San Francisco Educators Hail Jimi Hendrix As Role Model for Teachers

You might ask Pete Townsend of the Who about Jimi.
Mr. Townsend contends that ol’ Jimi S-T-O-L-E the idea of his
style of guitar playing from Jeff Beck.

There’s no doubt that Hendrix was a first class hard rock guitarist. How this translates into being a role model in school puzzles me, unless they now have hard rock classes.

If liberals want their own children to emulate Mr Hendrix, let them. Are there any normal White children in Frisco anymore? I’ve been there a couple times, and don’t recall seeing any.

There ARE worse role models than Jimi Hendrix. He was peaceful and not racial in the least. I read a great quote about him recently—someone said that whenever a lady walked into the room, Jimi would “shoot to his feet and greet her.”
I think the problem with the school district’s plan is that people like Hendrix are literally one in a billion. The real role models they should push are the people who get up in the morning, go to work, pay their taxes, and stay with their families. But those people aren’t cool or sexy, so no one pays attention to them.

Why is anyone complaining? All that we need to find out now is that JH was a homosexual and converted to Islam, he would be the perfect symbol of San Francisco Public Schools.

I think that hendrix was very much over-rated as a musician .
His fame is mostly just political . He was a ” media construct ”

These guys always seem to end up broke or deceased …
If hendrix had lived on , he would NOT have been the legend that he was made to be . He probably would have ended up in a housing project after he was “exploited” for a brief time .

I never believe the public ‘persona’ created about these figures by the media. At the same time, I met a disk jockey who said he met Hendrix in person and he mentioned Hendrix was pretty stoned when he met him.

At this rate, the role model for the next generation of San Francisco’s children will be Tupac Shakur.

Jimi Hendrix would sometimes show up to a concert so stoned that he couldn’t perform.

We don’t want that behavior in our school teachers, probably.

Kerr - you are totally wrong, Hendrix was a revolutionary guitarist, a fantastic musician with that “magic touch.” I believe he was also half white.

Hendrix might not be a perfect “role model” but I’m sure there are many guitarists on this board who would agree that his musicianship was excellent.

Jimi Hendrix once said that LSD inspired his music. His manager then said that the next time you take LSD, could you find some lyrics.
His lyrics were strange. He was more original than his contemporaries. The music was good the first two albums, They were tight and had interesting melodies even if the lyrics didn’t make sense.

Lastly, how quickly SF has forgotten Jerry Garcia. Oh well.

I guess any madness is possible when you start with the premise that the majority of blacks are capable of being as good students as the majority of whites, if you can only find the magic key to unlock black students’ stifled intellectual potentialities.

As an ex-professional guitarist, and a young hippie wannabe in the ’60s, I remember how the world changed when Hendrix came out with “Purple Haze.”

Whatever else he was, he was a guitar genius. I saw him perform twice and am a living witness. He took music, and us along with him, to places we had never been and may never go again.

My politics have turned around 180 degrees since those days (and I truly regret much of the negative impact ’60s leftism had on our society), but I’ll always be indebted to Jimi for sharing his “experience,” even though he may never have been able to live up to the expectations of us lowly mortals.

In general, blacks can be as good students as whites, if only the magic key can be found to unlock black students’ stifled intellectual potentialities.

Starting with that mad premise, any madness can follow.

Mr 82nd airborne “faked” being a sexual queer to get kicked out of the military and thus no-go to Vietnam. Perfect for San Francisco

Mr. Townsend contends that ol’ Jimi S-T-O-L-E the idea of his
style of guitar playing from Jeff Beck.

C’mon - maybe he did, but without a talent he would not have been able to actually perform it. He was brilliant guitar player, but as a role model he is not exactly a good choice. It’s like making a positive role model from, say, Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin. Iconic - yes, but for education purposes definitely not.

Jimi Hendrix is certainly a better role model than, for example, that Shabaaz guy or MLK. While home on TDY for the D.C. riots in early 68’ on my way back to Viet-Nam and in L.A. at a club I met and drank beer with Jimi Hendrix (he was buying, I was in uniform) a very decent guy, and he said that despite what people said of him, he was NOT anti war or anti military. He is/was PRO America, he DID NOT call himself AFRICAN American and his music was very, very popular in Viet-Nam.

Just consult his biography (which is not a bad one as movie bio’s go), Jimi Hendrix “wasn’t much of a color talker.”

And one of the above posters was exactly right - Hendrix was quite literally one in a billion. He is now being reconstructed by many blacks, and the usual group of self-hating Whites, for political purposes. And though he was an insecure man (the result of a broken home) who did drift for a time into a “black thing”, it was short lived.
Fact is, Jimi liked White people and had no problem with them.

For myself JH is a personal favorite. In fact, though it might be sacriligious to say it here, he’s one of my favorite Americans - ever.

Oh, and photos of his mother make it clear that there was a lot of White blood in Jimi’s veins. Just as his dad’s reveals some American Indian. Also - as George Harrison said about Brian Epstein, “everybody was topping themselves off in those days”. Comments of his drug use after the fact are easy. And if he was careless with what he took the man certainly paid the price.

Mr hendrix was in the 101st AB. He was pro military and supported the war in vietnam- this is according to Eric Burton. Not supportive enough to reenlist, but more supportive than your average celebraty at the time. I also looked through his albums. When he played with the two white englishmen, he sounded good. When he was forced to play with blacks, he went downhill.

I was a huge Hendrix fan, but he’s no kind of role model.

To echo a previous poster:there are worse role models than Jimi Hendrix.Although it strikes me silly that a school has to reach out to pop culture for a role model.

I do like some of Jimi’s music.He was a talented musician and a fine songwriter.I’m not quite old enough to remember Hendrix,but I’ve seen print and video interviews with him.He came across as a sweet and gentle person.It’s clear Jimi didn’t view himself as simply black.He embraced his multi-racial background.He was especially pround of his Native American heritage.His grandmother had helped raise jimi;she was Native American.

It’s very unfortunate that the black radicals laid such a guilt trip on Jimi Hendrix.Because he was a “black” artist playing to primarily white audiences,they told him he had sold out.The criticism caused him a lot of stress;maybe if they had left him alone he’d still be alive today.

Regarding Jeff Beck:I’m a JB fan.From what I’ve read,Jeff does believe he influenced Hendrix’s style of playing.I doubt if Jeff would consider it “stealing”,though. When it comes to popular music,it’s an accepted fact that there’s a lot of “borrowing.” Everyone sort of borrows from everyone else.That’s also how different musical genres were created.

His music was good, but I’m not exactly certain that setting up a herion addict who died of an overdose as a role model for children is a good idea.

Had he lived Jimi Hendrix would be 67 years old. Who is he supposed to inspire? The young and middle aged teachers who are the ages of any children or grandchildren he might have?

I can’t see the students identifying with a man from the “olden days”, a man who if he lived would be older than many of their grandparents.

SFUSD is what, about 70 percent Asian? I can’t see that ethnic group identifying with Hendrix in any way.

The only SFUSD group that might know anything about Hendrix is the retired teachers groups, old hippies.

The question of borrowing is not that simple. When a White musician copies something from a black, that makes him derivative and an exploiter. All of the reverse cases (of blacks ripping off White artists) are not publicized to the same degree. It thus makes look like it is a one-way street.

Untel:
I agree with your comments.(I was the anonymous poster who brought up the topic of borrowing.)There is a double standard.White artists are often accused of “stealing” from “black music”.Yet it’s rarely mentioned the influence white musicians have had on black musicians.

My comments were general;I meant to be brief,not overly simplistic.

I used to post on an internet music forum,and a poster there started referring to various (white) music legends(Elvis Presley,Beatles,Stones,etc.) as thieves,basically. He would make these judgments but not give any examples of what these great artists had supposedly “stolen.’ I’m pretty sure this poster was black because he identified himself as African-American;he also posted pictures of himself on this music site(usually with celebrities.LOL.)Anyway,I don’t post or visit there anymore. But hey,it was a learning experience…

Over the past couple of years,I’ve come to realize that his attitude is quite common in the black community.But IMO,it shows a serious lack of understanding of popular music. For instance,I think the blues would have remained obscure or died away if it hadn’t been for the white musicians of the sixties who re-energized the form and popularized it.

Not to digress too much.During the winter, I went to see the movie,Cadillac Records(the fictionalized account of Chess Records).The filmmaker’s(the director is an African-American woman.Can’t remember her name) anti-white bias was palpable. Elvis and the Beach Boys were portrayed as the bad guys;the guys who had stolen from the black man.If you’ve seen the film,you know how heavy-handed some of the imagery was in it.I went prepared;I wasn’t surprised by the film’s point of view.

Sorry for any typos.