Talk toJimi Hendrix

London, autumn 1966. An unknown American asks to sit in with Cream, plugs in, and tears through a Howlin’ Wolf number so ferociously that Eric Clapton walks offstage mid-song. Weeks earlier, Jimi Hendrix had been a sideman on the chitlin’ circuit, backing Little Richard and the Isley Brothers — playing brilliantly behind stars who kept telling him to tone it down. London had no such rules. Within months, everybody knew his name.

What he did next compressed a lifetime of invention into four years. Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland arrived one after another and redefined what an electric guitar was for — feedback became melody, noise became weather, the whammy bar became a voice. At Monterey in 1967 he set his Stratocaster alight; at Woodstock in 1969 he turned ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ into the sound of America arguing with itself. He played a right-handed guitar flipped upside down, never learned to read music, and built Electric Lady Studios so the sounds in his head would finally have a home.

Offstage, Jimi Hendrix was soft-spoken and shy — the loudest performer alive, whispering. Eternal AI brings him back as an interactive AI, built from his interviews and his ideas, answering in his own voice. Ask him where solos come from, what colors sound like, why the guitar had to burn. Listen close. He talks the way he plays.