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Jason Schneider, "That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of Hey Joe' and Popular Music's History of Violence" (Anvil Press, 2025)
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Bradley Morgan
Hello. Welcome to New Books and Music, a channel on the New Books Network. My name is Bradley Morgan and I'm joined today by my guest Jason Schneider. Jason is the author of several books including Whispering the Northern Roots of American Music and and the novel 3000 Miles, and has also written for several publications including Paste, American Songwriter, and more. His latest book is that Gun in youn the Strange Saga of hey Joe and Popular Music's History of Violence and is published by Anvil Press. Jason, thanks so much for joining me today.
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Jason Schneider
My pleasure to be with you, Bradley. It's great to chat about the book.
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Bradley Morgan
So to get things started, can you share with us what your book is about?
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Jason Schneider
Well, in the broad scope, it's about the history of the song hey Joe, which most people would know from Jimi Hendrix, but it had a, a life before him and a long life after him. So that's one aspect of it. And the other aspect is it's kind of a mystery story about Hay Joe's author, a guy named Billy Roberts, who, you know, when I, when I first became, I guess you could say obsessed with, with the song, there was virtually no information about him anywhere. And yeah, part of my motivation was just to uncover his life story and Find out who he was and what happened to him.
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Bradley Morgan
For those listening who may be unfamiliar with the song hey Joe, the story involves a man fleeing to Mexico after shooting his wife after she was unfaithful to him.
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Jason Schneider
And.
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Bradley Morgan
And you write in the book that part of the song's lineage is traceable to the earliest known ballads. So in tracing that lineage, what were some of the earliest ballads that helped create the blueprint for a song like hey Joe?
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Jason Schneider
Well, yeah, the tradition of kind of, you know, true crime, I guess, in American song. Yeah, I traced it back to the late 19th century. There's songs like Stagger Lee, Frankie and Johnny, which became kind of a standard during the jazz age in the 1920s. The folk song Lil Sadie, all of these songs involve, you know, one jealous lover shooting another and, you know, just. Just basically crimes being committed. And. Yeah, I mean, that was. That was really kind of a major focus of early, early American song. And, you know, we can kind of look at that maybe through the lens of today, like, you know, the popularity of true crime stories. So, yeah, that's. That's where kind of the story begins. And then, you know, how those songs and that, you know, that concept kind of evolved as popular music kind of, you know, grew through the. Through the 50s and 60s.
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Bradley Morgan
As you were saying, when most people think about the song hey Joe, they're thinking about the version recorded by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which is arguably the most well known rendition of that song. And. And your book explores the song's history in two parts, with the first part leading up to that version of the song and the second covering its impact after that. But before we get into the song's legacy, let's go over where the song comes from. Hey Joe is written by a man named Billy Roberts, as you mentioned. And could you tell us more about his background before becoming a troubadour and writing the song?
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Jason Schneider
Yeah, well, he was born in South Carolina in the late 30s, and from the research I uncovered, yeah, he became kind of involved in the folk music world at that time in and around South Carolina, which had its own kind of distinctive folk and blues community. A lot of great blues singers came from that era. Reverend Gary Davis, Blind Boy Fuller, the harmonica player Sonny Terry, and, yeah, Billy claimed to have learned about this culture through those artists. And then in the late 1950s, as folk music was kind of embraced by the mainstream and really became, you know, concentrated in the northeast, Greenwich Village in New York specifically. Billy migrated up there and. And he, he actually arrived almost exactly a year before Bob Dylan Did. And, and that's, that's, that's one of the aspects I found fascinating about the story was that, you know, Billy was kind of there in this, you know, pre Dylan era where, you know, not much is known. And, you know, obviously everything changed after Dylan arrived and became popular. But yeah, it was a totally different scene. And, you know, it was a scene where, you know, artists were really conscious of carrying on what is known as, you know, the oral folk tradition of just sharing songs. And that's really kind of the foundation of how, you know, once, once Billy wrote Hey, hey Joe, it sort of, you know, began to spread widely.
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Bradley Morgan
So as a teenager, Billy Roberts is enthralled with black music and culture and he was inspired by many musicians such as Reverend Gary Davis. And a lot of these musicians came from a, from, from a background called the Piedmont School, and that would influence those coming up with them. Within the emerging folk revival scene that was happening in Greenwich village during the 50s and 60s, violence and drunken anger were themes that sometimes found their way into the music that circulated among musicians in folk circles. And you know, with those stories, they're changing and adapting them based on whoever was performing them, which were often white musicians. Before writing hey Joe, how did this music influence Billy Roberts as a musician and songwriter?
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Jason Schneider
It was, yeah, that's, that's, that's an excellent question. I mean, he was, I think, part of that, that, that generation of, of, of white, you know, aspiring white, white musicians who wanted to, you know, you know, first of all, you know, play, you know, black music as, you know, to use a general term, you know, play it in a, in a convincing manner. But also, I think, you know, once, once he arrived, you know, being, being someone from, from a Southern state, I think he, he, he, he felt he had, you know, more quote, unquote, authenticity than a lot of other other folk singers around the scene at that time. So yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to judge, you know, since there weren't really, you know, since there weren't, you know, we, we couldn't get Billy's own own opinion. I, I, I just kind of drew these conclusions through, you know, in interviews with a lot of his contemporaries, people like know, Richie Havens and, But num. Well, number one, his, his, his Grange Village girlfriend was a, a folk singer named Nella Miller. And that's, that's another interesting twist to the story because it's, it, it's been argued, quite convincingly. By a lot of, you know, I don't want to say. All right. Stole hey Joe from Niella. But it was certainly inspired by one of her songs called Baby Please Don't Go To Town, which has a similar chord structure and lyrical content.
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Bradley Morgan
One of the most popular groups to emerge from that folk revival scene was the Kingston Trio, and they scored a hit with Tom Dooley, which is a traditional folk song based on the murder of a woman in the 1860s. And you write that the Kingston Trio's recording of Tom Dooley brought the genre of murder ballad into mainstream consciousness and that these songs became the equivalent of tabloid exposes. How did this success help create spaces for newer ballads like hey Joe to become part of the folk repertoire?
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Jason Schneider
Yeah, I mean, yeah, just. Just basically that. That commercial acceptance, it is really, you know, it is hard to think back on that era and think that a song about a murder could hit number one. But I guess to look at America during that time in the 1950s, the popular music of that era was rock and roll. The initial explosion kind of happened 1955, 1956. But after that kind of subsided, there were, you know, it did. It did create a lot of backlash, you know, where, where. Where. Where people, you know, started thinking, you know, rock and roll was. Was. Was phony and, you know, didn't. Didn't contain, you know, a lot of the. The messages that they wanted to hear at that time, you know, with a lot of, you know, political consciousness rising. So, yeah, folk music, you know, really became that. That outlet for a lot of people, and it was symbolized by. By the Kingston Trio, their. Their. Their popularity. But, but really, they. They were just really kind of the gateway for a lot of young people to kind of discover artists like, you know, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, et cetera.
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Bradley Morgan
I'm really glad you wrote this book, and I was excited to read it because, you know, I know a bit about the Greenwich Villager scene. I'm a big Dylan fan and. But I didn't know a lot about the song hey Joe, I guess, because I knew that it was kind of came from that scene that I thought it was just one of these repurposed, reappropriated songs from the 1860s like Tom Dooley and the Kingston Trio's version. So it was. It was astounding to me to learn that this was more contemporary. So could you describe for us what Billy Roberts original version of hey Joe sounded like?
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Jason Schneider
Well, it was. It was definitely a lot. A lot more up, up tempo. The chord structure, you know, has remained similar over the years. It's, it's what, you know, in musical terms, it's called the circle of fifths, which is, you know, in a, in a standard blues or folk song, most people know, it's, it's, you know, three chords, but in with the circle of fifths, there's, there's two more chords added, obviously, and that means that, you know, this, this chord structure can just kind of be, you know, replayed over and over again without any kind of resolution. So number one, that's what made it unique and I think, you know, attracted a lot of people to, to playing the song. But yeah, there, there, there were some, you know, Billy's original lyrics were a little different in the, in the, the, the, the sheet music he registered at the Library of Congress. The original lyrics were, you know, I'm going, you know, hey, hey, Joe, where are you going with that money in your hand instead of Gunn? So, you know, the song starts out, Joe's got a handful of cash and he's going to go buy the gun first before he actually commits the crime. So that was probably the major difference. But otherwise, you know, aside from the tempo, you know, which really got changed, you know, in some, which, you know, we can talk about in subsequent versions, but, you know, overall it's, you know, the songs remain consistent.
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Bradley Morgan
During the early 60s, Billy Roberts left for Washington, D.C. to look for gigs and also performed on some local radio stations there. But it was also during this time that he went to the Library of Congress to register the copyright for. Hey Joe, could you explain for us why it was necessary for Billy to register that copyright and what effect something like that would have in a scene where musicians would routinely copy songs from others?
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Jason Schneider
Yeah, well, that was definitely, I would say, a turning point, I think, not just in folk music, but I think just the music business at the time in general. As I was saying earlier, most of the folk musicians, well, number one, most of them didn't write original material. And, and those who did, you know, they generally wouldn't bother copyrighting it because, you know, none, you know, none of them were really that concerned with money and, or, or even, you know, recording. You know, the, the, the Richie Havens interview I referenced earlier, he, he said point blank at that time that artists like him thought that, you know, making records then was, was a hassle. Like they, they didn't want to do it. So the fact that Billy, while he was in Washington, he got, you know, he got it in his head that, okay, I've got this song, maybe I should copyright. It was, you know, a huge moment because, you know, right around that time or soon after, you know, as I said, Bob Dylan had just signed his first recording contract and his manager, Albert Grossman, was trying to think of ways that, you know, we can. We can make some money. And really, the only way that Dylan was going to earn money in those early days was through song publishing and having other artists covers his songs. So, you know, once that started happening, obviously other people saw that, oh, okay, this is how you make money by, you know, writing your own material and copywriting it. So, yeah, it was definitely. Billy made the right choice.
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Bradley Morgan
I wanted to ask about the copyright because it sets up my next question about the other musicians that Billy would meet within the folk community. And Dylan's name has come up a few times and certainly I think about what Dave Van Ro said about Dylan and his version of House of the Rising sun because while in Greenwich Village, Billy really hit it off with a man named Chester Powers, who would later perform under the moniker Dino Valenti. And. And Dino was mesmerized by hey Joe and began including it in his own performances. However, unfortunately for Billy, you write in the book that Dino's rendition was the first that many within the folk scene remember hearing. And that was primarily because Dino performed it with so much passion and drama. How did Dino put his own stamp on the song that differentiated it from the original?
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Jason Schneider
Yeah, from the, you know, from the accounts I found, yeah, Dino was. Was definitely a. A dynamic and charismatic performer. Very, you know, aggressive strumming style. And on, on his guitar, loud, loud voice, you know, just the kind of guy that, you know, you can imagine, you know, being at a. Bringing his guitar to a frat party and just, you know, either, you know, entrancing people or just completely pissing them off. But, but anyway, yeah, Dino. Dino was that kind of performer. And, and once he kind of adopted hey hey Joe people, people, you know, identified him, hit him with the song and, and that's, and, and, and that's really where the next stage of the song happens. After Billy Roberts left New York, a young folk singer from LA named David Crosby arrived to Greenwich Village to check out the scene. And he became immediate friends with Dino Valenti. I think they shared a lot of personality traits in common. And Crosby learned Hey Joe from Dino took it back to la, where soon after he formed the Birds. And, yeah, that's when kind of the LA takeover of hey Joe began.
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Jason Schneider
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Bradley Morgan
David Crosby because as you mentioned, Dino's version of the song really resonated with a lot of young and up and coming folkies. And as David was an inspiring folk singer that was making his way through the coffee house circuit, this was a song that he really gravitated towards. And when he eventually did form the birds with Roger McGuin and Gene Clark, really his only, like, main contribution to the band's repertoire at that point had largely, had largely been. Hey, Joe, could you tell us about these performances and what Crosby brought to the story of Joe?
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Jason Schneider
Well, number one, just, you know, playing it, you know, playing, playing the song in a full band electric version transformed it. And, and, and I, you know, there's, there, there really aren't that many, you know, versions of, of, of, of the Birds doing it. I mean, you know, we can't go back to hearing them play it on the Sunset Strip, sadly. But, you know, you can easily imagine in a small club, you know, the Birds kind of like tearing into this song and they're, they're, they're loyal fans on the dance floor just going crazy and you know, again, it's, it's, it's, it's hard today to wrap your head around, you know, a room full of, you know, teenage kids kind of going wild over a song about a, a guy killing his cheating woman. But, you know, that was, you know, you know, these were the days in rock and roll where there, there weren't any rules. So, you know, anything with a lot of high energy, that's what, that's what People wanted. And the Birds version of hey Joe certainly delivered that.
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Bradley Morgan
And not just an era where there weren't any rules, but also not a lot of women. And we'll talk a little bit later about some of the women who have taken their own version of that song. But before that, though, hey Joe had become a staple for the Birds during their concerts. It was another band from LA called the Leaves that earned the distinction of being the first to record the song for release. Like actually put it on a record and put it out there. And not only that, they were the first to record an electric version of that song. Could you tell us more about the Leaves version of the song and the decision to plug in on what had been, up until that point, an acoustic folk song?
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Jason Schneider
Yeah, the Leaves were they. They were actually the band that took over the Birds residency at a LA club called Ciro's. Yeah, this is after the Birds signed their. Their. Their record deal with Columbia and scored their first big hit with Mr. Tambourine man and, you know, moved out, you know, went out on tour. So, yeah, the Leaves kind of like moved in there. And, you know, knowing that, you know, the popularity of hey Joe, they naturally kind of added it to their set just to kind of keep that, that audience there. But, yeah, that's, that's, that's one of the interesting twists that, you know, the Birds actually didn't record ho until their third album, Fifth Dimension. And I mean, I was just kind of. I. I was maybe more. More speculating on this. But, you know, you listen to their first, the first Two Birds albums, Mr. Tangerine Man, Turn, Turn, Turn. Most of the material on those records are either Dylan songs or kind of traditional folk songs. So, I mean, to Dave, hey, hey Joe on either one of those records, I think would have really, you know, it would have had a jarring effect, I think, on listeners. It's, you know, a very aggressive song. And I don't think that's the image that, you know, Columbia wanted to present. So, yeah, so for about, I don't know, at least. At least six months, you know, hey Joe is really kind of up for grabs within the LA scene. And, yeah, the Leaves just happen to be the first. The first band to record it. But, you know, over the next few months, many, many, many others would as well.
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Bradley Morgan
So the Leaves put out their version in 65, and the birds put out their version in 66 on 5th dimension. However, though the Byrds had introduced the song to the LA music scene, you know, the song was really buried on the album. Because LA had become saturated with hey Joe singles. And you write in the book that hey Joe was well on its way to joining the ranks of Louie, Louie and Gloria as songs that essentially boiled down the essence of rock and roll down to a simple pattern that any band of musical novices could play. Could you tell us more about the.
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Jason Schneider
Yeah, this was, yeah, this, this was the era, you know, the, the, the golden age of, of, of garage rock where, you know, the post, well, it's also the, the post British Invasion era where, yeah, I mean, kids, kids wanted to form bands. You know, you, you, you talk to anyone who was a teenager, from Bruce Springsteen to, you know, whoever else you want to name, you know, they, they, that's what they wanted to do and you know, to grasp for, for material. Yeah, you have, you have songs like Louie, Louie, Gloria, and I kind of put Hate Joe as kind of the third part of the, you know, that, that holy trinity of Grodgerock where, you know, if, if, if you're learning how to play guitar. And I can speak from my own experience, you know, when I was, when I decided to learn how to play guitar when I was, you know, 12 or so, hey Joe was one of the first songs I tried. Just because it had so many of the basic chords in it that, you know, once you kind of mastered it, you sort of had a, had a, had a feel of how to play. So yeah, it's, it's, it's really not surprising that, you know, a lot of bands kind of, you know, took, took to the song and, but yeah, the, the reason why it was, you know, there, there, there were so many versions of it. That's, that's just kind of really hard to explain. You know, again, in our modern terms, it's like, you know, can you imagine, you know, dozens of of artists recording the same song nowadays? It's probably not going to happen, but at that time, whether it was just kind of riding the coattails of other artists, that probably had something to do with it. But I think for most kids it was just a fun song to play and people always responded to it.
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Bradley Morgan
While there were quite a few versions of hey Joe floating around, one singer who was using the song to stake his own claim to fame was Tim Rose, who began including it in his repertoire after hearing Vince Martin sing it. And Tim would claim throughout his life that he had never heard another version of the song before then. But despite that, he managed to take the song in a completely different direction than what the LA bands were doing. What changes the Tim Rose make to.
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Jason Schneider
The song his, well, his version. Well, number one, he kind of slowed it down, added a lot more kind of blues elements to it. And it is, you know, that this is one of the most fascinating parts of the story just because it, you know, this is, this is kind of the point where, where the song, you know, the narrative kind of splits into this kind of east coast, west coast thing where, you know, as, as, as you said, Tim Rose claimed that he'd never heard any other version of it until he heard Vince Martin play one night at his club in Miami. So, you know, if, if, if Tim Rose's account is to be believed, he, yeah, he, he kind of started from scratch. He added this, you know, famous opening riff that, that, you know, Jimi Hendrix adopted with, with his version. But yeah, there's also a lot more in Tim Rose's version, there's definitely a lot more menace, there's definitely a lot more sense of a crime being committed. And yeah, the fact that his song was released in the summer of 1966 kind of in the heat of all these other LA versions circulating, it's, it's, it's fascinating that, you know, it, it kind of simply existed without anybody really, you know, taking any special notice of it.
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Bradley Morgan
So while Tim Rose's version of hey Joe is being shipped to stores and making few inroads on the radio outside of some regional airplay, you have Jimi Hendrix finishing a six month run as a sideman for saxophonist King Curtis. And, and he was becoming increasingly frustrated with the tightly structured R and B music he was playing. And you write in the book then that when you put on Tim Rose's version of hey Joe, you write that in the context of pop music, it's easy to grasp the impact the song had made on Hendrix. I know you touched upon a little bit about this with the riff, but could you tell us more about the impact that Tim Rose had on Jimmy musically at that time?
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Jason Schneider
Well, I think the song itself.
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Bradley Morgan
Well.
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Jason Schneider
I, I kind of make the argument that, you know, Jimmy as, you know, the first, the first black artist that, you know, we, we know of to, to play the song. He, he naturally infused it with, you know, his, his life experience. And you know, Jimmy as, as his hardcore fans know, he, he came from a broken home in Seattle. His, his, his mother, he didn't really know well, and she was, you know, she had her demons and, you know, carried on, you know, affairs and yeah, she ended up dying, dying young when, when Jimmy was a teenager and you know, he was, he was kind of left to cope with that. And, and you know, so, so, you know, the story of hey Joe, I, I feel, you know, would have, would have connected to, you know, he would have connected to that in instantly just, you know, knowing, you know, the struggles between men and women and you know, and, and, and, and, and you can kind of hear that, you know, in his, in his voice. You know, there, there, there really is a somberness, you know, once, once Jimmy started playing the song that, yeah, there, there certainly was that aspect in Tim Rose's version. But I think, you know, with, with, with Jimmy that, that really came out and really kind of changed the whole complexion of the song.
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Bradley Morgan
Hendrix was certainly in the midst of a transitional period at this time and, and he was discovering music, realized more the musician he wanted to be. And you write that his natural ability as an interpreter would prove just as crucial as his raw talent. And he was convinced to go to England to record hey Joe in order to launch his solo career. However, there were a lot of issues recording the song. What problems were happening in the studio?
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Jason Schneider
Yeah, this was well, well, well, number one, you know, the band that he had, you know, the Jimi Henri Experience was probably, it was only a couple weeks old when they went into the studio to record hey Joe is the drummer, Mitch Mitchell, bass player Noel Redding. They were hired through auditions. So Jimmy really didn't know them. He was, he had, well, one, one, one thing that, you know, he loved right away was the, was the technology in England. This was kind of the dawning of, you know, the Marshall amplifier. So all of a sudden, you know, you've got this potential with, with volume that, that, you know, Jimmy loved. So in the studio, you know, he wanted, he wanted, wanted it to be loud, as loud as possible. And this was something that, you know, the, the poor engineer had never had to deal with before. So, so, you know, I can't remember the, the amount of takes they did, but it was, it was a substantial amount of takes and a lot of them were ruined just by the fact that, you know, Jimmy wanted, insisted on playing at, at top volume and they're, you know, all kinds of rattling and noise going around in, in the studio. So yeah, I mean, it wasn't really kind of like the beginning of heavy metal or hard rock. I mean, obviously there are bands like, you know, Cream, the who, the Yardbirds. They had already been experimenting with a lot of this stuff. But, but yeah, Jimmy, you know, he had to kind of find, find kind of the right balance, you know, especially with a song like hey Joe where You know, there are a lot of dynamics to it and, and he, I think once he kind of like, grasped that, that notion, that's where he, you know, you, you can really kind of like hear him literally blossom into, you know, the, the musician that he had become.
- [34:10]
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Bradley Morgan
When the Hendrix version of hey Joe was released, it left a very powerful impression across Europe. And this was at a time when American audiences were getting tired of it. The single credited as a traditional arrangement by Hendrix. And I guess that's why I thought the song was perhaps older than it was. And. But soon European artists began recording their own versions of the song in their own languages. Was the song credited that way in order to break into the broader European market? And were these artists aware of the song's history prior to hearing that version by Hendrix?
- [36:12]
Jason Schneider
Well, I'm sure that there were. There were people who knew the Birds version, but, yeah, Jimmy's version, it was. Yeah, it, it literally hit England like a. Like an atom bomb. And, you know, well, to address the whole copyright issue, I just simply think that, you know, the British music industry had no idea who wrote it because back in America, the, the copyright was still being sorted out. You know, a lot of people in LA thought that Dino Valenti wrote, you know, wrote the song and he actually claimed credit for it while he was serving time in jail for. For. For drug possession. He'd already. He'd already written probably his best known song, Get Together, which became a folk standard. So he was using that, you know, that royalties from that to help pay for his legal expenses. So to add to that, he claimed he wrote hey Joe as well and managed to get a publishing deal for that up until word got to Billy Roberts about this and he was able to show his Library of Congress paperwork. But all of that really didn't get sorted out until 1967, which, by that time, Jimmy had signed an American deal with Reprise and was about to come over to play the Monterey Pop Festival. So, yeah, the whole copyright thing didn't really get sorted out officially until Jimmy's first album, Re Experience, was released.
- [38:07]
Bradley Morgan
When Hendrix eventually left England to make his debut in America, the venue for that sort of homecoming would be the Monterey International Pop Festival, which was a music festival curated to legitimize pop as a serious art form. And there the Byrds also performed at Monterey Pop and where they managed to get through their own ramshackle version of hey Joe. But you write that it became the last hurrah for that particular arrangement, because when Hendrix took to the stage during the festival's final night, he would reintroduce hey Joe to American audiences as if they were hearing it for the first time. Could you tell us more about that performance at Monterey Pop?
- [38:43]
Jason Schneider
It's, yeah, the Jimmy and Monterey. It's. You know, people talk about the seismic impact of Bob Dylan going electric. But I think, you know, Jimmy's performance at Monterey was even more important just for the fact that, you know, I think I heard. I heard an interview with Dweezil Zappa once where he was talking about it and he said, you know, this was something that nobody in history had ever done. You know, Jimmy was doing. Did things that night that nobody in history had ever done before. And, you know, I tend to agree with him. And not just the fact that he says guitar on fire, but, you know, he was. He was. He was playing the. The guitar in a way that no one had ever seen or heard before. And hey Joe was it. It was one. By that time, it become one of his set pieces where, you know, he would, you know, play the guitar behind his. Behind his back, you know, all around different parts of his body, play with his teeth. He was. He was doing all that during hey Joe. So, you know, when you watch the film, it's still amazing. You know, you can, when they cut to shots of, you know, the first couple rows, people just sitting there, you know, mama cast with her jaw just, you know, hanging wide open. You know, I can't even imagine what it would have been like just to be there to, to witness that. And so, you know, that, that impact and, you know, especially Jimmy's performance of hey Joe is what stuck in a lot of people's minds. And, you know, that, that's, that's where, where, where the song kind of like took off next.
- [40:33]
Bradley Morgan
You know, just as a quick sidebar before we move on to the interview I'd seen recently, and I'm not sure if this is true, that Dweezil gave Frank that guitar. Is that, is that accurate? Do you know that?
- [40:45]
Jason Schneider
Yeah, I don't think it was the Monterey guitar. I think it was another, it was another guitar genie set on fire. I think it was the, the Monterey pot or the, the Miami Pop festival. Okay, in 1968, where, yeah, I think the mothers were on the bill then, too. But yeah, I think that was, yeah, Ginny burned a guitar there and that was the one that, that Frank received. And Dweezil, I think, I think he still owns that one.
- [41:09]
Bradley Morgan
There's a really great quote from the book I want to read in which you write, Hendrix's triumphant homecoming without the benefit of a hit single was a sure sign of the impending changes within the music industry. But it also displayed how his aggressive, hyper secularized approach captured the zeitgeist. What about that performance signaled that cultural change?
- [41:30]
Jason Schneider
Well, number one, I think just the fact that you have, you know, a black artist playing, playing rock and roll, you know, and coming out, you know, coming out on stage, you know, in a feather boa, just, you know, expressing himself in way, in a way that, you know, a black artist in America hadn't done before. You know, of course, the other famous performance of Monterey was Otis Redding. But, you know, it's to, to compare Otis and Jimmy is just like night and day. I mean, Otis was amazing and you know, the things he did. But, but you know, what, what, what Jimmy did was just tell, tell the, you know, the white rock and roll establishment that, you know, there are, there are no barriers really. You know, if, if, you know, I'm going to do what I want to do and, you know, if, if, if, if white kids love it, all the better. You know, I, I, I remember reading some, some reviews at the time where he did receive some backlash for that, you know, people didn't. Well, I think there might have been one case where someone called him an Uncle Tom, but, but. But really, you know, this was kind of the. The beginning of the. Maybe so not. Not so much a new state of black consciousness, but just, you know, more of a, you know, a message to, you know, to black people in America at that time that you can express yourself any way you. You choose to, and. And no one should be able to prevent you from doing that.
- [43:17]
Bradley Morgan
Hendrix's version of hey Joe also stands out for its brutal act of violence, especially as told by a black singer. How did that come to reflect the issue of race relations and racial violence in America at that time?
- [43:29]
Jason Schneider
Yeah, it was kind of unusual timing because, yeah, shortly after Monterey, which was June 1967, I think within a few weeks, a lot of the major riots started happening in cities around America, know, Detroit, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey. So, you know, the fact that here's. Here's Jimi Hendrix suddenly on the. On the. On the charts with this song about, you know, an act of violence, pure and sequoia, and here's all this violence going on in black communities, you know, you know, this. This is kind of, you know, a twist to the whole story that no one was expecting. And, you know, I think it played. Played a lot. You know, it played a role in sort of how, you know, organizations like the Black Panthers would evolve over the next several years. You know, they did try to, you know, get Jimmy on their side. You know, he obviously did. Did sympathize and support what they were doing, but he was. He was not the kind of person who was ever going to commit himself to any, you know, single political cause. But, yeah, it did bring, you know, the issue of. Of gun violence definitely more into, you know, the public conversation. You know, maybe not just because of the song specifically, but just the fact that here was a, you know, prominent black artist singing about gun violence almost immediately.
- [45:21]
Bradley Morgan
Hendrix's version of hey Joe had this reverberating effect among his contemporaries in the music industry. And while several bands began covering the song and putting their own spin on it, albeit still relying on Jimmy as the foundation for it, there were others who felt the culture surrounding the song's popularity was distracting from the music. In 1968, a year after Monterey Pop, the Mothers of Invention, released their album We're Only in it for the Money, which referenced hey Joe and a song called Flower Punk. What was the message in Flowerpunk? And why did the Mothers Use Hey Joe to say it.
- [45:54]
Jason Schneider
Well, I think, I think they chose to say it just because again, the LA connection, that there were so many LA bands playing it. I'm sure at that time, folks, Frank would have just been shaking his head, why are so many bands playing the song? But the ironic part about it was that the publisher that actually held the copyright for hey Joe was run by the brother of Frank's manager, Herb Cohen. So I think indirectly Frank was benefiting from hey Joe in a kind of a roundabout way. But yeah, I, you know, I, yeah, I'm not, I, I, I know you, you, you obviously know Frank probably Frank's work probably better than I do, but, but yeah, the way, you know, the way he, he kind of adapted it to, to, to flower punk, you know, really playing it. And I really sped up arrangement. It almost made it sound kind more cartoonish. And maybe, probably by that point, that's, you know, I would imagine that's how Frank viewed the song is just, you know, this little diddy that, you know, all the Te Boppers are playing.
- [47:16]
Bradley Morgan
Making fun of hippie culture on the counter at that time.
- [47:19]
Jason Schneider
Exactly.
- [47:21]
Bradley Morgan
Your book profiles several artists and groups who were inspired by hey Joe and did expand upon that Hendrix blueprint, you know, either as guitar gods or continuing the storied tradition of murder ballads. You know, it's a great section of the book. We don't have time to go through all of them, but I did want to ask you about one. Patti Smith was not a musical contemporary of Jimmy's, but they did meet at a party at his recording studio, Electric lady, before had officially opened. Several years later, Patti would record her first single at Electric lady, which was her version of hey Joe and included Piss Factory as its B side. Could you tell us about that recording and how it furthered Jimmy's legacy as being the song's definitive performer?
- [48:03]
Jason Schneider
Yeah, Patty's. You know, Patti's early, early years as a, as a musical performer, you know, she was obviously established as a, as a poet. But, you know, I think. And well, and I was fortunate enough to talk to her longtime collaborator Lenny K, about this whole graciously wrote the forward to the book as well. But yeah, during those kind of formative years between the two of them, they were really kind of struggling to sort of adapt her poetry to music. But they found, so they found it easier to kind of start by doing cover versions along with hey Joe. They Play My Generation and By the who and you know, other other garage rock song. You know, famously, of course, Gloria, she adapted later on. On. On. On horses. But yeah, but, you know, the, the way it. It kind of came, you know, hey Joe kind of came together for her was, you know, many people remember in 1974, there's the famous case of Patricia Hearst, the newspaper heiress. She was living in Berkeley, California and was kidnapped by this kind of ragtag revolutionary group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. And they were going to try to use her to help get a couple of their members out of prison. But the way it all kind of unfolded was, you know, Patty Hurst, you know, seemingly became a member of this organization and participated in other crimes they committed, and she ended up going on the run. So. Yeah, so, so, you know, this was a national sensation for, for months and months around this time that Patti Smith was just, you know, beginning to. To, you know, do her own. Her own recordings. So, you know, I, it really kind of made sense that she would look at this, you know, the Patty Hearst story. And you know, aside from the fact that they shared similar names, I think, you know, Patti Smith related to, you know, Patty Hearst situation as, you know, she's. She's become kind of, you know, this pawn of both, you know, the patriarchal. Patriarchal society she grew up in and also this kind of weird, you know, revolutionary subculture. So, you know, putting all that together with, with, with, with hey Joe was really kind of a stroke of genius on, on. On Patti Smith's part. And, you know, listening to your version, you know, it. It kind of stays true to the original song until the very end where Patti Smith kind of puts herself into. Into Patty Hearst shoes and, and, and sings through, through her voice saying, you know, I'm, I'm. I'm not going to take it anymore, basically. So I've got a gun in my hand now and, you know, I'm going to use it. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's. It's really remarkable. Probably one of the most remarkable cover versions of any song.
- [51:41]
Bradley Morgan
It was through Hendrix's version of hey Joe that Billy Roberts began earning royalties from the song. And though it was interesting to read in your book that he never recorded his own version of it, which was really surprising. But after surviving a serious car accident in the early 90s, Billy never publicly performed or recorded music again, and he eventually passed away in 2017. He lived long enough to see Jimmy effectively come to own his song in the popular consciousness and was relegated to being this mysterious figure in music history. And he collected royalties until his death, which is great. And I know you didn't get a chance to speak with him, and there's not a lot that's known about him. But what sense do you have of his motivations to not take back cultural ownership of his own song?
- [52:25]
Jason Schneider
Well, what. One of the people who knew him, who I was fortunate to talk to, said that, you know, he kind of surmised that the reason Billy never recorded the song himself was that he didn't want to share royalties with the publisher. Third Story Music, who I mentioned, again, was, you know, had that Frank Zappa connection. Yeah, I. But I. I think, you know, at. At his core, I. From. From, you know, this. This. This picture I've kind of constructed about him, I think he was. He was. You know, he. He just wanted to be an archetypal troubadour, just, you know, traveling around, playing his music to people who wanted to listen to him, you know. You know, again, going back to the. That early Greenwich Village experience, he didn't seem concerned about money. You know, he was making enough, yearning enough to live on. You know, he. He. He wound up, you know, playing on, like, playing on cruise liners, you know, getting. Getting to see the world. You know, he would go out and busk whenever he felt the urge to do so.
- [53:46]
Experian/Podcast Host
So.
- [53:46]
Jason Schneider
Yeah, and there are a few recordings kind of drifting around on YouTube where there were times where he could be persuaded to come up on stage once in a while and sing it with some of his old friends. But, yeah, I think he was just happy that he had this song that people loved. And, you know, he wasn't. He wasn't that concerned about, you know, I guess, you know, taking full advantage of it. That's probably the best way to put it.
- [54:24]
Bradley Morgan
So. To close things out with so many amazing versions of the song, which are some of your favorites.
- [54:32]
Jason Schneider
I think. Yeah, well, my. My. My initial answer to that is usually the version by Ave Lee Moses, who is a pretty obscure soul singer from Atlanta. He recorded it around the time of Hendrix's death. I can't remember exactly whether it was before or after, but, yeah, his version is just dynamic. Well, mostly for the fact that, you know, he opens it with this really, really kind of long, you know, recitation where he's. He's almost. He puts himself in the song as kind of an observer, and, you know, he kind of sees everything going down, but he, you know, he sees Joe with the gun. He knows what's going to happen, but something prevents him from doing anything about it. So, yeah, his version really adds this personal element to it that's really Fascinating. Along with the fact that it's just a great sample of early 70s soul music. So that would be number one. But then, yeah, there's so many strange, strange versions over the years. I always point to one of the last versions I kind of discovered as I was putting together that discography was a band from Japan called the Golden Cups. They were the house band at a US army based bar. And so they had to know all the current radio hits in the late 60s and they ended up recording a version that is just, you know, completely bonkers. It sort of takes every element of every version and kind of mashes it together. So yeah, I always point people towards that one. The Golden Cups. Check it out.
- [56:41]
Bradley Morgan
Well, Jason, thanks so much for speaking with me today. Your book is an absolute revelation and it's an eye opening work I consider an essential document and I think you should be truly proud of it.
- [56:51]
Jason Schneider
Well, thanks so much, Bradley. That means. Yeah, that means the world to me to hear that. And yeah, I hope people can find the book. It's available to order in the US through the website Asterism. And yeah, best of luck with your book as well.
- [57:09]
Bradley Morgan
Thank you. My name is Bradley Morgan and you've been listening to new books and music with my guest Jason Schneider. His latest book is that Gun in your Hand, the Strange Saga of Hey Joe and Popular Music's History of Violence and is published by Anvil Press.