In the early 60’s, Jimi Hendrix and I shared a cell waiting for bail. Jimi was in for a pot violation — back then, a couple seeds and stems could get you a weekend vacation in county.
Me? Same old story. Mopery. They never could define it, but the charge stuck to me like feathers in tar. Every time I asked the arresting officer what mopery actually was, he just shrugged and said, “Son, you know what you did.”
Jimi kept strumming air chords on an imaginary guitar, telling me one day he’d set his Stratocaster on fire in front of the whole world. I told him I’d been on fire plenty of times — usually unintentionally — and the audience was mostly fire marshals.
When the guard finally came to the bars with the bail slip, Jimi walked out free and I stayed behind, sentenced to another lecture on the dangers of mopery. I think he wrote a song about it, but the label made him change the title.