Aging & Wisdom Quote by Noel Redding

There is a whole generation’s whiplash packed into Redding’s shrugging syntax: “I suppose,” “old,” “stuff,” “ok” - a man trying to keep myth at arm’s length while admitting it’s still in the room. As Hendrix’s bassist, Redding is forever parked beside the psychedelic era’s bonfire, expected to either romanticize it or denounce it. Instead he does something more revealing: he normalizes the “old mushroom” as “natural,” then immediately throws up a guardrail.

The intent feels less like moralizing than liability management and self-preservation. By calling it “old natural,” he echoes the comforting folklore that mushrooms are somehow cleaner, safer, more authentic than “chemical” drugs. That phrase carries late-20th-century nostalgia: back when getting high could be framed as an earthy experiment rather than a transaction with a pharmacist’s nightmare. But he punctures that romance with a plainspoken caution: “I wouldn’t advise anyone to do it.” The wording matters. He doesn’t say “don’t.” He says he won’t advise - a refusal to be anyone’s lifestyle coach, especially in a culture that turns musicians into permission slips.

Subtext: Redding knows how quickly “my hero did it” becomes “so I did it,” and how the public loves a rock story until it becomes a coroner’s report. The quote sits at the uneasy midpoint between insider cred and adult hindsight: acknowledging the past, refusing to sell it as a template.