Pee Wee Herman

Pee-wee Herman is back in a big way – his stage production of The Pee-wee Herman Show is about to open on Broadway. In support of the opening, actor Paul Reubens recently participated in The Guest DJ Project radio show on KCRW in Los Angeles.

When asked to pick the five songs that have inspired him throughout his life, Reubens went with Jimi Hendrix’s “Stone Free” as his #1 and had this to say about Hendrix: “I think most people who heard Jimi Hendrix for the first time had a religious experience – as did I. I had never heard anything like this. This song, besides the beat of it, and just the drive of it, this was the piece of music that made me feel like anything was possible. This piece of music defines genre, invention…and you can draw just a straight line from Jimi Hendrix to almost everybody else who matters in music now, in my opinion. I mean, there is certainly no Prince without Jimi, there's certainly no…150 billion people without him.”

For Pee-wee completists, Reubens’ top five were:

1. Jimi Hendrix, “Stone Free”
2. The Rolling Stones, “Monkey Man”
3. Stevie Wonder, “Love Having You Around”
4. Michael Jackson, “Don’t Stop ’Til You get Enough”
5. Chaka Khan, “I Feel For You”