Every Moment Has A Song

Answered by Phillip Coory

In January 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, played their first date at Brian Epstein’s Saville Theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue. Cream were in the audience that night listening to Jimi do a souped-up rock’n’roll version of B.B. King’s ‘Rock Me bay’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, ‘Wild Thing’, ‘Hey Joe’ and one of Jimi’s compositions, ‘Can You See Me?’ Eric Clapton later related to Rolling Stone how Jimi’s performance that night inspired Cream’s most famous song, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’:

“He played this gig that was blinding. I don’t think Jack [Bruce] had really taken him in before. I knew what the guy was capable of from the minute I met him. It was the complete embodiment of all aspects of rock guitar rolled into one. I could sense it coming off the guy. And when he [Jack] did see it that night, after the gig he went home and came up with the riff. It was strictly a dedication to Jimi. And then we wrote the song on top of it.”

Coincidently, Jimi used to play this same song as a dedication to Cream, one of his favourite bands, unaware that he was in fact playing his own dedication.

Source: Jimi Hendrix – Electric Gypsy by Harry Shapiro & Caesar Glebbeek, Heinemann 1990.