Founders - #280 Jimi Hendrix

Starting point is 00:00:00 To all intents and purposes, this book has been written by Jimi Hendrix. But since it has been compiled after his death, it seems only fair to offer an explanation as to how the final text was arrived at. It evolved out of a film biography of him that I was working on. Not wishing to put words into Jimi's mouth, we began experimenting with dialogue culled from records of things he had actually said. An enormous dossier was compiled from all the sources that could be definitively authenticated. There was a super abundance of material, since during his four years in the spotlight, he was constantly giving interviews. He was also a compulsive writer, using hotel stationery, scraps of paper, cigarette cartons, napkins, anything that came to hand.

Starting point is 00:00:47 Funny, Jay-Z did the exact same thing when he was young as well. That's episode 238 if you haven't listened to the podcast I made on Jay-Z's autobiography. On reading through all the available material, it is clear that Jimmy left behind his own remarkable and comprehensive account of himself. We felt it imperative that Jimmy should be allowed to offer his own personal version of his life and music. The fact that Jimmy's speech patterns are so rhythmic and his turns of phrase so visually rich serve to enhance this approach. In a remarkable and haunting way, the book took on a life of its own.

Starting point is 00:01:26 He always claimed that for him, life and music were inseparable. As the book progresses, it becomes less an account of external events and more an exploration of an internal journey. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Jimi Hendrix, Starting at Zero, His Own Story. Real quick, before I jump back into the book, I want to tell you what got me excited and interested in reading a book about, a biography about Jimi Hendrix. Over the years, I'd heard about his obsessive practice habits. This has become a main theme that you and I talk about over and over again, because you see it in every single life story of history's greatest entrepreneurs or anybody that reached the top of their profession. And you and I define practices, all the things that you do to get better at your job.

Starting point is 00:02:13 And so in Jimmy's case, he got paid to make albums, so record albums in the studio and perform. What made those events, both the albums he made and the performances that he performed, valuable was everything he did when he was not technically working. And so people that played in the bands with Jimmy all said the same thing, that he would always be playing his guitar. He'd walk down the street playing the guitar. He would fall asleep playing the guitar. If he was in the back of the cab, he would start playing his guitar. And Jimmy's career from the time he became well-known to the time he died of a drug overdose was only four years. He had been trying to break through a few years before that. But somebody that knew him during this entire time, this guy named Billy, says that Jimmy put in 25 years worth of guitar practice into five years. And so when I hear stories like that, I'm like, OK, that's a person I can learn a lot from.

Starting point is 00:03:02 Let me go find a book about him. And that's how we arrived with this book in my hand. So I'm going to jump right into all of these words are Jimmy's words. And so it starts very, most of the highlights I have, and most of the book is covers like his four-year career, how he was thinking about it in a few years right before he breaks through. But there is an overview of his early life that I think is extremely important to start with. And so he says, I was born in Seattle, Washington on November 27th, 1942 at the age of zero. That's why the book is called Starting at Zero.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Dad, what he talks about his parents, his mom is going to die really early on, unfortunately, at an early age, says dad was very strict and level-headed, but my mother used to like dressing up and having a good time. She used to drink a lot and didn't take care of herself, but she was a groovy mother. There were family trouble between my mother and father. They used to break up all the time, so I stayed mostly at my aunt's house and my grandmother's. And the reason I'm reading this section to you is because one main theme I'm going to tie together with what we just learned last week with Peter Thiel's book Zero to One. Jimmy liked being different. He intentionally was different. Part of what led him to be different is he had a unique upbringing.

Starting point is 00:04:14 And he says, I used to spend a lot of time on her reservation in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is just a really bad scene. Now, this is going to be interesting because he talks about the drug abuse, the alcohol abuse that he was seeing as a young person. And what makes me sad about reading this book is the fact that everybody knows he's part of the 27 Club, a collection of these young, talented people that through alcohol and drugs died decades, decades before they should have. And as a result, the world was robbed of, they were robbed of their, you know, their 40 or 50 years into the future, the life that was taken from them, that they took from themselves really is the way to think about that. But the world was also robbed of their gifts. And what's heartbreaking to me is he sees this, he knows this behavior is not beneficial. And as the book progresses and you

Starting point is 00:05:02 get closer to his death, it gets more and more hectic, which we'll go into as well. But he sees this as a young person. He's like, they're, you know, he says, it's a really bad scene. Half of them are down on Skid Row. They're drinking. They're completely out of their minds and they're not doing anything. And yet he was unable to learn from that experience and realize, hey, I should stay away from drugs and alcohol. So then he goes back to the influence that his grandmother had and that she gave him a little Mexican jacket with tassels. And I wore it to school every day in spite of what people might have thought, because I liked it. I liked to be different. And that is another main theme of the book. So I'm going to talk about a few things here. So back on episode 259, I covered the autobiography of Bob Dylan. If you have not listened to that episode, highly recommend you

Starting point is 00:05:49 listen to it. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. It's one of the greatest books that I've ever read because of just his mastery of language. The reason I tie this into this is because Jimmy talks about, he mentions a lot of people in the book. He doesn't mention anybody else as much as he mentions Bob Dylan. They knew each other. He says like he was inspired by Bob Dylan. And what Bob and Jimmy have in common is they practice all the time, right? But also they created music. There was nobody else in their genre that put out the same product as them. So reading from Bob Dylan's autobiography, Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music scene. I told him nobody. I really didn't see myself like anybody. Another quote from Bob Dylan's autobiography.

Starting point is 00:06:30 What really set me apart in those days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the players. That is a goal you and I should be shooting for, isn't it? There was a lot better musicians around, but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing. And so how does that relate to what you and I've been talking about? Bob Dylan intentionally set out to build, he did not want to build an undifferentiated commodity business, right? What did Peter Thiel say, tell us last, last week, if you want to create and capture lasting value, you cannot build an undifferentiated commodity business. He repeats that over and over again. In another part of the book, he says, monopoly businesses, unique businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated commodity business. He repeats that over and over again. In another part of the book, he says, monopoly businesses, unique businesses capture more value than millions of

Starting point is 00:07:08 undifferentiated competitors. There's another example on how this applies to Jimi Hendrix. It actually came from, I've told you before, I was a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain when he was alive. Even after he died, unfortunately, I've watched a bunch of his stuff. I've read his books. That's episode, I did his biography on episode 219, if you haven't listened to that either. But in one of the episodes where Tony Bourdain goes to Tokyo, he and this is what makes Tony such a such a unique, interesting person. And why I think a lot of people love the content that he produced over the years is he's in Tokyo and he compares his experience to go to Tokyo for the first time to what it must have been like if you were alive in England in the late 1960s and you encountered Jimi Hendrix. I'm going to read from the transcript of this episode. And this is Tony speaking. He says, I often compare the experience of going to Japan for the first time, going to Tokyo for the first time to what Eric

Starting point is 00:07:56 Clapton and Pete Townsend must have gone through. So these are, you know, other people in in Jimi's industry, per se. And yet you have this guy who just says from a very early age, I like to be different. I want to be different. I do not want to build. He's not saying these words, but you and I are going to imply the meaning for us. I do not want to build a commodity,

Starting point is 00:08:15 an undifferentiated commodity business, right? And so he says, hey, I went to Tokyo for the first time to what Eric Clapton and Peter Townsend must have thought were the reigning guitar gods of England at the time, this is still Tony talking, what they must have gone through the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town. You hear about it, you go see it, a whole new window opens up into a whole new thing.

Starting point is 00:08:37 And you think, what does this mean? What do I have left to say? What do I do now? And even if Jimi's goal was not to make the most money, right? He intuitively understood Peter Thiel's idea that the Monopoly profits are the value in his case of just a stronger fan base and really just getting as many as many. His goal was getting as many people like to feel something in his music. He compares it to like a religious experience, church a lot. We'll talk about to feel something in his music. He compares it to like a religious experience, church, a lot. We'll talk about that. That was his goal, like maximize how

Starting point is 00:09:10 many people have this experience, have this feeling through the music that I'm producing. But he intuitively understood that the idea that monopoly profits come from differentiated businesses only. You and I are talking about Jimi Hendrix 50 years, half a century after he died. That doesn't happen if you're just putting out the same product as everybody else. Okay, so then we go to the early death of his mother. Unfortunately, it says his parents were divorced in December of 1950. Jimi and his younger brother remained with their father. Why is that? Jimmy saw his mother for the last time in January of 1958. She died the following month. This is Jimmy talking. There's a dream I had when I was real little about my mother being carried away on these camels. It was a big caravan and you could see the

Starting point is 00:09:56 shadows of the leaf patterns across her face. You know how the sun shines through a tree? Well, there were these green and yellow shadows. See what they were talking about? It's like he's very speaks very rhythmically, almost poetically. You're going to see the same thing if you've read the Bob Dylan autobiography as well. And she's saying to me, well, he's still talking about the dream. Think about this. Well, I won't be seeing you too much anymore, you know, so I'll see you. About two years after that, she died. I will always remember that one. I never did forget. There are some dreams that you never forget. And then he talks about how strict and religious, like he was, he was raised in like a strict and religious upbringing and he wanted to rebel from that. He wanted to

Starting point is 00:10:35 be different. He did not want to fit in. Mostly my dad took care of me. He was religious. He taught me that I must respect my elders and that I couldn't speak unless I was spoken to first by a grownup. So I've always been very quiet. But I saw a lot of things. A fish, this is something, a lesson from his dad, a fish wouldn't get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut. And so it does not sound like an environment that Jimmy wanted to be in. And you know that through his actions because later on, once he leaves Seattle,

Starting point is 00:10:58 he doesn't wind up, he winds up having like a half-sister. He doesn't come back home for like seven years. And his half-sister is like six years old the first time he meets her. And I don't think he ever goes back to Seattle after that. So you can read through his actions, whether, you know, what he thought of his home life. Jimmy, not that he didn't, you know, love his daddy.

Starting point is 00:11:17 There's a lot of letters. A lot of the book is letters he wrote to his dad, but he chose not to visit and stay in his hometown. Jimmy dropped out of high school at the age of 17. Lots of kids have it tough. Jesus, I couldn't stand it at home. I ran away a couple times because I was so miserable. I don't think my dad ever thought I was going to make it. I was the kid who didn't do the right thing. And so his life changes, just like when Bob Dylan has that almost religious experience when he hears the words of Woody Guthrie,

Starting point is 00:11:45 just like Jeff Bezos ran around with Sam Walton's book and gave it and had gave highlighted copies to all the people in Amazon at the very beginning, just like just like Steve Jobs talked about visiting Edwin Land was like a shrine. We see that happening again. In this case, it's this guy named Muddy Waters who changes Jimmy's life forever. Listen to how he describes this. This is wild. The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his records when I was a little boy and it scared me to death. That's a crazy response, right? Wow. What is this all about? And so he just starts playing a bunch of different instruments. My first instrument was a harmonica.

Starting point is 00:12:25 Next, it was a violin. I always dug string instruments and I liked the piano, but I wanted something I could take home or anywhere. And I couldn't take home a piano. So think about that. Something that he can always travels with him. He carries it all the time. That's going to fuel his practice habits.

Starting point is 00:12:39 You know, sitting there waiting for the plane to take off. I'm playing the guitar. I'm in bed playing the guitar. I'm walking down the street to get coffee. I'm playing the guitar. And so he says, so then I started digging guitars so he could take it everywhere. One night, my dad's friend was stoned and he told me, or excuse me, he sold me his guitar for $5. I was about 14 or 15 when I started playing. I learned all the riffs I could. He's completely self-taught, completely self-taught. How many entrepreneurs have you and I spoke, talked about, about like the power, like if you take a, an ambitious,

Starting point is 00:13:11 driven, intelligent person, especially today, imagine how hard it was to get information. And we know this again, I'm going to tie down the tie back to the Bob Dylan, to the Bob Dylan podcast. Cause it was so, just so impactful on me. If you've listened to it, I almost like made him even start crying on my podcast because I was having like a religious experience while I was reading it. I was in I think it's called the Central Library in Austin, Texas, visiting family. And I'd go there every day and read that book. And I'm surrounded by quotes of how impactful reading and books, the technology of books, have been to the human species. And I'm going through that exact same experience while I'm reading about Bob Dylan, who's going

Starting point is 00:13:50 through the exact same experience in New York, trying to make it and going through his friend's library, just reading biography after biography after biography. One thing Bob talks about is just how difficult it was for him to get access to other music. He'd have to go to a record store and they let you hang out there all day but you're supposed to like sample the music before you buy it and he would just sit in the booth all day he'd make friends and then go through their entire like go to their house and go through their entire record collection uh just a complete sponge of information again he's playing out to music other people apply to building businesses jimmy's doing the exact same thing but he's doing an environment where it's just information. Like there is a scarcity of

Starting point is 00:14:28 information where you and I have the exact opposite problem right now. It's just an abundance. So you can take some driven, intelligent person and you give them access to the internet. You give them access to all the world's knowledge through all the books and whatever you want. It's like you, that person is going to be unstoppable. And you know this because you see that same personality type throughout history and what they would do when it was so hard to get the information what they would go the lengths they'd go through to get it it's just remarkable so he says i learned all the riffs i could i never had any lessons i learned guitar from records and the radio i loved my music man love soul in the game church religion these are the main themes when I'm going to compare it. I think I have notes

Starting point is 00:15:05 later on the book. I've said this to you before. It's just like, if you go back and actually read, you know, the longest single book that I've ever read for the podcast was a biography on Enzo Ferrari. I think it's like episode 98 or 99, something like that. That's like a thousand pages. And Enzo Ferrari described his product, which are cars, the way you describe your lover. That's how Jimmy thinks about his music. He loves it. So he says, I love my music, man. That's the first time. I'm still really early in the book. We're in trouble because I got a bunch of highlights. He's going to repeat that over and over again. You see, I wasn't ever interested in other things, just music. I was trying to play like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. I was trying this.

Starting point is 00:15:45 I didn't even see this highlight from what I was just saying to you before. But this is exactly the point I was trying to make. I was trying to learn everything and anything. Now, keep in mind, this guy is going to eventually play in front of, he's going to have number one records, going to be one of the most famous people in the world. He's going to play in front of 500,000 people. What is his first gig?

Starting point is 00:16:05 My first gig was at an armory, which is a National Guard place, and we earned 35 cents apiece and three hamburgers. That's incredible. I think Bob Dylan, there was a similar story with Bob Dylan where he was playing at an armory too. I don't think he was making much money. So then this is Jimmy talking about this. It was so hard for me at first.

Starting point is 00:16:26 I knew about three songs. And when it was time for us to play on stage, I was all shaky. You get so very discouraged. You hear different bands playing around you and the guitar players always seem like he's so much better than you are. And this is so important.

Starting point is 00:16:39 I put a gigantic exclamation point on this paragraph. Most people give up at this point, but it's best not to. Just keep on. Just keep on. Sometimes you're going to be so frustrated that you'll hate the guitar. But all of this is just part of learning. I'm going to read that again. Just keep on.

Starting point is 00:16:58 Most people give up at this point, but it's best not to. Just keep on. Just keep on. Sometimes you're going to be so frustrated you hate the guitar, but all of this is just part of learning. If you stick with it, you are going to be rewarded. If you're very stubborn, you can make it. And imagine the self-confidence. This is not a cocky person. In fact, later in the book, which you find most interesting, is he's got a quote on how he deals with everybody. Suddenly tell them, hey, you're the best guitarist in the world. You're the best. You're the best. And he says, I don't consider

Starting point is 00:17:27 myself to be the best and I don't like compliments. They distract me. His whole thing is like, I just want to play a guitar. I want to get paid. Like, obviously, I want to make money. But if I can just play the guitar as a living for the rest of my life, I will be happy. But we see an insight into his mindset when he's playing gigs for 35 cents and three hamburgers. Belief comes before ability. When you talk to normal people, right, not people, non-founder mentalities, people that maybe have a hard time understanding how entrepreneurs think, they think it's a reverse. They think you're able to do something and then you have now you believe you can do it because you just proved you could do it. It's like, no, no, there is no reason on earth that Jimmy believed what he's about to tell us he believed when he's playing gigs for 35 cents and three hamburgers.

Starting point is 00:18:13 I had very strange feelings that I was here for something and I was going to get a chance to be heard. I got the guitar together because that was all I had. Oh, daddy. One of these days, I'm going to be big and famous. I'm going to make it, man. I think at that point, he's a 17-year-old broke high school dropout. Think about that. That's incredible. And now that's the future of the future. What's going to take place in the future of your life and my life is unpredictable. He's like, I'm going to make it. But first, he's going to get arrested and then he's going to have to go serve in the army.

Starting point is 00:18:47 So it says Jimmy was arrested for riding a stolen car. He was given a two year suspended sentence after the public defender told the judge that Jimmy was going to enlist in the armed forces. This is 1961. He says, I was 18 and I didn't have a cent in my pocket. So then this part of the book is a lot of the letters that Jimmy is writing home to his dad while he's serving the armed forces. And he talks about like the intense training, how difficult it was, how a lot of people are quitting. And I just, I'm just going to skip over a bunch of that. I want to just pull out one line here because it gives you an insight what he just told us. Like, man, this is the point of a lot of people quit. I'm telling you, don't quit. Keep going. It's part of the

Starting point is 00:19:22 learning process. You're going to be rewarded if you don't quit. You and I talk about this over and over again. Time carries most of the weight. What did Jimmy say here? I made up. He's talking about all these people dropping out, all these people crying next to him during all the training he's doing in the military. He says, I made up my mind that whatever happens, I'm not quitting. And what was he doing when he was when he had any downtime in the army? Army, right? He says in the army, I'd started to play guitar very seriously, so I thought all I can do is try to earn money playing guitar. That is his, he has one goal. He's like, I just want to earn enough money so I can play guitar.

Starting point is 00:19:55 There's no way he could have predicted when he was at this point in his life that he was going to be one of the most famous, you know, some people say he's the greatest guitar player of all time, whatever the case is, but he's no doubt one of the most famous guitar players to ever live. So he winds up like breaking his ankle. And I think he either hurt his back or he like he faked a back injury to get out of the army. And so now he's completely broke.

Starting point is 00:20:17 He's homeless. This is this is Bob Dylan all over again. Right. Same story here. Completely broke, homeless, just doing any kind of gig that he could possibly do. And so we're going to see another giant exclamation point on this paragraph. I went down south. I played in cafes, clubs and on the streets. It was pretty tough at first. I lived in very miserable circumstances.

Starting point is 00:20:36 I slept where I could. And when I needed to eat, I had to steal it. I started a group called the King Casuals with a fellow named Billy Cox who played funky, funky bass. Billy's that guy I quoted earlier that said Jimmy put in 25 years of guitar practice into five years. And so now he's traveling all over the South. Again, he is homeless.

Starting point is 00:20:57 That is not an exaggeration. He goes, I went to Nashville. I lived in a big housing estate that they were building. So in a country, like, you know, you travel in the neighborhood you live in or whatever. There's a house that's under construction. Well, you know, that one's supposed to be in there.

Starting point is 00:21:09 You're going to find Jimi Hendrix sleeping in there in the 1960s. They hadn't put in the floor yet and there was no roof. We so we had to sleep under the stars. This was wild. We used to go downtown to watch the race riots. He talks about in the background of this. This book, obviously, is all that this is 1960s America. It's crazy.

Starting point is 00:21:25 Even though he blows up, he gets really famous in England first, actually. We would take a picnic basket because they wouldn't serve us in the restaurants. So obviously, being African-American in the South, couldn't even go into a lot of the restaurants, unfortunately. One group would stand on one side of the street and the rest on the other.

Starting point is 00:21:39 They'd shout names and talk about each other's mothers, and every once in a while, they would stab each other. That would go on for a couple hours. And then we'd go to the same club and we would get stoned. And so people were like, why aren't you involved in all this? And he says, I had more important things to do, like playing guitar. So we see a singular focus. He doesn't like, obviously agree what's going on.

Starting point is 00:21:56 But he's like, I'm only focused on what I can actually control. And it's going to be playing the guitar. I want to make money playing the guitar. And he felt it was beneficial to be where he was at this time because so many guitar players were in Nashville. He says, in Nashville, everybody knows how to play guitar. This is where I really learned how to play. And so he's going to list a bunch of people that when he's not playing, he's studying the people that came before him that created great work that he admired to see if there's ideas. He names them Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters again,

Starting point is 00:22:25 Robert Johnson, Albert King, Albert Collins. You see this with Bob Dylan. I mean, you really see it with every entrepreneur, but specifically Bob Dylan was doing the exact same thing. Most of the guitars come from the South. Down South at some funky club, one cat there starving to death might be the best guitar player you ever heard, and you might not even know his name.

Starting point is 00:22:43 I started traveling all around, playing around the South. It was one of the heart. It was one of the hardest audiences. Guys must play really good because for these people, you can't play less. And so he becomes famous later in life for playing guitar with his teeth. There's videos on YouTube of this. I don't even understand how that's possible. But he learned that idea, you know, a decade before playing these gigs. He says, the idea of playing guitar with my teeth came to me in a town in Tennessee. Down there, you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot. There's a trail of broken teeth all over the stage. I traveled all over the states playing in different groups. Oh, God, I can't even remember all their names. Bad pay, lousy living, and getting burned. That was those days. And so what he means

Starting point is 00:23:26 by getting burned is that a lot of the promoters would fail to pay you or they'd say, hey, we're going to pay you, you know, 15 bucks for this gig. And he'd get like two bucks or no money at all. And so I spent a lot of time in this book or in this part of his life, in this part of the book as well, because there's note after note after note on these next few pages. It's like, how bad do you want it? You could say that you want X to happen in your life. Jimmy did everything he possibly could to allow, to like prepare himself to have a lucky break. I lived in very miserable circumstances. Sleeping among the garbage cans between all the tenements was hell.

Starting point is 00:24:01 Rats would run across your chest at night. I ate orange peel and tomato paste. People would say, if you don't get a job, you're just going to starve to death. But I didn't want to take a job outside of music. Then one of the Isley brothers, this is one first big break, Isley brothers are obviously well-known musicians, heard me playing at a club and said he had a job open. And so the very beginning, he's got a few years before he makes it on his own, where he's got to play backup to more famous people. And in that case, he's told what to do and what to play.

Starting point is 00:24:28 He's like, there's no part of my personality. Eventually, he's just like, I can't do this anymore. I have something inside of me that the world has to get out. I want the world to see. And so he gets to play. He's making a little bit of money, but he's still homeless. I had to sleep in the clubs where we were playing. And there were a lot of cockroaches and rats. Those bastard animals were all over you during the night.

Starting point is 00:24:50 But as a result of going on tour and being around people that were already successful in the music business, Jay, I referenced the autobiography of Jay-Z at the very beginning. He said the exact same thing. He learned so much by other rappers or other people in the music industry just by being around them. Some of them gave them opportunity to go on tour. And so he obviously would try to repay that once he got famous and successful to people, to more people up and coming. But we see this in Jimmy's life, too. After a couple of months, there was a soul package coming into town with Sam Cooke, Solomon Burke, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, B.B. King. He's just listing name after name. So I think you get the point. And he says, I got a little job playing in their backup band.

Starting point is 00:25:35 I learned an awful lot of guitar picking behind all those names every night. I then met Little Richard. So Little Richard winds up being a bastard to him. I met Little Richard, so I started playing with him for a while. He wouldn't let me wear frilly shirts on stage. So, you know, maybe you don't know this, but if you Google Jimi Hendrix and you look at pictures of him, you're going to see him dressed as only Jimi like, what the hell's wrong with you, kid? He'd just love to stay out or stand out. He says, Little Richard said, brothers, we've got to have a meeting. I am Little Richard, and I am the king of rock and rhythm, and I'm the only one who's going to look pretty on stage. So he's like, Jimmy, you cannot look pretty on stage. He had another meeting over my hairstyle. Imagine working for somebody like this. Come on, man. He had another meeting over

Starting point is 00:26:23 my hairstyle. I said I wasn't going to cut my hair for nobody. That'll be a $5 fine for you, Little Richard said. If our shoelaces were two different types, we'd get fine $5. Everybody on that tour was brainwashed. And so then he quits the band, but he doesn't have anything to fall back on. And all he has to fall back on is a wish sandwich. This is what he says. I had nothing but a wish sandwich. Two pieces of bread, wishing I had some meat between. Moving a few pages ahead, we see the theme. How bad do you want it? It continues on and on and on. And it comes from this idea. It's like, I don't want to play backup on somebody else's team. I have my own ideas that I have to bring to life and I'm willing to sacrifice my comfort to do so. So he's

Starting point is 00:27:05 writing a letter home. I just want you to let you know that I'm still here in New York trying to make it. Although I didn't, although I don't eat every day, everything's going all right for me. I still have my guitar. And as long as I have that, no fool can keep me from living. And he's trying to put things into perspective. He says it could be worse than this, but I'm going to keep hustling and scuffling until I get things to happening like they're supposed to be. There's that relentless self-belief, right? Belief comes before ability. He's homeless. He's not eating every day. And he's like, that's fine. I'm just going to, it could be worse. I'm going to keep hustling and things will be how they're supposed to be. And so he talks about, now he's telling us like like, why'd you quit? You had a gig.

Starting point is 00:27:45 Like, you were getting paid. You may have to deal with this, you know, this jerk or whatever. And he says, I just got tired, man. I can't stand it anymore. I can't tell you the number of times it hurt me to play the same notes, the same song. It was just kind of a shadowy, I was just kind of a shadowy figure up there. Out of sight of the real meaning. I wanted my own scene.

Starting point is 00:28:03 Making my own music. I had these ideas and sounds in my brain. So I just went down to the village, this is in Manhattan, and started playing like I wanted. That's exactly where Bob Dylan went. And we see that here because this is the first mention of Bob Dylan, first of many times he's going to talk about Bob Dylan throughout the entire book. When I was down in the village, Bob Dylan was also starving down there. I saw him one time. Both of us were stoned out of our minds. We were both stoned and just hung around laughing. Yeah, we just laughed. And then he knew, like everybody else knew, he was like, oh, this cat is different. Like Bob Dylan is on his, what did Bob Dylan say? He's like, listen,

Starting point is 00:28:37 there's a lot of other musicians that made a bit better than me, but no one was doing what I was doing. Bob Dylan was building an undifferentiated career, right? I used to get bored so quickly by anybody and everything. That's why I went towards Dylan, because he offered me something completely new. He used to have a pad with him all the time to put down what he saw around him. And so Jimmy uses that idea later on where it's just like, where do your songs come from? He's like, it comes from everything I experienced. Like the world is my classroom. I just write down the stuff I see. And then over time, that stuff turns into songs. And so this is where he gets his biggest break. He gets invited to go

Starting point is 00:29:10 play in England. He says, my big slice of luck came when this little English friend persuaded some guy named Chaz Chandler, who was a bass player of this successful group called The Animals, to come down and see where we were gigging and give me an ear. So that's his way of saying, hey, my friend told him, come down and watch this Jimmy guy. Chaz asked if I would come over to England and start a group there. And then listen to how Jimmy makes his decision. I'd never been to England before. I said, I might as well go because that's the way I live my life. So he gets to England, writes his dad. I'm in England, dad. I met some people. They're going to make me a big star. This is where his career goes parabolic.

Starting point is 00:29:48 I think that's the right word. Just completely a straight line all the way up. So he says, we don't want to be classed in any category. My music isn't pop. It's me. We're trying to create our own personal sound. So then he talks about, again, I wrote this on this page as well. Bob Dylan, Peter Thiel, unique product.

Starting point is 00:30:06 The English people hear Jimmy, they're like, what the hell is this? And so he says, the first time we played there, they sat open mouth and didn't know how to accept us, but they still listened. The club managers think that we were in a Bob and Bob. This is so important too, man. Why you can't listen? How many times have you and I talked about critics don't know shit, right? And the reason I use terminology like that, so it sticks in your brain, it's like, it doesn't matter whether you're good or you're bad. That's irrelevant. You're going to be, if you're doing anything, you're going to be criticized. And in story after story after story in these biographies, hundreds of them now, we're almost up to 300, right? You see this over and over again. And all that matters is not that people

Starting point is 00:30:41 that don't like what you're doing, just focus on the customers that love what you're doing, or they give value to what you're doing, or that find your work, solve some kind of problem for them. That's the only, I love what, the way Jeff puts this, Jeff Bezos puts this in the most, like the most, I guess the least words possible. I'm saying most, I mean, the least words possible, obsess over customers. That's it. And we see this with Jimmy Jimmy where it's like the club owners and the critics, they don't like us, but guess who loves us? The listeners. That's all that matters. The club managers thought we were an abomination, but the public thinks it's awesome. Meaning that work we're doing is awesome. And so then he starts meeting other super famous people. It says the Beatles used to come and see me sometimes. The Beatles and the Stones are all such beautiful cats off record, but it's a family thing that sometimes it all begins to sound alike.

Starting point is 00:31:28 Sometimes, remember, the very first page, or I think the second page of the book, is I like to be different. Jimmy uses that theme throughout his entire life, that sometimes it all begins to sound alike. Sometimes you don't want to be part of the family. I believe soon all the English records will all sound alike, just like Motown all sounds alike. That's nice in a way, but what happens if you have your own thing going? And so this difference, going back to what Tony Bourdain said, right? What must have they thought the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town? You hear about it, you go see it, a whole new window opens up to this whole new thing, and you think, what does this mean? What do I have left to say? What do I do now? And as a result, if you're doing

Starting point is 00:32:05 that, right, you're getting people's attention. There's going to be people that hate it, but people that love it. And this is the end result. I don't know how this happened so suddenly, but our records began to sell at an incredible rate. We never thought it would be this big. And so that's great. He's getting to play. His records are selling. He's making money, but there's also headaches. Now he becomes world famous. We're going to talk later on about how he would isolate, self-isolate in hotel rooms, just like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant talk about in their biographies. There's people trying to like steal your sound. You're going to get sued. But what I liked, you know, I'm going to skip over a lot of that because I liked his perspective. This is

Starting point is 00:32:42 Jimi Hendrix on gratitude. Jimi, if you think about it, Jimi found what he loved to do. You and I just spent how many weeks going over Paul Graham's essays, right? I did three separate podcasts on them. And one thing that sticks out in Paul Graham's essays is like really trying to help you think through like how do you find work that you actually love? And Paul says a line in those essays that's just fantastic. He's like, you know, this is obvious. You know it's hard because you're talking about out of billions of people that live,

Starting point is 00:33:09 a few hundred thousand actually achieve that goal, finding work that they love to do. Jimmy was one of those people. And so his whole point is just like, I don't give a damn so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I want to play. That's enough for me. I consider ourselves to be some of the luck I want to play. That's enough for me. I consider ourselves to be some of the luckiest cats alive because we're playing just what we want to play and people seem to like that. You know how hard it is to, and you know, this is still like maybe a year into

Starting point is 00:33:38 two years into massive success. That sense of gratitude has got to be unbelievably difficult and counter to human nature to maintain that sense of gratitude as your success increases. And you see this as like people get richer and richer. And it's like, OK, yeah, I got maybe I have one hundred million dollars now or whatever it is, but I got to get to a billion or not. I got a billion. I got to get to two billion. And, you know, I think like Bill Walsh's perspective on this was like the score takes care of itself as long as like if you make that much money, that's fantastic. But you've lost the thread somewhere in life. If you start out just wanting to start a business, get successful, build a business people love, you get wealthy as a result of that, which is which is, you know, as it should be.

Starting point is 00:34:18 But then you you're somehow discontent or unhappy because there's not some kind of number. It's just like, no, let's send it. Like I get to choose. I get to build my own business, build my own world. I get to choose who I spend my time with. I have complete autonomy and control. You know how rare that is in life? And in Jimmy's case, it's just like, I just wanted to get paid to play the guitar. And now I've overshot that goal so much that, you know, I'm building, making millions and millions of dollars. He says later in the book, he's like, I could if i really wanted to just buy a house in beverly hills and chill and do nothing but he's like i don't want to do that i want to continue what did i

Starting point is 00:34:53 start out as i started just wanting to be able to play the guitar and get paid for it so i'm just going to keep doing that and i think key of him like centering himself on that a few pages later he talks like what am i doing like what am making? And this is going to relate to another thing that Paul Graham said, that you need to build a product that you would use. It made me think of also with Stephen King, when I read his autobiography, what he said, he's like, I'm the first reader, right? Which means that, yeah, I'm the writer, but I'm the first reader. If I wrote something and I'm reading, and I don't like it, that means I shouldn't publish that book. Steve Jobs used the same exact idea that Jimmy's about to say here. So that's Paul Graham, Stephen King, Steve Jobs.

Starting point is 00:35:27 He's like, listen, we made the iPod and all the devices we're making because it's like, we made it for us. And so Jimmy's saying that exact same thing. Listen, this is self-satisfaction, Jimmy says. We're playing for the audience, but I have to entertain myself too. And that just reminds me that when I get to that section, it's like, man, this is why, and I think you learned from Charlie Munger. If you go and listen to him, he's like, listen, like you got to just his idea of inversion is just genius in its simplicity. It's like, go and identify the bad things that happen to people. And you'll find, he talks about a bunch of his friends that he grew up with. I think they were childhood friends, if I remember correctly. And he's like, you know, most, there was like three or four guys.

Starting point is 00:36:05 I can't remember the exact number, but it's like, hey, you know, they all had problems with alcohol. Two of them are dead. One of them is like, you know, bankrupt or, you know, not doing well. So what did Charlie's like? Okay, well, I'll just not have not become an alcoholic. And the reason that's important here is because Jimmy didn't learn that lesson, right? So as a man, like that attitude where it's like, I'm playing, I have to entertain myself too. I'm building the product that I want to see.

Starting point is 00:36:24 It's like, that is part of the key to longevity. And so we just went over the fact that he's doing it. He's building something he wants to see in the world. He's grateful for the opportunity. These are traits that people have that can do great work for decade after decade, which is, you know, our end goal. And yet that's not enough because you can get caught up in, you know, in his case, he was taking pills. He gets caught with heroin. He says it's not his.

Starting point is 00:36:47 He swears up and down in the book. He's like, I'm scared of needles I would never inject. But he did. He does talk about, you know, that he had a problem with alcohol. He would get violent with alcohol. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of alcohol in the system when he also took those pills and unfortunately died. And so I look at Jimmy's example. There's a ton of other examples, you know, up and down my family tree.

Starting point is 00:37:06 I've talked to you about this before. It's just, you know, pills and alcoholism and cocaine. And I don't have problems with any of that stuff because I take it as an anti-model. It's like that person's an idiot. And what does that idiot do all day? That idiot wakes up and starts drinking. That idiot wakes up, drinks and takes pills. So I'm just not going to do that.

Starting point is 00:37:24 And I think that's part of one of the gifts that Charlie Munger gives to the world because he tells, he's great with aphorisms and he's great with stories. And that's how these ideas really get lodged into your brain so that you can use them and take them with you. It's just like, look at the behavior of people you dislike or you don't respect and do the opposite. So then he talks about the pace. And this is what really started in my reading of the book. I'm like, man, you really should try to optimize for consistency over intensity because this guy really worked himself to death. And I think how tired and mentally he also has to be disorienting, going from being completely unknown, sleeping in clubs that you're playing in with rats and cockroaches crawling over you to three years later or two years later being one of the most famous people in the world can't go anywhere you know who knows what what um that that experience is like and so that's why you see uh rick rubin talked about this a lot where um you know he's worked with a ton of artists and musicians for decade after decade he's like they they don't know how to deal

Starting point is 00:38:20 they feel the same they're the same person they're the the external world is treating them completely different and a lot of people you know medicaid and a lot of those people that medicaid they use substances that kill them he talked about working with mac miller uh which is the the rapper who uh died of an overdose as well and i think he was i don't know if he was 27 but he was in his 20s and so this is where he's jimmy's pace and intensity just skyrockets. He says, we just we've played about 10 places, 10 places. The gigs happen like every day, too, which is crazy. We play just about 10 places here, I guess. I'm not sure because I don't keep up with that. I just play. We're working very, very, very hard now. Once you've made a name for yourself, this is actually important. Once you've made a name for yourself, you're all the more determined to keep it up. And so I was listening to a, it might have been in the Defiant Ones documentary on HBO, but it was either that documentary or an interview with Eminem, right? And he said, you know, he gets in, he had years of struggle. Dr. Dre was already very, very successful, discovers Eminem and completely catapults Eminem's career and at the very the

Starting point is 00:39:26 one of the very first things Dr. Dre said to Eminem when they were working on the first album was once you get it you have to work twice as hard to keep it and Eminem was smart because he listened to that here you have Dr. Dre right this guy I should see if there's a book on him because maybe a lot of people don't know like his career. Dr. Dre has been in his industry for four decades. He starts off selling Beats with a beeper. This is decades before there was such a thing as a cell phone, right? He literally sold Beats using a beeper, starts off selling Beats with a beeper,

Starting point is 00:40:00 30 years later sells Beats to Apple for billions. And his advice, once you get it, you have to work twice as hard to keep it. Then he goes back to his process. He's like, listen, when you're first starting out, you're going to, it's normal to copy other people that are doing the same thing you're doing. But then eventually you take their ideas, combine them with yourself. I listen to everybody, but I don't try to copy anybody. If you try to copy them note for note, your mind starts wandering. Therefore, you should dig them and then do your own thing. Music is very serious to me.

Starting point is 00:40:28 It is my way of saying what I want to say. I hear sounds, and if I don't get them together, nobody else will. So that's another theme throughout the book. He repeats different variations of this. He's like, there's something inside of me that has to come out. I have to bring this to the world. And then he does interviews throughout the book. And a lot of the transcripts are printed in this book.

Starting point is 00:40:50 And it was very interesting that he talks about like the importance of he starts out with, hey, I just want to get paid to play the guitar. And really, he's yearning for freedom. This is something you and I have talked about over and over again. The main motivators of entrepreneurs is independence and control. And Jimmy says freedom is the key word to this whole thing. Everybody has their own ways. They can do exactly what they want. When it's time for you to die, you've got to do that all by yourself. Nobody is going to help you. As I go through this book, or any book rather, I try not to think. It's just like all instinct.

Starting point is 00:41:22 It's like, okay, that part seems interesting to me. I'm going to highlight it. And then I'm immediately going to write down what comes to mind. And I can't necessarily explain why two quotes came to mind when I read that. So I'm going to read that to you again. Freedom is the key to the whole thing. Everybody has their own ways. They can do exactly what they want. When it's time for you to die, you've got to do it by yourself. No one's going to help you.

Starting point is 00:41:39 The first quote that popped in my mind was from Naval Ravikant. And he says, the reality is life is a single player game. You're born alone. You're going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All of your memories are alone. You're gone in three generations and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It's all single player. And so to me, the way I interpret why Naval is saying that is that it's importance of having an inner scorecard as opposed to an outer scorecard. Just do what you feel is right, what you truly believe in your souls, what you should be doing,

Starting point is 00:42:08 as opposed to worrying about, oh, what will this person think or what will that person think? And then the second was a quote from George Lucas's biography, which I covered all the way back on Founders 35. I got it. I'm shocked that I have not reread.

Starting point is 00:42:19 I need to reread that book. It's one of my favorite books I've ever read. And where Jimmy's like, hey, everybody has their own ways. They can do exactly what they want. There's a quote in George Lucas's biography that just gives me chills. And it's like, he's talking about this way before he's successful. I'm pretty sure he's saying this when he was struggling. And so it says, it was the importance of self and being able to step out of whatever you're in and move forward rather than being

Starting point is 00:42:42 stuck in your little rut, Lucas said in 1971. People would give anything to quit their jobs. All they have to do is do it. They're people in cages with open doors. So on the very next page, this jumps out to me. He's asked the question by a reporter. Why do you carry two dimes in your shoe? Jimmy's answer. that was all I had when I landed in this country. What do you do in your spare time? If I'm not working, I rarely leave the flat. Mostly I sit at home playing records. I don't like having to dress up and go to social parties. Me, I'm just trying to get my music together. Another question, has money making changed you? I don't give a damn so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I want to play. Where do your songs come from?

Starting point is 00:43:28 From the people, from the traffic, from everything out there. The whole world influences me. And then this is one of the first times that he's going to mention just not being able to handle what's happening to him. Think about this guy's becoming so world famous. There's a lot of like not only is the money rolling in, the records are doing well. He's selling out shows. You got to be able to step out of yourself. This business, music business, is so much harder than people think. It's nerve-wracking and mind-bending. The people who dig ditches for a living don't know how lucky they are. We are constantly under pressure and the workday is 24 hours a day. I often get depressed. I need to slow down. And then he's looking at some of the records, like once he cuts a record,

Starting point is 00:44:24 it's out there. He can't go back and change it. And James Dyson talks about this. And then he's looking at some of the records. Like once he cuts a record, it's out there. He can't go back and change it. And James Dyson talks about this. I think it's in his second autobiography. But he talks about like just being there's like a constant like some percentage of him. I can't remember what percentage, maybe 10 or 15 percent. Always a little discontent that everything can always be a little better. And we're seeing Jimmy say that, too.

Starting point is 00:44:44 This is the first time he mentions it, but he mentions it many times in the book that as he goes back and looks at his past work, he's always disappointed in himself. Above all, our records will become better, purely from the point of viewing our, from the view of our recording technique. We have not been happy with a single one. Keep in mind, he's selling tons of them. Everybody loves them. And Jimmy's like, I'm not, they're not good enough. We're cutting, we're now cutting a new record between our tours. There'll be maybe two tracks from the new Bob Dylan album on it.

Starting point is 00:45:10 Dylan goes his own way. He is just getting more and more of a songwriter. He mentions Bob Dylan, like I've said, a lot. He's really admired Bob Dylan. And there's also these weird, almost like premonitions of his death. At the very end of the book, he talks about like, I don't think I'm going to make it to 28. And this is the first example where he's like, yeah, Seattle's beautiful. But the next time I see it, I'm going to be on a pine box. No city I've ever

Starting point is 00:45:35 seen is this pretty Seattle, all the water in the mountains. It's beautiful. But I couldn't live there. You get restless. His whole point is like, he didn't want to live anywhere. He just wanted to like roam the earth. You get restless. And before you know it, he didn't want to live anywhere. He just wanted to roam the earth. You get restless. And before you know it, you're too old and you haven't seen any of the world. You've got to get this great, big, fat, old world here. Or excuse me, you've got this great, big, fat, old world here. So who wants to live in the same place forever? The next time I go to Seattle, it will be in a pine box.

Starting point is 00:46:00 Let me go to the next page. And this is redlining life. Main theme here is just slow down. Consistency over intensity. Tomorrow, we end our Italian tour. Then I fly to New York for a day to sign a contract. In four days, four days later, I'll be in Switzerland. Then I'll have a vacation in Spain. We really need one. We are simply overtired. We cannot continue at this pace for this long. And he talks about, again, mentions just how difficult the business is. They squeeze something until it is completely dry. He will be dead two years later. He brings up the fact that a lot of his promoters and these partners wind up stiffing them, something that, you know, you and I have spent a few weeks talking about. I think Peter Thiel talked about the importance of having the co-founders having some kind of prehistory together. Paul Graham talks about, hey, on the Y Combinator application, we ask about the prehistory of co-founders more than any other single thing. Charlie Munger or

Starting point is 00:46:48 Warren Buffett, I can't remember which one, says you can't do a good deal with a bad person. And so these people are just chewing Jimmy up and spitting him out. They don't really care about him as a person. They only care about what money he can make them. These promoters think that you're a money-making machine and they have no faith in you. It's dog-eat-dog world constantly. I can always tell the artificial people from the real music people, the ones who care about the music and what the musicians are doing. The trouble is, in this business, there are so many artificial people. This is a tale as old as time. They see a fast buck and they keep you at it until you're exhausted and so is the public, and then they move on to other things. I am so tired I could drop, but I find the relaxation comes from thinking about music.

Starting point is 00:47:30 Nothing else moves me. I hear music in my head all the time. A few pages later, he picks up that same idea. I get a little deep at times, and I don't talk, but that's because I'm thinking about my music. I've got notes in my mind, so I can't kill them. But I can't kill them by talking. I guess I could do without people. In fact, sometimes I'd rather be alone. I like to think. I can really get lost thinking about my music. But then I think so much, I have to get out among people again.

Starting point is 00:47:57 A few pages later, more soul in the game. I care so much about my work. I record stuff I believe is great. So on some of his shows, he would just, he's really big into improvisation. And so he started having this idea. He's like, man, I want to sacrifice. It goes to this like church religious thing. He's like, you have to sacrifice things you love. I love my guitar. So he starts at the end of show, starts burning guitars. The problem is he realized that that got so like the press started talking

Starting point is 00:48:23 about it. People would start coming to his shows, not for the music, but for the theatrics. And he's like, oh, I can't do this anymore. And so he's got this idea that you can't prostitute your own thing. And I told you last week that I've been rereading a lot of my highlights from Andrew Carnegie. I'm glad I was doing that at the same time I was reading this book, because this made me think of something that Andrew Carnegie said. And he says this is this is Andrew Carnegie, you know,, speaking what, maybe 150 years ago, maybe even longer. The judge within sits in the Supreme Court and can never be cheated. He's talking about himself, like how you view about yourself, right? Hence the grand rule of life. Your own reproach alone

Starting point is 00:49:00 do fear. This motto adopted early, adopted by me early in life has meant more to me than all sermons I ever heard. And so that's what popped into my mind when I read this paragraph by Jimi Hendrix. We haven't burned any guitars lately. Those little things were just added on like frosting, but the crowd started to want them more than the music. The more the press would play it up, the more the audience would want it, the more we would shy away from it. Do you see where all of that fits? You can't prostitute your own thing. You can't do that. And I really like this part because he's saying, you know, the way my music is described, the way other people talk about it, it's like, that's not how I feel about it at all.

Starting point is 00:49:39 They call it like pop music at the time. And so it says, he's asked the question, how do you see the future of pop music? I don't know. I'm the future of pop music i don't know i'm not a critic and i don't like the word pop so the follow-up's like okay well how how do you like your music to be described then and he says we're trying to play real music we call our music electric church music because it's like a religion to us and then we see it goes back to like having a good sense of gratitude understanding that this this is like he's doing things for the right reason. And so at this point, he's essentially the apex of his career.

Starting point is 00:50:10 And he's asked a question like, how has success changed you? And he says, it depends on what you think is success. I don't consider myself even started yet. I'm always just trying to get better and better. This is where he gets arrested trying to get into Canada with this a year and a half before he dies. On May 3rd, 1969, Jimmy and the experience arrived in Canada for a performance. Everyone had been warned to take extra care because of Toronto's reputation for strict customs checks. A jar containing packets of heroin and a metal tube with hash resin were found in Jimmy's flight

Starting point is 00:50:43 bag. And so he's going to eventually get acquitted of that. They said, you know, a fan gave it to him, put him in his bag, and he swears that he never used heroin because he's afraid of needles. This is one of many problems. Towards the end of 1969, numerous problems were building up in Jimmy's life. A lawsuit over an old contract, failure to deliver a new album to Warner Brothers for over a year, financial problems due to building his electric lady studios, and pressure from his management to keep on touring.

Starting point is 00:51:10 And then I thought to myself, it's too much, too fast. And again, if management actually cared about him, it's like clearly this guy's got too much going on. Taking a year off, six months off, not like just stop because that pressure has to be released somehow. And unfortunately, he chose to release it through, you know, drug and alcohol abuse. And so he talks about this. This is a year before he dies.

Starting point is 00:51:30 And well, let me read it to you and then I'll read the note I left myself. I don't know what's happening. I'm so exhausted. I have no time for my music. I just want to relax and think about myself and my music for a while. I want to bring my guitar, walk on stage, play and then vanish. I want to get away from questions and people. I am very tired, not physically. then vanish. I want to get away from questions and people. I am

Starting point is 00:51:45 very tired. Not physically. I'm mentally. I'm mentally tired. My head's in a position now where I have to take a rest or else I'll completely crack up pretty soon. Nervous breakdowns. I've had three of them since I've been in this business. I can't help but isolate myself from the world. Sometimes I just want to be left alone. This is what I mentioned earlier. In both their biographies, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan talked about that, like the fame and the pressure and everything wearing so much on them that they spend most of their time when they're not practicing and playing just alone in hotel rooms. And so when I get to this point, it's like this is very short-sighted by, you know, Jimmy's team and trying to push him because it's like if you push him,

Starting point is 00:52:24 he could break. And to me, it's like the important thing in my life is like i need to avoid anything that interrupts the compounding it is survival at all costs and this is where the book gets darker and darker and you it's in chronological order as he's giving these uh these interviews and so like this is just one example of that we all want to be respected after we're dead. Who doesn't want to be remembered in history? Another interview. This is, this is the year he dies. There are certain things that I would like to do. And it's very possible that I will destroy myself in my attempt to achieve these things. And then this is 12 days before he dies. I'm so tired of everything. I lose myself. I can't play anymore. I've been working very hard for three years. I sacrifice part of my soul

Starting point is 00:53:12 every time I play. Direction is the hardest thing for me to find now. I can't even try and think about how this life has affected me. Somehow I must have changed, but I can't know how. The moment I feel I don't have anything more to give musically, that's when I won't be found on this planet. I'm not sure I will live to be 28 years old. The world owes me nothing. I tell you, when I die, I'm gonna have a jam session. It's funny the way people love the dead. You have to die before they think you were worth anything. When I die, just keep on playing the records. The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye. And then on the last page, it says, London, September 18th, Jimi Hendrix, the American rock star whose passionate, intense guitar playing stirred millions, died here today of unknown causes. He was 27 years old. And that is where I'll leave it. I also, in addition to reading the book,

Starting point is 00:54:12 I also rented a documentary that is very similar to this book. It's called Jimi Hendrix Voodoo Child. And that's available on Apple. It's almost like watching the book. But if you want the full story and the book, if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you want to use the same app that I use to store all of my highlights for all my books and all of my notes, I use Readwise. They'll give you 60 days free to see if you like the Readwise app as much as I do. Readwise.io forward slash founders. That is 280 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #280 Jimi Hendrix

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