Bob's Vintage Guitars

Marin Hendrix fan plans tribute with 3,000 guitar players

Paul Liberatore

Forty years ago, rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix made history with his anguished rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. Now a Marin County Hendrix scholar is attempting to make another kind of history by assembling the world's largest guitar ensemble for a tribute to the late guitarist in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Steve Roby, a San Rafael resident who teaches a Jimi Hendrix course at College of Marin, is trying to gather 3,000 guitar players together to play "Purple Haze" on Oct. 25 at West Fest, a Woodstock 40th anniversary tribute concert in the park's Speedway Meadows, where Hendrix played a free concert in 1967.
Roby, author of "Black Gold: The Lost Archives of Jimi Hendrix," hopes to break the Guinness record for largest guitar ensemble set last year by Country Joe McDonald, who organized 2,052 acoustic guitarists to play Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land."
"I thought that if he could get that many people to play 'This Land Is Your Land,' I could get more than that for Hendrix's 'Purple Haze,'" Roby said, noting that "this is part Guinness record and part Hendrix tribute with a Woodstock connection."
So far, Roby says 1,800 electric and acoustic guitarists from as far away as Florida and Texas have signed up for the tribute. Marin guitarist Peter Kaukonen has scored a five-minute arrangement of "Purple Haze" that can be downloaded on the registration page (www.steveroby.com/Jimi_Hendrix_Archives/Welcome.html)

along with an mp3 lesson of the song and instructional videos. Electric guitars should have battery powered amps.
A rehearsal is scheduled from 1 to 4 p.m. Sept. 19 at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma. It will be the day after the anniversary of Hendrix's drug-related death on Sept. 18, 1970.
"It's not a talent contest," Roby said. "You won't be judged if you hit a wrong note, and you don't even have to play everything completely right. You just follow along with the band on stage."
What would the late guitar god, who would have been 67 in November, think of Roby's tribute?
"He'd probably think it's very silly," Roby said. "But when you look out at a sea of guitarists playing 'Purple Haze,' it will be an emotional moment for Hendrix fans."