Where Are They Now? - Mitch Mitchell

When Jimi Hendrix ignited his guitar and the public imagination at Monterey in 1967, Mitch Mitchell provided the drum rolls. For a couple of years Mitchell's reputation grew with that of the Jimi Hendrix Experience; then Hendrix went on to form the Band of Gypsys, and the English drummer was left on his own. Today Mitchell's career has come full circle, with a twist: he's mainly playing Hendrix songs again, but his new group is named after the one he wasn't in — it's called the Band of Gypsies. He was drafted this spring to replace the Gypsys' original drummer, Buddy Miles, who had to leave the reconstituted group to serve a prison term.

''When I first heard about the project, I thought, well, what's past is past,'' Mitchell says. But then a friend took him to see the band, which features guitarist and Hendrix imitator Randy Hansen (who played on the Apocalypse Now soundtrack) and bassist Tony Saunders. ''The crowd really seemed to like it, whatever I thought.'' Now that he's a Gypsy, Mitchell is philosophical: ''A good song is a good song. And the way we play it now may not sound the way it did twenty years ago.''

Mitchell himself is hardly stuck in the past. After Hendrix' death he went on to play with such luminaries as Jack Bruce and Muddy Waters. He got so busy gigging that in 1975 he said, '''Wait a minute!' I'd been on the road for fifteen years by that time. I had a four-year-old daughter I wasn't seeing, a house I hadn't lived in.'' He spent the mid-Seventies in Jamaica, recharging. Then it was back to Sussex, England, and studio work. Between sessions Mitchell has played on advertising jingles.

Work brought Mitchell to the town he calls ''Hollyweird'' a year and a half ago. He has plans to move ''beyond just rock & roll,'' in a collaboration with jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette. And he does not indulge in nostalgia. ''Woodstock?'' he snorts. ''It was a muddy field. A piece of shit. 'Love, peace, or I'll break your arm' — it's got nothing to do with good music at all.''

[From Issue 456 — September 12, 1985]