Call it Forrest Gump or Chauncey Gardner disease, but there has been something strange in my life where I just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

One such time happened back in April 1968. I was a junior at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York.

It was a strange time, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King and the NYC teachers strike. Yet, there was hope and love and comraderie amongst those of us that flashed peace signs to total strangers, because we knew that they too were against an unjust war.

And there was music…. everywhere. The Stones, The Beatles, The Airplane, The Dead, Cream, Motown, Stax Volt, Marvin Gaye, Aretha, Dylan.

And Jimi Hendrix. There was nothing else like him, and to me, no one has even come close since. The most gifted musician on the planet with a message of peace and ascension. Beautiful, Black, hip, soulful with a sound I had never heard. He was an Avatar of God.

I had always played in bands as a kid. I was a NYC Mick Jagger wanna be;
the white kid who just knew he could sing the blues. And did I ever try. From bands named the “Ups and Downs” (slight drug reference), to “Farley Bluff” (nonsense John Lennon talk), I played at hundreds of parochial school dances ( where I routinely got my ass kicked because I was Jewish), Bar Mitzvahs (where I routinely had a sip of J&B and made out with one of the girls) and an occasional school yard hop (which routinely turned into a drunken brawl).

I continued my musician ways for many years, but at one point thought that VFX would be less stressful. Hah!

I bet High School today isn’t very different from High School back then. Kids were classified into types. There were the Stoners/Hippies, the Hitters (the kids with Elvis Presley hair, that used to pummel the Hippies). There were the Musicians, the Collegiates ( the kids who drank beer, wore penny loafers and Madras shirts), the Jocks ( the Football team). And then there were the Intellectual /Politicos. Ok, maybe we were different than todays kids.

I was classified as a Musician/Politico. Most of my friends were the same which is why I guess they call it, “clicks”. Musician/Politicos were interesting, especially back in the late 60’s as we were generally color blind. If you were a player and knew your way around a I,IV,V progression, we didn’t care if you were orange. In fact, I believe there was this one kid who was…. but he played alto like Cannonball Adderly, so we didn’t really care.

I had a friend named Larry. He was a fine bass player, African American from St. Albans. St. Albans was where the upper class Black community lived in Queens back then. His neighbors were Thelonius Monk and Louis Armstrong. I hung out quite a bit with Larry but one thing always used to piss me off about him. He always bragged about celebrities that he “knew”. Maybe he has since become a talent agent for CAA ? For several months, Larry had been saying that he was really tight with Jimi Hendrix. Hah!

On a cold early April morning, I got off the Q17a bus in front of the diner on Francis Lewis Blvd and Utopia Pkwy and started my three block sojourn to my first class, Physics. Dressed in my usual Levis, Python boots, fringed cowboy jacket, peacock feather earring and hair looking like Roger Daltrey, I ran into Larry.

“Hey man, wanna go see Hendrix record in the city today”, he said.

Larry had been pulling my chain for months about Jimi and I had just about enough of his bravado. I also had a Physics test that morning.

“Sure”, I said, “let’s go”.

We hopped on to the Q17a and rode it to the subway station on 169th street in Jamaica. We caught the F train to 42nd Street and got off. All this time I’m thinking…. “Damn, I got this little lyin’ mutha”.

At about 10 AM, we approached a non-descript building at 321 West 44th Street. Larry rang the intercom, a female voice rang out…. “Yes?” . Larry said, “Hey, it’s Larry for Jimi”. The buzzer let us in. OH MY GOD! We walked past a very lovely women that waved us into Studio A and there, was Noel Reddings rig, Mitch Mitchells drum kit and… Jimi’s Strat and his Marshall amps… Damn.

I was 16, and the biggest Hendrix fan ever, and here I was at 10AM on a Tuesday morning sitting in the same room with the instruments that recorded FOXY LADY.

By the time the clock struck 2PM, I was sorta over it. I had waited four hours to meet Hendrix and all I got, was to sit and stare at a bunch of gear. I needed to get home as my Dad would be returning from his job. He was an air brake maintenance dude for the NYC Subway System, union all the way. My Mom, another civil servant for the Tri State Transportation Commission, would be home by 6. She took the subway as she didn’t know how to drive nor could we afford more than one Rambler American junker.

I started to leave and said my goodbyes to Larry going through all the jive handshake motions that one did with a “brotha” back in ’68. Suddenly the door flew back and in walked Gary Kellgren, Mitch Mitchell, Eddie Kramer and Jimi.

Guess I wasn’t leaving.

Introductions were made and to this day, 43 years later, I remember the feel of Jimi’s gargantuan hand as we first shook. Needless to say, I was beside myself. Jimi was shy, quiet, introspective and almost beatific. I guess I expected the guy with the flaming guitar, writhing around on the stage at Monterrey like some uncaged Panther. But out of the hot white light of the Supertrooper spotlights, Hendrix was the pure white light of tranquility and joy.

I lost track of all time and space. Jimi asked what I was listening to and at the time it was a lot of blues. Muddy, Howlin Wolf, Paul Butterfield, Robert Johnson. He asked Eddie Kramer, the recording engineer to put up a track called “Red House” for me.

Red House

It was and still is the greatest recorded blues solo I’ve ever experienced. After watching Jimi lay down bass lines on “Gypsy Eyes”, because Noel Redding had not shown up till later, he asked me if I wanted to play on a track. Yikes!

We took a small break and chatted about some porn film that was playing on 42nd Street, a send up of that years hit “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” called “Titty Titty Gang Bang”…. Jimi was wondering if we should go see it after the session.

When we returned to the studio, two Neumann mics were set up on stands, headphones hanging over the boom arms. Jimi handed me a cowbell, and I thought to myself, I can play this thing. Hendrix said ” Ok, I’m gonna count this down, then I’m gonna take these headphones and create feedback and when I nod at you, start hittin’ this cowbell”.

The tape rolled for a rehearsal and that was the first time I heard the track, “Stone Free” .

Stone Free

We started again, Jimi got his feedback and I smacked that cowbell. The rest became a blur. When the track was finally over, Kellgren punched a talkback and said, “Dinner!”

Dinner? What time was it? Oh no, it was 8PM. My Mom and Dad had been home for quite awhile, they must be freaking out. They probably called the cops. My Mom had Emphysema for years ( she would die only four years later from lung cancer) and I later found out, that she was so upset, she had an attack.

This time there were no high fives, I said my adieus and hi-tailed it to the F train. I jumped on the train and made it to the bus “in record flat”. It was now about 9PM and there was only one other person on the Q17a, a long haired hippy type, who, when he saw me, flashed me the peace sign. I smiled and flashed back, acknowledging our “cultural connection”. He came over and sat down next to me and said ” Hey man, what’s happenin’ ?” I proceeded to tell him my story about Jimi and “Stone Free”.

He looked at me, glassey eyed, obviously stoned and said ” Bullshit…. asshole”, and got off at 188th Street.

When I finally arrived home, there was hell to pay. I was grounded for three months and frankly I deserved it…. And, I’d do it again, gladly!

Years later, in 2009, I had been developing a script with some writers called “Voodoo Child”, a biopic of Hendrix. I had seen that Eddie Kramer, the great producer and recording engineer was showing some of his Hendrix photos at a gallery in LA. I sent my assistant to talk to him and invite him to my house so that we could chat about the script. Interestingly enough, Eddie came by and we talked for a few hours. He was now 67, charming, erudite and a strange combination of a New Yorker and a Brit. Just as he was leaving, I asked him about that session in April of ’68. I wanted to know if that was indeed my cowbell on the released track of “Stone Free”. Eddie, shook my hand firmly and said, “Scott there were a lot of tracks cut for that record and frankly I don’t recall”. I stopped him just as he got in his car and said, “But you do remember a 16 year old kid with Roger Daltrey hair at the Record Plant that day, don’t you?”

And he said, “Frankly, I don’t”.