“Chuck Berry said, ‘Hey, you got to hear this guitar player. This guy is really great!’”: How EHX founder Mike Matthews became friends with Jimi Hendrix
Mike Matthews, CEO and founder of Electro-Harmonix (EHX), is no stranger to rock history, having shaped the sound of countless musicians with his effects pedals. But before all that, he had a front-row seat to the rise of one of the greatest guitarists of all time: Jimi Hendrix.
Recounting the start of their friendship in a new Guitar World interview, Matthews says: “Back when I was in college during the summers, I hooked up with a place called the Highway Inn in Freeport, Long Island, and I said, ‘Look, let me bring in some acts. I’ll promote it. I’ll take the gate, and you’ll have a big bar.’”
READ MORE: “I’ll never forget meeting Jimi at that club in New York in 1968”: Buddy Guy returns to the stage to honour Jimi Hendrix
“In those days you could buy acts real cheap. Chuck Berry, I booked him for $1,000 a night for two nights, with the General Artists Corporation (GAC). Then that same promoter from GAC called me up and said, ‘Mike, I need you to take this other band. I can give them to you for three nights for $500.’”
“So I hired this band called Curtis Knight and the Squires,” Matthews explains. “I didn’t know what the hell they were. Chuck Berry would do two shows a night and after the first show, I went in to count the gate while Curtis Knight and the Squires went on.”
“Steve Knapp was the second guitar player backing up Chuck Berry, and he came running to me, telling me, ‘Hey, you got to hear this guitar player. This guy is really great. Jimmy James [an early stage name used by Jimi Hendrix] is his name.’”
Intrigued, Matthews watched the young Hendrix perform, and it didn’t take long before they struck up a friendship: “I liked his playing,” Matthews says.
“After that, Jimi and I became friends. Every couple of weeks, while I was working at IBM, I’d take a break and go up and visit him. He was staying at a hotel in Times Square. [It was a] fleabag hotel and had no bathroom in the room. He had his hair set in these pink curlers and we would just talk band drama.”
The EHX founder also bore witness to Hendrix’s evolving aspirations: “I went to see him at a gig; during the break he sat down with me and said, ‘Mike, I gotta quit. I want to form my own band. I want to be the head writer.’ I said to him, ‘Well, if you’re going to be the head writer, then you’ve got to sing.’ He says to me, ‘Well, that’s the problem, Mike, I can’t sing.’”
“‘Look at Bob Dylan,’ I said. ‘Look at Mick Jagger. They don’t sing, but they ‘phrase’ great and people love them.’ He says, ‘Mike, you got a point.’”
In other news, Mike Matthews recently shared his concerns over the future of the pedal brand amid US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on imported goods.
“We’re gonna have to continue to buy our raw materials from overseas, even with the tariffs,” he told Bloomberg. “I’ll have to scratch my chin to think about it – you know, can I still make a profit? You sort of just guesstimate. Like by raising your prices, what will that do?”
The post “Chuck Berry said, ‘Hey, you got to hear this guitar player. This guy is really great!’”: How EHX founder Mike Matthews became friends with Jimi Hendrix appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
