Lots of kids dream of becoming rock stars. The same was true for Randy Hansen, growing up in the Northwest and watching Seattle’s Jimi Hendrix. Hansen, for nearly 40 years, has lived that dream.
“Like other guitar players, I listened to Jimi a lot,” he said. Hendrix, was a Seattle icon and favorite son among teens, even years after his death in 1970. “He was a big thing at our school if you were a guitar player.”
Given two guitars by a friend’s father after his own dad died, Hansen turned his attention toward music.
Late in his senior year of school, counselors told Hansen he wasn’t going to graduate, so he started staying home. After his mother left for work for each day, Hansen would have the house to himself and he’d play Hendrix and Led Zepplin records and learned as much guitar as he could. Rather than try and return to school to graduate, Hansen took his guitars on the road.
Then in a band called Kid Chrysler and the Cruisers in the mid ’70s, Hansen and the band leader, Gary McKinney, went to a club in Vancouver, B.C., to watch an act that parodied Alice Cooper. The show gave McKinney an idea for a new act and he asked Hansen who he’d like to parody.
“I told him I didn’t want to make fun of anyone, but that I’d really like to do Hendrix. I knew his material well,” Hansen said.
The band mounted the show, making light of Cooper, the Rolling Stones and Randy Bachman of Bachman Turner Overdrive, with Hansen doing his Hendrix bit but playing it straight. The Hendrix act went over so well Kid Chrysler’s agency started getting requests for it.
“I said, ‘Gary, I think I better start my own band,’ So that got me fired from Kid Chrysler, but the rest of the band wanted to go with me, and that was the start of Machine Gun,” Hansen said.
Machine Gun got a two-month booking at a club in Kent, playing to packed houses, then started playing other clubs.
“Heart saw me and decided to take me on tour,” he said.
Hansen’s reputation as a Hendrix tribute artist grew and he remains the longest-running tribute act in the Northwest, not only playing as Hendrix but also playing in the Heart tribute act, Heart by Heart, which features two members of the original Heart band who backed Ann and Nancy Wilson, drummer Mike Derosier and bassist Steve Fossen. Hansen also regularly tours Europe.
Hansen performs his Hendrix tribute at 7 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Historic Everett Theater.
Hansen doesn’t apologize for the tribute label. He’s a serious student of Henrdix’s music and performance, even copying some of Hendrix’s trademark style, playing the guitar behind his back or with his teeth, and, yes, even smashing a guitar when he feels driven to.
“I’ve probably broke about 50 guitars. I do it every so often, if the mood hits me. And sometimes it hits when I’m holding a really nice guitar. A song will take me away. People request ‘Manic Depression.’ That’s a dangerous song for me and is probably responsible for me breaking more guitars. There’s some stuff that Jimi wrote that I go black and don’t remember playing it, you lose control, whatever thought pops into my head. It’s just what the music does to me, since I was a kid. When I was learning guitar, I’d be diving aorund my front room, jumping on furniture and rolling over things.”
The interest in tribute bands isn’t hard to understand, Hansen said; the music remains vital.
“I would say the reasons are changing now,” Hansen said. The great musicians of some of the original bands are aging, bodies and voices are failing or they just don’t want to go out on the road any longer, he said.
“Tribute bands are doing a great service by keeping the music going, playing it live, and people can experience, somewhat, what the band was like,” he said.
Although Hendrix, because his life was cut short, doesn’t offer as deep a catalog of songs as does the Rolling Stones or other classic rock acts, Hansen said Hendrix left behind a great legacy of music.
Hansen says his band, which includes Rick Spano on drums and Kevin John Adams on bass guitar, doesn’t play the same set twice.
“We throw in some B sides along with the hits. All the stuff that was on ‘Band of Gypsies,’ ‘Machine Gun,’ that record was really powerful to me, and it was the beginning of Jimi playing a dance groove. He wanted people to dance, so we get in that stuff because we like the people to dance, too.”
Hansen remains appreciative of the career he’s enjoyed.
“A lot of good things happened because other people took an interest in me, leading me and guiding me in another direction. I was an at-risk kid in the ’60s who needed guidance. And one of the things that guided me was Jimi Hendrix’s lyrics. I learned life lessons from all of his songs.”
A new experience
Randy Hansen’s Tribute to Jimi Hendrix is at 7 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Historic Everett Theatre, 2911 Colby Avenue. Special guest Medicine Hat opens. Tickets, $12 to $25, are available at etix.com, www.historiceveretttheatre.org, at the door or by calling 425-258-6766.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
