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Hey Joe – Where You Going With That Gun In Your Hand?

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C-G-D-A-E

Those are the chords to Hey Joe. Along with House Of The Rising Sun it’s one of those simple songs that nearly every budding guitarist learns how to play very early in the uphill struggle to rock stardom.

Perhaps the most famous version of Hey Joe is by Jimi Hendrix. It was Jimi’s very first single, recorded as a slow, lazy ballad in late 1966 not long after he arrived in London. But the song has a long and illustrious history going back much further than Hendrix.

It’s thought that Hey Joe was written in 1962 by Billy Roberts, an obscure California-based folk singer, but even that is shrouded in uncertainty.

The Leaves, The Standells, The Surfaris, Love, The Music Machine, and The Byrds all recorded versions before Jimi and the song became an LA garage band standard, in much the same way as Louie, Louie had before it.

The song became so ubiquitous around LA, usually in fast-paced, speeded-up form that perhaps inevitably, Frank Zappa lampooned it as Flower Punk a track from the Mothers’ 1967 album We’re Only In It For The Money. It’s thought that Frank based Flower Punk on The Leaves version of Hey Joe. Ironically the bass player with The Leaves, Jim Pons, would later join The Mothers, via the Turtles.

The Leaves recorded what is thought to be the first commercial recording of the song in 1965, but then re-recorded it in 1966 and that’s the recording which became the first hit version (still with me?)

The lyrics of Hey Joe tell a grim and, in the world of pop music, unlikely tale. The titular Joe picks up his gun and sets off to kill his girlfriend because he “caught her messin’ ’round with another man”. All of which results in a date with the hangman, of course. Strangely this sad and violent scenario doesn’t seem to raise nearly as much ire among the PC brigade today as, say, the Fabs’ song Run For Your Life does, but there you are.

There are thought to be 1800 different versions of Hey Joe, let’s hear yours.

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Comments

    • I must have encountered that Soft Cell album a thousand times over the years but have never played it. I really enjoyed that electronic minimalist take on Hey Joe. I imagine that’s how Devo might have tackled it.

        • So much to love in that clip. Jimi’s effortless cool and his playing behind the head and with his teeth. The outfits, including Mitch’s outrageous frilly shirt. They’ve all got afros there, so that must be well into 1967. And best of all the shell-shocked expressions on the impassive faces of the crowd,

          • Damn Johnny, I must have been born old but even the 12-year-old me hated those tricks. It was a distraction from his greatness, he didn’t need to play with his teeth (!!!) but then again, I suppose it got him plenty of TV appearances.

            “just sayin'” 🙂

            • I often wonder if Jimi really did play with his teeth or he was just simulating it to give the impression of, er, a spot of the well known Irish airline. After all, putting your teeth in violent contact with those metal strings night after night would soon result in dental disaster.
              But I take your point and would only add that Jimi was picking up where T-Bone Walker left off. He did all that stuff in the 40s and 50s. It was just a part of black showmanship which floored all the white guitarists when Jimi arrived in London. He didn’t have/need to do it, but we see Prince carrying on the tradition even now.

                • I really hope this doesn’t sound too immodest but, yes, I must have seen Hendrix live a dozen times.

                  From the early mismatched package tour with Engelbert, Cat Stevens and the Walker Bros, through all those Sunday nights at the Saville Theatre concerts, to the final UK appearance at the IOW 1970. Plus a few odd shows in-between.

                  And on September 18, 1970 I was living not half a mile from the apartment/hotel where Jimi died.

                    • I saw him once, at the old Marquee. Don’t remember much at all, including the “support acts” Pink Floyd and (I am told) the Move.

                      He didn’t play with his teeth, just his fretting hand. Looked good though. It was a trick he stole from somebody else.

                    • We always suspected that the amp was so loud giving the guitar so much “gain” that playing with his fretting hand alone was enough to produce the full sound

    • Nice to see they used Jimi’s ascending bass line at 2:46.

      It’s a good ethereal version, but modern production always confuses me. We have the drums and backing vocals louder than everything else there, including the guitar which seems to be off down the corridor in another room.

  5. My first thought was “Wilson Pickett!”, but then I thought I could think an even better thought so I thought “Roy Buchanan!” (as achingly Afterword an artist as you could name, I would have thought, but he rarely gets a mention on here for some reason ), but finally I thought “There must be a Wrecking Crew one out there”, and of course there is:

    • The intro takes up exactly 2 mins of a 4.30 song there. Beautifully played as you hinted AND they throw in an extra chord at the end of each verse.

      That was from Realization, Johnny’s 1968 psychedelic album. It was his biggest seller, too reaching #5 in the US album charts.

    • Yes Archie you are right, a classic Afterword artist at least for the old school rock dog fret wank blues rock clique (flashes membership card) and you should have posted a clip. Such a clean piercing sound, tragic end hanging himself in a police cell arrested fore drunkenness. If he could have found and retained a good singer things might have been different.

  9. Did you ever read the story of Billy Roberts? He wrote Hey Joe in 1962, posted it in a letter to himself and kept it unsealed to help register its copyright. Three years later, Dino Valente of Quicksilver Messenger Service was claiming it as his own. That’s when Crosby would have heard it. Tim Rose claimed it was a traditional song.

    Wikipedia says this about its origins:

    “Roberts possibly drew inspiration for “Hey Joe” from three earlier works: his girlfriend Niela Miller’s 1955 song “Baby, Please Don’t Go To Town”[4] (which uses a similar chord progression based on the circle of fifths);[11] Carl Smith’s 1953 US country hit “Hey Joe!” (written by Boudleaux Bryant), which shared the title and the “questioning” format;[14] and the early 20th century traditional ballad “Little Sadie”, which tells of a man on the run after he has shot his wife.[15] The lyrics to “Little Sadie” often locate the events in Thomasville, North Carolina, and “down in” Jericho, South Carolina (a large rice plantation in the lowlands)[16][17] Roberts was himself born in South Carolina.”

    Posting it to himself saved Billy a fortune. He also owes a debt to Crosby for ‘selling’ his song so effectively.

  16. I suppose the Beatles Run For Your Life is thought different because it’s from the singer’s perspective rather than via a third party which is then conflated with the knowledge of the nasty side of Lennon’s personality but then they probably don’t know the line ‘I’d rather see you dead, little girl, Than to be with another man.’ is lifted directly from Elvis’s Baby Let’s Play House. Neil’s Down By The River must have been inspired by Hey Joe one would think but is first person, yet surely everyone accepts it’s not autobiographical.

  18. Well, thanks for the link to the 1800 versions. Have scanned it and the only ones I needed and were unfamiliar with are duly noted. I didn’t feel I needed a million poor garage bands and skimpy live phone clips of the great and good performing it as a medley or some such.
    This was/is, however, rather good.

  19. Here’s Clarence Ashley doing Little Sadie in (I think) 1930. This is the song that supposedly inspired Hey Joe. This is another much-covered song with countless versions in the country/bluegrass world as well as versions by Bob Dylan on Self Portrait and the Grateful Dead

  23. I checked in my CD listings and I have around 30 versions of Hey Joe.

    However, around 20 of them are by Hendrix. Of the rest only four haven’t been mentioned: Gary Moore (we can guess what that sounds like), Body Count (on a Hendrix tribute album), Carl Smith (a different song entirely from the c&w world) and this one, from 1966 the modtastic Creation:

  25. In my book on Bert Jansch there’s a long footnote on ‘Hey Joe’. I’d interviewed Bert’s guitar mentor, Len Partridge – a towering figure in guitar playing circles in late 50s/early 60s Edinburgh, who never recorded commercially. Bert had said previously that he’s played Hey Joe in the early 60s and when Jimi’s version came out, wondered where he’d got it from. Bert’s had come from Len. Len – absolutely not a man given to self-promotion – explained that Billy Roberts had spent a few weeks in Edinburgh circa 1959 [this is from memory – check out the book for accurate info] and Len helped him with a few words or lines of this song he was writing at the time. Len – a gentleman – was adamant in saying it was totally Billy’s song and he couldn’t recall which lines he’d come up with. If it were Mike Love, it would still be in the courts, wouldn’t it?

  29. I have a version from -67 by some Swedish band called (The) Lee Kings which is notable for the singer’s way of pronouncing the “e” in Joe (“Hey Jo-eh”…)
    Unfortunately it’s not on YouTube.
    Apart from that odd style choice it’s pretty much a faithful Hendrix cover.

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