Why Randy Hansen Lets His Fans Air Guitar On Stage

When he first put a band together that would pay tribute to Jimi Hendrix, Randy Hansen stresses it was "a big oddity". "I was in a '50s rock band that did a comedy show back then and the leader of the band wanted to add another show. He wanted to make fun of rockstars and he asked me who I would like to make fun of in this show. And I said, 'Well I don't want to make fun of 'em, I wanna to do it seriously. I would like to do Jimi Hendrix'. And that was the beginning of it, right there."

When asked what made him pick up a guitar in the first place, Hansen muses, "You know what? I started in the weirdest way of anybody that I know of… My father died when I was ten years old. Um, about two weeks after that I went to finally go visit a friend of mine; I decided to come out of the house, you know? And I went to visit this friend of mine and his father played the guitar. And when I knocked on the door his father answered the door, he looked at me and he grabbed me by my shirt… hauled me into the house and threw me in a chair. And then he went and he pointed at me and says, 'Stay right there'. He went into the next room and he grabbed a guitar, and he brought it to me, put it in my lap, and he started showing me how to play, immediately, without even asking me. And he kept doing that every time I went to visit, to the point where I started visiting just so he would give me a lesson. And I got hooked on it."

"His father answered the door, he looked at me and he grabbed me by my shirt… hauled me into the house and threw me in a chair."

Hansen reflects, "It ended up being the best thing anyone could've done for me, really". "Every time I see his sons, I tell 'em how I owe a huge debt of gratitude to their father," Hansen adds.

Another fortuitous presence in Hansen's life was Floyd Rose (inventor of the revolutionary vibrato arm): "Floyd was my sound man and I have the first one of those things," The guitarist considers. "And then my first is that I got to be the first rock tribute band in the world. I mean, it's not a well-known fact or anything but I kind of try to honk my horn whenever I can about that."

Of the "sacred cows" in Hendrix's legacy, what song is the most requested? Hansen chuckles, "They're always yelling 'Voodoo Child'! I go, 'Come on, wait for it,' you know? There's ones that I'd probably get beat to death if I didn't play them [laughs]."

On whether audience members cut sick on the air guitar at these shows, Hansen confirms, "This has happened within the last two or three gigs. I started bringing people up onto the stage and taking the guitars that I'm not using and… I'll just strap a few guitars on a few people and let 'em air-guitar their way through Purple Haze.

"The last guy he was, like, acting like he was playing with his teeth and everything. He hit his fingers so hard on my guitar there was blood all over one of my guitars! And he had nothing but a big smile when he handed it back to me," he guffaws.