Creativity Quote by Jimmy Carl Black

There is a whole postwar music economy tucked inside this offhand line: England as the place where American counterculture got validated, polished, and sold back to America with better lighting and louder amps. Jimmy Carl Black isn’t praising Hendrix so much as sketching the social circuitry of the late 60s scene, when “big in England” functioned like a passport stamp. It signals a moment when British audiences and press could crown an American artist before the U.S. industry fully understood what it had.

The casual “We all became good friends” does a lot of work. It flattens mythology into logistics: tours, bills, clubs, shared managers, long nights, the proximity that turns icons into coworkers. The subtext is that greatness, in this world, isn’t just talent; it’s also geography and timing, who you’re stuck in vans with, who you see backstage three nights in a row. Friendship becomes a credential, but it’s delivered with a working musician’s shrug rather than name-drop swagger.

The emotional punch lands in the last clause: “I am still in touch with Noel Redding.” Hendrix is the headline, yet Black anchors the memory in the bassist - the human-scale relationship that survived after the star burned out. It’s a quiet rebuttal to rock history’s tendency to freeze people at their peak and discard the supporting cast. Staying in touch reads like an ethic: amid the churn of fame and tragedy, some bonds stayed ordinary, ongoing, real.