What I learned from reading Starting At Zero: His Own Story by Jimi Hendrix.

1 of my favorite things about making this podcast is that I get to talk to so many founders.

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To all intents and purposes, this book has been written by Jimi Hendrix.

But since it has been compiled after his death, it seems only fair to offer an explanation as to how the final text was arrived at.

It evolved out of a film biography of him that I was working on.

Not wishing to put words into Jimi's mouth, we began experimenting with dialogue culled from records of things he had actually said.

An enormous dossier was compiled from all the sources that could be definitively authenticated.

There was a super abundance of material, since during his 4 years in the spotlight, he was constantly giving interviews.

He was also a compulsive writer using hotel stationary, scraps of paper, cigarette cartons, napkins, anything that came to hand.

Funny, Jay-Z did the exact same thing when he was young as well.

That's episode 238 if you haven't listened to the podcast I made on Jay-Z's autobiography.

On reading through all the available material, it is clear that Jimmy left behind his own remarkable and comprehensive account of himself.

We felt it imperative that Jimmy should be allowed to offer his own personal version of his life and music.

The fact that Jimmy's speech patterns are so rhythmic and his turns of phrase so visually rich served to enhance this approach.

In a remarkable and haunting way, the book took on a life of its own.

He always claimed that for him, life and music were inseparable.

As the book progresses, it becomes less an account of external events and more an exploration of an internal journey.

you about today, which is Jimi Hendrix, Starting at 0, his own story.

Real quick before I jump back into the book, I wanna tell you what got me excited and interested in reading a book about, a biography about Jimi Hendrix.

Over the years, I'd heard about his obsessive practice habits.

This has become a main theme that you and I talk about over and over again, because you see it in every single life story

of history's greatest entrepreneurs or anybody that reached the top of

And you and I define practice as all the things that you do to get better at your job.

And so in Jimmy's case, he got paid to make albums, to record albums in the studio and perform.

What made those events, both the albums he made and the performances that he performed, valuable was everything he did when he was not technically working.

And so people that played in the bands with Jimmy all said the same thing, that he would always be playing his guitar.

He'd walk down the street playing the guitar.

If he was in the back of the cab, he would start playing his guitar.

And Jimmy's career from the time he became well-known to the time he died of a drug overdose was only 4 years.

He'd been trying to break through a few years before that, but somebody that knew him during this entire time, this guy named Billy says that he that Jimmy put in 25 years worth of guitar practice into 5 years.

And so when I hear stories like that, I'm like, Okay, that's a that's

a person I can learn a lot from Let me go find a book about him." And that's how we arrived

So I'm going to jump right into all of these words are Jimmy's words.

Most of the highlights I have in most of the book covers his four-year career, how he was thinking about it in a few years right before he breaks through.

But there is an overview of his early life that I think is extremely important to start with.

And so he says, I was born in Seattle, Washington on November 27th,

That's why the book is called starting at 0 dad what he talks about his parents his way his mom is gonna die Really early on unfortunately at an early age says dad was very strict and level-headed But my mother used to like dressing up and having a good time She used to drink a lot and didn't take care of herself, but she was a groovy mother.

There were family trouble between my mother and father.

So I stayed mostly at my aunt's house and my grandmother's.

And the reason I'm reading this section to you is because 1 main theme, I'm gonna tie it together with what we just learned last week with Peter Thiel's book, 0 to 1.

be different is he had a unique upbringing.

And he says, I used to spend a lot of time on her reservation in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Now, this is going to be interesting because he talks about the drug abuse, the alcohol abuse that he was seeing as a young person.

And what makes me sad about reading this book is the fact that everybody knows he's part of the 27 Club, a collection of these young, talented people that, through alcohol and drugs, died decades, decades before they should have.

And as a result, the world was robbed of...

They were robbed of their 40 or 50 years into the future, the life that was taken from them, that they took from themselves really is the way to think about that, but the world was also robbed of their gifts.

And what's heartbreaking to me is he sees this.

He knows this behavior is not beneficial.

And as the book progresses and you get closer to his death, it gets more and more hectic, which we'll go into as well.

He's like, they're, you know, he says, it's a really bad scene.

They're drinking, they're completely out of their minds and they're not doing anything.

And yet he was unable to learn from that experience and realize, hey, I should stay away from drugs and alcohol.

So he goes back to the influence that his grandmother had and that she gave him a little Mexican jacket with tassels and I wore to school every day in spite of what people might have thought because I liked it.

And that is another main theme of the book.

So I'm going to talk about a few things here.

So back on episode 259, I covered the autobiography of Bob Dylan.

If you have not listened to that episode, highly recommend you listen to it.

It's 1 of the greatest books that I've ever read because of just his mastery of language.

The reason I tie this into this is because Jimmy talks about, he mentions a lot of

He doesn't mention anybody else as much as he mentions Bob Dylan.

He says, like, he was inspired by Bob Dylan.

And what Bob and Jimmy have in common is, they practice all the time, right?

There was nobody else in their genre that

So reading from Bob Dylan's autobiography, Billy asked me

who I saw myself like in today's music scene.

Another quote from Bob Dylan's autobiography.

What really set me apart in those days was my repertoire.

It was more formidable than the rest of the players.

That is a goal you and I should be shooting for, isn't it?

There was a lot better musicians around, but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing.

And so how does that relate to what you and I have been talking about?

Bob Dylan intentionally set out to build, he did not want to build an undifferentiated commodity business, right?

If you want to create and capture lasting value, you cannot build an undifferentiated commodity business.

In another part of the book, he says, monopoly businesses, unique businesses, capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors.

There's another example on how this applies to Jimi Hendrix.

It actually came from, I've told you before, I was a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain when he was alive.

Even after he died, unfortunately, I've watched a bunch of his stuff.

I did his biography on episode 219, if you haven't listened to that either.

But in 1 of the episodes where Tony Bourdain goes to Tokyo, he...

And this is what makes Tony such a unique, interesting person and why I think a lot of people love the content that he produced over the years, is he's in Tokyo, and he compares his experience to going to Tokyo for the first time to what it must have been like if you were alive in England in the late 1960s and you encountered Jimi Hendrix.

I'm gonna read from the transcript of this episode.

He says, I often compare the experience of going to Japan for the first time, going to Tokyo for the first time to what Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend must have gone through.

So these are other people in Jimi's industry, per se.

And yet you have this guy who just says, from a very early age, I like to be different.

He's not saying these words, but you and I are going to imply the meeting for us.

I do not want to build an undifferentiated commodity business, right?

And so he says, hey, I went to Tokyo for the first time to what Eric Clapton, Peter Townsend must have thought were the reigning guitar gods of England at the time.

This is still Tony talking what they must have gone through the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town.

A whole new window opens up into a whole new thing.

And even if Jimmy's goal was not to make the most money, right?

He intuitively understood Peter Thiel's idea that the monopoly profits are the value, in his case, of just a stronger fan base and really just getting as many, as many, his goal was getting as many people like to feel something in his music.

He compares it to a religious experience, church, a lot.

That was his goal, maximize how many people have this experience, have this feeling through the music that I'm producing.

But he intuitively understood that the idea that monopoly profits come from differentiated businesses only.

You and I are talking about Jimmy Hendrix 50 years, half a century after he died.

That doesn't happen if you're just putting out the same product as everybody else.

OK, so then we go to the early death of his mother.

it says his parents were divorced in December of 1950.

his younger brother remained with their father.

Jimmy saw his mother for the last time in January of 1958.

This is Jimmy talking There's a dream I had when I was real little about my mother being carried away on these camels It was a big caravan and you could see the shadows of the leaf patterns across her face You know how the Sun shines through a tree?

Well, there were these green and yellow shadows see what they were talking about It's like he's very speaks very rhythmically almost poetically You're gonna see the same thing if you've read the Bob Dylan autobiography as well.

And she's saying to me, well, he's still talking about the dream, think about this.

Well, I won't be seeing you too much anymore, you know, so I'll see you." About 2 years after that, she died.

There are some dreams that you never forget.

and religious, like he was raising like a strict and religious upbringing and he wanted to rebel from that.

He taught me that I must respect my elders and that I couldn't speak unless I was spoken to first by a grownup.

So I've always been very quiet, but I saw a lot of things.

A fish, this is something, a lesson from his dad, a fish wouldn't get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut.

an environment that Jimmy wanted to be in.

And you know that through his actions because later on once he leaves Seattle, he doesn't wind up, he winds up having like a half-sister.

He doesn't come back home for like 7 years, and his half-sister's like 6 years old the first time he meets her.

And I don't think he ever goes back to Seattle after that.

So you can read through his actions, what he thought of his home life.

Jimmy, not that he didn't love his dad, there's a lot of letters, A lot of the book is letters he wrote to his dad, but he chose not to visit and stay in his hometown.

Jimmy dropped out of high school at the age of 17.

I ran away a couple of times because I was so miserable.

I don't think my dad ever thought I was going to make it.

I was the kid who didn't do the right thing.

And so his life changes just like when Bob Dylan has that almost religious experience when he hears the the words of Woody Guthrie.

Just like Jeff Bezos ran around with Sam Walton's book and gave it and had gave highlighted copies to all the people in Amazon at the very beginning just like just like Steve Jobs talked about visiting Edwin land was like a shrine we see that happening again in this case It's this guy named Muddy Waters who changes Jimmy's life forever.

The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters.

I heard 1 of his records when I was a little boy and it scared me to death.

And so he just starts playing a bunch of different instruments.

I always dug string instruments and I liked the piano, but I wanted something I could take home or anywhere and I couldn't take home a piano.

Something that he can always travels with him.

You know, sitting there waiting for the plane to take off.

I'm walking down the street to get coffee.

And so he says, so then I started digging guitars so he could take

1 night my dad's friend was stoned and he told me, or excuse me, he sold me his guitar for $5.

I was about 14 or 15 when I started playing.

He's completely self-taught, Completely self-taught.

How many entrepreneurs have you and I spoke talked about?

If you take an ambitious, driven, intelligent person, especially today, imagine how hard it was to get information.

And we know this again, I'm going to tie back to the Bob Dylan podcast, because it was so...

If you've listened to it, I almost like...

I might have even started crying on that podcast,

because I was having like a religious experience while I was reading it.

I was in, I think it's called the Central Library in Austin, Texas, visiting family.

And I'd go there every day and read that book and I'm surrounded by quotes of how impactful reading

and books, the technology of you know books, have been to

And I'm going through that exact same experience while I'm reading about Bob Dylan who's going through the exact same experience in New York trying to make it and going through his friend's library just reading biography after biography after biography.

1 thing Bob talks about is just how difficult it was for him to get access to other music.

He'd have to go to like a record store and they let you hang out there all day but you're supposed to like sample the music before you buy it and he would just sit in the booth all day he'd make friends and then go through their entire like go to their house and go through their entire record collection uh just a complete sponge of information again he's applying that to music other people applied to building businesses jimmy's doing the exact same thing but he's doing an environment where it's just information, like there is a scarcity of information where

you and I have the exact opposite problem right now.

So you could take some driven, intelligent person and you give

them access to the internet, you give them access to all the world's knowledge through all the books and whatever you want.

It's like that person is going to be unstoppable.

And you know this because you see that same personality type throughout history and what they would do when it was so hard to get the information, what they would go, the lengths they'd go through to get it.

So he says, I learned all the riffs I could.

lessons I learned guitar from records in the radio I loved my music man love soul in the game church religion these are the main themes when I like I'm going to compare it

the book I've said this to you before it's just like if you go back and actually read you know the longest single book that I've ever read for the podcast was a biography on Enzo Ferrari I think it's like episode 98 or 99 something like that that's like a thousand pages and Enzo Ferrari described his product, which are cars, the way you describe your lover.

I got a bunch of highlights He's gonna repeat that over and over again.

You see I wasn't ever interested in other things just Music I was trying to play like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters I was trying this I I didn't even see this highlight from what I was just saying to you before.

But this is exactly the point I was trying to make.

I was trying to learn everything and anything.

Now keep in mind, this guy is going to eventually play in front of, he's gonna have number 1 records, gonna be 1 of the most famous people in the world.

He's gonna play in front of 500, 000 people.

My first gig was at an armory, which is a National Guard place, and we earned 35 cents a piece and 3 hamburgers.

It was, I think Bob Dylan was, there was a similar story with Bob Dylan where he

And I don't think he was making much money so then this is Jimmy talking about this it was so hard for me at first

I knew about 3 songs and when it was time for us to play on stage I was all shaky you get so very discouraged You hear different bands playing around you in the guitar players always seem like he's so much better than you are and this is so important I put a gigantic exclamation point on this paragraph.

Most people give up at this point but it's best not to.

Sometimes you're going to be so frustrated that you'll hate the guitar but all this is just part of learning I'm going to read that again just keep on most people give up at this point but it's best not to just keep on just keep on Sometimes you're going to be so frustrated you hate the guitar but all this is just part of learning if you stick with it you are going to be rewarded if you're very stubborn you can make it.

And imagine the self confidence like this is not a cocky person in fact later in the book which which which you find most interesting is he's got a quote on how he deals with everybody.

You suddenly tell him, hey, you're the best guitarist in the world.

And he says, I don't consider myself to be the best and I don't like compliments.

His whole thing is like, I just want to play

Obviously I want to make money, but if I can just play the guitar as a living for the rest of my life, I will be happy.

But we see an insight into his mindset when he's playing gigs for 35 cents and 3 hamburgers, belief comes before ability.

Not people, non-founder mentalities, people that maybe have a hard time understanding how entrepreneurs think, they think it's a reverse.

They think you're able to do something and then you have, now you believe you can do it because you just proved you

There is no reason on earth that Jimmy believed what he's about to tell us he believed when he's playing gigs for 35 cents and 3 hamburgers.

I had very strange feelings that I was here for something and I was going to get a chance to be heard.

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#280 Jimi Hendrix: His Own Story