Jimi Hendrix's 1967 Hit Was Allegedly Inspired By This Comfort Food

True artists draw inspiration from all areas of their lived experience, though it is a rare thing for a true masterpiece to be attributable to something so simple as food. In the case of "The Wind Cries Mary," however, a track from Jimi Hendrix's 1967 album "Are You Experienced," the case can be made that its origin lies in a dish of mashed potatoes — albeit somewhat indirectly.

As the story goes, Hendrix got into an argument with his then-girlfried Kathy Etchingham over a dinner she was preparing for them. As Etchingham recalled in an interview with the BBC, "He comes along and tastes them with a fork and says they're all lumpy." Feeling an understandable hurt as the only one of the two who cooked, this disapproval apparently ignited a dispute that only built in intensity. "It ended with my screaming and shouting," she remembers, "throwing the plates on the floor and marching out."

Etchingham did not return that night, but when she came back the next morning, Hendrix had something to show her. By way of apology for his comments about what he saw as a mistake with the mashed potatoes, he shared the lyrics to "The Wind Cries Mary." One verse in particular seems to fit the moment and the regret that Hendrix might have been feeling in the home alone that night:

"A broom is drearily sweeping / Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life / Somewhere a queen is weeping / Somewhere a king has no wife / And the wind, it cries 'Mary.'" The song peaked at No.6 in the U.K., while not charting on the Billboard Hot 100 in the States at all. However, it was listed in 2011 among Rolling Stone's 500 greatest songs of all time.

Clearly, in any scenario, it was not actually the mashed potatoes that inspired the melancholy words of this classic song, but rather the tumultuous relationship that the two shared. Even if Etchingham knew all of the tricks for how to prevent lumpy mashed potatoes, the song likely would have found a different inciting event. Given that the couple lived in London, perhaps instead it would have been an underseasoned crock of mushy peas or a runny gravy in need of thickening that kicked off an argument ending in a painful rupture and broken dishes. But there may be more to this story.

Mary was a name that Hendrix sometimes used for Etchingham. It is her middle name, and apparently, in practice, he would use it primarily to get a rise out of her. But there is another Mary in Hendrix's romantic history, and it may be the case that she was equally important to inspiring those famous lyrics. Mary Washington was Hendrix's girlfriend back in Seattle, before he moved across the pond. According to "Jimi Hendrix: The Stories Behind Every Song," at least some of the lines in the song — "Somewhere a Queen is weeping, Somewhere a King has no wife" — actually came from a poem that he had written and shared with her back in the States.

For his part, Hendrix maintained that it was not a single event that inspired the lyrics to "The Wind Cries Mary," but rather an amalgamation of feelings he had about two important Marys in his life. His relationships with these two women were certainly all that could've created such a powerful and melancholy rock ballad, but it could still be said that lumpy mashed potatoes were what pushed the song to the finish line.