07/04/2026
The following is from THE BIRTH OF LOUD — Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock and Roll, by Ian S. Port
The last notes trilled and rang in golden liquid glory, and before they could feed back into acid, Jimi underscored them with a few broad, shining chords, the pride and the anguish all shimmering there in the humid morning, his performance conjuring truths about the United States of America that so many previous renditions of the song had failed to express.
It had lasted three minutes and 43 seconds. Jimi Hendrix didn’t stop to await applause for what he’d just done, to see if it was greeted with approbation or indifference. He rode the swell of feedback straight into “Purple Haze” and went on playing.
To the thousands standing agape on the mud fields of Woodstock, it was clear that something important had just occurred–the most unforgettable moment of the festival, perhaps of the era: “A quintessential piece of art,” as Woodstock organizer Tom Law remembered it, that “hooked us up with Vietnam, with the devastation and the sin and the brutality and the insanity.”
“Before that,” said witness Roz Payne, “If someone would have played the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, we would have booed. After that, it became our song.”
“It was probably the single greatest moment of the Sixties,” said the music critic Al Aronowitz. “You finally heard what that song was about, that you can love your country, but hate the government.”
A patriotic melody, rendered in a distorted electronic voice, cleaved in half by a sonic evocation of the horrors of war: By playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” that day, Hendrix cemented his reputation as the most vital American performer in rock after Bob Dylan. He gave a generation of Americans a new connection with their national anthem, showing that even this most patriotic of songs could embody their painfully conflicted views.
