DREAMING IN COLOR: An Interview with Jimi Hendrix

Nov 28 2025

Interview by Thomas Lopez (aka Meatball Fulton).

By December 1967, Jimi Hendrix had put the finishing touches on Axis: Bold As Love, the follow-up release to The Experience’s monumental debut Are You Experienced. It was a whirlwind year – in a matter of just nine months, The Jimi Hendrix Experience had gone from virtually unknown, toured continuously, recorded two albums and were the number one rock ‘n’ roll act on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Axis: Bold As Love was a chilling 13-song collection highlighted by several tracks that clearly pointed to Hendrix’s roots and interests. The opening “EXP” delved into Jimi’s interest in Science Fiction while the hard driving sounds of “Spanish Castle Magic” pointed to memories of a small club in his hometown of Seattle, Washington. And yet other songs (“If 6 Was 9,” “You Got Me Floating,” and “Up From The Skies”) fused Jimi’s unequalled creativity with his newfound psychedelic experimentalism – the result was all the more astounding when it was later learned that Hendrix had crafted this sophomore set in merely sixteen days. 

Adding pressure to meet the December release date set by Track Records in the UK, the original mix of the recordings were lost the night before delivery—forcing Chas Chandler, Eddie Kramer, and Hendrix to return to Olympic Studios to remix the album during a whirlwind eleven-hour session.

“My first impression of Jimi Hendrix was that his presence was so strong. It was sort of like stepping into a field of electricity.”
~ Meatball Fulton

With album sales in full swing and early indications pointing to a quick entry into the British Pop Charts [Axis: Bold As Love debuted on the December 13 Pop Charts at position #22] American radio personality Meatball Fulton interviewed Hendrix at his Upper Berkeley Street apartment about two weeks after the release of Axis: Bold As Love. The interview later aired on the ZBS syndicated radio network.

The interview proved an enlightened foray into the creative mind-set of Jimi Hendrix while at the same time revealing the pent-up anger Jimi was feeling inside, as a result of mounting pressures to turn over new material at break-neck speeds.

In the years following the interview, Meatball Fulton recounted his experience spending time with Jimi and some of the topics that they discussed including this introduction:

“This is an interview with Jimi Hendrix. It was done in London about two weeks after his second album was released. I’m going to make some comments about my impressions of Hendrix point out some things to look for when you listen to this interview. It’s a good interview.

“When I met Jimi Hendrix, my first impression was his presence was so strong, it was sort of like stepping into a field of electricity and I don’t know if it’s because of the giant amps that he was working with or just being a superstar and having all that energy directed at you, you know. But I wish there had been a way that this tape could have captured some of that vibrancy that I felt at that moment.

“I did this interview mainly because I wanted to meet him and I honestly did not have one question ready. I figured that you know; when the time came, I’d open my mouth and sort of a question would come out. We’ve all heard interviews where the interviewer is so involved lining up the next question that he or she doesn’t hear what the person’s trying to say.

“Well, I didn’t have a next question. I just listened to what he was saying and what he was saying led to the next question, and he was so sensitive as you’ll hear he could see me listening and he really opened up.”

MEATBALL FULTON: You really hate these interviews?

JIMI HENDRIX: Oh no, well it’s alright.

FULTON: Do a lot of people bother you for interviews?

HENDRIX: Well, yeah, to tell the truth, yeah there is a lot. But you know that’s alright. Sometimes you just feel like talking. Sometimes you don’t. You’re just in different moods.

FULTON: You’re originally from Buffalo and you’ve been here…

HENDRIX: No, No, No, I’m not from Buffalo, I’m from Seattle, Washington … originally. I’ve lived all over the States though. And then I wound up in New York, but I’ve lived all over the States. I stayed in Buffalo for about a month or two but it’s too cold up there. 

FULTON: Yeah, but if you were in Seattle, it can’t be any colder than in Buffalo…

HENDRIX: No, Seattle has a different type of cold. It’s a nice type of cold. It’s not so cutting as Buffalo. Anyways, there’s this girl up there trying to work roots on me. Work that voodoo stuff to keep me there. [laughs] I had to go to the hospital…

FULTON: What do you mean, “you had to go to the hospital?”

HENDRIX: Well, you know, she tried working roots, you know. That’s a scene … like they put a … you know it’s different things they can do. They can put something in your food or they can put some hair in your shoe. Voodoo stuff.

FULTON: Mojo?

HENDRIX: Yeah, and all that kind of stuff. Well, she tried all that but she must have tried it half-heartedly ‘cause I was only sick in the hospital for two or three days. 

FULTON: Do you ever get involved in the scene?

HENDRIX: Not anymore. In the southern United States, they have a lot of scenes with that going on. But um … if I see it happen or if I feel it happen then I believe it. You know, but necessarily if I just hear it being talked about.

FULTON: What about charms and things like that?

HENDRIX: Well, you know a person, they give off certain electric shocks really. So, then they can actually get those things together really. If the vibrations are strong enough to get those charms working, they can actually do it.

FULTON: I was watching you when you were talking to that girl who came in … I think she was going to do some clothes for you. It was nice because you were really watching her and you were really taking her in. I mean just sizing her up.

HENDRIX: She seemed like a nice girl, you know. I’d like to take her home and, you know, scrub her up a little bit, and get into the scene. Get the clothes measured up maybe. You see, I don’t go by… some girls you don’t go by appearance. You go by… there’s other things that girls have to offer besides looks that makes you maybe want to be with them. For a second or two. There’s other things. I don’t just go by looks. We know the story about that. Some of the worst people are… But you know what it is, you can just feel things. You say, “Damn, I might want to be with her, I don’t know, let me check myself there and see what happens.” That’s great.

“It’s a scene like … it’s another way of communication … some people just communicate better by not even knowing each other’s name.”
~ Jimi Hendrix

FULTON: What about this? I mean, needless to say, a lot of people are envious, me included, you know…

HENDRIX: Not necessarily. Really. You shouldn’t. Because if you’re not used to it, well, it could kill you really. Rally. ‘Cause it’s another way of communication. That’s why other people can’t understand. They say, “Well, damn! Why are you with so many people?” You know. So, I say that I won’t necessarily be touching those people all the time. I’ll just be talking to them. Some I talk to and others … you know what they’re for and what they’re after. It’s a scene that … like it’s a part of you. It’s nature. I don’t know. I just can’t help it, that’s all. [laughing] It’s a scene like … it’s another way of communication, though. You have your own ways, you know. Some people just communicate better by not even knowing each other’s name. By sayin’, “Hey hi how you doin’ there? You want to come with me for a minute?” And then you know you know you do that. And you can be the best of friends then. Some even get married after that.

FULTON: How do you find you flow with it, after you started to get this image?

HENDRIX: Oh, it was worse before. Because I used to be on the block starving, you know. And girls used to help me and all that, you know. Girls are some of my best friends because they used to help me. Really help me. And ever since then that’s why I say to myself “Wow.” Every girl I meet now I want to show her my appreciation for what they did for me before. Not seriously, though … it’s just nature.

In remembering the interview, Fulton later described some of the challenges facing Hendrix.

“In this section we talk about his second album and he was really unhappy about it.  This section is an interesting document, I guess you could call it, of the kinds of frustrations that Hendrix went through, that is the artist – Jimi Hendrix – talking about what he’s trying to do, create, and how he’s being frustrated by those that were managing him at that time, what they wanted him to do, and to be. 

“I hope you listen closely to this part because there’s something really bizarre happening between Hendrix and myself. Hendrix was so unhappy about the new album that had just come out, he was trying to express his frustrations to me. You’ll hear him sort of sputtering out of sheer frustration. But I felt at that time that what he was saying was so personal, so revealing that it shouldn’t be on tape. He had obviously been hurt, and so what he was trying to tell me was really private stuff, not for the public, and at that time I didn’t have the sense to turn off the tape machine and set the mic down and say, ‘oh ok let’s talk about it.’ 

“Instead, what you hear is Hendrix trying to tell me about these frustrations of his and I’m trying to get him to not tell me.  My questions are trying to steer him away from it, but everything he talks about brings him right back to it again.  Listen to the sound of his voice, he was incredibly open about himself.”

HENDRIX: … I really don’t care what my record does as far as chart wise. We had this one that only made No. 11, which everyone around here hated. They said it was the worst record, you know. But I think that was the best one we ever made, not as far as recording because the recording techniques are really bad, you know. You couldn’t hear the words so good. Probably that’s what it was.

FULTON: How are you satisfied with the recording techniques generally?

HENDRIX: Not at all.

FULTON: What about the LPs?

HENDRIX: Not at all. Even worse on the LPs. It makes me so mad. ‘Cause you see, that’s a part of us. See, we record it and everything and then all of a sudden something happens and it just comes out all screwed … and you just get so mad, you just don’t want to know about it anymore … on our next LP, ever track is gonna have to be just right or else I’m just … gonna forget about it. I mean not forget about it … you say that but you know you’re not. But that’s the way I feel.

FULTON: Do you think they’re better in the States as far as recording? It really depends on the engineer, though … 

HENDRIX: It all depends on what you want really. It all depends on where you go really depends on so many things, the cutting of it … that’s a whole scene, the cutting of it. You can mix and mix and mix and get such a beautiful sound, and when they cut it, they can just screw it up so bad.

FULTON: I don’t understand.

HENDRIX: I wouldn’t understand that either ‘cause we, you know … ooh, it comes out so bad. ‘Cause they go by levels and all that. Some people don’t have any imagination … See when you cut a record, right before it’s being printed you know, when you cut the master, if you want a song where you have really deep sound, where you have depth and all this, you must … there at the cutting place. And 99 percent don’t even do this. They just say, “Oh, turn it up” so their mixture doesn’t go over or their mixture doesn’t go under. And there it is, you know. It’s nothing but one-dimensional.

FULTON: Do you get the time you need? I mean … because it’s so costly anyways.

HENDRIX: The money doesn’t mean anything to me because that’s what I make it for… to make better things happen. I don’t have no value on money at all. That’s my only fault. I just get things that I see and want and try to put it into music. I want to have stereo where it goes … up … and behind and underneath … ‘Cause all you can get now is just across and across. Our new LP was made in sixteen days, which I’m very sad about.

FULTON: That one that’s just out recently.

HENDRIX: Yeah. No use even talking or discussing why. ‘Cause it’s really a bad scene. But it just makes me mad. It could have been so much better.

FULTON: It’s mainly the sound quality?

HENDRIX: Well, the songs could have been better too. You know that’s what I think though. As soon as you’re finished you got a completely new idea.

FULTON: Well, it’s good in a sense because your mind’s purring along, moving along nicely.

HENDRIX: It’s not necessarily getting any better, but like you might move to different things you know.

“I just want to make sure I can get out what I want. That’s why I say we’re very lucky … Just as long as we could be happy with what we’re doing, with what we’re recording and stuff like that.”
~ Jimi Hendrix

FULTON: Do you feel that the groups are free to change as they want to?

HENDRIX: No. Half of them aren’t. They’re all thinking about their career, about their future so much. I really don’t give a damn about my future or my career. I just want to make sure I can get out what I want. That’s why I say we’re very lucky. Because we didn’t have to, you know, make it. I said it’d be great but I really didn’t care. Just as long as we could be happy with what we’re doing, with what we’re recording and stuff like that. With doing what we want to do … we’re still … we’re not really doing what we want…

FULTON: What about the new LP? You’ve been thinking about that.

HENDRIX: Yeah. Well, I wanted to make it a double LP, you know, which is almost impossible.

FULTON: Because of the cost, you mean?

HENDRIX: Yeah. Well, it’s a big hassle. Nobody wants to do that. The record producers don’t want to do it and companies don’t want to do it. I’m willing to spend every single penny on it if I thought it was good enough. But there you go, you know. I do that and then they leave me out there.

FULTON: What about the length of the songs too? Would you like them to be much longer?

HENDRIX: It depends on what kind of song it is. If it’s a song with three or four movements … well yeah. Now there’s this one song I wrote named “Eyes And Imagination,” that’s the name of it. And it’s about fourteen minutes long, but it’s about, it’s telling about … every sentence or every two sentences tells a completely different story. It’s nothing but imagination … it starts off with a baby crying you know a brand-new baby has been both, and then you hear these bullets, you know [laughs] in the background. It’s nothing but imagination, and every sentence tells a different story. But it goes in about four major movements, and it keeps going back to this one little thing, you must have that one little thing through it. But I don’t know … they’re so many songs I wrote that we haven’t even done yet and we’ll probably never do. It’s because … ooh I don’t know, there are a lot of things around here. It’s a really bad scene … You know, we must be the Elvis Presleys of rock ‘n’ roll and The Troggs. We must be that [laughs]. And there’ll be no smoking in the gas chamber.

FULTON: Do you think people will be doing longer numbers, or trying to?

HENDRIX: Well, I think they should if they have something to offer really…if the number really has to be long. If they say I have this number and it’s really …I just can’t get it together unless I have more time …I just need more time on it. Well then hold time like that. You know the song named “Purple Haze?” That … had about a thousand words and ooh … ooh it just gets me so mad ‘cause that isn’t even the “Purple Haze” you know.

“… what I like to do is write a lot of mythical songs … like the history of the wars on Neptune … you can have your own mythology.”
~ Jimi Hendrix

FULTON: What do you mean that it isn’t… 

HENDRIX: I don’t know, man. I’m just a frustrated old hen. That’s all. That’s what I feel like. You should have heard it, man. I had it written out. It was about going through … through this land. This mythical … because that’s what I like to do is write a lot of mythical songs. You know, like the history of the wars on Neptune. And all this mess, you know … they got the Greek gods and all that stuff, well you can have your own mythology, see. Or write fiction. Complete fiction. I mean anybody can say “I was walking down the street, and I seen an elephant floating through the sky.” But it has no meaning at all, there’s nothing except the elephant there you know. And if you don’t watch out you might break your neck!

FULTON: Do you think you’ll be able to make more demands as you continue?

HENDRIX: Yeah. This whole thing is gonna blow wide open.

“This is probably my favorite part, recalls Fulton. “I’m not sure how we got into talking about this. The original interview was lost except for these sections you’re now hearing and fortunately these are the best sections anyway. At this point Hendrix is so animated he gets up and starts pacing about the room. 

“I should mention this was done with a single handheld microphone. There’s a certain advantage to this, you have to sit alongside the person so you can swing the mic back and forth you know from your questions to their answers and it’s sort of rubbing shoulders with a person and it enables you to touch the person. I don’t mean necessarily physically touching you know their arm or their hand or something, but I mean mentally touch the person; sort of sync your mind with their mental state, you have to feel the person and they need to feel you, see you, know you’re okay, and it establishes a trust; and as I’ve said Hendrix’s presence was so strong and the energy in the room was so hot at this point that I was high for a week after doing this interview.

“One last thought; I realized that if I approached Hendrix as the pop star, he would have been forced to reply as the pop star, and that’s what this interview would have been—the pop star talking about his records—but I wanted to talk with Hendrix the person, you know the artist, and he replied as that, and that’s what we get.

“In this section I think it’s a rare and kind of a beautiful view of Hendrix as he talks about his childhood memories and his dreams can you remember when he’s a little baby.”

HENDRIX: Can you remember when you was a little baby?  I think your memory comes through…

FULTON: Not until about the age of two and a half. But it came back like a dream.

HENDRIX: Yeah, there you go. When you think about it now, it’s just blank before that. Then you think of that, but I think that’s why you come about on some other scenes too, you know. Because human beings die too easily, you know. 

FULTON: What about the animal? You were talking about an animal…

HENDRIX: Like you might see an animal or something like that. And also, you might have a very funny feeling go through you for a second.

FULTON: You mean like looking into its eyes. Or not necessarily … or just the animal itself?

HENDRIX: OK. One time I seen this deer you know. ‘Cause you know I see a lot of deer around … where I used to be from … and I said, “Wait,” and something went through me for a second, like I’d seen him … like I had some real close connection with that deer for one split second and then it just went away like that you know. A lot of friends of mine told me about that happening to them, you know. 

Have you ever laid in bed and you were in this complete state where you couldn’t move? And you feel like you’re going deeper and deeper into that, and it’s not sleep, but it’s something else. And every time I go into that I say, “Ah hell, I’m scared as hell” and you get all scared and stuff and so you try to say, “Help help.” You can’t move and you try to say, “Help help” and you finally get out of it you know. You just can’t move. It’s a very funny feeling. But one time that feeling was coming through me and I say, “Ah, here we go. This time I’m just gonna let it happen and see where I go. “I just wanted to see what happens and it was really getting scary, man, it was going woosh, like that, you know. And I said, “I’m not even asleep, this is really strange.” And then somebody knocked on the door. I said “oh” … because I wanted to find out.

FULTON: Can you remember some things really far back? Like when you were a baby.

HENDRIX: Yeah, I can remember the nurse putting the diaper…

FULTON: Can you really?

HENDRIX: Yeah. When the nurse … I don’t know what I was there for, but I remember when I used to wear diapers. And then she was talking to me. She took me out of the crib … or something like that. And then she held me up to this window … this was in like Seattle, and she was showing me something up against the sky. It was fireworks or something like that. It must have been the Fourth of July you know. I remember her putting the diaper on me and almost sticking me. I remember I didn’t feel so good, you know. I must have been in the hospital sick about something, and I had a bottle and all that kinda stuff and then she held me up to the window and she was saying something about … I was looking, and the sky was all WHEW.

FULTON: Almost an acid thing.

HENDRIX: Wow. That’s right. That’s what it was. Only beforehand … [laughs]. That nurse still turns me on.

FULTON: Can you remember any other things?

HENDRIX: Well, I can remember when I was small enough to fit in a clothes basket. You know those straw clothes baskets they have in America, that they put all the dirty clothes in? It’s only about like that.

FULTON: They call them hampers or something.

HENDRIX: Yeah. Hampers. I remember when my cousin and I was playing around. I must have been about three or something. Like sometimes when you’re sitting around and you start remembering things … Those are the first two that come to my mind. And some dreams that I had when I was real little you know. Like my mother was being carried away on this camel. And there was a big caravan and she was saying, “Well, I’m gonna see you, “and she was going under these trees, and you could see the shade … you know the leaf patterns … crossing her face. You know how the sun shines through a tree, and if you go under the shadow of the tree the shadows go across your face. Well, these were in green and yellow. Shadows. And she was saying, “Well, I won’t be seeing you too much anymore you know.” And then about two years after that she died. And I said, “Where you going?” I remember that I always will remember that.

“There are dreams you never forget.”
~ Jimi Hendrix

There are dreams you never forget. Like one dream. There’s this one dream where you go down like that, you go down this real big hill, but it has this real long grass and there are a whole lot of bananas on the floor, on the floor of this hill, but they’re all growing from the ground … each one separate. I remember that, and we were skating across that … I know how we were, but what we did was pour out this stuff that we made. You know these big bags. We poured it out across the bananas. And it fills up all the gaps between the bananas and we skate across it. I remember those things.

FULTON: You must have been dreaming in color when you were very young.

HENDRIX: Oh yeah. I was. I don’t remember too many. … The closest thing to a black-and-white dream I ever had was in pastel shades like … maroon and ah … dark you know, then this big gold chick—I don’t know her. It was great. And that was the closest I ever got to black- and–white.

“This final section is only a few words about reincarnation and death.

HENDRIX: People really … people really believe that every single person that’s going there is completely different. That’s true but through the times, can imagine … what if we all were supposed to go to heaven. Can you imagine all these people who died beforehand and all of us, all up in heaven. All on top of each other. [laughs] “Hey man, move over man, I’ve got no room over here man.” “Oh, hell man, you had no business dying did ya.” So … oh God. So can you imagine that … wow!

# # #

Interview conducted by Thomas Lopez (aka Meatball Fulton), December 1967

Reprinted with permission by Thomas Lopez / ZBS Foundation

Founded by Thomas Lopez in 1970, the ZBS Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit arts organization that has been producing radio/audio stories for more than 55 years. In addition to this interview with Jimi Hendrix, Lopez via his “Meatball Fulton” radio persona has also conducted well-known interviews with the likes of Syd Barrett, Jerry Garcia, Don Van Vliet [Captain Beefheart], Mel Blanc and others. Visit ZBS.org to learn more.