The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1969 Performance That Earned Them a BBC Ban — Video
The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing at BBC TV center for 'Happening For LuLu' in 1969
In January 1969, the producers of Lulu’s BBC TV show booked the Jimi Hendrix Experience with the idea of Hendrix singing a duet with the pop star.
On the night of the show, the band were scheduled to perform two songs, one from their latest record Electric Ladyland, and later in the show, they were to do their first U.K. hit, “Hey Joe”, with Lulu expecting to join the band to finish up the last verse. However, Jimi had something else in mind. When after playing about two minutes of “Hey Joe”, Hendrix stopped and announced;
“We’d like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to Cream, regardless of what kind of mood they may be in, and dedicate this to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce”.
The Experience then broke into the cream classic, “Sunshine of Your Love”, with the studio director apparently signalling for Hendrix to stop as the continued regardless. Unrepentant, Hendrix was told he would never work at the BBC again.
Check out the video clip below, to see the band’s unruly final live appearance at the BBC.
https://dailymotion.com/video/xu6fyo
Forgotten Guitar 
i find it interesting that he called one of his songs rubbish. Hey Joe was a successful song for him
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That’s because he was in a publishing feud w/ the writer of the lyrics, Billy Roberts.
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He must be referring to either, keeping the song to 3 minute length. or being required to play it with pop star, Lulu.
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Sounds to me like Hendrix was frustrated his guitar was out of tune and decided enough of that.
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Hey Joe wasn’t one of Jimi’s songs. It was a cover of a song that was originally written and performed by Billy Roberts. By 1969 The Experience had played it thousands of times and was not representative of where they were creatively as a band. I love Jimi’s version of Hey Joe, but I totally understand where he was coming from!
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Geddy Lee from Rush on bass. Who knew? 🙂
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I think he had an equipment failure. The tuner on his low E, or the low E string became partially unwound. Hey Joe uses the low E string alot, that’s why he switched to Sunshine of your love, he could play it all on the higher strings, I’m all sure of this. He may also have had some power issues on his FX, fuzz pedals, or amp. So multiple issues, that’s why he did it.
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Jimi did that because on this day or the day before that he found out that Cream was breaking up and he played sunshine of your love honoring them
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Awesome!
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