July 17, 2025 • 33 mins
Uncover the fascinating history behind the murder ballad "Hey Joe" with author Jason Schneider. Learn how this haunting tale captivated Jimi Hendrix and became a timeless classic.
Purchase a copy of That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of ‘Hey Joe’ and Popular Music’s History of Violence
Visit Jason Schneider's website
----------
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe
Purchase a copy of That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of ‘Hey Joe’ and Popular Music’s History of Violence
Visit Jason Schneider's website
----------
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The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on this episode of Book Don Rock. This
is the story of the song Hey Joe, made famous
by Jimmy Hendrix. It's a song that binds nearly every
strand of twentieth century American popular music.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We're totally bummed rock and roll. I mean, gotta leave you.
You're reading Little Hans says it's time to roll Rock.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Roll up.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I totally booked.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome back to Book Don Rock, Americ Senich. This episode's
guest is Jason Schneider. He is the author of the
brand new book called That Gun on Your Hand, The
Strange Saga of Hey Joe and popular Music's History of violence.
Welcome to the podcast, Jason.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Great to be here, Eric, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Congrats on the book. First off, phenomenal job with the book,
but what a fascinating topic.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, Well, I mean it goes back to probably the
first time I played my dad's copy of Our Experienced
when I was ten or eleven years old, and it
was one of those moments you know, I'm sure you've
had them in your life too, or you put a
record on and you're just mesmerized for forty five minutes
just listening to it.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
That was my experience.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yes, punintended. Now, were you like me and most people,
did you assume Hey Joe was a Hendricks original?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah. At that age, I didn't know anything about songwriting.
But you know, as I got older started listening to
more artists, Suddenly I'd see Hey Joe popping up in
different places, different artists doing it, and that got me
to wondering a bit about its origins. And then I
went back to are You Experienced? I saw the writing
(01:40):
credit was by this guy, Billy Roberts, who I knew
nothing about, and it turns out there was really no
information about him anywhere. So that kind of got me
going on trying to unravel this mystery too of who
Billy Roberts.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Was a very interesting backstory to the song. So talk
about how this book is divided into two parts.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah, well, the first half is really it goes back
to Hey Joe's origins and murder ballads early. Well, I
guess maybe you could go back to the late nineteenth
century and then early blues and country recordings from the
twenties and thirties, and then how that sort of influenced
(02:23):
Billy Roberts into actually writing the song Hate Joe, and
then the journey, it kind of took from Billy through
a whole bunch of different artists doing it before Hendricks,
and then the first half of the book ends with
Jimmy's version and where he kind of took it. Then
the second half is basically discussing different artists who covered
(02:45):
the song after Jimmy's death.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Quite a few artists have recorded the song. It turns
out Patty Smith's version may be the most interesting beyond
Hendrix's version, but that's one we'll get to as well.
Although other songs similarly updated themes found in early American blues,
folk and country in the rock and roll era, Hey
Joe offered something different. It's a visceral drama. A man
(03:10):
describes how he shoots his unfaithful lover to death and
intended to get away with it. Why do you think
this song has resonated so profoundly with so many people,
fans and musicians.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I think there's a few reasons. Number one, the song's
structure itself is very simple. The chord pattern it's based
on what's known as the circle of fifths, which people
who have a basic understanding of blues music, a typical
blues song is three chords A one, four, five, but
with Hey Joe, there's two additional chords thrown in there,
(03:46):
so it kind of circles around itself, I guess, creating
the term circle of fifths. So there's really no resolution
to it, and interesting enough, people might not realize it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Doesn't have a chorus.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
It's just in one verse after another, and the versus themselves.
It's constructed as a conversation between Joe and his friend.
It's got that really personal side that I think anyone
can relate to, and then to go deeper into the
psychology behind it. I think all of us can relate
(04:20):
in one way to another. Two crimes of passion, of
being in a situation where we have to pull back
before we do anything drastic, and I think that has resonated.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I think that's part of the fascination just in general
with people with true crime. It's very similar. There's just
some fascination that we have with this how can a
man cross that line? The one line in the song
that really gets me and it's real simple. But hey Joe,
where are you going with that gun in your hand?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And right away you're thinking, WHOA, what's up? What is
this guy?
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Going to do yeah, and that, and and that kind
of puts the listener in the position of that person
asking the questions, so you know, right away the listener
is involved in the song, you know, waiting to hear
what Joe's answer is going to be, and you know,
having that kind of dialogue.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So Billy Roberts hard to believe that his twenty seventeen
death went unreported by all news outlets in this day
and age, but that's what happened. The book presents previously
unpublished information about his life. So tell us about Billy Roberts.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, well, he I think his life was kind of
mysterious by his own choice. He was born in South
Carolina in the late thirties, I believe, so he kind
of grew up within that early blues scene in that
region of the country, and that's where he kind of
developed his love of music and folk music and blues.
(05:49):
By the time he reached his early twenties, he decided
to go where the action was, which was Greenwich Village
in New York City. And this was all pre Bob Dylan.
Billy actually he arrived in New York almost exactly a
year before Dylan did, so it was a slightly different scene.
(06:10):
It was a scene where the singers, very few of
them wrote their own material, Very few of them cared
about making records, you know, most of them just thought
it was a hassle. They weren't really concerned about making
money in general. They just wanted to play this music
and share it with people. So that was kind of
the world that Billy stepped into. And almost as soon
(06:32):
as he arrived, he met a woman who became his girlfriend.
There a woman named Neela Miller who was a folk
singer herself, and she had this song called Baby Please
Don't Go to Town, which you can look it up
on YouTube, and there are a lot of similarities to Hayjoe.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And Billy was fixated on that song.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, and he thought he could, you know, I guess
borrow it would be a generous term for the time,
and kind of do something with it on his own,
and so he kind of took that as a basis
and injected his own experiences with the blues, and out
of that came Hey Joe. And almost immediately other artists
in the Greenwich Village scene picked up on it too
(07:13):
and started playing. And that's really where the song's journey began.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The history of murder ballads is interesting too. It became
something that was part of the mainstream consciousness. In nineteen
fifty eight the Kingston Trios recording of the traditional ballad
Tom Dooley. Yeah, but how far do we go back
to find the origins of the murder ballad?
Speaker 3 (07:34):
That's kind of hard to say, because you can go
back to the British Isles in the sixteen hundreds. I
think there's songs about lovers killing each other. You know,
obviously it's part of Shakespeare as well. But by the
time folks songs were being documented in America in the
early twentieth century, that's when you see songs like Stagger Lee,
(07:58):
songs based on real life events of people shooting each other.
Then one of the main songs I also examine is
Frankie and Johnny.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yes, let's talk about that. One that turned the tables
on a standard murder ballad is what you wrote?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, I mean that was a song again based on
real life events. It was in Saint Louis, I believe,
where a woman found her boyfriend cheating on her and
during the course of a scuffle, she ended up shooting him.
That was Frankie and she ended up getting off on
the charge due to self defense. But almost immediately one
of the Saint Louis barroom entertainers had written song based
(08:36):
on the events, and it became in I guess what
we would call a viral hit nowadays. You know, people
everywhere playing the song, and it ended up really kind
of destroying Frankie. Her full name was Frankie Baker. It
ended up really kind of destroying her life. She had
to move out of town start a new life. The
song grew to inspire movies. She ended up suing the
(09:00):
movie companies to no avail, and that really kind of
started this whole notion of a murder ballad being embraced
by popular culture.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
And what year was that that that song came.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Out, Well, the first recordings of it would have been
in the nineteen twenties, late nineteen twenties, and there was
actually I think it was one of May West's first
movies it was based on the song. That movie was
a huge hit. It might have been one of the
first movies to get an oscar actually, if I'm not mistaken.
And then STAGGERLYE. Of course that became a jazz standard
(09:35):
and then an R and B standard Grateful Dead.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
I'm a big Dead fan. I know Jerry Garcia played
it a lot.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yep, that's all about one man cheating another man after
he stole his hat. Then through early country music, bluegrass music,
and then that led to Tom Dooley being recorded by the
Kingston Trio in the late nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
In the prelude to the book, there's a you tell
it's about Billy playing the song with another person. He
was a street busker in nineteen sixty can you tell
this story? Where did you find out about this story too?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I got a lot of great research from a website.
There's a guy in Europe who created a website to
try to catalog every known version of Hey Joe. It's
pretty monumental task.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
But I'd love to know the number. What's the total
number of that?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, it'll blow your mind, you can't even imagine. But anyway,
on the website, a lot of his posts he got
some great responses from people. And that that story actually
got from a woman who wrote in and commented saying
that was her experience with Billy Roberts, who's busting with him?
In Paris in nineteen sixty, but he was there on
(10:51):
a trip with another New York Folks singer named Dino Valenti,
who he became good friends with. And Dino really he
played a crucial role. Hey, Joe's next stage of kind
of migrating to the West Coast and suddenly being adopted
by every almost every band in LA.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Booked on Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after this.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I'm out come out wherever you are.
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(11:44):
tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
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at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
to the show. As somebody from Connecticut who also spent
many years working in Danbury, Connecticut. I'm interested in the
story of Chester chet Powers, who went on to become
(12:07):
Dino Valenti. Right, yeah, so let's get into this. He
was born October seventh, nineteen thirty seven, in Danbury, Connecticut.
He and Billy Roberts later became friends. His first gig
was at the Cafe Wa in Greenwich Village, which was
run by Manny Roth, who happens to be the uncle
of David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame. Dino Valenti
(12:27):
played Hey Joe often there and noted for his intense
performance of the song. What was it that he did
differently and how did that come from his desire for
a normal life while he was growing up.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I think what made his version stand out based on
accounts of different artists, people like Richie Havens, who I
was fortunate enough to talk to you before he passed away,
Dino took the song and really embodied it, you know. He,
as Richie kind of described, he was just a really
tense guitar player. He basically put everything he had into
(13:03):
playing that song, and that really moved a lot of people.
And I think you can see that in Richie Havens's
performances how intense he played too. By watching him, you
can kind of get an idea of what Dina Valenti
was like, since I haven't come across any footage of
him playing or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
That's coming from when he was a kid, a Dino
then known as Chester. He wanted a normal life, but
he did not have one.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, that was something I was really fascinated to learn that.
According to his sister, they grew up basically as the
kids of carnival workers, so they would spend their summers
traveling around in carnivals and kind of learning all the
all the tricks of the trade, how to entertain people
(13:51):
and at the same time, you know, maybe pull a
few fast ones on them.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So that was sort of the reputation that.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Dino created that he was a guy who basically felt
he had a license to sort of do whatever he
wanted and he could get away with it.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
There's an important decision that Billy Roberts makes in nineteen
sixty two regarding this song Hey Joe. He goes to
the Library of Congress to register copyright for this song.
This is huge talk about how important of a decision
that turned out to be. Do you think that he
felt the urgency to do it because other artists are
performing it a lot.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I couldn't really say definitively what motivated him to do it,
But like I said, at that time, folk singers weren't
concerned about copywriting. There if they'd written an original song,
they weren't really concerned about copywriting it. That obviously began
to change with Bob Dylan, who almost at that exact
(14:45):
time in early nineteen sixty two, Bob had just signed
his first record deal with Columbia, and his new manager,
Albert Grossman, was encouraging him to start writing his own songs,
basically just as a as a way to make money
to try to get other artists to cover them. At
that time, Bobb had just signed his first publishing deal
(15:06):
and the rest of course's history. So whether Billy knew
about that, I'm not sure. But by that time he
was based in Washington, d C. So it wasn't too
hard for him just to pop over to the Library
of Congress do a search to see if anyone had
registered a copyright. No one had, so he went ahead
(15:27):
and did it.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Jason Schneider is the author of That Gun in Your
Hand the strange sog of Hey Joe in popular music's
history of violence? How does Hajoe findance with it?
Speaker 2 (15:36):
David Crosby, That's another fascinating twist.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
So Crosby was just starting out his own career as
a folk singer and made his way from LA to
New York and when he got there, Dino Valenti was
one of the first people he became friends with, and
they had very similar personalities, So naturally, David Crosby learned
(16:00):
Hey Joe from Dino, and when Crosby went back to LA,
he just started raving to everyone he knew about this
guy from New York. He was friends with Dino Valenti.
He was one of the greatest singers he'd ever heard.
So he eventually convinced Dino to come out to LA
to make some demos. And at that time, the Birds
(16:20):
were just starting to come together through Roger mcgwinn and
Gene Clark. Crosby was part of that original trio, and yeah, Crosby,
he made the offer to Dino, do you want to
join this new band I'm forming. We're going to play
folk music with electric instruments. Dino declined for whatever reason,
(16:40):
but Crosby still took up the song Hey Joe, and
that became kind of his show piece in the early
Birds repertoire, and by all accounts too, it was one
of their showstoppers. Most of their early fans loved hearing it.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I remember hearing the Leaves version of Hey Joe maybe
fifteen years ago or so, once YouTube became a thing
you could listen to anything, you know, and then streaming services,
so that was around the first time I heard that
they're the first band to release an electric version of
this song.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Correct, I think a version in general, they were the
first band to yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, Now there is a Bird's connection to this version.
Who were the Leaves and what was their connection to
the Birds regarding Hey Joe?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
After the Birds signed their record deal with Columbia. At
that time, they were the house band at a club
on Sunset Strip called Ciro's, And so after they signed
with Columbia, they had to give up the residency. They
were going to go on tour, so every band in
LA wanted to step in to fill in, and the
Leaves got the gigs. So to kind of maintain that
(17:42):
Bird's audience, they added Hey Joe to their repertoire just
to keep the Birds fans happy.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
That actually leads us to Jimi Hendrix and why he
ends up recording it. The story of how Hey Joe
lands on Hendrix's radar. Okay, this is a great story.
So he heard nineteen sixty six version by singer songwriter
Tim Rose, but I think he also had heard the
Leaves version at some point, but I'm not sure, but
(18:09):
the tim Rose version is the one.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Well, right like that.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yeah, that's that's where the story gets really complicated, because yes,
this is.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The amazing case of serendipity.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Even before that, so we have the West Coast version
of Hey Joe, which is popular. But then we've got
this guy on the East Coast named Tim Rose, struggling
singer songwriter, and he hears a version of Hey Joe
played by another Greenwich village artists, and it's.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Just crazy how many people were playing that song.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah, exactly. So tim Rose hears the song and he
claimed throughout his life that he'd never heard he never
heard the song before until he'd heard this other guy,
Vince Martin play it for him. So he said, so
where get this song? Vince Martin couldn't tell him so
tim Rose just kind of took it up. He created
(19:03):
his own arrangement of it, which was a little bit
more slowed down, a little bit more bluesy, and he
ended up signing a record deal with Columbia as well
and recorded his version of Hey Joe, which didn't really
become a hit, but it was just such a special
(19:23):
according that even the record label like, they pull out
all the stops to make it a hit, but they
just couldn't make it happen. So anyway, fast forward to
the summer of nineteen sixty six, Jimmy Hendrix is playing
around Greenwich Village with pickup bands. He's decided to turn
his back on being an R and B side man.
He wants to do his own thing.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
He's kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Struggling, and just by happenstance, one night, the girlfriend of
Keith Richards, a woman named Linda Keith, a British model.
She pops into a club where Jimmy's playing, and just
like anyone would be, he falls in love with him
and they begin this really kind of short intense relationship
(20:07):
where Linda is firmly committed that she needs to make
Jimmy a star one way or another. At this time,
the Rolling Stones are on tour, so Keith Richards is
kind of safely out of the picture. One night in
New York, Linda runs into the Animals Basis chas Chandler,
who tells her that he's about to leave the band.
(20:30):
He wants to move into record production and management, and
Linda says, well, if that's your plan, you got to
check out this guy, Jimmy Hendricks. He's going to blow
your mind. So part of Chaz Chandler's plan as well
is that he's looking He's he's a fan of Tim
Rose's version of Hey Joe, and he wants to find
(20:53):
someone to record it so it could become a big
hit in England. He's convinced it will. So Linda Keith
has absorbed all this information. She goes back to Jimmy
and says, look, I've invited Chaz Chandler to come see you,
but something you gotta do. You gotta play this song
Hey Joe for him. Chances are I'm almost certain Jimmy
(21:15):
had no idea what the song was, so he had
to quickly learn it. The next day, of course, chas
Chandler walks into the club Jimmy's up on stage, he
starts playing Hey Joe and the Stars aligned.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Wow, that is one of the coolest stories. Yeah, that's
one of the greatest stories in rock and roll. Yeah,
let's get into Jimmy's version, which was recorded in London.
So there's a mix of the Leaves baseline with the
tim Rose arrangement here. And it's interesting to read that
Hendricks threatened to walk out of the studio after getting
into an argument with Chas Chandler.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, that's another thing I didn't really realize until I
kind of dug into it, like this was really the
first time that Jimmy had sung his own songs in
a professional recording studio. Obviously he was nervous, and Chaz
actually brought in a female backing. Course they're not that prominent,
but you can kind of hear them in the background
(22:11):
giving them a little support. And Yeah, evidently they went
through a lot of takes just trying to get it right.
And when you're trying to achieve that sort of perfection,
of course, you know, tempers can get freed. And at
one point the story goes, yeah, Jimmy did threaten to
walk out, but then Chaz said, well, hey, I've got
your passport, You're not going anywhere. That was the other
(22:34):
funny story about those sessions was Jimmy approached it as
if you were on stage, so he just instinctively just
cranked his amp up to maximum. And that's something that
the studio engineer had never experienced before. So all of
a sudden, you know, here's here's Jimmy playing a top
volume and you know, all kinds of things rattling around
(22:55):
the studio. But Jimmy refused to turn down that was
that was a sound, So they had to kind of
eventually work at a compromise. And you know, people have
debates all the time about the origins of hard rock
or heavy metal, but I think going back to that
time nineteen sixty six when Jimmy and young bands like
The Who were just first starting to make records, they
(23:18):
wanted volume, and that's of course cream Eric Clapton, the
birth of the Marshall amplifier. You know, I think all
of that just if you want to trace the origins
of heavy metal back to anything, I think that's where
I would go.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And Jimmy's version went to number twelve on the British
arm Beach Art Top forty on the pop side. It's
going on to become the definitive version. The impression that
it made it was quick. It was within weeks of
the single coming out, and many bands and artists started
to jump on the song as well because they heard
Jimmy's version.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, well, especially in England and Europe, nobody knew the
song the way they kind of did in America, so
all these artists immediately they not only connected Hey Joe
to Jimmy, but this was him giving.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
His first impression as an artist. You couldn't really.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Separate Jimmy from Hey Joe for at least that initial
period when he was in England. They released further singles
Purple Hayes of course when Cries married, but Hey Joe
became synonymous with him, and so anyone he wanted to
imitate him. That was the place where they always started.
So you know, you had bands like The Creation. I
(24:27):
think they were the first British band to do it.
And then not long after that, Deep Purple recorded a
version for their debut album, which was a lot different
but still retained a lot of that Hendrix's mystique about it.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Hendrick just had a way like he did with all
along the Watchtower. It's the same thing. He just had
a way of taking songs by other artists and making
it his own. Book on Rock podcast. We'll be back
after this. Find the book down Rock website booked rock
dot com. There you can find all the back episodes
(25:04):
of the show, the latest episode in video and audio,
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(25:25):
Pick up some Booked on Rock merch. It's all at
booked on Rock dot com. Now let's talk about Patti
Smith's version from seventy four. This is another notable recording. Now,
this is an interesting story here because she was twenty
three years old. She's a struggling writer. She was invited
to the grand opening of Electric Ladies Studios grand opening.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Well, she ended up at the Electric Lady party.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Covering it for a local newspaper or a magazine.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Yeah, she was writing articles about musicians. She was basically
an early rock journalist. So she got an invitation to
the studio opening, and yeah, she ended up having a
brief but meaningful interaction with Jimmy. He had to leave
the party by all accounts, to catch a flight he
had to play the Isle of Wight Festival. But yeah,
(26:14):
Patty making that personal connection with Jimmy that stayed with her.
I'm sure it's still probably one of the most important
moments of her life. So fast forward a few years
when she begins making music herself. Early on, she's kind
of been this sort of struggle of finding a way
(26:35):
to turn her poetry into songs, which didn't really happen
at first, so she had to use other people's material
to kind of convey what she was feeling. So when
it came time to make her first single, she chose
to do Hey Joe, Well for very specific reasons if
you want.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
To, yes, the Patty Hurst thing. So yeah, she includes
the monologue about fugitivaris Patty Hurst and her kidnapping in
participation with the Symbionese Liberation Army. So what was it
that led her to include this in her version?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
In that year, you know, nineteen seventy four, the Patty
Hirst story was really kind of gripping the nation. It
was on the news every night, people just having trouble
believing that this young woman from great privilege be the
Suddenly people assumed she was brainwashed into joining this revolutionary
they might be called a terrorist organization nowadays, and you know,
(27:30):
committing these crimes. Of course, this was something that Patty
Smith couldn't ignore either, and along with kind of sharing
the same name, Patty Smith felt a connection to Patty
Hurst in terms of feeling the pressure of patriarchal society
coming down on her. And to tie that in with
hey Joe, of someone taking it upon themselves to do
(27:54):
something through the use of a firearm, I guess you
know that's that's where it kind of happened. But but yeah,
Patti Smith's version it's one of a kind, just because
by the end of it, she's sort of speaking through
Patricia Hurst's voice as I'm tired of being oppressed, I'm
tired of what society is doing to women. It's a
(28:18):
version that really kind of turns the song's original story
on its head, and that sets the tone I think
for future versions where artists could really express their own
societal frustrations through the song.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
As for Billy Roberts, how did his life change after
the song's popularity in terms of his financial status, in
terms of his artistic pursuits.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
It's a really interesting question because by that time, the
late sixties, he was based in San Francisco. Interesting fact,
for a time he lived in a rooming house owned
by Huey Lewis's mother get out and yeah, well, yeah
and Huey. He made an Instagram post I found at
one point that he said that he picked up harmonica
(29:02):
from Billy Roberts.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Get out, Yeah, because he was from San fran Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
But anyway, so Billy was he was around the late
sixties San Francisco scene, playing in various blues bands and stuff.
But no, he kind of kept up his whole truidoor
philosophy of just going out and playing music without really
any concern for making money off of it. He did
(29:27):
end up making a record in the mid seventies. I
think it's called Thoughts in California. It's kind of hard
to find. It's nothing really spectacular. But the odd thing
is he never recorded. Hey, Joe himself.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Never recorded, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah? There are home recordings of them doing it on YouTube,
but he never officially recorded it as a single or
put it on an album or anything. I think he
was happy just to get the royalties from Jimmy's version.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Well, yeah did he had to had to have put
a few bucks in his pocket. But according to the book,
that lasted only so long.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
That goes back to his relationship with Dino Valenci in
the mid sixties, where it got really complicated because Dino
had some serious legal problems. He was actually went to
jail for a period for drug possession, and in order
to pay his legal fees to get out of jail,
he ended up making a deal with an LA publisher
saying that he had written Hey Joe, which wasn't the case,
(30:23):
And when Billy found out about it, he showed his
library of Congress registration and through legal wrangling, Billy ended
up getting the copyright. But anyways, it was something that
he just sort of helped him maintain the life he wanted.
Throughout the seventies. I saw stories that he would play
on cruise liners, he'd recorded radio jingles for people, and
(30:47):
you know, whenever the mood struck him, he would still
go out there and busk on the.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Street more so just because I think that was just
who he was.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, definitely for sure. And sadly I can't remember what
year it was, sometime in the early eighties, he was
involved in a pretty serious car wreck that left him
with permanent head injuries.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And he was lucky to live through that.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
He was lucky to live through that, and that was
really kind of the end of the story for him.
He lived many years after that, but you could never
you could never really play music again, unfortunately. And yeah,
he just sort of fell off the map after that.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
This book gives him the recognition he deserves, though he
really should be recognized more well.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah, I mean that was definitely one of my intentions,
and the power of Hey Joe lives on. I added
a little story right at the very end where a
couple of years ago a city in Poland, they decided
to try to set Againness Book of World Records for
the number of guitar players playing Hey Joe together at
the same time. I can't remember the number. It was
(31:52):
in the hundreds, but Steve Vai was there to kind
of conduct them.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
The forward in the book, By the way, Lenny k
speaking of Patty Smith, right, the guitar from the Patty
Smith group. So you were able to get him to
do the former.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, I was very fortunate that he agreed to do that,
and to me, it was the perfect choice given you know,
not only he played on Patty's version, but as kind
of the garage rock guru, he knows every version of
Hey Joe that exists, So to get his seal of
approval that meant the world to me.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
That got on your hand the strange saga of heyjo
in Popular Music's History of Violence. It's out now and
it goes much deeper than what we've discussed here. We've
just basically scratched the services so much in this book
that you're going to want to read about the history
of not just Hey Joe the song, but murder balance
in general. It is an amazing read. It's available wherever
(32:43):
books are sold, right.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, Anvil Press based in Vancouver.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
You can order it from their website and I just
confirmed today actually that their US distributor should have it
out by the middle of next month.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Great. Where can people find you online, Jason if they
want to reach out to you.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Schneidermedia dot com I'm always happy to meet new people
and answer questions.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Great man, it was great meeting you, and again congrats
on this book. It's a fascinating book I must read
for fans of music, music history.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Excellent. I really enjoyed it. Eric, thank you. That's it.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
It's in the books.
Coming up on this episode of Book Don Rock. This
is the story of the song Hey Joe, made famous
by Jimmy Hendrix. It's a song that binds nearly every
strand of twentieth century American popular music.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We're totally bummed rock and roll. I mean, gotta leave you.
You're reading Little Hans says it's time to roll Rock.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Roll up.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I totally booked.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome back to Book Don Rock, Americ Senich. This episode's
guest is Jason Schneider. He is the author of the
brand new book called That Gun on Your Hand, The
Strange Saga of Hey Joe and popular Music's History of violence.
Welcome to the podcast, Jason.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Great to be here, Eric, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Congrats on the book. First off, phenomenal job with the book,
but what a fascinating topic.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yeah, Well, I mean it goes back to probably the
first time I played my dad's copy of Our Experienced
when I was ten or eleven years old, and it
was one of those moments you know, I'm sure you've
had them in your life too, or you put a
record on and you're just mesmerized for forty five minutes
just listening to it.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
That was my experience.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yes, punintended. Now, were you like me and most people,
did you assume Hey Joe was a Hendricks original?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah. At that age, I didn't know anything about songwriting.
But you know, as I got older started listening to
more artists, Suddenly I'd see Hey Joe popping up in
different places, different artists doing it, and that got me
to wondering a bit about its origins. And then I
went back to are You Experienced? I saw the writing
(01:40):
credit was by this guy, Billy Roberts, who I knew
nothing about, and it turns out there was really no
information about him anywhere. So that kind of got me
going on trying to unravel this mystery too of who
Billy Roberts.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Was a very interesting backstory to the song. So talk
about how this book is divided into two parts.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah, well, the first half is really it goes back
to Hey Joe's origins and murder ballads early. Well, I
guess maybe you could go back to the late nineteenth
century and then early blues and country recordings from the
twenties and thirties, and then how that sort of influenced
(02:23):
Billy Roberts into actually writing the song Hate Joe, and
then the journey, it kind of took from Billy through
a whole bunch of different artists doing it before Hendricks,
and then the first half of the book ends with
Jimmy's version and where he kind of took it. Then
the second half is basically discussing different artists who covered
(02:45):
the song after Jimmy's death.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Quite a few artists have recorded the song. It turns
out Patty Smith's version may be the most interesting beyond
Hendrix's version, but that's one we'll get to as well.
Although other songs similarly updated themes found in early American blues,
folk and country in the rock and roll era, Hey
Joe offered something different. It's a visceral drama. A man
(03:10):
describes how he shoots his unfaithful lover to death and
intended to get away with it. Why do you think
this song has resonated so profoundly with so many people,
fans and musicians.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I think there's a few reasons. Number one, the song's
structure itself is very simple. The chord pattern it's based
on what's known as the circle of fifths, which people
who have a basic understanding of blues music, a typical
blues song is three chords A one, four, five, but
with Hey Joe, there's two additional chords thrown in there,
(03:46):
so it kind of circles around itself, I guess, creating
the term circle of fifths. So there's really no resolution
to it, and interesting enough, people might not realize it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Doesn't have a chorus.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
It's just in one verse after another, and the versus themselves.
It's constructed as a conversation between Joe and his friend.
It's got that really personal side that I think anyone
can relate to, and then to go deeper into the
psychology behind it. I think all of us can relate
(04:20):
in one way to another. Two crimes of passion, of
being in a situation where we have to pull back
before we do anything drastic, and I think that has resonated.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I think that's part of the fascination just in general
with people with true crime. It's very similar. There's just
some fascination that we have with this how can a
man cross that line? The one line in the song
that really gets me and it's real simple. But hey Joe,
where are you going with that gun in your hand?
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
And right away you're thinking, WHOA, what's up? What is
this guy?
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Going to do yeah, and that, and and that kind
of puts the listener in the position of that person
asking the questions, so you know, right away the listener
is involved in the song, you know, waiting to hear
what Joe's answer is going to be, and you know,
having that kind of dialogue.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So Billy Roberts hard to believe that his twenty seventeen
death went unreported by all news outlets in this day
and age, but that's what happened. The book presents previously
unpublished information about his life. So tell us about Billy Roberts.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, well, he I think his life was kind of
mysterious by his own choice. He was born in South
Carolina in the late thirties, I believe, so he kind
of grew up within that early blues scene in that
region of the country, and that's where he kind of
developed his love of music and folk music and blues.
(05:49):
By the time he reached his early twenties, he decided
to go where the action was, which was Greenwich Village
in New York City. And this was all pre Bob Dylan.
Billy actually he arrived in New York almost exactly a
year before Dylan did, so it was a slightly different scene.
(06:10):
It was a scene where the singers, very few of
them wrote their own material, Very few of them cared
about making records, you know, most of them just thought
it was a hassle. They weren't really concerned about making
money in general. They just wanted to play this music
and share it with people. So that was kind of
the world that Billy stepped into. And almost as soon
(06:32):
as he arrived, he met a woman who became his girlfriend.
There a woman named Neela Miller who was a folk
singer herself, and she had this song called Baby Please
Don't Go to Town, which you can look it up
on YouTube, and there are a lot of similarities to Hayjoe.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
And Billy was fixated on that song.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, and he thought he could, you know, I guess
borrow it would be a generous term for the time,
and kind of do something with it on his own,
and so he kind of took that as a basis
and injected his own experiences with the blues, and out
of that came Hey Joe. And almost immediately other artists
in the Greenwich Village scene picked up on it too
(07:13):
and started playing. And that's really where the song's journey began.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The history of murder ballads is interesting too. It became
something that was part of the mainstream consciousness. In nineteen
fifty eight the Kingston Trios recording of the traditional ballad
Tom Dooley. Yeah, but how far do we go back
to find the origins of the murder ballad?
Speaker 3 (07:34):
That's kind of hard to say, because you can go
back to the British Isles in the sixteen hundreds. I
think there's songs about lovers killing each other. You know,
obviously it's part of Shakespeare as well. But by the
time folks songs were being documented in America in the
early twentieth century, that's when you see songs like Stagger Lee,
(07:58):
songs based on real life events of people shooting each other.
Then one of the main songs I also examine is
Frankie and Johnny.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yes, let's talk about that. One that turned the tables
on a standard murder ballad is what you wrote?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, I mean that was a song again based on
real life events. It was in Saint Louis, I believe,
where a woman found her boyfriend cheating on her and
during the course of a scuffle, she ended up shooting him.
That was Frankie and she ended up getting off on
the charge due to self defense. But almost immediately one
of the Saint Louis barroom entertainers had written song based
(08:36):
on the events, and it became in I guess what
we would call a viral hit nowadays. You know, people
everywhere playing the song, and it ended up really kind
of destroying Frankie. Her full name was Frankie Baker. It
ended up really kind of destroying her life. She had
to move out of town start a new life. The
song grew to inspire movies. She ended up suing the
(09:00):
movie companies to no avail, and that really kind of
started this whole notion of a murder ballad being embraced
by popular culture.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
And what year was that that that song came.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Out, Well, the first recordings of it would have been
in the nineteen twenties, late nineteen twenties, and there was
actually I think it was one of May West's first
movies it was based on the song. That movie was
a huge hit. It might have been one of the
first movies to get an oscar actually, if I'm not mistaken.
And then STAGGERLYE. Of course that became a jazz standard
(09:35):
and then an R and B standard Grateful Dead.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
I'm a big Dead fan. I know Jerry Garcia played
it a lot.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yep, that's all about one man cheating another man after
he stole his hat. Then through early country music, bluegrass music,
and then that led to Tom Dooley being recorded by the
Kingston Trio in the late nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
In the prelude to the book, there's a you tell
it's about Billy playing the song with another person. He
was a street busker in nineteen sixty can you tell
this story? Where did you find out about this story too?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I got a lot of great research from a website.
There's a guy in Europe who created a website to
try to catalog every known version of Hey Joe. It's
pretty monumental task.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
But I'd love to know the number. What's the total
number of that?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, it'll blow your mind, you can't even imagine. But anyway,
on the website, a lot of his posts he got
some great responses from people. And that that story actually
got from a woman who wrote in and commented saying
that was her experience with Billy Roberts, who's busting with him?
In Paris in nineteen sixty, but he was there on
(10:51):
a trip with another New York Folks singer named Dino Valenti,
who he became good friends with. And Dino really he
played a crucial role. Hey, Joe's next stage of kind
of migrating to the West Coast and suddenly being adopted
by every almost every band in LA.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Booked on Rock Podcasts. We'll be back after this.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I'm out come out wherever you are.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Hey, guys, thanks so much for checking out the Booked
on Rock podcast. If you've just found the podcast, welcome.
If you've been listening, thank you so much for your support,
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(11:44):
tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
to the show. As somebody from Connecticut who also spent
many years working in Danbury, Connecticut. I'm interested in the
story of Chester chet Powers, who went on to become
(12:07):
Dino Valenti. Right, yeah, so let's get into this. He
was born October seventh, nineteen thirty seven, in Danbury, Connecticut.
He and Billy Roberts later became friends. His first gig
was at the Cafe Wa in Greenwich Village, which was
run by Manny Roth, who happens to be the uncle
of David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame. Dino Valenti
(12:27):
played Hey Joe often there and noted for his intense
performance of the song. What was it that he did
differently and how did that come from his desire for
a normal life while he was growing up.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I think what made his version stand out based on
accounts of different artists, people like Richie Havens, who I
was fortunate enough to talk to you before he passed away,
Dino took the song and really embodied it, you know. He,
as Richie kind of described, he was just a really
tense guitar player. He basically put everything he had into
(13:03):
playing that song, and that really moved a lot of people.
And I think you can see that in Richie Havens's
performances how intense he played too. By watching him, you
can kind of get an idea of what Dina Valenti
was like, since I haven't come across any footage of
him playing or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
That's coming from when he was a kid, a Dino
then known as Chester. He wanted a normal life, but
he did not have one.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, that was something I was really fascinated to learn that.
According to his sister, they grew up basically as the
kids of carnival workers, so they would spend their summers
traveling around in carnivals and kind of learning all the
all the tricks of the trade, how to entertain people
(13:51):
and at the same time, you know, maybe pull a
few fast ones on them.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So that was sort of the reputation that.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Dino created that he was a guy who basically felt
he had a license to sort of do whatever he
wanted and he could get away with it.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
There's an important decision that Billy Roberts makes in nineteen
sixty two regarding this song Hey Joe. He goes to
the Library of Congress to register copyright for this song.
This is huge talk about how important of a decision
that turned out to be. Do you think that he
felt the urgency to do it because other artists are
performing it a lot.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I couldn't really say definitively what motivated him to do it,
But like I said, at that time, folk singers weren't
concerned about copywriting. There if they'd written an original song,
they weren't really concerned about copywriting it. That obviously began
to change with Bob Dylan, who almost at that exact
(14:45):
time in early nineteen sixty two, Bob had just signed
his first record deal with Columbia, and his new manager,
Albert Grossman, was encouraging him to start writing his own songs,
basically just as a as a way to make money
to try to get other artists to cover them. At
that time, Bobb had just signed his first publishing deal
(15:06):
and the rest of course's history. So whether Billy knew
about that, I'm not sure. But by that time he
was based in Washington, d C. So it wasn't too
hard for him just to pop over to the Library
of Congress do a search to see if anyone had
registered a copyright. No one had, so he went ahead
(15:27):
and did it.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Jason Schneider is the author of That Gun in Your
Hand the strange sog of Hey Joe in popular music's
history of violence? How does Hajoe findance with it?
Speaker 2 (15:36):
David Crosby, That's another fascinating twist.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
So Crosby was just starting out his own career as
a folk singer and made his way from LA to
New York and when he got there, Dino Valenti was
one of the first people he became friends with, and
they had very similar personalities, So naturally, David Crosby learned
(16:00):
Hey Joe from Dino, and when Crosby went back to LA,
he just started raving to everyone he knew about this
guy from New York. He was friends with Dino Valenti.
He was one of the greatest singers he'd ever heard.
So he eventually convinced Dino to come out to LA
to make some demos. And at that time, the Birds
(16:20):
were just starting to come together through Roger mcgwinn and
Gene Clark. Crosby was part of that original trio, and yeah, Crosby,
he made the offer to Dino, do you want to
join this new band I'm forming. We're going to play
folk music with electric instruments. Dino declined for whatever reason,
(16:40):
but Crosby still took up the song Hey Joe, and
that became kind of his show piece in the early
Birds repertoire, and by all accounts too, it was one
of their showstoppers. Most of their early fans loved hearing it.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I remember hearing the Leaves version of Hey Joe maybe
fifteen years ago or so, once YouTube became a thing
you could listen to anything, you know, and then streaming services,
so that was around the first time I heard that
they're the first band to release an electric version of
this song.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Correct, I think a version in general, they were the
first band to yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, Now there is a Bird's connection to this version.
Who were the Leaves and what was their connection to
the Birds regarding Hey Joe?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
After the Birds signed their record deal with Columbia. At
that time, they were the house band at a club
on Sunset Strip called Ciro's, And so after they signed
with Columbia, they had to give up the residency. They
were going to go on tour, so every band in
LA wanted to step in to fill in, and the
Leaves got the gigs. So to kind of maintain that
(17:42):
Bird's audience, they added Hey Joe to their repertoire just
to keep the Birds fans happy.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
That actually leads us to Jimi Hendrix and why he
ends up recording it. The story of how Hey Joe
lands on Hendrix's radar. Okay, this is a great story.
So he heard nineteen sixty six version by singer songwriter
Tim Rose, but I think he also had heard the
Leaves version at some point, but I'm not sure, but
(18:09):
the tim Rose version is the one.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Well, right like that.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yeah, that's that's where the story gets really complicated, because yes,
this is.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
The amazing case of serendipity.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Even before that, so we have the West Coast version
of Hey Joe, which is popular. But then we've got
this guy on the East Coast named Tim Rose, struggling
singer songwriter, and he hears a version of Hey Joe
played by another Greenwich village artists, and it's.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Just crazy how many people were playing that song.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah, exactly. So tim Rose hears the song and he
claimed throughout his life that he'd never heard he never
heard the song before until he'd heard this other guy,
Vince Martin play it for him. So he said, so
where get this song? Vince Martin couldn't tell him so
tim Rose just kind of took it up. He created
(19:03):
his own arrangement of it, which was a little bit
more slowed down, a little bit more bluesy, and he
ended up signing a record deal with Columbia as well
and recorded his version of Hey Joe, which didn't really
become a hit, but it was just such a special
(19:23):
according that even the record label like, they pull out
all the stops to make it a hit, but they
just couldn't make it happen. So anyway, fast forward to
the summer of nineteen sixty six, Jimmy Hendrix is playing
around Greenwich Village with pickup bands. He's decided to turn
his back on being an R and B side man.
He wants to do his own thing.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
He's kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Struggling, and just by happenstance, one night, the girlfriend of
Keith Richards, a woman named Linda Keith, a British model.
She pops into a club where Jimmy's playing, and just
like anyone would be, he falls in love with him
and they begin this really kind of short intense relationship
(20:07):
where Linda is firmly committed that she needs to make
Jimmy a star one way or another. At this time,
the Rolling Stones are on tour, so Keith Richards is
kind of safely out of the picture. One night in
New York, Linda runs into the Animals Basis chas Chandler,
who tells her that he's about to leave the band.
(20:30):
He wants to move into record production and management, and
Linda says, well, if that's your plan, you got to
check out this guy, Jimmy Hendricks. He's going to blow
your mind. So part of Chaz Chandler's plan as well
is that he's looking He's he's a fan of Tim
Rose's version of Hey Joe, and he wants to find
(20:53):
someone to record it so it could become a big
hit in England. He's convinced it will. So Linda Keith
has absorbed all this information. She goes back to Jimmy
and says, look, I've invited Chaz Chandler to come see you,
but something you gotta do. You gotta play this song
Hey Joe for him. Chances are I'm almost certain Jimmy
(21:15):
had no idea what the song was, so he had
to quickly learn it. The next day, of course, chas
Chandler walks into the club Jimmy's up on stage, he
starts playing Hey Joe and the Stars aligned.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Wow, that is one of the coolest stories. Yeah, that's
one of the greatest stories in rock and roll. Yeah,
let's get into Jimmy's version, which was recorded in London.
So there's a mix of the Leaves baseline with the
tim Rose arrangement here. And it's interesting to read that
Hendricks threatened to walk out of the studio after getting
into an argument with Chas Chandler.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, that's another thing I didn't really realize until I
kind of dug into it, like this was really the
first time that Jimmy had sung his own songs in
a professional recording studio. Obviously he was nervous, and Chaz
actually brought in a female backing. Course they're not that prominent,
but you can kind of hear them in the background
(22:11):
giving them a little support. And Yeah, evidently they went
through a lot of takes just trying to get it right.
And when you're trying to achieve that sort of perfection,
of course, you know, tempers can get freed. And at
one point the story goes, yeah, Jimmy did threaten to
walk out, but then Chaz said, well, hey, I've got
your passport, You're not going anywhere. That was the other
(22:34):
funny story about those sessions was Jimmy approached it as
if you were on stage, so he just instinctively just
cranked his amp up to maximum. And that's something that
the studio engineer had never experienced before. So all of
a sudden, you know, here's here's Jimmy playing a top
volume and you know, all kinds of things rattling around
(22:55):
the studio. But Jimmy refused to turn down that was
that was a sound, So they had to kind of
eventually work at a compromise. And you know, people have
debates all the time about the origins of hard rock
or heavy metal, but I think going back to that
time nineteen sixty six when Jimmy and young bands like
The Who were just first starting to make records, they
(23:18):
wanted volume, and that's of course cream Eric Clapton, the
birth of the Marshall amplifier. You know, I think all
of that just if you want to trace the origins
of heavy metal back to anything, I think that's where
I would go.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
And Jimmy's version went to number twelve on the British
arm Beach Art Top forty on the pop side. It's
going on to become the definitive version. The impression that
it made it was quick. It was within weeks of
the single coming out, and many bands and artists started
to jump on the song as well because they heard
Jimmy's version.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, well, especially in England and Europe, nobody knew the
song the way they kind of did in America, so
all these artists immediately they not only connected Hey Joe
to Jimmy, but this was him giving.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
His first impression as an artist. You couldn't really.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Separate Jimmy from Hey Joe for at least that initial
period when he was in England. They released further singles
Purple Hayes of course when Cries married, but Hey Joe
became synonymous with him, and so anyone he wanted to
imitate him. That was the place where they always started.
So you know, you had bands like The Creation. I
(24:27):
think they were the first British band to do it.
And then not long after that, Deep Purple recorded a
version for their debut album, which was a lot different
but still retained a lot of that Hendrix's mystique about it.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Hendrick just had a way like he did with all
along the Watchtower. It's the same thing. He just had
a way of taking songs by other artists and making
it his own. Book on Rock podcast. We'll be back
after this. Find the book down Rock website booked rock
dot com. There you can find all the back episodes
(25:04):
of the show, the latest episode in video and audio,
links to all of the platforms where you can listen
to the podcast. Plus all the social media platforms were
on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and x. Also check
out the Booked on rockblog. Find your local independent bookstore,
find out all the latest hot rock book releases, and
before you go, check out the Booked on Rock online store.
(25:25):
Pick up some Booked on Rock merch. It's all at
booked on Rock dot com. Now let's talk about Patti
Smith's version from seventy four. This is another notable recording. Now,
this is an interesting story here because she was twenty
three years old. She's a struggling writer. She was invited
to the grand opening of Electric Ladies Studios grand opening.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Well, she ended up at the Electric Lady party.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Covering it for a local newspaper or a magazine.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Yeah, she was writing articles about musicians. She was basically
an early rock journalist. So she got an invitation to
the studio opening, and yeah, she ended up having a
brief but meaningful interaction with Jimmy. He had to leave
the party by all accounts, to catch a flight he
had to play the Isle of Wight Festival. But yeah,
(26:14):
Patty making that personal connection with Jimmy that stayed with her.
I'm sure it's still probably one of the most important
moments of her life. So fast forward a few years
when she begins making music herself. Early on, she's kind
of been this sort of struggle of finding a way
(26:35):
to turn her poetry into songs, which didn't really happen
at first, so she had to use other people's material
to kind of convey what she was feeling. So when
it came time to make her first single, she chose
to do Hey Joe, Well for very specific reasons if
you want.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
To, yes, the Patty Hurst thing. So yeah, she includes
the monologue about fugitivaris Patty Hurst and her kidnapping in
participation with the Symbionese Liberation Army. So what was it
that led her to include this in her version?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
In that year, you know, nineteen seventy four, the Patty
Hirst story was really kind of gripping the nation. It
was on the news every night, people just having trouble
believing that this young woman from great privilege be the
Suddenly people assumed she was brainwashed into joining this revolutionary
they might be called a terrorist organization nowadays, and you know,
(27:30):
committing these crimes. Of course, this was something that Patty
Smith couldn't ignore either, and along with kind of sharing
the same name, Patty Smith felt a connection to Patty
Hurst in terms of feeling the pressure of patriarchal society
coming down on her. And to tie that in with
hey Joe, of someone taking it upon themselves to do
(27:54):
something through the use of a firearm, I guess you
know that's that's where it kind of happened. But but yeah,
Patti Smith's version it's one of a kind, just because
by the end of it, she's sort of speaking through
Patricia Hurst's voice as I'm tired of being oppressed, I'm
tired of what society is doing to women. It's a
(28:18):
version that really kind of turns the song's original story
on its head, and that sets the tone I think
for future versions where artists could really express their own
societal frustrations through the song.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
As for Billy Roberts, how did his life change after
the song's popularity in terms of his financial status, in
terms of his artistic pursuits.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
It's a really interesting question because by that time, the
late sixties, he was based in San Francisco. Interesting fact,
for a time he lived in a rooming house owned
by Huey Lewis's mother get out and yeah, well, yeah
and Huey. He made an Instagram post I found at
one point that he said that he picked up harmonica
(29:02):
from Billy Roberts.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Get out, Yeah, because he was from San fran Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
But anyway, so Billy was he was around the late
sixties San Francisco scene, playing in various blues bands and stuff.
But no, he kind of kept up his whole truidoor
philosophy of just going out and playing music without really
any concern for making money off of it. He did
(29:27):
end up making a record in the mid seventies. I
think it's called Thoughts in California. It's kind of hard
to find. It's nothing really spectacular. But the odd thing
is he never recorded. Hey, Joe himself.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Never recorded, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah? There are home recordings of them doing it on YouTube,
but he never officially recorded it as a single or
put it on an album or anything. I think he
was happy just to get the royalties from Jimmy's version.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Well, yeah did he had to had to have put
a few bucks in his pocket. But according to the book,
that lasted only so long.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
That goes back to his relationship with Dino Valenci in
the mid sixties, where it got really complicated because Dino
had some serious legal problems. He was actually went to
jail for a period for drug possession, and in order
to pay his legal fees to get out of jail,
he ended up making a deal with an LA publisher
saying that he had written Hey Joe, which wasn't the case,
(30:23):
And when Billy found out about it, he showed his
library of Congress registration and through legal wrangling, Billy ended
up getting the copyright. But anyways, it was something that
he just sort of helped him maintain the life he wanted.
Throughout the seventies. I saw stories that he would play
on cruise liners, he'd recorded radio jingles for people, and
(30:47):
you know, whenever the mood struck him, he would still
go out there and busk on the.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Street more so just because I think that was just
who he was.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, definitely for sure. And sadly I can't remember what
year it was, sometime in the early eighties, he was
involved in a pretty serious car wreck that left him
with permanent head injuries.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And he was lucky to live through that.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
He was lucky to live through that, and that was
really kind of the end of the story for him.
He lived many years after that, but you could never
you could never really play music again, unfortunately. And yeah,
he just sort of fell off the map after that.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
This book gives him the recognition he deserves, though he
really should be recognized more well.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah, I mean that was definitely one of my intentions,
and the power of Hey Joe lives on. I added
a little story right at the very end where a
couple of years ago a city in Poland, they decided
to try to set Againness Book of World Records for
the number of guitar players playing Hey Joe together at
the same time. I can't remember the number. It was
(31:52):
in the hundreds, but Steve Vai was there to kind
of conduct them.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
The forward in the book, By the way, Lenny k
speaking of Patty Smith, right, the guitar from the Patty
Smith group. So you were able to get him to
do the former.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, I was very fortunate that he agreed to do that,
and to me, it was the perfect choice given you know,
not only he played on Patty's version, but as kind
of the garage rock guru, he knows every version of
Hey Joe that exists, So to get his seal of
approval that meant the world to me.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
That got on your hand the strange saga of heyjo
in Popular Music's History of Violence. It's out now and
it goes much deeper than what we've discussed here. We've
just basically scratched the services so much in this book
that you're going to want to read about the history
of not just Hey Joe the song, but murder balance
in general. It is an amazing read. It's available wherever
(32:43):
books are sold, right.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, Anvil Press based in Vancouver.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
You can order it from their website and I just
confirmed today actually that their US distributor should have it
out by the middle of next month.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Great. Where can people find you online, Jason if they
want to reach out to you.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Schneidermedia dot com I'm always happy to meet new people
and answer questions.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Great man, it was great meeting you, and again congrats
on this book. It's a fascinating book I must read
for fans of music, music history.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Excellent. I really enjoyed it. Eric, thank you. That's it.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
It's in the books.
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