The Sound of Fear Breaking

The First Guitar

You know what it was like, right? That moment when you held a guitar for the first time — the wood warm in your hands, the strings unfamiliar but promising. I remember mine. It was a ukulele, actually, strung together from a broomstick and some fishing line. I was a kid in Seattle, probably no older than ten, and I made it myself because we couldn’t afford anything real. I used to sit on the porch and pluck out notes, pretending I was someone else — someone with a name that mattered. But fear was already there, in the background, like a bad chord someone forgot to mute. I didn’t know then that fear could sound like silence, or that silence could be the loudest thing in the room.

The Draft Notice

I got the letter in '66. Vietnam. I remember the paper felt heavier than it should have. I’d already been playing with the Isley Brothers, then with Little Richard — I was getting somewhere, I could feel it. But Uncle Sam didn’t care about that. He just saw a Black man with long hair and a guitar and figured he owed something. I didn’t want to go. Not because I was afraid of dying — I was scared of what war would do to the music in me. And when I got there, in the army, I saw fear everywhere. In the eyes of the men, in the way they talked, in the way they laughed too loud. I knew then that fear wasn’t always about death. Sometimes it was about losing the part of yourself that makes noise.

Monterey

People always talk about Monterey like it was magic. And it was — in a way. Setting my guitar on fire? That wasn’t planned. I just got up there, and I felt this energy, like the whole world was watching. But what they don’t tell you is that before I lit the strings, I almost walked off the stage. I was scared. Not of the crowd — there were hundreds of thousands — but of being seen. Of being real. I had this image, this sound, this thing that was mine, and I was terrified someone would say it didn’t belong. But when I burned that Strat, I wasn’t just making a show — I was burning the fear that told me I couldn’t. And when people clapped, when they felt it, I realized fear doesn’t own you unless you let it speak for you.

The Noise in the Room

I used to chase sound like it was something I could catch. At the studio, I’d make the engineers stay late. I’d play the same riff fifty times, just trying to get it right. But the truth is, fear never really left. Even when I was on stage, in front of thousands, I still felt it. Not in the same way — not like the army, not like the silence of that porch — but like a whisper in the back of my mind. It told me I’d never be enough. That I’d never be understood. That I was too loud, too strange, too much. But I learned to play with it. I’d turn it up until it became part of the music. I’d let it scream through the amps. And somehow, in that noise, I found peace. Not because the fear went away, but because I made it part of the song.

To the Boy on the Porch

If I could talk to the boy who made that broomstick guitar, I’d tell him this: fear isn’t your enemy. It’s your amplifier. It makes everything louder — the doubts, the dreams, the questions. But it’s up to you what you play through it. Don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait for someone to say you’re ready. The world will try to tell you how to sound, how to look, how to be. But music — real music — comes from somewhere deeper. From the parts of you that hurt, that ache, that burn. So let it burn. Let it scream. Let it be yours.

Talk to Jimi Hendrix on HoloDream and ask him how he learned to play with fear — and what music taught him about being free.