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[ Music ] >> Randy Hansen has been channeling Jimi Hendrix since the '70s, a fixture in Northwest club scene but also taking his Hendrix impersonation around the world.

Now at 67, he's still going, and slowly getting back on stage, as the live music scene tries to recover after COVID.

Randy Hansen is next on Northwest Now.

[ Music ] There are tribute bands touring all across the world.

Some are recognized for their musical virtuosity, some not so much.

Randy Hansen is an accomplished guitar player in his own right who has played with a lot of big names and released his own albums.

But Hansen hits his stride impersonating and really more like channeling Jimi Hendrix.

Just saying Hansen is an impersonator or plays in a cover band or a tribute band doesn't really seem like enough when you consider the experience he delivers.

He's one of the few acts approved by the Hendrix family, and has been doing this for 47 years, since he was in his early 20s.

Randy, thanks so much for coming to Northwest Now.

Great to have you here.

>> Thank you, it's my pleasure.

>> And I have to tell you, for the people who aren't here during the pre-shows, you're warming up and getting going, even that was awesome to listen to.

>> Oh, thank you.

>> Tell me about the first time you saw Jimi Hendrix in concert.

That must've made one heck of an impression.

>> Yeah.

My mom dropped me and my brother and a friend off at Sick's Stadium, and we watched the last show that Jimi did in Seattle, which would've been my last chance to see him live.

And yeah, I saw him that day along with about four other bands, I think, Cactus and even Junior Cadillac from Seattle played there that day.

And his show was incredible that day.

I mean, and from what I hear, he wasn't in the best of moods that day, for various reasons.

But I guess he didn't enjoy playing his hometown, because the phone would ring off the hook.

He'd stay in a hotel, he wouldn't even go home.

Because the phone would ring off the hook, people trying to get in.

>> That's interesting that that was the experience, because a lot of time in your hometown, you're just Jimi.

Nobody thinks you're a star, you're just Jimi, man, we know you.

>> Right.

>> Don't be going there.

So that's interesting that he had a different experience.

>> Well, yeah.

And I don't blame him either.

I mean, you know, because like I'll play a lot of clubs around Seattle and everything, but if I play the Paramount, the same thing happens to me.

Everybody I know wants in.

And I'm going like, if I let you in, I've got to let everybody in.

So I'm sorry, you know, I can do that unless you're family or something, you know.

>> When did you really start getting serious and saying, this is something I can do; I have an affinity for this music, it speaks to me, and I'm going to do this?

>> Well, it happened in stages, because I just gravitated towards Jimi's music, because I was already playing the guitar.

And I thought the Ventures was as far as a guitar was going, and then I heard Jimi.

And so I kind of abandoned everything else for a while and started focusing in on that music, because I really wanted to know how he's doing much of it, you know.

And so I quit school, my senior year I stayed home listening mostly to records of Hendrix but other people too.

And I learned a lot, did most of my woodshedding then.

And so I didn't really have an opportunity to do it until I joined this -- my mother threatened me with rent, so I joined a '50s comedy group, called Kid Chrysler and the Cruisers.

It was a '50s comedy show.

And they wanted to add another show making fun of rock stars.

I said, well, I don't -- they asked me who I wanted to make fun of, I said, well, I don't want to make fun of him but I'd like to do Jimi Hendrix, and I'd like to do it seriously.

And that part of the show ended up getting so popular that they kicked me out of the band, and then the rest of the band decided they wanted to go with me.

So basically the leader of that band fired himself kind of, Gary McKinney.

And it was his idea really that got everything going.

And then the next thing I know, I'm playing like in one tiny little room up in Kent, called Peter Guys.

And that's where Roger Fisher showed up to see me from Heart, and then another time Rat Scalers in the U district.

Then the whole band came to see me out in Everett at the Great American.

And then they offered to take me on tour with them.

>> I know you could sit here and talk about people you've played with and who know for a long time.

>> I was really privileged.

I got passed around the music business, and it was really fun.

>> Quick side note, though -- because I think this is kind of a little piece of trivia people may not know -- in 1979, you actually participated in the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now, right?

>> Yeah.

I got to live at Francis's house for a month and live with the Coppola's, you know, every morning have breakfast and dinner with them you know.

Had lunch in the studio every day.

God, I could just -- I could write a book about just that experience.

>> I'll bet.

>> It was like really incredible.

>> Good.

>> But yeah, I really lucked out with that.

They saw an ad in the paper.

And he was at a point in the movie where he didn't want to spend a lot of money.

So they were asking too much for real Hendrix sounds.

And he wanted sounds that nobody had heard before.

And so he asked me if I could sound like Hendrix and do -- just sound like him, without doing anything that he did.

>> Right.

>> Yeah, that's kind of what I studied.

And so I didn't know who he was when he asked all these questions.

I had no idea who Francis Ford Coppola was.

And so I thought it was a little tiny movie that I was interviewing for.

>> Yeah, little did you know.

Let's listen to a cut.

This is Axis: Bold as Love.

[ Music ] So one of the questions I have for you is, where do you end and Jimi begin?

Is there a channeling relationship going on here?

>> Well, you know, the way I bound so close to him was the lyrics, when I studied his lyrics and everything and I realized what he was saying in a lot of things.

My father died when I was 10.

And I didn't really have a rudder or guiding force in my life, you know, other than, you know, teachers at school.

And, you know, adult guidance kind of went out the window after my dad died in this car crash.

So when I started realizing what Jimi was about, I really I felt like this guy I can learn from.

I can learn not only guitar but I can learn some moral values and I can just learn what he thought was important in life.

>> You have a sense of responsibility in you to his memory and his music.

I mean, you must really hold that.

>> Right, you know.

The guy was, you know, he was more than just a musician.

He was like a force to young people, who -- I don't think that many people really studied him as closely as I did, because of missing my father, and then just the joy of learning anything from him, you know.

Learning the lyrics, learning how to play and sing it, and then I found that my voice lent itself to it.

>> Yeah.

>> All kinds of stuff.

I even looked in the mirror and said, man, you even look a little like him, you know.

>> Yeah.

And that's a question.

Have you ever had any pushback about, you know, the thing now, appropriation, and, you know, hey, this is somebody else's property?

What's your relationship with the family and how do you handle that pushback about, hey, you know, don't be stepping on Jimi's stuff here?

>> Yeah.

Well, like anybody who says that I ripped off Jimi has got a point.

Because if I didn't, then who did, you know?

I totally I tried to get as much of his playing style as I could.

Because I thought, this is more than just a playing style, this is really a genre that he's created, you know.

What he does with the guitar is something that nobody else had really done before.

So it opened up a whole new page in music and everything.

And that's what genres do, you know, that's what hip-hop or whatever it is, whatever people are following, you know.

Jimi created such a genre that a lot of guitar players decided, I'm going to try to play kind of like that.

I'm going to turn the guitar up and I'm going to try to get feedback and maybe even do some tricks, you know.

>> You went all the way right along with them.

>> Yeah.

I really wanted as much of it as I could get, you know, because I really missed the guy, you know, and it was traumatic.

It was like losing my father again when he died.

And it was just too hard for me.

And I thought -- and my first thought when I heard that he died is that, no more songs, somebody's got to salvage this stuff.

>> Let's listen now to Castles in the Sand.

[ Music ] Randy, COVID put a dent in the live music scene.

What was the impact of COVID on you and your career?

And are things starting to take off again?

>> Well, the first impact was that I got to stay home for a while.

I mean, most of the time, I'm being yanked out.

I didn't really get to spend any -- like I couldn't have a pet or anything, you know, because I have to leave to go to Europe, you know, every once in a while.

And so staying home was a new thing.

I haven't stayed home this long since I was a teenager.

And so that was the first thing.

The other thing was, I started holding mini-concerts in my backyard.

I built a stage in my backyard and a seating area.

And we did some shows there, because there was nothing else to play for a while.

>> Yeah.

>> And luckily, you know, I had saved up enough money to kind of get by, you know, and not completely lose all my savings, you know.

But I'm a real spendthrift, you know.

So I really, you know, a lot of my stage clothes -- people go, why did you get all those stage clothes?

I go, most of them are from the Goodwill, you know.

And they're usually stuff that people got for Christmas, they go, I can't wear that, you know.

>> Well, you're getting ready to head back to Germany, so I'm sure the bank account will get a little infusion here.

>> Yeah.

>> Here soon.

>> It'll be appreciated.

>> Yeah.

You are 67 years old now.

And in a lot of our minds, Jimi Hendrix is forever young.

He's a young man.

So do you try to project what Jimi would have been like as he got older, or do you try to go all the way back to square one and simply portray that?

How do you manage that?

>> Well, it depends on the night, you know.

Some nights I feel like doing more to make myself probably look younger and everything.

I was dyeing my hair for many years.

Because my hair started going gray, so I started dyeing it.

And then, you know, lately, I've just gone like, well, you know, I'm 67, I don't know how many years I have left on this planet, you know, maybe -- I'm aiming for 100.

I want to be the oldest guitar player you've ever seen in your life who can still do some crazy things on a guitar.

>> And not only on the guitar, but Jimi had a pretty physical act too.

How have you coped with that with jumping on the stage and a lot of physical dynamics of his performance?

>> I tried to step that up.

I tried to do, and I'm still doing, more physicality things than Jimi did.

I run at the stage and jump and then do it's called a Fosbury flop really.

But it looks like a flip that I'm doing.

People say I flip onto the stage.

But I run at the stage, jump in the air, let the stage hit my legs, which starts me rolling, and then I roll and stand up.

So it looks like a flip.

But I've been doing that ever since the beginning.

There's a lot of things that I used to do that I don't do now.

There's a thing called a kip, where you roll on your back with feet in the air and then kick yourself to a standing position.

I learned how to do that while holding onto my guitar.

Normally, you have to push off with your hands to do this trick, you know.

But I worked on it and worked on it until I had it.

But I stopped doing it quite a while ago, because I dislocated my knee, and it really hurt.

>> I'll bet you did.

How is 2022 looking with hopefully the live music scene coming back and you're touring?

Just lay out some highlights of what's coming up here in the next year for you.

>> Well, we're going to reinstate Germany and Europe and everything and get all that going again.

There's a lot of tradeshows, things, you know, that I normally would do, it's called the NAMM shows (National Association of Music Merchants).

And they do another one in Texas.

We did that last year.

Might do that again this year, it just depends on if -- it depends on the rules of Europe whether I'll actually be able to go over there.

Because of just the rules, I might not qualify.

It depends on what happens by the end of April.

>> Okay.

>> So but yeah, everything is livening up again it seems like.

>> Yeah.

>> And it's about time.

>> And you're in it for the long haul.

You're going to go until you can't go anymore, basically?

>> Oh, yeah, yeah.

I hope I keel over on the stage, you know, when I'm 100 years old, you know, day after my birthday.

>> All right.

Good stuff.

Randy, thanks so much for coming to Northwest Now.

I'm going to have you play us out now with Voodoo Child.

>> All right.

[ Music ] Those of us growing up in Western Washington in the '70s and '80s remember at least hearing about Randy Hansen and his concerts, as they were promoted on the radio.

The bottom line, my thanks to Randy for coming to Northwest Now.

It was great to actually meet him.

And I hope you enjoyed it too.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

To watch this program again or to share it with others, Northwest Now can be found on the web at KBTC.org.

And be sure to follow us on Twitter at Northwest Now.

Thanks for taking a closer look on this edition of Northwest Now.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson, thanks for watching.

[ Music ]