Lithofayne Pridgeon, Hendrix's girlfriend: Interview in the Guardian

While I'm extolling the virtues of Roadies, I should also mention that The Guardian had a piece on another aspect of musician support networks. Not that I'm suggesting this lady, the amazingly-named Lithofayne Pridgon, was a groupie, in the vulgar sense. She is one of those women like Pattie Boyd, Charlotte Martin or June Child who seemed to understand rock musicians and their odd lifestyles and ended up dating or marrying several of them.

Lithofayne Pridgeon was associated with Sly Stone, Little Willie John, and of course Jimi Hendrix. She also befriended such men as James Brown, Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye. It's an incredible life story, and the Guardian gives a long interview and brief overview of her life.

My favorite remains Pamela Des Barres, though, because she is such a sweetie. Also, she wrote a tell-all book, which always helps.

Iconic Jimi Hendrix nite spot to close!

Horrors! One of the treasured - indeed fabled - eateries of my youth is to close.

The first (and, really, where it counts, the only) Harry Ramsden's fish and chip shop, in Guisely, Leeds, is set to close down. It's been open since 1928.  I only recall getting to visit it once or twice, and my memory of it is of a giant, neon-lit barn filled with red-faced Yorkshiremen, situated on top of a desolate moor where winds howled across cringing heather. It's possible my memory is faulty. The fish and chips were nice, though.


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Fish and chips are soul food to Yorkshire people (and many others, though regional variations like Deep Fried Mars Bars and chips, and Eel Pie and Mash with Green Liquor abound in those foreign lands). We had one in our town, of course, but Harry Ramsden's was a sort of Holy Grail of fish shops, unattainable (because kids don't have cars and Wuthering-Heights-Ville was off the beaten bus route), mirage-like and unique.

Anyway, Jimi Hendrix once ate there, after being shooed off stage by the Leeds constabulary during an allegedly over-the-fire-limit gig in Leeds, 12th March1967.  The BBC has an article on the Leeds Spring of Love:

The Troutbeck Hotel was the venue for Hendrix's historic gig, and it was dangerously over-full before the band even took to the stage. Reports suggest up to 900 fans squeezed in, a mere 700 people more than the place could accommodate! ...As the gig heated-up, Ilkley policeman Tom Chapman decided enough was enough and stopped the gig. One boy in blue versus nearly a thousand Blues fans was never going to end well - and Hendrix just kept on playing. What happens next is unclear - some say there was a 'riot', others say people just went on their way. For his part, Tom Chapman denies there was big trouble.

 The Jimi Hendrix Forum takes up the story:

"Later on that evening, a woman called Sheila Lilley was waiting to be served at Harry Ramsden’s famous fish shop. behind her in the line appeared none other than Jimi Hendrix dressed in psychadelic gear. He said to Sheila that he was sorry that the gig had to be cancelled after just one number. He signed her a photo. She still has it. Framed on the living room wall."

This is the most famous appearance of a legendary guitarist in a fish and chip shop, and that's probably it for Harry Ramsden's in general. But I feel I ought to include this picture of even more angelic legendary guitarist Paul Kossoff eating fish and chips with his dad, David Kossoff. It's from the Free Forever DVD. It's not Harry Ramsden's but it'll do.

Note that Dad David holds his knife properly while young Paul is a punk. Tch! Young people of today...well, young people of forty years ago... no manners.

Jimi Hendrix Bio Pic Planned

OMG, maybe blog correspondent Casey is right.

Jimi Hendrix Bio-Pic On The Way -

With the Woodstock 40th anni in the spotlight this year, Legendary Pictures is mounting a feature film about Jimi Hendrix, whose perf of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was a seminal moment of the original 1969 fest.
Legendary topper Thomas Tull would produce the pic with Bill Gerber.

Thomas Tull is a producer of Davis Guggenheim's you-know-what.

The project is Tull’s second homage to guitar gods, after he conceived and produced “It Might Get Loud,” the recently released Sony Classics doc that features Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, U2’s the Edge and Jack White of the White Stripes.

Casey said of Guggenheim he was a "yuppie rock tourist with no depth of understanding of his subjects. It seemed like a movie made by a bored millionaire who's first real "connection" to Zep happened at O2."

Any idiot who wants to make a biopic of Jimi Hendrix fits that description pretty closely, so maybe the problem was Tull, not Guggenheim.

Wait, no, stop press. It was Guggenheim after all. In this interview about It Might Get Loud, he says, "And culture's always changing. Before Zeppelin there were just pretty boy pop bands. [Page] made it much more live and aggressive.

Methinks Guggenheim has misunderstood the distribution of bands in the sixties. (Led Zeppelin formed in 1968.) Perhaps familiarity with The Monkees has wiped out all knowledge of say, The Stooges (1967) or The Velvet Underground (1965). Or Jimi Hendrix, he of the putative biopic. Bob Dylan for christ's sake. Cream. The Jeff Beck Group. Or the several hundred groups hailing from places as far apart as Ladbroke Grove, New York, Detroit and California who were not pretty boy pop bands.