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"The great majority of recent discoveries were conveyed to me either by Tony Brown or by Michael Fairchild, with whom, among other things, I share a deep love for audience recordings. If not for Michael there wouldn't be so many surprises in this book for the people who have been into collecting for quite some time...In the process of picking up reviews of American concerts, I got in touch with Michael Fairchild, when he was still up-and-coming, and I had the pleasure of exchanging many rare items with him."

- Ben Valkhoff in Plug Your Ears Up From the Skies Unlimited Books 1993

"Thank you for the copy of UniVibes containing the article by Michael Fairchild. I am very sorry for any offense that may have been caused by my reference in Sixties [book] to the burning of the American flag by Jimi. I was relying on popular myth when mentioning that he burned the American flag and I sincerely apologize for interpreting hearsay as fact. Jimi was one of my closest friends and I have no wish to see his reputation damaged in way by perpetuating the story. I have therefore instructed my publishers to immediately alter the text accordingly, and hope that Jimi's fans will accept my apologies for alluding to this unsubstantiated report." - Linda McCartney, London, England

- UniVibes Magazine - February 1993

"So you work for the Jimi Hendrix estate?"

MF: Yes, there's a company in Hollywood that puts out all of the official releases.

"Where are the 'Jimi Hendrixs' today?"

MF: He was a special case, connected with the blues, the beat, coming from a Voodoo background in Africa, that's the source of blues and rock and roll. Voodoo is about the possession dance and sacred drums, people who use dance as a way to experience a religious ecstacy. The blues came into New Orleans from the Carribean, from African, and the Irish slaves that had been imported there. The nature religions, religion with a beat, the possession dance.

Caller: I saw Jimi in Rochester, he came out playing with his teeth and behind his head and stuff, but at the end, while he was doing that, they were taunting him and somebody started throwing those flash cubes at him and smacked him in the head, and after that happened, he whipped his guitar off, turned around and whipped it into his mountain of amps. He got all this feedback, but nothing broke. But then he turned around and flipped everybody off and walked off stage.

"Can the public read Jimi's diary?"

MF: There are several books in the works at the Hendrix estate company, one is Jimi's autobiography, we gathered all of his quotes from all sources, like interviews and tapes, and compiled them, and have been editing this down into a book called Room Full Of Mirrors - Jimi In His Own Words. At the same time producing a film called Room Full Of Mirrors, in London. This year there's a book called Cherokee Mist - The Lost Writings Of Jimi Hendrix, that HarperCollins has coming out in September. This one has his lost handwritings, with about 70 photos.

"What happened to Jimi's guitars?"

MF: They surface at auctions. The white guitar that he used at Woodstoock was bought by one of the Microsoft guys [Paul Allen] in Seattle. In Seattle they're building a museum [Experience Music Project, aka EMP], a memorial for Hendrix, he's from Seattle. One of the people from Microsoft, one of the wealthiest companies, bought his guitar.

- WCMF-FM Rochester - March 19, 1993

"In the shadow of the most eclectic stretch of Monroe Avenue...lives a scholar of worldwide repute. He is a consultant and researcher for books and videos album liner notes and even an exhibit on a three-year tour of the world. His byline appears in well-known magazines like Guitar, and more obscure publications like UniVibes. He's planning a 90 minute presentation for the college lecture circuit. His word has impact. Linda McCartney, Paul's wife, recently acknowledged his criticisms of her coffee table anchor, Sixties: Portrait of an Era, and promised corrections would be made. His subject never varies. Michael Fairchild is one of the world's foremost scholars on Jimi Hendrix...'Hendrix is a supernatural event that we witnessed'... Fairchild talks about the guitarist in terms that approach the religious. 'He will transcend almost anybody from this era for a thousand years'...Hendrix remains the center of a profitable legend, much of it funneled through a Los Angeles-based company called Are You Experienced? Ltd. The company, granted commercial control over Hendrix's name by his estate, employs Fairchild as an in-house writer and consultant on Hendrix related projects...Alan Douglas, the Hendrix archivist who heads Are You Experienced, said, 'Fairchild probably knows more about Jimi than anyone in the world.' Fairchild's most recent big project is as a consultant for the Jimi Hendrix Exhibition - a touring show of over 100 artists interpretations of Hendrix through art and photography. After a successful tour through Europe and Australia last year, it opens April 8 in New York City's Ambassador Gallery, before moving on to other cities...

'It's constant phone tag, calling people all over the world, and writing, the first three albums are being repackaged with 24-page booklets, and I'm writing the booklets for them.' Fairchild calls himself a switch operator, directing information relating to research messages, funneling the data and conclusions...'There are a lot of politics involved,' he says, 'a lot of different Hendrix factions; the black group, the English group - and a lot of them have hostility between each other. I have to be a liaison'...Fairchild does more than search out pieces of the Hendrix legacy, he assembles them into a cosmic whole, what he refers to as a mythology. It is, he says, like 'pushing oceans through a keyhole.'

Without much prodding, this mythology, folded into a world philosophy, floods from Fairchild. He sees Hendrix as a rock 'n' roll apostle, a bridge between cultures and religions, a healer of mind and body: 'mythologies are about transformations of consciousness, communal ecstatic experience, possession dance, Voodoo - that's where the blues came from, Cromwell invading Ireland in the 1600s. Voodoo in the blues born out of Irish pagans slaves mating with black Africans, spiritual blues, healing the split that came about in Western culture between mind and body, a union of polarities, primitive and futuristic, black-and-white, the collision of myths, the fall of nature. Hendrix is the furthest expansion of blues we have ever seen. I think it exhausted the blues function'

It is an explosion of imagery, philosophy, religion and history, some of it almost improbably entangled. Hendrix and Fairchild are entangled, too. Fairchild describes the tasks they face in large, visual metaphors: 'Crushed under multiple Pentagons and Vaticans.' They are Davids facing Goliath...he experiences visions and coincidences beyond what he calls the laws of probability. 'Hendrix gives me these stories,' he says, discussing Cornerstones, the Hendrix compilation album he helped assemble for PolyGram Records...he sees a conspiracy of missinformation and silence over Hendrix's death. Fairchild is helping one of Hendrix's former girlfriends, Kathy Etchingham, to unravel discrepancies in the stories of his death. Mainly over the length of time between the discovery of the body and the arrival of medical personnel. Why did it take so long to summons help, who was present to actually made the call for help?

When Hendrix heard Heartbreak Hotel on the radio he began playing guitar for the first time. But Elvis was not the King, says Fairchild. 'Elvis is more like John the Baptist, babbling, whereas Hendrix is this Jimi Christ figure. Hendrix appealed to the emotionally wounded of the world. The Third World moving into the mainstream. When we do become a truly unified world Hendrix will eclipse all figures.'

Fairchild was learning to play guitar when he met blues great Son House, who lived on Greig Street in Rochester. House, Fairchild says, had been invited to a party, gotten drunk, and began abusing other guests. The 15-year-old Fairchild and his Marshall High friends were told to drive him home. 'We used to bring him alcohol,' Fairchild recalls, 'we were just kids. We didn't know he was a recovering alcoholic, his wife used to get really mad at us. I remember he had pictures of JFK and Martin Luther King on his walls.' They talked about the guitar; Fairchild recalls how clumsy the blues legend was with the pick. House had never played with one.

Fairchild later attended the Eastman School of Music, State University at Albany, and Empire State College. He then worked at some social service jobs and psychiatric centers before sending his Hendrix manuscript to Are You Experienced? Ltd. The Los Angeles company hired him. That unpublished book, A Touch Of Hendrix, ties together many of Fairchild's themes. He links social rifts of the day and finds links between the Vietnam War and Hendrix. 'And that's what they're not ready for,' Fairchild says, 'they say it can't be published.'

Is he obsessed by Hendrix? 'That's a mischaracterization,' Fairchild insists, 'Hendrix is a mask. There is more to it than this black guitarist from Seattle'...Fairchild trails off as he talks about his band, which plays only Hendrix material. In fact, the band built quite a solid reputation around the northeast in a short period of time...Fairchild says the band was a victim of harsh club policies and people who booked the acts - just as Hendrix was used by concert promoters and record executives. Hendrix represents the victims, the disenfranchised...'As incredible as the music is to a percentage of people, the story that attends it is equally interesting. I think it's as interesting as any of the other religions of the world.'

Any of the other religions.

'I don't consider myself a fan, I'm a writer pursuing the hottest story I've ever seen.'"

- Democrat & Chronicle - March 25, 1993

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