TRIUMPH's RIK EMMETT Recalls Seeing JIMI HENDRIX Live - "He Was Struggling A Lot At The Shows To Keep His Guitar In Tune"

Greg Prato, reporting for Ultimate-Guitar.com: "While chatting a few years back with Rik Emmett for a book I was working on - "Avatar Of The Electric Guitar: The Genius Of Jimi Hendrix" - I assumed that the discussion would focus solely on what the Triumph singer/guitarist thought about the guitar legend's playing. But I came to find out that he actually had the good fortune of seeing Jimi live in concert (which probably was a performance at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, on February 24, 1968).

"So, while recently interviewing Emmett for Ultimate Guitar on a variety of topics (including his new autobiography, "Lay It On The Line: A Backstage Pass To Rock Star Adventure, Conflict And Triumph"), I was curious to see if he was up for revisiting the aforementioned subject and shedding new light on it. Indeed he was – and was unflinchingly honest in his assessment."

Rik Emmett: "Well, I'm not one that's necessarily given to hyperbole. The times that I saw him, he maybe… There had been a lot of drugs involved. [Laughs] And he was struggling a lot at the shows to keep his guitar in tune. He would have moments that would be surpassing – because he was Jimi Hendrix. And he had sort of figured out that he was this larger-than-life kind of character. But we're talking 1967/1968. Guys, they didn't think about a set, like, 'OK, we're going to make a setlist.' Guys would just kind of wander out, be tuning on stage, and he'd finish a tune and he'd be using the wang bar a lot, so now the guitar was out of tune. It wasn't that kind of a world where guys sort of understood, 'OK. Bring a string up to pitch, give that string a little bit of a tug as it's going through the nut and under the retainer on its way to the tuning peg.' He would be tuning and he would be starting from above and coming down."

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