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GW Mitch, in the spring of ’69, had Jimi spoken to you about bringing in Billy Cox as the new bass player? MITCHELL Jimi and I had spoken about replacing Noel a few times over a couple of years, because there was always a lot of frustration there. I’m sure he had told me about Billy, and when we finally did play together for the very first time, we probably just nodded at each other and got right to it! COX That’s right! [laughs] We just jumped in together, and with the three of us, it sounded good to me right away. MITCHELL I have some film of those early sessions, in fact. I can’t speak for Jimi, but Billy’s presence on the bass immediately took a lot of weight off of me, which I greatly appreciated! I was now playing with a real bass player, and it was great. GW Billy, when you first came to New York, didn’t you do some gigs as the bassist for the Buddy Miles Express, which Jimi was producing at the time? COX Right. While Jimi was finishing up his commitments with the original Experience, Buddy told me he liked my playing and asked me to join his band. I had to learn his whole album within a week—I slept with it!—and then I did a handful of gigs with him till Jimi was ready for me. MITCHELL Jimi and I had different musical tastes—he turned me on to Dylan lyrics and I used to play him [jazz saxophonists] John Coltrane and Roland Kirk—but we did see eye to eye in the bass-player department. Noel, bless his heart, went to see Bob Dylan once at a gig in Ireland, and Bob told Noel that he liked his bass playing on Jimi’s recording of Bob’s “All Along the Watchtower” [Electric Ladyland], which, of course, is really Jimi on bass. It was just so much easier to make records with just Jimi and myself, because Jimi was one hell of a bass player. In actual fact, he played better bass when he played a right-handed bass upside down! GW When Jimi played bass during a session, did it change your approach to the drums? MITCHELL Most definitely. Jimi was so solid, I could actually play less and leave more space; those were some of the only times when I wasn’t compelled to overplay, at least until Billy came onto the scene. Jimi and I were always aware that we needed a funky, rock-solid bass player. I had some fantasies about really fattening up the bottom end, by getting [jazz legend] Larry Young on organ, maybe Howard Johnson on tuba, along with a killer bassist. I wanted overkill, miles of low end! I was once doing an album in New York and was asked who I’d like as a bassist on the session, so, being a bit of a wise guy, I said Chuck Rainey on electric bass and Richard Davis on standup. The next day, they were there! Richard had his lion-headed acoustic bass, and Chuck had his convertible Ampeg B- 15 amp and Fender Jazz Bass, and he parked himself right next to me. It was wonderful. GW In working on Jimi’s previous studio effort, Electric Ladyland, he had expressed in the press a strong desire to work with different musicians in the pursuit of new musical forms. MITCHELL That’s true. Jimi and I had both become very disillusioned with the situation with the band. It was becoming increasingly difficult to break new ground. We encouraged each other to play with as many different people as possible, and there were a handful of people who had played with us in the studio and live, such as Buddy Miles, Steve Winwood [of Traffic] and Jack Casady [of the Jefferson Airplane]. The studio was where Jimi lived; in truth, if he could have lived in the studio 24 hours a day, he would have. The studio was a natural instrument for Jimi, one with which he possessed an uncanny ability to express himself. Billy, I’ve got to ask you something: did you ever work with Buddy—who was so solid we used to refer to him as the “concrete mixer”— on any studio dates other than with Jimi? COX No, I only worked in the studio with Buddy and Jimi together, never just Buddy. There have always been rumors to that effect, but the answer is no. MITCHELL I once asked Buddy to come and sit in with Jimi and Noel at Winterland in ’68 just because I wanted to hear what the band sounded like! [laughs] GW Billy, immediately after you arrived in New York, you and Jimi recorded a number of times at the Record Plant, right from the start forging arrangements of new compositions like “Earth Blues,” “Message to Love” [originally titled “Message to the Universe”] and “Straight Ahead,” as well as the complex masterpiece “Power of Soul.” How did that song come together? COX I was playing an old Ray Charles song called “Mary Ann,” which has some similar bass patterns, and Jimi heard it, picked up on it and then wrote new riffs for it. All of those new songs, like “Dolly Dagger,” came together during that spring and summer. With “Dolly,” we were up at the house in Woodstock [actually Shokan, New York], and one morning I started to play a riff that sounded like Big Ben, [sings] “Dada- da-da, Da-da-da-da,” and Jimi added a twist to try to top me. Then I’d play another line to try to top his, and of course he’d end up topping me every time! So that’s how we worked together, and it was always fun and with a good musical spirit. MITCHELL I noticed from the get-go that there was genuine warmth between Billy and Jimi. I didn’t know anything about their relationship beforehand from their army days; I just knew that they went back to the chitlin circuit together. But they would spent a lot of time together, working on music as partners; this was the first time in my three years with Jimi that he’d ever had anyone to work with like this and bounce ideas off. In Billy, I also saw someone that was prepared to play on Jimi’s level, and had real enthusiasm about the work and was willing to sit for hours and hours getting things together. This was right from the start, way before the Band of Gypsys [Jimi’s subsequent three-piece group with Billy and drummer Buddy Miles]. There was a synchronicity; there was contact. For me to see my friend Jimi getting his socks off being able to play off someone else was really great; he’d never had that before, for as long as I’d known him. I saw it and I felt it. GW So Jimi’s daily routine changed dramatically? MITCHELL Oh, definitely. I’d leave Jimi’s 12th Street apartment and he and Billy would stay there and continue working on music for hours, however long it took them to get the new ideas together. The feeling was so great. COX Then we’d put these ideas down on tape—we always had our little tape recorders running. After rehearsal, we’d get some sandwiches, listen back to the tape, and then I’d go back to where I was staying, listen to the tape some more, and I’d think, Oh, I’m gonna improve on this tomorrow, and Jimi would be thinking the same thing. Then we’d come back together with more ideas the next morning. He’d say, “Listen to this!” and I’d say, “Oh yeah? Well, listen to this!” [laughs] GW While the original Experience were playing live shows throughout May 1969, Jimi returned to New York on a half dozen occasions to record new songs in the studio with Billy and a variety of other musicians. The spring tour culminated on June 29 at the Denver Pop Festival, after which Noel Redding left the band. In July, Jimi moved to Shokan in upstate New York to prepare for the upcoming Woodstock show on August 18, ultimately settling on a lineup of Larry Lee on guitar, Billy on bass, Jerry Velez and Juma Sultan on percussion and Mitch on drums, and called the new ensemble Gypsy Sun and Rainbows. What are your recollections of that time? MITCHELL The first thing is, we didn’t know that we’d come to the end of the Experience. It was never defined. Billy and I had done a bit of playing in the studio together, and it was always good. But regarding Noel, there was nothing definitive one way or the other. There was this “floating” situation, wherein Noel was concentrating on Fat Mattress, I had gone back to England, and Jimi began working with some of the guys that ended up at Woodstock. I felt in my heart that Jimi and I would work together again and never gave it a thought, but nothing whatsoever was discussed. COX It was a little awkward, because no definite plans were laid out. Jimi expressed to me that he was tired of the trio format and he wanted to make some changes. He tried an expanded lineup at Woodstock, but ultimately the bigger group didn’t work out. Personally, I like the trio concept best. MITCHELL I got a call in July asking if I’d consider coming to New York to prepare for the Woodstock show. I’d lived up there before, at Mike Jeffrey’s house, so I knew the area well and liked it very much. And I only got the call because something wasn’t happening up there, I suppose. [To Cox] Didn’t you guys have another drummer at one point? COX Yes, we had played some with Phil Wilson, from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, but that was really just jamming. I think Jimi knew he really wanted Mitch to be the drummer. MITCHELL When I got to the house, it was a shambles! A ramshackle house—with some very nice people, like Claire [Moriece] the cook—but I had my doubts from the beginning. The world and his wife was up there. To see Jimi riding a horse was a sight to behold! [laughs] COX I have a picture of Mitch falling off his horse! MITCHELL I remember that Eric Barrett, the roadie, had an air rifle, and when he fired it he shattered the windscreen on Mike Jeffrey’s jeep! It wasn’t intentional…of course! It was craziness up there, for sure. I think I have a realistic view of this period and, for me, my memories of the Woodstock situation are that it was not brilliant, musically. It was fortunate that Billy and I had played together a little bit beforehand, because the percussion players, Jerry Velez and Juma Sultan, didn’t really cut it for me, no offense intended. I was very grateful that at least Billy and I had begun to forge a strong musical bond. COX We had each other, and we knew where we were each coming from, musically speaking. MITCHELL We knew where we sat together. I do think the other players were out of their element, because it is a difficult thing to be thrown into what had been, for Jimi and myself, a well-established working relationship, one that had lasted nearly three years at that point. These guys were thrust into the limelight, and I think they were in awe to a certain degree.

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