Foxy Lady

["Jim Sigel" <drjimmy_mrjim@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I heard Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" on my way home from the second 12 hour
shift in two days, so my mind wandered easily.  Kudos to the squirrel that got
out of the way of my car in time...

I've heard several times here that Foxy Lady is about Roger Daltrey's wife,
Heather.  It was Heather, wasn't it?  Anyway, it would be cool if someone who
knows more about this could tell the story.  But since I don't know the
"legend" of Hendrix's lust for Mrs. Daltrey, I wondered just how *real* the
song is.

The opening verses of FL are:

"You know you are a sweet little heartbreaker...oh foxy..."  (Okay, that's
pretty straightforward; Jimi thinks she's hot.)

"And you know you are a sweet little lovemaker...oooh foxy..."  (It's THIS
line that led to my fatigued curiosity about the song.  How does Jimi know if
she's a sweet little "lovemaker"???  Do you think the suave Mr. Hendrix
actually bedded the flattered Mrs. Daltrey???)

I can see multiple scenarios where it's quite possible that Jimi could've
nailed Roger's wife.  London being such a mecca of the "in crowd" at the time
Jimi wrote Foxy Lady, it's a gimmie that he'd met her, and on many occasions
I'm sure.  And if he's smitten enough to write a song about her, it's easy to
imagine that he made his lust for her known to her.  Jimi was King of the Hill
at the time, and as the old saying goes, he got more ass than a toilet seat
from groupies, admirers, whatever.  It's also easy to imagine Heather having
the hots for Jimi in return...  So I wondered as I continued to listed to the
song.

I came to the conclusion, hearing the rest of the song and getting a feel for
what Hendrix was saying, that Jimi and Heather did not have an illicit affair
behind Roger's back.  To me, the song is definitely a statement of *yearning*
for something he couldn't get, not a celebration of his conquest of another
man's wife.  So I wondered even more, after the song had finished and the DJ
played something else I don't remember, why Jimi wrote the song at all.  And
that was easy to figure out; songwriters don't write nearly as many songs
about affairs and on-nighters as they write about the "ones that got away".

I was further convinced that Jimi never dared make a move on Heather for
another very simple reason - survival (Yes, since Hendrix O.D.'d, I get the
irony.).  I think Jimi released his burning desire for Mrs. Daltrey in song
instead in the flesh because I believe that Hendrix KNEW, if Roger found out -
Jimi was dead.  Fear of getting his ass handed to him by Roger Daltrey is why
Jimi Hendrix wrote Foxy Lady.  Remember, Roger was probably the baddest cat in
the jungle among that crowd, and everyone knew his reputation from the old
school.  Hendrix had to have known that Daltrey kicked a lot of ass in his
time.

Yep, a bit of unofficial rock and roll folklore - Foxy Lady was written out of
the fear of a Roger Daltrey beating.

I told you I work a lot of hours, didn't I?  Now I must go work on Scene 2 of
next week's "The Young and the Restless".

Jim in Colorado

Oh and hey Lela, welcome back...