No. 936 – Rock Me Baby

Performer: The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Songwriters: B.B. King, Joe Josea

Original Release: Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival

Year: 1970

Definitive Version: The Monterey International Pop Festival, 1992

I’m not exactly sure of the timeline, but I’m pretty sure that sometime in the spring or summer of 1980 I discovered Jimi Hendrix.

Not that I didn’t know who he was. You pretty much had to be living in a cave to not have at least crossed paths with Hendrix in the ‘70s, but I didn’t really know his music.

That changed when a friend suggested going to see the Jimi Hendrix movie showing at the midnight movies on Ohio State’s campus. Because my birthday is in June, I was always one of the youngest in my class, which meant I was the last one among all of my friends to get a driver’s license, so he’d drive.

I can’t recall whether I had already seen Woodstock by this time—my guess is no—and if not, then this was my first, ahem, experience. I can’t say I’d never seen anything like it, because I had been exposed to The Who in full flight in The Kids Are Alright, but this was something different.

As you might know, the movie opens with an interview with Pete Townshend talking about how great Hendrix was and then Eric Clapton doing the same. The first performance is Rock Me Baby at Monterey, followed by another Townshend interview about Monterey and how Hendrix lost the coin flip and had to follow The Who’s act on stage that night, and how Hendrix subsequently promised that he was going to “pull out all the stops.” And then came Wild Thing. As you can imagine, I was hooked—even before he pulled out the lighter fluid.

So that’s what I think of when I hear this song: Being some 15- or 16-year-old punk feeling as if I snuck in somewhere I didn’t fully belong, surrounded by college kids who had “prepared” for the show and were continuing to “prepare” with their funny cigarettes.