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Hendrix played gay for Army discharge

FlaSoxxJim

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FlaSoxxJim Grand Master

FlaSoxxJim

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Having spent so much time on the Hendrix tangent in the American supergroup thread, I figure we should follow up with this item.

 

I've not read any of the Hendrix bios of the last 10 years or so, but I read just about everything prior to that. The official story about Jimi getting discharged from the 101st Airborne because he broke his ankle in a jump is the one that had always been reported in those books. I had not heard this take on it before.

 

The books author seems somewhat sensationalist in claming Jimi pretended to be gay to "avoid 'Nam" even if that may have been the end result. This was 1962, which was in the very early days of our involvement and well before most of the callups of enlisted soldiers. But if Jimi's tour of duty would have had him in through 1964 then I guess the author's claim is a fair one.

 

Then again, it is known that Jimi had not planned to be a soldier, and enlisted to avoid jail time after being nicked in a series of youthfull indescretions involving stolen cars, etc. So, coming up with a ploy to get discharged after a year is certainly a reasonable assertion.

 

Jimi wrestled with demons a lot larger that this, but I guess most of that history is already well known. I might have to check this book out.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=996912

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FlaSoxxJim Grand Master

FlaSoxxJim

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QUOTE(winodj @ Aug 1, 2005 -> 09:47 AM)
I do know that he was all about Vietnam though.

well, I think he was conflicted there through the course of his life. He was anti-communist, but he became a visibly perceived part of the peace movement.

 

The Jimi song Machine Gun is certainly very anti-war, and the lines about gunning farmers down is VietNam imagery no doubt. But jimi's introductory dialog from the New Year's Eve Fillmore debut of the piece with the Band of Gypsies suggests the song is about the 60s race riots as much as it was about VietNam. That version of the song is one of the live recording highpoints of Jimi's career.

 

Jimi: 'Happy New Year first of all. I hope we'll have a million or two million

more of them...If we can get over this summer, heh heh heh. Right, I'd like to

dedicate this one to the draggin' scene that's goin' on. All the soldiers that

are fightin' in Chicago, Milwaukee and New York...Oh Yeah, and all the soldiers

fightin' in Vietnam. Like to do a thing called 'Machine Gun'.'

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Kid Gleason Grand Master

Kid Gleason

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Word had it that during the inspection, or sometime where they had to be standing around naked (again...this is what I had heard...I know nothing about military life, and even less about military life circa Viet Nam era) he supposedly got himself a big ol' boner rolling, and when the drill seargent (or whoever) got to him, he was crying saying that it always happened when he got around other men.

 

Again...a story I had heard years ago, no proof of fact, can't even remember who told me the tale.

 

Oh...and I never knew he was gay. That could explain his ability to do a video with Kate Peterson and NOT have drool all over the place. :D

Edited by Kid Gleason
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