by Kurt » Tue Feb 19, 2013 2:06 am
Speaking of Hendrix, I was friends with Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs (one of the funniest guys I have ever met). Tuli had this way of almost being really famous but was too much of a slacker to pull it off. He once told Allen Ginsburg to write a really long poem about everyone he knew and he did..it became Howl and Tuli was featured as a guy who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and lived. (but Tuli jumped off the Manhattan Bridge and lived...which I think was just Tuli BSing a very gullible Ginsberg but he may have been BSing a still gullible me too). Anyway, he met Hendrix when Hendrix was playing with the Isley Brothers and living in Isley Mother's basement (he took trips to Manhattan) and Hendrix once opened for the Fugs, so they often hung out.
So I asked him what Hendrix was like and Tuli said that all that stuff about Hendrix doing drugs by drinking his bandana sweat was stuff he and Ed Sanders made up. He pointed out that bandanas soak up sweat and any acid contained in the sweat would not be lickable really. He also said Hendrix was always the most mature and sober person in the room. He sometimes smoked pot but he never partied like the rest of them did and he was always the one who wanted music to be more serious and Tuli was always the guy who wanted music to be less serious (he admitted that Hendrix was right and he was wrong). But one thing he mentioned was that Hendrix suffered horrible jet lag and insomnia and he could not stand not being able to sleep. So he thinks that is what caused him to take ludes and choke on his own vomit in the UK.
Also he said that Janis Joplin had the most atrocious smelling lady-garden that one could imagine. (considering Tuli had about the worst breath of anyone I find this to be staggering) and booze turned her into a near rapist, so often a night of young hippies looking to get laid would really end up being a group of young hippies hiding from Janis Joplin's crotch. Apparently there was a BS book written years ago supposedly by Joplin's lesbian lover who claimed that Hendrix raped her, but she really was not so much a Lesbian as drunk with bad hygiene and most like it would have been Joplin who had attempted to rape Hendrix but Hendrix would have been too sober and been able to fight her off. (or hide...like the rest of them did)
His stories about Leonard Cohen were funny too. Apparently Cohen was the kind of guy who would start a rumor about himself being great in bed, and it would spread around and soon he would be having sex with women who were way out of his league, but never for very long. I wondered if he had done the same thing for his own music as well.