude’s having to ask people to get down. You’d think it would be obvious.”
A collective laugh sounded from our group.
“You don’t know the half of it, man,” Johnny said. “That’s his four hundredth announcement. He’s had a helluva time.”
Chip made another plea. “Before we begin, and close, could we ask you once again to leave the towers. And then in the same breath, thank you for making all of this possible. It’s been a long one, but it’s been delightful.”
“Four hundred and one,” said Leon.
We all laughed.
Five minutes later, at nine o’clock Monday morning, exactly three years minus a day after missing the concert of a lifetime in Memphis, I got a second chance in Bethel. Woodstock’s headliner strolled onto the stage with only a fraction of the audience left, but the cheering sounded like a full house.
Chip gave his final introduction. “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Jimi Hendrix Experience.”
With his white Fender Stratocaster guitar hanging from a colorful shoulder strap, the one and only Jimi Hendrix strolled onto the Woodstock stage wearing a white leather jacket with beaded fringe on the sleeves. He looked uncommonly cool, and oh so patriotic, in his faded blue-jean bell-bottoms and a red bandanna tied around his forehead.
After what must have been a long weekend for him, too, Jimi walked straight over to the microphone and spoke in this sexy, deep-throated voice. “I see that we meet again. Hmm. Yeah, well, well, well. Dig, dig, dig. I’d like to get something straight. We, uh, got tired of the Experience, and every once in a while, we’re just blowing our minds too much, so we decided to change everything around. I call it ‘Gypsy Sun and Rainbows’ for short. ’Cause we’re nothing but a band of gypsies.”
A girl in the audience yelled, “Jimi! Are you high?”
“I am high, thank you. I am high, thank you, baby,” he said.
Ron pointed to ten girls on the side of the stage. “Holy shit. Look at his groupies.”
“They’re not all with him,” I said.
“You better believe they are,” my brother answered, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Ew.”
Leon, who’d been watching me, reached over and tugged my body into his, with a tantalizing grin.
“What?” I said. “That’s gross.”
He cracked a crooked smile, then looked right back at the groupies.
Jimi played six songs before I recognized the opening chords to “Foxy Lady.” Visions of my closet sprang to mind. Instead of crying, I hollered out loud, “Look at me now, Dad!”
Ron gave me a high five with an ear-to-ear grin.
In the middle of the song, Leon and Johnny exchanged fist pumps, as if this was the moment they’d been waiting for their entire lives, especially when Jimi played the guitar with his teeth.
Unable to take his eyes off the superstar, all Ron could do was stand perfectly still, staring at the stage in disbelief. Jimi wielded his Stratocaster like he was riding a bucking bronco. It sounded like one hundred wild Chincoteague ponies locked inside a corral, squealing to get loose.
