Jimi got his first guitar when he was sixteen. He told his dad about a deal for a secondhand acoustic guitar for five dollars and his dad agreed to buy it from him. From that day forward, Jimi and the guitar were inseparable entities. A year later, he bought Jimi an electric guitar. While Jimi was a lefty, both of these guitars bought by his father were righty guitars. Jimi therefore learned to play with the neck upside-down. In the summer of 1961, Hendrix enlisted in the army; however the young man could not stay away from his music and soon formed small bands on the side of his army duties. One of the men in his small army band, Billy Cox, became Jimi’s bassist in the Gypsies after Noel Redding left The Jimi Hendrix experience. In 1962, Jimi left the army, realizing that it simply did not mesh with his personality type.
Jimi continued to play back up guitar for many bands and was on his guitar as often as possible. Jimi "expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before to create new sounds through both his technical ability and his creative genius. When recording his lyric parts in the studio, Jimi would do so using an acoustic at all times to keep himself focused, grounded and centered. Therefore, even when listening to only the vocal tracks of the album, one can hear the mesmerizing sound of the Hendrix guitar in the background. No matter how wild Jimi's life would become, he held one thing steady throughout and that was his guitar. At a point, Jimi became at one with his instrument and it was as if the music simply poured out of this heart and soul with the help of his five stringed tool. This was stated by a critic for the British music magazine Melody Maker who said, "he had great stage presence and looked at times as if he was playing with no hands at all". Jimi Hendrix did not introduce his music saying "I'm Jimi Hendrix and this is music", but rather would say, "I am music".
