published: May "1995"
Film of Jimi Hendrix & Frank Zappa

.

My article below was published in the May "1995" issue of UniVibes - a quarterly magazine about Jimi to which Mr. Rob(ber)y subscribed.

As with my article about the lost ABC-TV films of Hendrix, Mr. Rob(ber)y presents my research about the Hendrix/Zappa film in a book he published five years later (2000) as if had made this discovery.

.


.

LIVE BOA & PIGTAILS

- by Michael Fairchild

The night that cable-TV's Arts & Entertainment channel aired a re-broadcast of Biography, an hour-long show on the late Frank Zappa, last January 1995, I was busy and video taping this documentary slipped my mind. But a friend of mine flipped on his VCR in time. What he captured (gasp!) is one of the most bizarre bits of Hendrixia ever seen.

My friend had read the Jerry Schatzberg interview in UniVibes #15 (p. 5) about the photo session for Zappa's We 're Only In It For The Money album. Jimi is pictured in the crowd of people assembled "Sgt. Pepper" style for the LP sleeve cover (a parody of the Beatles then hit album).

"Instead of flowers and wonderful dreams," said photographer Schatzberg, "Frank wanted garbage and old food and what you see around on the floor."

"I went to the Village, man, I found out the streets weren't paved with gold, there aren't no gold streets in New York, there's just a whole lot of old banana peels layin' around, that's all." - Jimi

The Schatzberg shoot was done in New York's Village on July 18, 1967. Jimi arrived at the photo session wearing what appears to be his pink Monterey boa, which Eric Burdon recalls seeing Hendrix receive from a girl backstage at Monterey. The Zappa/Mothers LP We 're Only In It For The Money, including a small photo of Jimi on the cover, came out the following spring while the JHE toured America.

But during the A&E Biography segment about that album, suddenly film scenes appear of the Schatzberg photo shoot!

On screen in the A&E bio, an image of Zappa's halo of beard and hair hovers briefly like a floating Shroud Of Turin. The Mothers Of Invention sing "Oh No" (first released in 1970 on the Zappa LP Weasels Ripped My Flesh) and after the line "Oh no, I don't believe it" Jimi and Frank are seen posing together, filmed in 8mm living color! The camera pans the assembly gathered for the album shoot. Frank wears his blue "mother" dress with his hair tied up in pigtails. During the fleeting seconds of the film he leans over and says something to Hendrix, who is standing behind Zappa's left shoulder. Wearing yellow trousers and the pink boa, Jimi turns and chats something back at Frank.

The entire scene flashes by in ten seconds with a Zapruder-like eeriness. An untrained eye would never have known what to look for. My friend slowed down the video scenes and dubbed a copy at 1/10th speed so we can see Jimi and Frank converse at 'length.'

The day after I saw this clip I faxed a memo to Are You Experienced? Ltd. (the Hendrix production company where I worked) in Los Angeles to try and get a telephone number for Zappa's family. As it so happened, when my fax arrived, Zappa's brother-in-law, Jay Sloatman, was sitting there in the office waiting to speak to Alan Douglas about setting up a new Hendrix internet website. But since the Zappa family has no knowledge about the origins of the Schatzberg photo session 8mm footage, we need to contact knowledgeable Zappa fans in the near future to see if more footage exists from this remarkable Zappa/Hendrix movie shoot.

.

.

[NOTE: A research thief called Mr. Rob(ber)y has appeard in a British documentary which credits him for the work Michael Fairchild did with Kathy Etchingham and Dee Mitchell about Jimi's death.

Also, please be aware that for years the owners and staff at the Yahoo search engine have artificially/surgically removed this rockprophecy.com website from all listings under the words "jimi hendrix." Following the example of Paul Allen, the owners of Yahoo are intent on concealing the insights and research of Hendrix scholar Michael Fairchild, out of sheer pathological jealousy.
- James Sedgwick]

.