Latest news with #JimiHendrix
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Letters to the Editor: Was it right for Nezza to sing the national anthem in Spanish at Dodger Stadium?
To the editor: I am honored to hear the national anthem in Spanish, just like I was honored to hear a great Black musician, Jimi Hendrix, play his rock-infused version at Woodstock ('Nezza says she sang national anthem in Spanish at Dodger Stadium against team's wishes,' June 15). I'm proud that minorities and immigrants wish to come to America and contribute by working hard and raising good families. Those are certainly more Christian values than those espoused by some U.S. citizens, including the person accused of shooting two Minnesota Democratic lawmakers. My Sicilian and Slovak ancestors entered the U.S. via Ellis Island in the early 1900s. I am proud of Nezza and hope she will sing the national anthem in Spanish again. Jay Ross, West Los Angeles .. To the editor: I hope the Los Angeles Dodgers never invite Nezza back to sing our national anthem. She was told it would be sung in English and then proceeded to openly defy the Dodger organization by singing it in Spanish. The Dodgers were honoring the Hispanic community by having a Latina sing the anthem, and then she brags that she did what she wanted in spite of their instructions. As someone of Mexican descent, I am proud of my grandparents for bringing their children here to have a better life and more opportunities. They became naturalized American citizens and their descendants are grateful. The national anthem should be sung in English as the composer of the words, Francis Scott Key, wrote it. Lynda Martinez, San Jose
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iconic '60s Rocker Talks Wild Times With Elton John, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and More
Iconic '60s Rocker Talks Wild Times With Elton John, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and More originally appeared on Parade. An iconic '60s heartthrob singer/songwriter gave a new interview divulging all of the fun shenanigans he had back in the day, in honor of turning 80 in 2025. , the last surviving member of the 1960s music group and TV series , regaled People with stories of seeing American debut, nabbing Jimi Hendrix as an opening act for The Monkees (which was a disaster), and hanging out with the Beatles. On being at the legendary Hollywood club The Troubadour with the likes of Alice Cooper, Harry Nilsson, and : "It was the 'go-to' place. That was where we went all the time. Doug Weston was the impresario, and he helped introduce Elton John, Buffalo Springfield, Neil Diamond, . Just an incredible list."Dolenz went on to say he watched Elton John debut there in 1970 — and they accidentally wore the same outfit. "We went down to the Troubadour. My wife at the time had just got back from England…she'd always bring me these great clothes from Carnaby Street and all that stuff. [This time] she brought me this great T-shirt. It was a reproduction of the Andy Warhol [silkscreen] of Marilyn Monroe — the multiple images that he did. I wore that to the show, and my friend said, 'Come over to the afterparty at my house and meet Elton.' So I go over there and Elton John's in the kitchen leaning up against the refrigerator, drinking a beer … wearing the same T-shirt. And, I swear to God, he takes one look at me and he goes, 'Oh f**k!' And he never forgave me," said Dolenz. In 1967, he hung out with at his house in London, "Just me, him and Martha the sheepdog," the Monkees drummer next day, McCartney invited Dolenz to the Abbey Road studios and he was so excited that he got all dressed up in his psychedelic '60s finest — "I looked like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Charlie Manson" — and when he got there, everyone was just sitting around casually and John Lennon said to Dolenz, "Hey Monkee Man, you want to hear what we're working on?" "From then on, he called me Monkee Man," said Dolenz. The singer also made a brief mention to People that he invited a young Jimi Hendrix to open for the Monkees, and both Dolenz and the Monkees' music director were "pleasantly surprised by the reaction" they got. However, the Hendrix/Monkees pairing was notoriously terrible. According to The History Channel, the four Monkees members — Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork — were all huge fans of Hendrix, but unfortunately, the Monkees' fans were not. Hendrix joined the tour in 1967 and only lasted for seven performances before he bailed because he was constantly getting booed by Monkees fans. As Dolenz wrote in his book I'm a Believer, "Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps and break into 'Purple Haze,' and the kids in the audience would instantly drown him out with, 'We want Daaavy [Jones]. God, was it embarrassing." 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 But in the book, Dolenz acknowledged what a massive fan of Hendrix the Monkees all were, especially him, writing, "[Hendrix was] not just your ordinary opening act. It was evident from the start that we were witness to a rare and phenomenal talent. Jimi was virtually the only act I ever made a point of getting to the hall early to see. I would stand in the wings and watch and listen in awe. I felt incredibly lucky just to have been there." So it's funny that the People interview has such a casual, brief mention of Hendrix because that tour was quite the debacle. But anyway, in the People interview, Dolenz also admitted he has a hilariously terrible memory sometimes, like the one time someone asked him if he'd ever met frontman and Dolenz said he saw Morrison play, but he never met him, then his wife jumped in and said, "Micky, he slept on the living floor for three days at our house!" Iconic '60s Rocker Talks Wild Times With Elton John, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and More first appeared on Parade on Jun 4, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 4, 2025, where it first appeared.
Washington Post
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Sly Stone taught pop stars how to dress wild
In 1968, the Temptations were still performing in matching suits and the Beatles had just shed their pin-neat tailoring for the whimsical trappings of Carnaby Street. That same year, Sly Stone and his newly formed band, multiracial and mixed gender, posed in outfits as wild as those groups' seemed scripted: hippies and dandies and bohemians in peacock prints, optimistically borrowing garments and accessories from the Middle East and South Asia. Even amid this style splendor, Stone stood out: In the middle, he was stoic as a toreador prefight, his chest bare beneath an embroidered vest and a pile of chains. On his legs was a pair of breeches over knee-high socks and gladiator sandals. In one look, he combined ancient Roman battle gear, the snobbery of equestrianism, a then-trendy fervor for Indian styles and a prescient taste for hip-hop's gold chain obsession — a seemingly nonsensical mix that altogether, with Stone's prodigious touch, just worked. Stone dressed the way he made music. He grabbed at influences but understood them intuitively, never superficially, which allowed him to create songs — and outfits — that were so original that they made you feel good before you even understood what was happening to you. Jimi Hendrix shared and almost certainly influenced Stone's flamboyance, wearing large hats and decorating his bare chest with a long scarf and jewels. But if Hendrix was soft and romantic, with his tie-dyes and bell-bottom jeans, Stone was more mercurial, integrating glam, Edwardian melodrama and African diasporic styles into his foundation of funk. He wore his big sunglasses not, as Greta Garbo did, to shield, but to invite your gaze. Stone wanted your ears and your eyes. For a 1969 television performance, he dressed in a satin ocher blouse with a Draculoid collar, tying up the front to expose his chest and fabulous abs, seducing the audience at the piano with 'Hot Fun in the Summertime.' A few minutes later, he stood up for 'I Want to Take You Higher,' revealing that the shirt's bishop sleeves were festooned with lengthy black fringe that shimmied as he punched his arms through the air like a preacher sermonizing. We may not have seen that live fusion between clothing and music — not a marriage of music and aesthetic, as David Bowie pioneered, but a synergy between a song's message and a shirt's purpose — again until Beyoncé stepped onstage during her Renaissance tour in 2023, razzing her audience with mirrored alien wear as she wiggled between those robot arms. Before Stone, you could either assuage your audience with clothes — as many of Motown's acts did, as Black artists who sought to appeal to White audiences — or scare them, as Hendrix did with his ripped jeans, or Janis Joplin with her unkempt hair. Stone sketched out a third possibility: Your clothes could open up your music. His band was not focused on looking 'cohesive' visually; rather, its members' disparate and sometimes clashing ensembles emphasized their universe of inspirations. His own ensembles had the same smooth tension. The hippie style that Stone took to an intergalactic other place was about rebellion: that you could reject the values of your parents, of the clean-cut establishment, by wearing your jeans frayed, by not buying new things but patching or mending what was old, by wearing clothes from another time to show you longed for a simpler (if imagined) past. Stone's style was about freedom — the freedom to mix pieces from different centuries and cultures that seem to have little in common and to make them work, even sizzle. He could put on a rastacap and a black fringe suede suit and it just made sense. When he walked onstage in the mid-1970s, wearing a purple sequin jacket with orange flames and a silver sequin baker boy cap and little silver pants — well, that was wilder than anything the Sex Pistols or the New York Dolls were wearing at that time. Ripped jeans and safety-pinned T-shirts are nice poetry, but they don't require the courage that Stone's clothes did. A male rock star in women's clothes is often a gimmick. A male rock star in clothes that seem to defy the orders of mens- and womenswear but are undeniably sexy? That's bold. The door Stone karate-kicked open would shape the looks of some of the biggest pop stars of the late 20th century and early 21st. There was Prince and his feminized, feline sex appeal, then Rick James in his total commitment to exuberance. Then Beyoncé, of course, who, like Stone, is less interested in flouting her connections to designers or trends and instead committed to wearing clothes than enhance the experience of seeing her onstage. Perhaps the musicians most influenced by Stone are Andre 3000 and Big Boi, formerly of Outkast, who started off weird — Andre wore a lace-up skirt and T-shirt, and Big Boi a snakeskin short suit, to the Source Awards in 1999 — and then just kept getting freakier even as they became household names. As he moved beyond his musical prime in the 1960s and '70s and struggled with addiction, he remained glamorous. He wore furs and metallic jeans, Dior sunglasses and a big belt spelling out 'SLY' in silver studs. In 2010, he played Coachella, dressed in a police officer's uniform and a blond wig. It was weird, but it was like nothing else. Unlike Hendrix or Gram Parsons, who worked with Michael & Toni and Nudie Cohn, respectively, to create their custom pieces, Stone was never associated with a particular designer or store. Nor did he think about clothes the way Bowie or Madonna did — as tools to help create an era or mood that would mark a new stylistic experimentation. For Stone, dressing was something deeper than a designer or an exercise. He didn't just play with style. He lived it.
The Guardian
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sly Stone obituary
Between 1968 and 1973 Sly Stone, who has died aged 82, changed the direction of African-American popular music not once but twice. Initially promoting a utopian vision of racial and sexual unity with catchy, imaginative and anthemic songs, he then morphed into a shadowy, stoned figure whose downbeat music mirrored the disenchantment of the early 1970s. It was in 1968 that his band, Sly and the Family Stone, released the single Everyday People, an appeal to unity that topped both the US pop and R&B charts for four weeks in early 1969. Everyday People's catchphrases – 'different strokes for different folks', 'we got to live together' – reflected an optimistic, racially inclusive America and ensured that Sly, with his bright smile and brighter threads, became an iconic figure to many. He and his band had a huge US following, their energy and optimism making them flag bearers for the nascent hippie movement, while appealing to both black and white audiences. In 1969 the band released the adventurous album Stand!, which opened with the title track urging listeners to stand against injustice, and was followed by the dissonant Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey. By now the likes of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were studying Sly: he was an icon of black power and arguably the most influential talent in popular music. The band's powerful performance at the Woodstock festival in 1969 – with Sly driving the audience into a frenzy as he chanted I Want to Take You Higher – provided one of the highlights of the Woodstock feature film, and magnified their fame. Then the band relocated to Los Angeles in late 1969, releasing Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), a propulsive funk number that topped the charts in 1970. Sly then began to shut himself away in a Bel Air mansion, consuming huge quantities of cocaine and angel dust (the hallucinogen PCP). The album There's a Riot Goin' On took almost two years to emerge – a lifetime in pop music. It was a Sly Stone solo effort in all but name and its sound was no longer bright and bold but sombre and low-fi, recorded with an early drum machine and a few close friends (the guitarist Bobby Womack, the organist Billy Preston) sitting in and getting high. Sly's record company, Epic, was aghast, fearing it would alienate his audience. But once again Sly proved himself ahead of the pack: Family Affair, the first single to be released from the album, was a US No 1 and has since gone on to become a contemporary music standard. Nothing else on There's a Riot Goin' On possessed the commercial potential of Family Affair, but the album was a murky, compelling insight into Sly's weary but creative mind – and its drug-induced mood of ennui and cynicism appeared to match that of many Americans experiencing a comedown after the excitement and hopes of the 60s. Riot topped the US album charts and effected a profound influence on African-American music. It is now regarded by many as a masterpiece. Born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, Sly grew up in Vallejo, California. His mother, Alpha, sang and played guitar at a local church, and his father, known as KC, served as a deacon. With his siblings, Sly sang in the Stewart Four, a gospel group that played in churches and even cut a 78 record. He taught himself to play the guitar and soon mastered the organ, harmonica and a number of other instruments, becoming lead vocalist of the Viscaynes, a doo wop group with whom he released two singles in 1960. After studying musical theory and composition at Vallejo Junior College in Fairfield, California, he was hired by Autumn Records, producing pop hits for the Beau Brummels and Bobby Freeman (and writing Freeman's C'mon and Swim). Sly maintained a hectic schedule during the mid-60s: leading his own band, the Stoners, and working as a DJ at the KSOL radio station in San Francisco, then at KDIA in Oakland, at both of which he was a pioneer in playing contemporary rock music alongside R&B. He formed Sly and the Family Stone in 1966 with his brother Freddie on guitar, Larry Graham on bass, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, Jerry Martini on saxophone and Greg Errico on drums. His sister Rose joined on electric piano after the release of the group's little-noticed 1967 debut album, A Whole New Thing. Sly wrote all the material, played guitar and keyboards, and sang, too. Sly and the Family Stone were a radical proposition from the start: a multiracial, mixed sex band who blended elements of contemporary rock with a James Brown-influenced dance groove. Their afros and long hair, and fashionable clothes, stood outside the R&B mainstream, in which matching suits and processed hair remained the norm. With their harmonising, their habit of using different members to sing individual lines, and Graham's popping bass technique that would come to be the signature sound of funk, they had a unique feel. Only three months after their second album, Dance to the Music, which contained their first hit single (a Top 10 success in the US and the UK) with the track of the same name, they released Life, an unremarkable collection of songs that produced minor hits with the title track and M'Lady. A year later came Stand!, and then, as Epic grew frustrated at receiving no new material, a Greatest Hits collection was put out in 1970. It reached No 2 in the US charts and has since gone on to sell more than 5m copies. With Sly working for two years on his next album, Epic's president, Clive Davis, froze his royalties to force him to get a move on. When Davis finally received There's a Riot Goin' On he was shocked by its contents. Although his worries about the album's unsaleability proved to be ill-founded, Davis did, however, have genuine cause for concern in the years after Riot. Sly's drug intake escalated, and he became increasingly paranoid and isolated, regularly refusing to perform at concerts (leading to riots by furious audiences) and surrounding himself with thuggish bodyguards. Their threatening behaviour led Errico and Graham to leave the band and the 1973 album, Fresh, although it contained the Top 20 US single If You Want Me to Stay, was not a great commercial success. The following year the album Small Talk proved a critical and commercial failure, and 90% of tickets for a 1975 concert in New York were left unsold. The Family Stone dissolved and Sly attempted a solo career, but subsequent albums failed to sell. In 1977 Epic released him from his contract. For more than four decades he created little. Rarely performing or recording – his last album, Ain't But the One Way, came out in 1982 – he generally made the news only when arrested for cocaine possession, in court for not having paid tax or fighting with various managers over royalties. A comeback was mooted in 2007 when a European tour was booked, but Sly's reluctance to perform for more than 20 minutes, plus his new band's ineptness, meant the performances were widely ridiculed. After that he existed for many years as little more than a ghost, often reported to be living in his van, still a superstar in his own mind. In 2023 his autobiography Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again), written with Ben Greenman, was published and Stone gave interviews in which he claimed to be free of his drug addictions. Seemingly, his daughter Sylvette and a new manager, Arlene Hirschkowitz, had combined their efforts to ensure drug dealers no longer had access to Stone. A feature documentary, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), directed by the musician Questlove, was released in 2024. The popularity of the music he created between 1968 and 1973 had never faded – Prince, D'Angelo and Lenny Kravitz were among the many musicians influenced by him. Indeed, the US critic Joel Selvin wrote that 'There are two types of black music: before Sly Stone and after Sly Stone.' He is survived by three children: Sylvester, from his marriage to Kathy Silva, which ended in divorce; Sylvette, from a relationship with his fellow band member Robinson, and Novena, from another relationship. Sly Stone (Sylvester Stewart), musician, born 15 March 1943; died 9 June 2025
News24
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News24
Weekender playlist: From Hendrix to Nirvana, Whitney to Winehouse... some iconic song covers
In this edition of The Weekender's playlist, Joel Ontong has you covered. He takes a look at some of the best and most iconic covers of all time. When Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor first heard country legend Johnny Cash cover his song, Hurt, he said it was like 'someone kissing your girlfriend'. 'I knew where I was when I wrote it. I know what I was thinking about. I know how I felt,' Reznor told The Sun in 2008. 'It felt invasive.' But, after watching Cash's music video, Reznor was floored: 'It really, really made sense, and I thought, what a powerful piece of art.' 'I never got to meet Johnny, but I'm happy I contributed the way I did. It felt like a warm hug. I have goosebumps right now thinking about it.' Cash's version of Hurt is hailed as one of the best covers of all time. What made it great was that he sang as if he meant every word, like it was coming straight from his heart. This raises the question: What makes a great cover? It's not better or more theatrical vocals or upscaled production, but rather the ability to make a song one's own and find ways to reinterpret, not just redo. News24's Weekender playlist looks at some great or notable covers. Another iconic cover is Jimi Hendrix's take on Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower. Hendrix's recording is the stuff of guitar legend. Midway through the song, he delivers arguably the greatest guitar solo put to wax. The song showcases what happens when cutting-edge guitar technology falls into the hands of a visionary. Plenty of Hendrix's peers had access to wah-wah pedals, reverb, and delay effects, but none of them could play like him. If Hendrix hadn't covered All Along the Watchtower, and Dylan hadn't written it, rock music wouldn't be the same. Dylan was also so impressed by Hendrix's version that he even changed the way he played the song live. READ | Weekender playlist: From Oklou, Internet Girl and Weed420... to prog rock by Pope Francis Sometimes, a bit of theatricality can help make an iconic cover – case in point, I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston, written by Dolly Parton. Parton's original is lovely, but Houston's version is monumental. Though the 1992 version is backed by a dated adult contemporary instrumental, Houston gives a vocal performance for the books. In the song's coda, Houston lets it rip, but not at the expense of emotional rawness. A similar case is Aretha Franklin's cover of Respect, originally by Otis Redding. In an era where everyone was covering each other's songs without really adding much, Franklin's performance defined the Southern Soul sound of the 1960s. Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson's cover of The Zutons' Valerie is, to many, the definitive version of the song. The Zutons might not have known it at the time, but Valerie was made for Winehouse. A great cover can also simply highlight great songwriting, especially when it's overlooked. When Nirvana decided to add David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World to their MTV Unplugged setlist, they probably didn't put that much thought into it. Their raw and rugged rendition is simple but brilliantly highlights Bowie's compelling songwriting, much better than the original ever did. Mainstream jazz music has also been noted for artists frequently doing covers, and there are many great ones by the likes of Miles Davis, Bill Evans and Abdullah Ibrahim. For our playlist, we included John Coltrane's take on Sound of Music's My Favourite Things. It's a significant departure from the original, but it is one of the best cool jazz recordings ever. We also included two songs you might not have known were covers: I'm a Believer by Smash Mouth (used in Shrek) and Red Red Wine by UB40. Both songs were written by Neil Diamond and appear on his debut album.
