Hendrix had insisted on closing Woodstock, and as a result, took the stage at 9 o’clock Monday morning to a fraction of the festival’s estimated 500,000 fans—and virtually no media. It was only when the Oscar-winning documentary, Woodstock, came out a year later that Hendrix’s performance gained currency. Perhaps the press had written off his rendition as having limited appeal—much the way it ignored Lady Gaga’s performance at the New York City’s Gay Pride Parade in 2013, after she replaced the closing line “home of the free” with “home of the gay.”

Ferris points out that Hendrix may have been given a pass by the mainstream press, but not by the conservative American public. “He played [his version of the anthem] a lot, live. He actually got in trouble in Texas. Five thugs showed up outside his dressing room and said, ‘Nobody who plays the national anthem like that will live in Texas.’ He emerged unscathed. But he was ex-Army, and he insisted that his version was not disrespectful to the country.”

Of Hendrix’s Woodstock version, Clague says, “Fans understood that he wasn’t laying a blistering critique of the country on them. Musically, he played the entire song in a proper and respectful way. Where he goes crazy is with his psychedelic improvisation. After the phrase ‘the rockets red glare’ he [adds] this big extension, which is war; and I hear the phrase ‘the bombs bursting in air’ affiliated with race rioting in America. These are illustrations of the text, rather than insults to the text. For me, [his rendition] expresses both love of country and frustration with the country.”