The one musician Jimi Hendrix knew he could never match

(Credits: Far Out / Sony Music Entertainment)

Awe and inspiration are two separate things. Though the line is thin and often overstepped, admiration sits separate and distinct from inspiration. To be inspired by someone is to be trying to siphon bits off and adopt them into yourself, learning lessons from them that you put into practice. Admiration is arguably more honest and humble as it’s merely the act of watching on, enamoured. Sometimes one is so great that it cuts off the other. In Jimi Hendrix’ case, his admiration for one artist made it so he simply couldn’t be inspired by him.

The rest of the music world would argue against it though. When the man in question is Bob Dylan, a good amount of the rest of the music world would claim that Hendrix was obviously deeply inspired by Dylan given the fact that he covered his songs.

Some would even go so far as to argue that being inspired by Dylan is impossible to avoid. Martha Wainwright put it succinctly when she said, “He is the artist that all artists are led to,” or, even more poetically, “all roads led to Bob Dylan.” To a degree, that seems correct. Dylan has had so many tracks adopted into the world’s songbook that it is impossible to escape his influence. He was also so pioneering in the worlds of folk and rock, with that trickling down to other huge acts like even The Beatles, that it could be argued that to a degree, every single modern artist working in those genres is inspired by Dylan. 

But Hendrix’s admittance that he wasn’t is a bigger topic than that and it demands we draw that tricky like between admiration and inspiration. It asks, can a person have a musical hero and want to honour that musical hero, but not want to be them?

“He doesn’t inspire me actually, because I could never write the kind of words he does,” Hendrix said as his reasoning. It serves as a reminder that although Hendrix’ name is tightly tied to Dylan’s through his cover of ‘All Along The Watchtower’, they are two very different musicians. Though Hendrix made the words of that song his own in a cover that even Dylan himself was blown away by, they’re nothing like the kinds of words Hendrix would write of his own accord. 

And he likes it that way. The bottom line comes down to the fact that Hendrix was a huge music fan; a fact that stands separate from his role as a musician. He loved The Beatles and covered their songs, but it doesn’t seem like ‘Voodoo Child’ or ‘Purple Haze’ are inspired by Lennon-McCartney.

Instead, Hendrix’ covers of songs are less of an attempt to be more like the artists he loved or adopt a bit of their energy into his own work, but simply a homage to honour the songs and acts he was into at that minute. “I really dig him, though,” he added on Dylan, and that’s about as deep as it goes. 

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