All language subtitles for BBC.Music.Money.Madness.Jimi.Hendrix.Live.in.Maui.1080p.HDTV.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org_Subtitles01.ENG

MUSIC: Purple Haze
by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

REPORTER: Do you consider yourself a
drop-out from society?

JIMI HENDRIX: Not necessarily, no.

Because we're making our own
society, if you give us a chance.

They might...
Oh, I shouldn't say that.

JIMI CHUCKLES

No, I'm not a drop-out, man.

I'm still living and
breathing just like you.

We just look a little different,
that's all.

We just have different ways of
expressing ourselves.

Which should be the free
point of view anyway.

# Purple haze

# All in our brain

# Don't know if I'm
comin' up or down... #

REPORTER: What do you do in your
music? What do you try to say?

JIMI: I try to say "Pewwwwww!
Crash! Blam! Prong. Smash"

# 'Scuse me
while I kiss the sky... #

He had the gist, he had the
soul, he had the love,

he had his music.

That's all he cared about.

REPORTER: What do you think your
audience likes best about you?

JIMI:
Sex. Danger.

JIMI GIGGLES

# Tomorrow or just
the end of time. #

Your lyrics seem to have quite
a bit of sophistication.

Yeah, well, so we're for anybody

that's going to get themselves
together, you know?

We're not for the whole lot of
people sitting around

in a big drug den, sitting around
complaining. If they're sitting

around and still trying to get
themselves together in some kind of

way, you know, regardless of if it's
a drop-out

of society or whatever it might be,
or if it's the people in society,

if they get anybody's mind together,

because the idea now is communicate.

Not to knock one another, you
know, rebel and all this.

Well, quite, actually, you have to
start somewhere,

so you go to the rebellions.
The idea is to communicate.

And for everybody to be respected,
regardless of what group scene

you might be in, you know?

PURPLE HAZE CONTINUES

All of a sudden, Jimi has gone to
Hawaii for a vacation

and somehow he got locked into
making this movie in Hawaii

with these knuckleheads.

Chuck was a showman.

He was the sort of guy who dressed
very care...

Like, put on a costume to go out for
the day.

He was called the Wizard because
there's nothing

that Chuck didn't know about.

He was totally turned in to
the cosmic world.

Could you tell us once more
what the Space Brothers

say about LSD?

We're talking 1970, so things
were pretty crazy

and it was a psychedelic era.

You know, rock and roll lifestyle.

SCRAPES GUITAR STRINGS

CHEERING

We got involved in this crazy film,
Rainbow Bridge, in Maui...

ARCHIVE: In half.

..and, I mean, that was just
very strange.

Chuck went in to talk to
Warner Brothers,

these two heads of Warner Brothers,

explaining how he wants to take all
of us to Maui

and rent this girls school
that's on a summer vacation

and we're all going to live there.

The one guy looks at the other guy
and goes,

"I do not know what the fuck the
guy's talking about.

"Give him the money."

And off we went,

with all of our friends,
to Maui to make this movie.

Jimi did not want to be a part
of Rainbow Bridge.

It was asked of him many times

and many times he would say,

"No."

It was not a script.
It was just a very loose idea.

And it shows.

ARCHIVE: I see through the form

for I created the form.

I'm beyond all time,

crying before time.

Anybody know what's going
on around here?

Hello?

GUITAR FEEDBACK

MUSIC: Foxy Lady
by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

Jimi Hendrix and I played
in a lot of concerts.

A lot of them were strange,
but this is the most unusual one.

On the cattle ranch,

on the side of a volcano.

THEY PLAY FOXY LADY

It wasn't just a regular
concert that you go to.

It was a colour, vibratory,
sound experience.

And it was insane.

The electricity went off in Lahaina,

people swore a spaceship went by.

I mean, crazy, crazy things happened
that day

from whatever Jimi pulled
out of that guitar.

THEY PLAY FOXY LADY

# I see you
on down on the scene

# Oh, ah... #

Hendrix's music kind
of was like...

I kept thinking a spaceship
was landing.

# Foxy

# Yeah,
I'm gonna take you home

# But don't you worry

# I won't do you no harm

# You've got to be all mine, all
mine

# Ooh, Foxy Lady... #

People were going,
"Oh, my God, we're...

"Jimi Hendrix is on the island."

To see Jimi Hendrix in this setting,

it was like a gift from God,
to me.

IMPROVISES GUITAR SOLO

PLAYS GUITAR WITH TEETH

PLAYS GUITAR WITH TEETH

Could you have asked for anything
more amazing?

Maui, free concert, Jimi Hendrix?

THEY PLAY FOXY LADY

Jimi Hendrix was a very,
very successful artist

at the record company.
There is no question of that.

And he was such an innovative
and captivating guitar player

that he was the artist that everyone
was talking about.

PLAYS GUITAR SOLO
WITH BAND ACCOMPANIMENT

He had a way to keep the crowd
on the edge of absolute hysteria.

It seemed to be a dangerous
situation,

because if the crowd went in one
direction,

the result would have been a riot.

It was very exciting.

MUSIC: Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

Jimi was a new force in music.

He brought something new and fresh
to the table

and, yeah, he was the biggest noise.

BAND PLAYS
VOODOO CHILD (SLIGHT RETURN)

There was really nothing
that could touch him.

His guitar playing,
it turned me upside down.

It's like his music got
inside my brain.

It was almost like it was
the soundtrack of my youth.

Thank you very much.

CHEERING

Frank Sinatra started Reprise
Records for his own records

initially and then started signing
his friends like Dean Martin,

Sammy Davis Jr,

and when Frank started Reprise,

he needed somebody to run it.

And his lawyer, Mickey Rudin,
suggested Mo Ostin.

And Frank's not so much into signing
rock acts,

but Mo sees this as the future.

MUSIC: Stone Free
by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

# You can't hold me down

# I don't want to be down, now

# I gotta move on

# Hey!

# I said
Stone Free

# Yeah, to do
what I please, baby... #

Hendrix's trajectory is straight up.

This isn't lost on Mo or the record
distributors

or Warner Brothers corporate,
I'm sure.

# Hey!

# Stone Free. #

And I remember Mo talking
about how excited he was

about signing
the Jimi Hendrix Experience,

these three guys who made enough
noise for 150 guys.

THEY PLAY STONE FREE

The Jimi Hendrix Experience!

JIMI PLAYS GUITAR SOLO

I felt 1969 was a critical
year for Jimi.

He was just on his own, just running
around, going from studio to studio

to try to put stuff down

while we were in the process
of building Electric Lady Studios.

And the more we got into the
building of Electric Lady Studios,

the more there was demand on Jimi
to go out on the road

to get money to fund the whole
operation.

Hendrix and Eddie Kramer

and Jim Marron have decided to
build this incredible studio,

and Michael Jeffery,
who was their manager,

finds out it's a lot more expensive
than he initially thought.

Their cost overruns,
things they didn't anticipate.

And they find
themselves in a cash crunch.

And construction has stopped dead
in its tracks. Nothing's happening.

We're out of money.

So, typically, someone going to try

and borrow $500,000 for a recording
studio seemed kind of crazy

but, in going to Warner Brothers,
Michael Jeffery realised that

Hendrix's royalties would easily pay
Warner Brothers back for this loan.

Michael Jeffery was an operator.

Mike's was more the role of
taking care of the financial

side of things,

and they all seemed to have a
great deal of respect for Mike

and, in a sense, I think
they were a bit frightened of him

and a bit in awe of him.

Michael, like a lot of managers
in the music business,

was kind of ruthless.

I mean,
his background was MI6, I believe,

he was a Secret Service guy.

But, clearly, he was, you know,

savvy about the music business,
about talent.

But without Mike, it
would have gone nowhere.

Without the actual music
experience that Mike had...

..I don't think any of them

would have gone any further
than that time.

Good old Michael Jeffery.

He was brilliant at figuring out,

"How can I squeeze some money
out of somebody?"

He goes to Warner Brothers
and figures out a deal whereby

he gets a loan against Jimi's
forthcoming royalties.

So Michael Jeffery,
being Michael Jeffery,

couldn't leave well enough alone,
and he said, in one of those "oh,

"by the way" asides,

we're going to go in the studio
and do some more recording.

Fantastic! That means we'll
get our record that much quicker.

Oh, no, he's not recording for
you guys - he's recording

a soundtrack album to this movie
I'm making, Rainbow Bridge.

Do you guys want a soundtrack album?

And Warner Brothers flipped out
and said, "Well, wait a minute!

"We have the rights to this."
"No, you don't."

Michael made a deal with
Warner Brothers that,

if they gave him
the money to make the movie,

he would give them
an album called Rainbow Bridge.

As presented to Mo Ostin,
Rainbow Bridge was a score that

Jimi Hendrix was
providing for a film.

There was no notion that he was
going to be seen in the film,

so it was a first for Jimi
insofar as he had never scored

a movie before,
and that was enticing.

Michael Jeffery wanted to diversify

and was interested in being
a film-maker and auteur.

Four or five years before that,
it would have been ridiculous,

but Easy Rider had
been a big success.

This year, the judges at the
Cannes Film Festival presented

the award Best Film By A New
Director to Easy Rider.

It's the story of a man who
went looking for America

and couldn't find it anywhere.

I'd never seen a movie like that,

I'd never seen a movie that
had people getting stoned

and riding on motorcycles
and didn't make linear sense,

but I loved it
and Jimi Hendrix's music was in it.

# If the sun

# Refused to shine

# I don't mind

# I don't mind... #

I think that Easy Rider
had something to do with

the elevation of movie soundtracks.

I mean, the score of Easy Rider
was really remarkable and was,

you know, an unforgettable
part of the picture.

# Got my own world to look through

# And I ain't gonna copy you... #

I don't think there's any doubt that
Easy Rider was THE independent film.

I mean, if you look at independent,

it's normally people that don't
have anything to do with studios.

Bert Schneider,
who was one of the producers,

Bert's family ran Columbia Pictures,
so he had an in, but still,

if you think of it,
and how it was put together,

and who directed it, um,
it's the most independent film ever.

You do your own thing in your
own time. You should be proud.

The difference is
the subject matter,

Hopper and the drugs
that were involved.

I think he wanted to
get into the movie business,

and so he started,
you know, why not?

Get some people that maybe know
the movie and have Jimi

because Jimi was going
to be the big draw.

It's hard to imagine a star
at the level that Jimi Hendrix had

attained, being caught
up in a project along these lines.

It seemed so amorphous. It wasn't
really a solid bet, so to speak.

What really, I think,

crossed my radar was the presence
of these very odd people,

wandering around the studio,
offering good vibes, quote on quote.

They were a bit strange.

I think these were Michael's film
partners in this venture.

I believe Chuck Wein was one
of the individuals who was floating

around there and, by floating,
I mean sort of levitating, possibly.

Chuck was one of the most amazing
men I've ever met in my life.

Chuck graduated from Harvard when
he was 18, completely brilliant,

spoke probably almost every
language on the planet,

and, besides that, he was totally
turned into the cosmic world,

the psychedelic world and worlds
beyond. I don't know, man.

It's, like, LSD good, LSD bad.

Every minute,
we're hearing something else.

Nobody really comes out and says
what really happened to him.

He was psychic, he was an astrologer

because he could do all these
wonderful magic things.

He was called The Wizard

because there's nothing that
Chuck didn't know about.

Chuck knew about everything in
this planet or planets beyond.

He was a wizard.

There were a lot of wizards
around in those days but, you know,

wizards, like the Wizard of Oz,
sometimes,

you just see it's just a guy with
a microphone behind a screen.

I was making films in New York
underground, Andy Warhol.

Just... You don't
have to do anything.

Just what you're doing.

Really, it was just taking
people from the streets, mixing them

with the Jackie Kennedy crowd
and my girlfriend, Edie Sedgwick.

We were partying one night in
a disco called Ondine under

the 59th Street Bridge.
Everybody was kind of a little...

What's that actress that
was like Marilyn Monroe?

Jayne Mansfield - the one who
died in the horrible accident.

Jayne Mansfield was there with her
muscle husband, Mickey Hargitay,

and she had a little ocelot
that she had on a chain.

And this guy comes in and says,
"Party for Tennessee Williams'

"birthday - my penthouse,
a block away."

Everybody streams out, we go up
there, that's where we met Warhol.

And Edie and I said, "We're filming
Empire State Building in 24 hours.

"Why don't you guys come
and make movies with us?"

Next day, I went down, look in
the studio, and I said, "Let's go."

In Edie's apartment, we made
a film three days later -

all over the New York Times,
boom, boom, boom.

When Chuck first came to the Factory
in March of '65 with Edie,

he wasn't involved the whole time.

Chuck brought to Andy Edie Sedgwick,
the golden girl.

Edie Sedgwick went on to be one
of Andy Warhol's favourite stars.

Andy loved Edie,

and it was before she was
ravaged by drugs or anything.

She was a beautiful
and delicate bon vivant girl.

I mean, she was really a society
gal in every aspect of her life.

Edie Sedgwick was born
out of the Sedgwick family,

lived on the West Coast
in Santa Barbara.

She's, like, real aristocracy,
she's American aristocracy.

She grew up rich.

When Andy met Edie, she was
in the thrall of her Harvard grad

puppet master confidant, Chuck Wein.

Chuck was a '60s cosmic
bullshitter with a great rap

about aliens and witchcraft.

His operation was to use Edie to
get himself ahead with Warhol.

Warhol was a very,
very powerful man.

Beauty No 2 was the core
of Warhol's relationship

with Edie Sedgwick.

She sat on her bed in her underwear,

drinking vodka with a hunk in
jockey shorts called Gino.

He was her Beauty No 2.

Beauty No 1, Chuck,
sat several feet away,

just off camera,
and interrogated her.

As Chuck took Edie apart,
Andy's camera recorded her twisting

and turning in its grip.

By the end of the film,

Edie was reduced to the victim
she always saw herself as.

It's very cruel,
what they're doing to her.

It's very obvious what they're
doing to her, you know.

But Edie was a very weak
person in reality.

It was good if you want to see
somebody really...

If you want to see Edie Sedgwick
fail, he was the king of failure.

He wanted to document the failure,
much like Andy.

So glamorous! Oh!
My Hustler...

Was really totally Chuck's idea,
and he was giving notes to Andy

and setting it all up.

In the middle of the film,
Chuck went to Paul Morrissey.

He's an assistant director.

He said, "Hey, let's you and me
direct this film.

"We don't need Andy.
Let's get rid of Andy."

A crazy, crazy, crazy thing to do.

He probably wasn't allowed
to come around after My Hustler.

One, he tried to mutiny on the set,
and second, he gave everyone acid.

I mean, just like...
HE LAUGHS

He was brilliant,
but in the end,

I think turned out to be kind of
a really... a destructive force.

You was a model
back in New York, huh?

Yeah, I was a model. THE model.

ARCHIVE VOICEOVER:
The story of Edie Sedgwick,

superstar of New York's Silver
'60s, in Ciao! Manhattan...

The film that wrote itself.

When I was finished
with the rough cut,

there was a New York Times article

that called it was going to
change the history of film.

The next day, it was seized.

But it's very easy to get
carried away and think, you know,

"I'm a big star now."

But actually, you're only that

because Andy Warhol
said you could be that.

Had a falling out with Warhol.

Things didn't turn out.
Went my own way,

made a Kennedy assassination film
that got seized by the CIA,

and I went underground,

left July 4, '68 from Manhattan
on a psychedelic...

..at noon, July 4, '68.
July 5 at noon, I was in Memphis,

July 6 at noon, I was
on a Hopi Indian reservation.

Didn't know how I got there.

Chuck Wein got
a great deal of credibility

from working with Warhol.

So when Chuck would talk to people
after this and say,

"I was at the Factory,
I did this and that,"

no-one would question it.

You meet Chuck, he was
dressed kind of extravagantly

even for the time. You know?

He'd find the highest place to sit,
he would sit there and sometimes

his eyes would roll back in his head
and then...

He would come back to us and he
would say that he had just made...

He'd teleported somewhere
or something like that.

So at first I'm wondering...

Is he... Is this for real?

What's going on ? But apparently,
that's what... That was his...

Do I dare call it a shtick?
I don't know.

I don't know if he believed it.
I never could figure that out.

He, as I later learned,
liked to call the archangels,

the four archangels, what he called

out of the corners, right?

So he would call "MICHAELO!"
in this big booming voice,

"GABRIELO!"

And we were at Michael Jeffery'
house in New York

with the whole Experience
and Michael Jeffery and Chuck,

and he stood up and said
he was going to do this,

he was going to call
the angels out of the corner.

So most of us
just sort of sat there.

He said, "If you want to join me..."

I didn't get up and
follow Chuck, but Jimi did.

Jimi just stood up like...

Like he was being pulled

and walked over there
in all his splendour,

and he, luckily, sat in a chair
right by the door so I could watch.

And Chuck, I could hear his big,
booming voice calling the angels,

and Jimi was like...

Chuck would call the angels out
and make a big event out of it,

and either you them or you didn't.
He did. Chuck always saw them.

And that you didn't see them...
oh, well, maybe next time.

SHE LAUGHS

Chuck Wein was working together
with a gentleman named

Barry De Prendergast.

They came to Los Angeles together

and set up an organisation
called Alcyone Distribution.

Barry was very eccentric.

Barry De Prendergast
was very, very entrepreneurial,

and then got into the film business
with Chuck Wein.

And there was some hint of
aristocracy in there.

I'm not sure, you know,
if that was real or not.

But he was quite the lad.

One time, they were going to go
to a restaurant which was, like,

two and a half blocks away.
But they couldn't leave right away.

They had to wait for a limo,
because Barry couldn't walk.

He was on crutches because
he had athlete's foot. So...

You had to kind of wonder a little
bit about priorities here and there.

Jimi did not want to be
a part of Rainbow Bridge.

It was asked of him many times,
and many times, he would say no.

But Barry was relentless,
and Barry happened to call one day

and Jimi was at our apartment
in New York, and was telling me,

"Do you know how I can
get in touch with Jimi?"

And I said,
"Well, Jimi's right here,

"so why don't you say hello?"
And I put Jimi on the phone.

And that's how Barry and Chuck
got together with Jimi.

We're meeting
Michael Jeffery in LA,

and Michael Jeffery said,
"Let's go ahead."

The first time that anybody
ever raised funds for a movie

by promising the soundtrack.

Michael Jeffery
was smart, tough, ex-MI5.

Used to pack a .38 in the ankle.

Nobody would mess with him.

You would think.

He'd been through the trenches with
the gangs in London and the clubs

and knew how to run all of that,
run his little mini-empire.

Master negotiator.

But here's this guy who you would
never think in a million years

could be turned by
a bunch of whack jobs...

LAUGHTER

I mean, that's what they were,
for crying out loud!

I don't know how they managed to
convince Michael to part with money.

That's the mystery!
That's the $10,000 question.

Did Michael just fall for this?

He was one... you know,
sometimes they say, you know, like,

professionals can be fooled by
amateurs, or something, you know?

I think they slipped
something in his tea.

I think that the reason
why Jimi went for it -

and that's what
you're asking me, right? -

I think that the fact that
Barry was a friend of mine.

Chuck Wein had sold this concept,
initially as Wave, a surfing movie,

and it was going to be
the next big thing after Easy Rider.

The idea was kind of it to be
a take-off on Easy Rider, I think,

and the scene in Easy Rider
that stole everything was

when Jack Nicholson smokes a joint
and starts talking about UFOs

and people that...

Space people that are already here
on the planet amongst us.

That was a...
UFO beaming back at you.

They've been coming here
ever since 1946

when the scientists first started
bouncing radar beams

off of the moon, and they have been
living and working among us

in various quantities ever since.
The government knows all about them.

Chuck's idea was to produce
a programme

to relieve the mass paranoia against
the arrival of the space brothers.

You are into extraterrestrials?
Yes, there are... I mean,

people here at Rainbow Bridge
who have made contact.

But Earth is not alive right now,

and that's why the Space Brothers
are here, to get Earth all in line.

Maui in 1970 was like
just after World War II.

Front Street in Lahaina
was all mom and pop stores.

There was only three hotels
at Kaanapali.

It was, like, shocking,
coming from southern California.

And I was here to ride waves.

Maui in 1970 was a sleepy island.

There was a Dairy Queen
in Kahului. As a teenager,

we hung out there.
Pretty quiet and sedate.

Undeveloped, no lines of hotels
along the shore,

and the surfing was
very uncrowded back in 1970,

and that was really pretty nice.

There was just a lot of freedom
over here. Just beautiful waves

and no people on them,
and, yeah, it was just great.

Just the lifestyle.

Yeah, in 1970,
no rock concerts on Maui.

Well, I got involved by hearing
that there was a guy on the island

recruiting, making a movie,
and Jimi Hendrix was going to play.

That was like a big deal! On Maui!
That was like a gigantic deal.

So there was a juice stand
called Charlie's Juice Stand.

There were these people there
one day - Chuck Wein.

Long hair, kind of like a Jesus.

Actually, how he was introduced was,
he was "The Wizard".

Far out. Yeah, he was a far out guy.
He was a good guy. Far out guy.

He had the answers.
Had all the answers.

# Sail on, sail on... #

Chuck said he's going to come back

and do the surfing footage
in the May of '70,

so when they actually showed up,

then we were like, "Whoa, yeah,
they've actually showed up."

In those days, the surfers
were the epitome of everything.

They were the most handsome people,

they were the most fit people.

They were doing yoga,
they were eating organic,

they were riding waves, they were
riding off the edge of the Earth.

I married a surfer,
one of the most famous surfers ever,

Michael Hynson,
who made The Endless Summer.

The Endless Summer
was a documentary,

and it just stormed the surf world.

That's when I kind of
met Chuck Wein,

and Chuck knew about
The Endless Summer,

and the fact that
I was making a movie,

and so we just kind of
juggled our situations, you know?

Chuck had seen
the success of Easy Rider,

and his feeling was that it wasn't
that the movie appealed to people

so much as the fact that,
on the opening scene

when they're riding
their bikes across the desert,

that they're riding past
the Hopi Indian burial grounds,

which is a high energy centre
on the planet,

and that everybody that's watching
the movie subconsciously goes,

"Oh, this is... I feel great".

So his philosophy was to shoot
scenes in high-energy locations

which he knew about,
which was, you know, Maui...

And put in elements of
pop culture at the time.

Surfing, drugs, music and whatever.

That would pull it all together,
and you'd have a hit movie.

# Ezy ryder

# Riding down the
highway of desire... #

It wasn't intended
to be a surf film.

I said, let's at least show that...

You know, you bend it,
there's a little bit of yoga,

there's some pure food,

there's some partying,
there's some good drugs!

So that's what...
I said, I want to give you,

I want to give a little bit of
reality and humanise

this whole thing and show
there's some consciousness here,

and then people can take it
as it is.

Chuck's making
a cosmic surfing movie.

Oh, you're going
to film the surfers?

Not just them,
but I mean, the cosmic surfers.

We talked about, well, what would be
the best music for the film?

And there was no doubt,
we all said Jimi would be.

# Look over yonder,
he's coming my way... #

I always had Jimi Hendrix in mind,
you know, because he was so...

He used the guitar sound
like the music, you know,

that we could make waves.

And we just wanted to have him
just watch this film, you know,

and do his thing. Weren't going to
bother him too much.

HE LAUGHS

# Look over yonder

# Look over yonder... #

GUITAR FEEDBACK

We were able to have this amazing,
beautiful place called Seabury Hall

in Maui where we could do this.

Seabury Hall started
as a girls' school.

It was a boarding school.

It had charm classes,
it had handbells,

and it was not an alternative
school, by any means.

It was a religious school based on
Episcopalian principles,

because Roger Melrose
was an Episcopal minister.

Dad relays the story
that he gets called upon

by two handsome gentleman in suits

representing themselves
as Warner Brothers,

and they come in with their cards,
and they asked to rent the campus

for a programme that they were
going to do that summer.

When the group finally did show up,

Antahkarana Productions showed up,
not Warner Brothers.

Antahkarana is called
also the Rainbow Bridge,

and it's a bridge between
our higher self and spirit.

All the Rainbow Bridge is

is a bridge between
here and here and here.

Between the lower self
and the higher self.

Front page of the Maui News
at the time was,

"The Hippies Have Taken Over
Seabury Hall," you know?

My dad was incredibly stressed
by what happened

from the instant
that the people showed up.

All of the staff on campus
are aghast at what's happening.

We had a chef that came from
a restaurant

in Los Angeles called Help.

They would not cook with light.

They had to cook with candles,

because the light put off
the wrong kind of energy.

Warner Brothers wouldn't eat
with us, because they were afraid

that maybe we would be
dosing the food

with some kind of psychedelic!

They did not stay with us at night,
they did not eat with us.

They all left, every single day.

Chuck's directorial approach
was basically,

he'd keep his eyes and ears open
as he meandered through Seabury Hall

or wherever, picking up on
conversations that were happening.

Yeah, it was a general chaos thing.

The film crew are freaking out.

They've just come off some
Burt Lancaster movie in Spain

to go there and film this thing.
They'd be in the middle of

the night sleeping,
and somebody would rush in and say,

"Come on, you have to get up now,
the vibrations are right!"

You know, I'd be like,
"What the fuck's going on?!

"It's one in the morning!"

"The vibrations are right
in the church!"

"Don't think you can just rush in
and film it," you know what I mean?

It was like...
It was an absolute shambles.

Who are you, anyway?
I'm the same thing that you are.

I see through the form,
for I created the form.

There really was no script.

But he would create
incidences that could happen.

I am beyond all time, for I am
before time, and I am beyond time.

When you take people,
even when you're shooting

somewhat documentary-style,

you get people talking
from their hearts passionately.

They thought I wrote it!
I mean, people were coming...

Trying to nail me, saying,
"You wrote these lines!"

But these people are so convincing
because they're so interested

in what they're doing,
which is the real reality technique.

I did not hear about any movie
at all until we got here,

and I don't know how much
Jimi knew about a movie at all.

JIMI PLAYS GUITAR SOLO

Jimi went to Hawaii thinking
he was going to do a concert,

and he sort of knew
in the background that there was...

You know, people wanted
to make a film.

When I first came to Maui,

they were going to give us a...
30 days to just R and R.

So we could have
a couple of weeks there

to cool out with the families
or whatever else.

Jimi was tired. When he came here,

he thought perhaps he'd have chance
to just relax and lay back.

And no way!
HE CHUCKLES

# Hear my train a-coming

# Lord, I hear my train a-coming

# One of these days,
I've got to be free... #

Jimi didn't really know
what was going on, I don't think.

When he first showed up there,
he's going,

"I don't even know exactly
what's going on around here."

# Lord, I can hear
my train coming... #

Oh, boy.

We knew there was some movie we were
going to be doing something with.

And the movie, that was uncharted
territory. It was very bizarre.

Jimi was pretty much into
all this stuff. He was into...

You know, he wanted to take
a stack of Marshalls and put it

in the Grand Canyon,
because sound created matter.

He thought we could
duplicate the experiment.

# I hear my train a-coming

# Hear my train a-coming... #

And he thought that surfing was just
like musicians with their guitar.

A surfboard is their,
you know, riff, what they do.

Rainbow Bridge was
Michael Jeffery's production.

Jimi was required to be up here
while they were making the movie.

Jimi felt that Michael was really
using him for Rainbow Bridge.

That was not Jimi's idea,
of doing Rainbow Bridge at all,

and he just didn't want to be there.

It was a scheme, where Michael isn't
going to be around for a while,

so he snuck away
and had some more...

Some little all times,
and we had a good time that day.

But then when Mike came back,
he had to come back here

and fulfil the obligations
that Mike wanted him to.

And every day, they would try
to get Jimi to talk on camera,

was the main thing, whenever,
when he showed up.

So the thing was that
he would always chicken out.

He just expected to play,
basically, you know?

Michael didn't understand
the creativity of Jimi.

Jimi's brilliance was very simple.
Because it was pure.

Jimi was very mysterious,

and he would see right through you.

He could smell the hustle.

Let's turn this
army into an ecological army.

Let's replant the planet.

In that one scene where
he shoots Baron...

You think they want you to know that
your car doesn't have to wear out?

You think the power elite wants
you to know what you can do?

GUNSHOT FIRES

ELECTRIC GUITAR PLAYS

He goes...

"All right, break's over, everybody
get back on your goddamn head!"

Cos he thought it was a yoga centre,
you know what I mean?

Back on your goddamn head.

He didn't really know that...wasn't
really that into yoga and stuff.

Michael Jeffery was
Jimi's manager,

but other than that,
he just stepped aside.

I mean, there was really
no part for him in the movie.

He was the producer, but he was...

He didn't have anything
to say on set.

The whole concert idea was
separate from the film.

Chuck - that was Chuck's.

Chuck was always talking
about energy and all that stuff,

so I don't know if Michael was
trying to tap into that or

what his motivations were.

But it was a business venture.

And you know, at a certain point,

he knew that there was something
very wrong with this film.

Barry De Prendergast went and talked
to Ben Baldwin of Haleakala Dairy.

The one thing that Ben Baldwin asked
us was not disturb the cows.

So, Barry De Prendergast is
up on the top of the hill

and he runs down the hill chasing
the cows.

Going, "Aaagh!" Chasing the cows!

And the first thing that happens,
a whole herd of cows just

ran right through
the barbed wire fence

and just mixed in with these
other cows, you know.

Chuck's whole idea was, it
was going to be this colour-sound

experience, it was going to be free,
and it was for everybody to come.

The place that they
chose was directly up

the hill from school, in the
pasture, and it was a natural bowl.

Behind us is a volcano,
Haleakala, here in Maui.

So, Haleakala Crater is by some
people considered the heart

chakra of this planet.

It has a very, very high vibration.

The energy there is amazing,
really, truly amazing.

And it is a place of energy
when you're in the crater,

there's no question.

When you see a sunrise out of the
clouds of the horizon, it feels

like it's all boiling right out
of the middle of the volcano itself.

It's a beautiful spot.

On the side of that volcano
is where the concert took place.

The area behind the trees is where
they built the stage, it's a

natural bowl behind there.

All of what you
see here has changed.

There was nothing here,
no buildings, no nothing.

I was used to playing on
stages on fields,

but never on the
side of a volcano.

With Jimi, we were in the back
and fixing to go on stage, he said,

"Man, this used to be a volcano,

"but it's no longer
erupting any more."

And I told him, I said, "I sure
damn hope it doesn't erupt today!"

He cracked up!

The Wizard did not want
the rest of the world to know that

Jimi Hendrix was going to
perform a concert on Maui.

So, it was not advertised.

But what he did have done was,
he had a carload of us,

at strategic spots and parks,
spread the word

and leave the signs that
Jimi Hendrix was going to play.

Well, it was something called
the coconut wireless, which

we have in Hawaii, it's the coconut
wireless, and it's just, you tell

two or three people and before you
know it, it's all over the island.

Mike Jeffery and a few other
people from the film came up with

this idea of going through the
streets with a kind of truck and

a few placards saying,
anyone that wants to come, come

up to the crater of
the sun and the moon,

to the volcanoes, and we're
going to have a concert, OK?

The morning of July 30th, I was
going by myself, I wanted to be

there for the sunrise at
the top of the Haleakala Crater,

because that's the only word
I had of where it was going to be.

I didn't realise it was
coming to be on the lower

slopes of the Haleakala Crater.

I got up there, and it was freezing!

I waited up there all night long -
nobody showed up.

The day of the concert,
they had rented a large bus,

and we drove to Lahaina to
get people that had no way...

..to get to Olinda, to the concert.

I had them stop at one point

and then go to the shopping
centre at the other end of

French Street, and myself
and whoever I was with went...

"Jimi Hendrix is playing today.

"Jimi Hendrix is playing in Olinda,
you want to come?

"I've got a bus.
Get your stuff, let's go.

"Meet us at the post office, we're
going to leave in a half-hour."

Went up the street, everybody I
saw that looked cool, looked young,

looked like they'd be hip,
we filled that bus.

And I see two young guys,
obviously had just hit the island.

You can always tell them

because they haven't got long
hair and beards yet.

And I go,
"You want to see Jimi Hendrix?"

And they're, like...
They don't see a word.

I go, "Get in the bus,
we'll take you to see Jim...

"We're all going
to see Jimi Hendrix."

They got in the bus.

When I woke up,
I continued down the hill

and I saw, like, a piece
of plywood nailed to a palm tree.

Somebody had painted
"Rainbow Bridge"

with rainbow colours,
with an arrow.

And I got there and I rolled
down the window of that panel truck

and I looked at the guy, he looked
at me, I said, "Rainbow Bridge?"

He said, "Yes."

And I went, "Oh, my God,
this is it, I have found it!"

ELECTRIC GUITAR PLAYS

People started
walking from everywhere...

..and parking on the side of roads
and walking in, crossing...

Walking through people's back
yards, off Olinda Road,

all over the place,
people started walking in...

..to the absolute horror of
most of the community up here!

I mean, this was, like,
if memory serves me right,

it's, like, a four-mile hike.

I mean, even if you
drive to where it is,

you've got one heck of a walk.

And all these people turn up.

This is the gate. The band
and the crew, we went up thataway.

We were taken up in a Jeep
and waited to go on...

..in a tent right behind
where those trees are.

You see these electric poles,
none of these were here.

We had to use a generator
to do the concert.

Welcome, cosmic brothers
and sisters of Maui to the

Rainbow Bridge Vibratory
Colour-Sound Experiment.

If we just turn on our energy
so Jimi can pick into that

and lead us across that bridge,

and everybody all over the world
is going to pick up on that.

So, we're all counting on you,
and here's your chance,

and Jimi should be
here in a few minutes.

I remember, we took a trip to Hawaii
supposedly to clear his head,

etc, etc.

I guess you'd call me, nowadays,
you'd call me the tour manager,

but...

You know, road
manager, tour manager,

whatever you want to call it.

We had a couple of guys who took
care of equipment

and I took out of the band
and generally...

..got the operation
around and convinced them

they should go on stage -
which wasn't always easy.

We were filming on top
of the mountain.

We hauled everything up there,
four-wheel drives,

get all the shit up there,
you know.

Chuck whatsisname, who's the
director... "Roll all the cameras!"

You can't take a multitrack
recording machine,

put it on the back of a Jeep and
take it up the top of a volcano.

"They've got trouble with
the recording machine..."

I say, "Hey, let's stop everything!"
You know?

"Because the machine ain't
working..."

"You can't stop him now, because
he's standing there, going...

"..hmmm..."

He says he's doing the vibrations
to make it good!

And everything, it's hundreds of

thousands of dollars
rolling on film here!

Guys working, and he's standing,
going, "Ummm..."

..making it good! I mean...!

It was a beautiful day, the stage,
with the colourful buntings

and the flags that were flying on
bamboo poles, it was like a fantasy

world, it was, like,
"Where did this come from...

"..and how did I find it?"

I mean, I was the luckiest
man in the world that day.

As was the movie, the concert
was very much unscripted.

Except that everyone was asked...

..to sit by their sun sign.

It was something kind of strange,
I couldn't really quite

put my finger on it...

..everyone sitting
in astrological order...?

We wanted people to sit according
to their sign, which,

because Jimi wanted to
dip into the energy,

so he had a feeling for what
those energies were.

Then maybe Jimi could
tap off that energy, like,

if you were aggressive,
he could get aggressive,

if you were laid-back,
he could be laid-back.

And people were reluctant
because they came...

You know, they didn't even
think there would be a concert,

they were coming with surfboards
under their arm and they're

up at 5,000ft, you know?

So, they obviously didn't
trust that there was a concert!

And some people went to us...

"God, you guys are crazy!"

And I went, "Bona fide.

"We are so crazy.

"And you are going to have
the best time of your life,

"so just sit down and do it."

MIXED VOICES: Aaaaaah...

I mean, that does have a little
energy, evidently, because I felt

it as soon as we, er...

..got into that immediate area.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

BAND PLAYS

# Hey, gypsy baby

# Where are you coming from...? #

The thing is, from
the sound point of view,

from the recording point
of view, from the equipment

point of view, only certain, erm,

electrical appliances worked
at any one given time,

because I think there's some
kind of magnetic force there.

# Where are you tryin'
to get to...? '#

There was enough power,
power was not the issue.

Wind was the issue.

# And a whole lot of peace
of mind to you and you

# Baby, come along with you, baby

# Yes, come along

# I'd come along with you,
baby, yeah

# I won't cause no harm... #

The wind was at the
audience' back,

but it was blowing straight
at us on the stage.

No sane person would try

and do a recording in
an environment like that.

It was 30mph wind, there was
wind blowing over mic stands.

# Every day of the week

# I'm in a different city

# If I stay too long... #

The wind was blowing so strong,

until the microphones
had to be covered over.

And they didn't seem to care if...

..mic stands, big wads
of foam around them.

Even that didn't keep the
wind noise completely down.

# That's when, got to move

# Before I get caught... #

Some of the things were
blowing around on stage,

it was very challenging.

But however, with all of that, Jimi
just took charge of everything,

and it worked out very, very well.

JIMI PLAYS RIFF

Well, it was intimate,
it was so organic,

people were just there,
just happy to be there.

I took some photographs,

and I wasn't sure if
that was cool, you know?

And I could walk up right
next to him.

# Well, I stand up
next to a mountain

# I chop it down with the
edge of my hand... #

But it was expensive,
it was the Heavens and the Earth,

and no walls, no nothing.

This was just...
This was Maui style.

# Well, I stand up next
to a mountain

# I chop it down
with the edge of my hand... #

It was awesome.
The crowd was inspired.

There were many people here.
If you were here, you were there.

Oh, it was spectacular.

Yeah, and I think Jimi enjoyed it.
As you can see, Jimi at his best.

# Cos I'm a voodoo child

# Lord knows,
I'm a voodoo child, baby... #

HE PLAYS EPIC GUITAR SOLO

It was really living in the moment,

learning how to be just
completely aware

of what's going on in the moment

and taking that moment and just
making the most of it.

Yeah! Everybody stand up now,

stand up. Come on, let's do it
together, man.

Are you going to sit down there?

MUFFLED SPEECH

OK!

When you look at that footage
in that concert of Jimi in Maui,

you have never seen Jimi
happier in his life.

He loved being there.

People were just going,
"Oh, my God, what is going on?"

People were crying.

Apparently, in town in Lahaina,
the electricity went off.

People saw a saucer go by.

Some guy fell off the tower,
the movie tower that was filming.

I mean, it was...it was crazy.
There was something that happened.

One thing about Jimi Hendrix -
he never had a set list,

and he didn't need a set list
because we got our cues from him.

# Just came back home

# Just came back from the storm... #

And that was an intentional thing,

to get away from what the public
wanted or expected to hear.

Yeah, there would be a lot more
things thrown out.

The show was in two parts.

JIMI: Yeah, thank you very much.
Thank you.

There was a break
in the middle of the concert

and they went into a little tent,
the band did.

Jimi was, like, pissed off
after the first set

because nobody wanted to get up
and dance.

Everybody was, like, loaded on acid
and just all like...uhhh.

You know? And just hanging out.

They were going, "This is...

"You guys, you want Hendrix to
come back out and play some more?"

"Uhhh, yeah."

"Well...say something!"

Yeah, he wanted people to get up and
start boogieing around, you know?

If we could just kind of move around
a little bit, you know?

Act like we're living.

"Make some noise!"

"Oh, is that what we've got to do?

"OK. Jimi!"

HE TUNES GUITAR

And then they talked him into
going back to play,

so he took up his
black flying wedge.

HE STRIKES UP BLUES ROCK

And he played no-holds-barred
rock and roll and blues.

No teeth, no behind the back,

just letting it flow.

You know, I was, like, shaking my
head and Jimi's yelling at me,

"Get up and dance, man!" You know?

# There goes old burnt-out Superman

# Tryin' to shoot his dust
on the sun... #

Everybody was smiling,
everybody was moving.

I mean, you can't stay still
when he gets going.

# Oh, the words of love

# Do they touch Dolly Brown?

# Yeah, she's on the highway

# No solid ground, here comes

# Dolly Dagger

# Her love's so heavy,
gonna make you stagger

# Dolly Dagger

# She drinks the blood
from the jagged edge... #

One time I asked him, I said,
"What's your next thing?

"What do you want to do with music,
you know?

You know, you've got
this wild concept, right?"

And he just said,
"I want it louder."

GUITAR SOLO

Jimi was doing his thing.

No-one dictated
any particular songs.

He did it the way
he wanted to do it.

And we enjoyed that also.
As you can see, we were free.

Well, it was a great concert.

In fact, one of the greatest
concerts we ever did.

# You got in my head

# So I bought my lead

# You been messin'
with my girlfriend

# Got my lead hangin' out of bed

# You got my honey

# You're tryin' to take my wife

# But I don't need her now... #

I didn't realise until it was
pointed out to me

how long he played for there.

That was, you know, the band,
and that was relaxing, you know?

I mean, you know, the band was doing
things and at least enjoyed playing.

And that was the main thing.

# Freedom! #

Mitch Mitchell, he looked like he
was levitating on his little stool.

Everything was going, arms and legs,

head and hair. I was amazed.

I think he was stretching himself
in areas he hadn't been to before.

And that's the one thing, obviously,
with Jimi - hey, that's the one

thing that I just loved him for
because you throw something at him,

he'll throw it straight
back in your face,

and good, bad, or indifferent,

that's what recreates...or creates
new music.

# Stick in your dagger

# To set me free, set me free! #

GUITAR SOLO

CRESCENDO

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

At the end of the concert,

I see these same two guys
from the tour bus.

They literally say,
"We're dreaming this.

"We're dream... We've just come
to Maui...

We're going to Maui tomorrow,

"and we're dreaming that we're at
a Jimi Hendrix concert."

And I go, "You've made it.
You guys have made it."

They were in heaven.
They couldn't believe their luck.

Can you imagine, the concert's over

and hundreds of people coming down
this way after the concert?

An incredible sight.

People were just talking, walking
down the hill just in amazement.

It was the talk of the town for days
and days and days and days and days.

The next night, right after
over here on Maui,

we played in Honolulu.
What a great gig.

The film crew was here on Maui,
but they didn't film.

# Hello, my friend

# So happy to see you again... #

They never took it over to Honolulu,

where they could've had

probably one of the greatest
concerts there's ever been.

Jimi was up on it.

# You gotta tell the children
the truth, yeah

# They don't need
a whole lot of lies... #

This is kind of remarkable,
in a one-week span

to be able to see Jimi Hendrix
in performance twice.

Right? Once outdoors,

which is a venue that's probably
just absolutely unmatched.

But his show in Honolulu at the HIC

was a very spectacular show.
It was energetic.

# Straight ahead, baby.

We did the HIC, which was one of...

It was one of my most memorable
Hendrix moments.

# Keep on straight ahead... #

Jimi comes back from Hawaii

and we start getting back into
mixing again

and going through tapes

and then actually recording
some new stuff,

which was wonderful.

# I got a lot of love to give

# From the mirrors of my hand... #

I asked Jimi, "Hey, so how was
Hawaii?"

And he goes, "Yeah, sure..."

And we hear from the roadies,

from Eric Barrett and Gerry
Stickles,

"Oh, don't get me started, mate.

"It was bloody horrible,"

and he'd just be going off,
"Arghhh!

"Bunch of bloody wankers."

# ..I am what I am

# Thank God

# Some people just don't understand

# Well, help them, God

# Find yourself first

# And then your tool

# Find yourself first

# Don't you be no fool... #

When he came back to New York,

Maui was left behind.

But the film had nothing to do with
it any more.

After we got back to New York,

we were back doing our thing -
recording and gigging -

and they were back over here

to continue working on
the Rainbow Bridge.

Thank you very much. Goodnight.

The editing in the chapel -
one, it's all dark.

There was a lot of imported, um,
herbs.

And you couldn't tell what they were
trying to get at.

There was nobody saying, "That's
it! Use that."

It didn't seem that way to me.

It seemed pretty haphazard.

And each day, more and more people
were leaving.

Like, "You're done, here's your
money.

"You're done, here's your money."

They didn't think they had it
in the can,

it was just the Warner Bros
production crew.

I remember them saying, "They're
outta money, we're outta here!"

So that was it. It was just like,
"We're gone!"

I think they probably had to do a
fair amount of cleaning up

and making sure all of that was
gone,

certainly before they brought new
freshman class in

to stay in the dorms.

I don't recall my father returning
the security deposit,

let's put it that way.

I came to work

and walked down the stairs

and you went
into the reception area

and you knew something was wrong.

I was down at Lahaina Harbor
at the time

and I remember somebody saying,
"Jimi's dead,"

and I'm like, "What?" You know? I
couldn't believe it, you know?

There was a sense of something
really important

having been ended. There was a sense
almost of, like,

music history being jarred

at that point.

That was one of the thoughts going
on, like, "Oh, fuck," you know?

After Jimi died, it was pretty
chaotic for me.

I do remember hearing one thing
in my head...

..the show goes on.

Jimi Hendrix's death was the
precipitating event

that was almost... It was like

a typhoon. It was a cataclysmic
event,

and it was cataclysmic for the
world,

for our people, for our culture and
all the things we believed in.

But for the movie,

man, it was like the death knell.

The Grim Reaper hadn't just removed
one of our most respected,

angelic messengers,

but it put everyone in a very
difficult situation.

The idea was that Jimi was going to
do the music for this movie.

I think that was part of the reason
that Warner Bros financed it.

And then of course Jimi had passed

and he hadn't written any music
for it,

which was kind of awkward, clearly.

The pressure was on from Warner
Bros to deliver.

"Where's the bloody album?"
You know?

Which puts Michael Jeffery
into a bind.

Got the call from Michael, you know,

"We need a soundtrack for this movie
we shot."

And I'm going, "Yeah. All right.
How do you want us to do this?"

# I done left that town

# I had to leave that town... #

And we listened to the eight-track
tape that was recorded

on the side of a bloody volcano with
100mph winds.

Maybe it wasn't 100mph,
maybe it was 40mph.

But when we look at the footage of
Jimi's mic...

# ..I put it all in my show

# And gave it all to you... #

..and this microphone has got

foam and all kinds of stuff just
crammed round it,

like layers this thick
to try and stop the wind noise,

and we're looking at this footage
going, "What?!"

Our work was cut out trying to make
the soundtrack

actually sound like something.

# ..I hear my train a-coming

# I hear my train a-coming... #

And John was there with these tapes
at the top of the hill in Hawaii,

trying to rescue adequate sound
from them.

The multi-tracks come back from
the concert

and there's no useful drums.

So that's when the decision was made
to over-dub the drums in the studio.

We had to take what a normal film
editor would use,

which was this contraption called
a moviola,

where you had the film,

then there would be the screen,
which was not very big,

it was good enough for editing.

And it was due to Mitch - he was
able to memorise,

after looking at the little moviola,

"Oh, that's what I was doing.

"OK, I'm doing this and this,"
and, bam, he would do it.

He would be playing and watching
this tiny little screen,

watching this little screen of him
playing,

trying to get something that's going
to work with the song

and maybe work with the visual.

So that was quite a challenge.

By a process of building blocks,

we managed to replace all the badly
recorded drum tracks

from that event in Hawaii.

# I just came back, baby

# Just came back from the storm. #

They were editing the movie

in, I think, that Chuck had rented
in the Hollywood hills.

I go up there, I knock on the door

and this man answers,

who turned out to be the editor.

Chuck was hiding behind the door.

I don't know who he was hiding from,

but he was definitely hiding
behind the door,

and then he came out, "Oh, yes, you.
OK."

There might have been some
directions he was getting

from Warner Bros that weren't being
followed.

I'm not sure what he was hiding
from.

They were up at what we all called
the Orange Grove house

and it was a struggle to maintain
its authenticity

and the context and the genuineness
of it

in the effort, the sensible effort

to create a commercial version
of it.

There was a massive amount,

a massive amount of film.

The editing was laborious.

Imagine 42 hours of footage.

Chuck's putting it all together,
masterminding,

"Oh, we're going to do this! We'll
have this.

"We'll take this from here
and we'll do this."

Chuck Wein came in a handful
of times

and afterwards would just roll his
eyes all the way around

in his head, a 360-degree eyeball,

and just suffered because these guys
were playing in Hollywood.

Chuck Wein, the director, would
occasionally burst in.

Chuck would say, "There's going to
be a special effect here

"where everybody goes to Mars."

And then there would be another
place where people were smoking pot

and this is when the smell of pot
would fill the theatre.

And now I remember, when we were
mixing the movie,

there was this sound effects guy

and Chuck would go on about,
you know,

"There's an explosion here and
there's the sound of this there,"

and he was going, "I got it, I got
it, I got it."

And then there's an explosion

and he would go, "I ain't got it.
I ain't got it."

So there was all these special
effects that he had earmarked,

and the movie was very, very long.

It's four hours long.

That was the one that made
the most sense

because it had the most people...the
most stuff in it,

but then they cut it down and cut it
down to an hour and a half.

There was angst, there were
discussions

and Barry de Prendergast

I think was the person who ended up,
I think,

representing most forcefully the
commercialisation aspect of it,

and Chuck was defending -

to some extent admirably,

but unsuccessfully in the end -

his artistic control.

He believed he was doing something
important for the world

by introducing him to Dr Bronner

and aliens and all the things he had
in there,

but he wasn't happy
with the outcome of it.

I went to the premiere with him

and he was happy and excited about
it,

but he wasn't content with it.

I went to the premiere.
It was awful.

LAUGHTER
It was awful.

I was so embarrassed.

It was terrible.

The Aquarius Theater was still the
original.

I was tasked at that point

with removing all of the soda pop
and candy bars

and junk food that's ordinarily
found at movie theatres.

We brought in sparkling grape juice
and sparkling apple juice.

We had all the new array of natural
foods candies

that when children eat it, it was
actually healthy for them.

The film Rainbow Bridge,

which you are about to see,

was not made from a script.

We had special music being played

that would raise the vibratory
frequency

of all of the people that were
attending.

The whole intent was to help change
the vibratory frequency

of the planet.

And as we face the sun,

we see, coming from this light,

a more distinct and brighter light.

And this theatre lit up like a fire.

Smoke just started going up.

You could hardly see

the goddamn movie, there was
so much smoke.

People with hookahs, they were
smoking joints,

doing hash.

I mean, it was just absolutely
incredible!

It was a mixed response.

Some people left.

But, hey, the people who stayed
got it,

and they wanted more.

They wanted to know more about it.

What's he talking about, basically!

But they were curious and wanted
to know.

He'd been through hell with it,

so it was not as glorious
as he hoped.

And I remember going to see
Rainbow Bridge

thinking it was a Jimi Hendrix film
and it really wasn't.

..Dedicate it to that little girl
over there called Hartley.

A thing called Foxy Lady.

It had this attractive girl,
Pat Hartley.

It had a nonsensical non-story,

but people were getting high

and there was talk about vibrations

and it, too, was of a piece

of what was happening in youth
culture at that time.

It was not intended to be a
blockbuster.

Of course, there were niches for it

and it would have grown had it been
given the chance, I believe.

It hadn't been cut and sort of
crushed by that moment.

So people who had been sort of keyed
up because they'd seen him

in Woodstock, and many millions of
people had seen him

in the Woodstock film,

were keen to see what he did in
Hawaii.

It certainly was not a Jimi Hendrix
film,

as much as anybody might have tried
to market it as one.

It was Michael Jeffery's attempt to
be an impresario

of the underground,

something I don't think he
understood,

through the vehicle of a director
and producer

who had seduced him with their
underground credentials.

And, yeah, we're going to shoehorn
Jimi Hendrix into this,

because that's the way we can get
this thing made,

and that's the way we can get this
thing booked into theatres

and that's the way we can get
unsuspecting kids like me

to go see it.

It was a counterculture film, it was
a documentary

and we were living it.

We were living it at the time.

So it was a documentary of our
lives and our lifestyles

and most importantly, it was about
our dreams.

So it encapsulated the things we
were hoping for,

that we were dreaming for.

What you're seeing now on
all the TVs is subverted.

You watch all the horrible stuff,

but you're not getting people to
speak deeply

from their spirit beings, which is
what you can do, so...

It's not hard. There's a little
thing that clicks on

where they go from the personality
they're usually trying to project

for approval into their core being.

That's what you've got to do in a
reality film,

and those people were doing it,
and the reason I know it succeeded.

I started back at Warhol, but I
never got much of a chance to do it.

I used real people, but these people
really had something

they wanted to say, but...

I got credit for all their lines.

Yeah, that might be the beginning of
reality television

or really spacy stuff, but looking
at it through the eyes

of a 15- or 16-year-old stoned
teenager,

which I was when I saw it,

made sense.

I thought it was great.

What was I going to think?

It's quite a movie, right?

We've seen that movie and it comes
with some question marks,

but even without a cohesive unit
except for Jimi's concert,

it was all a bit crazy

and I think the people that were
watching it

had no idea what Rainbow Bridge is.
They knew Jimi Hendrix,

they watched the movie and go, "What
in the world is this?"

Rainbow Bridge.

The ultimate American destination.

The film which shows what the
hippest people actually did

when they were at their hippest.

Quote unquote.

New York's Village Voice.

# Where are you coming from? #

Filmed on Maui, Hawaii.

Rainbow Bridge.

Now showing at a Rainbow Showcase
Theater near you,

it's from Transvue Films,

rated R under-17, not admitted
without parent.

Barry de Prendergast, in an attempt
to make it more commercial,

because he had to continue to
be the man, right?

He was supposed to be the producer.

So he said, "The only way we're
going to get money out of this thing

"is if we chop it up,"

and that's when he, um, went to
the extreme,

and I'm so sad to say it,

but he and this other gentleman

on many bottles of tequila

cut the negative

and threw the remnants away

so it couldn't be brought back
together.

I think everyone was surprised
at it.

Some people thought it was going to
be like a regular movie,

but it was a counterculture
presentation.

Thank God for the concert footage.

Thank God.

When the movie came out

and we had over to my left
at the Ridge,

Chuck brought it over
and we watched it.

We watched it on a brick wall
over there,

which was Maui's first showing.

On a brick wall!

When the film played around the
country,

people would picket it.

In Houston, there was somebody who
thought it was the antichrist.

And once place in California,

they thought it was a Jesus freak
movie

because you had both of those
things. In fact,

it was considered by the LA Times to
be a pro-acid movie,

but the Laguna
Mystic Arts Brotherhood

thought we betrayed them,

that it was an anti-acid movie.

And then, after that,

Warner Bros held on to the film.

They didn't like the film.

They were going to shelve the whole
thing. $500,000 - forget it.

Plus, they gave Chuck and Barry a
bill for $300,000 more.

And then Chuck and Barry had
to go out

and hustle it up and they got

Buzzy Bent, I think it was, for
Chart House Restaurants

to put up 300 grand to give them
back the film.

And they're walking out Warner Bros

and right outside was the IRS,

"You owe us 40 grand," and they took
it away from them again!

The Cry Of Love was pretty much
finished

and was put out as an album.

I think Dolly Dagger was pulled from
that.

I think Michael thought about
pulling that song

just cos he was seeing what's coming
up with Rainbow Bridge,

so I think because I knew the music,

he said, "You need to find music
that's going to fit in the movie

"and that will turn into an album."

# Wait a minute, something's wrong

# Yeah

# Lord, the key won't unlock
the door... #

Fortunately, Jimi Hendrix

was recording constantly throughout
his lifetime

and there was plenty of unreleased
stuff

that he could repurpose into a
soundtrack for Rainbow Bridge.

When he died and we went back to
Electric Lady in New York,

to his studio, it was already there.

He'd already done it.

He'd done it before the film.
It had fit.

# ..Lord, I might as well go back
over yonder

# Way back yonder
cross the hill... #

And we just started to pull tracks
from various places

and assemble something that could be
called Rainbow Bridge.

# ..I might as well go back
over yonder

# Way back yonder cross the hill

# Cos if my baby don't love me
no more

# Lord, I know good well

# That, hmm, her sister will. #

The record was completely different
from the movie, I would say,

in that it was all stuff that Jimi
loved and worked on

and, um, was real high-quality
stuff.

I think the one thing...

It was called Rainbow Bridge

because of the movie,

and then on the back cover,

Chuck would "om" occasionally.

Om-ing - you know, something that
Buddhists do,

so that was going to be on the back
of the album,

that was going to be not boldly but
behind the print,

but the people who did the album
cover got it wrong,

so it says "mo".

That, to me, was kind of like, that
makes sense.

Attention to detail is what we're
talking about here.

So the original version that Chuck
was still working with,

where the sri yantra and the om
sign was not reversed,

as in the vast majority of film
went out.

The original film wasn't like that.

The original film was a beautiful,
pristine snapshot

of a unique moment in history

that was so beautiful it was
indescribable.

Nothing has matched the Rainbow
Bridge concert for me.

It was just calm

and it was almost like I was
meditating

while I was watching it.

Had Hendrix lived,

this movie would have just been
a counterculture youth movie

with a soundtrack
of new music by Jimi Hendrix.

And people maybe wouldn't have
scrutinised this as carefully.

And I think people probably would
have had a better idea of what

it was when it was released.

# Tomorrow
or just the end of time? #

Rainbow Bridge was
not his artistic vision.

It was sort of disconcerting
after his passing

that his legacy

was kind of put under
something of a cloud

by this posthumous project,

which he really had nothing
personally to do with.

Hendrix dying left Michael Jeffery
and the producers scrambling.

# Yeah, purple haze... #

Who knows what it would have been,
though, if Hendrix had lived?

# You got me blowin' my mind, baby

# I'm really sorry
but you know how it is... #

When I see that, even today,
it's as though time stood still.

And it was an incredible time,
a great time, a youthful time,

a time of freedom,
no responsibilities.

And we were young.

GUITAR SOLO

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Thank you. Thank you.

Peace with you, man. Thank you.