Icon: Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix stands at the apex of 20th century guitarists, atop the pyramid of a hundred-year span in which that simple stringed instrument became the defining sound tool of several musical generations. In one left-handed upside-down human, all the innovations and genres that the guitar helped engender came together in a solo career that lasted, surprisingly, less than half a decade. He bridged blues, folk, rock and jazz; acoustic filigree and electric feedback; showmanship, sprawling technique, and a sense of the illimitable future.
More, he further blurred the boundaries of racial divide, much as Elvis and Chuck Berry had done in the 1950s, the vice-versa that initially melded the form of rock and roll from its disparate streams of country boogie and rhythm and blues. Even 40 years after his death, there is no one who encompasses and exemplifies the music’s inclusive and expansive possibilities as Hendrix, who could make a guitar moan and sing and talk in tongues with such sensual abandon, and whose legacy continues to amaze and inspire.
The Wind Cries Jimi
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Chas Chandler, bassist of the Animals, "discovered" Jimi playing Greenwich Village clubs in the summer of 1966. His skill and theatrics, honed by cutting his teeth in the road bands of R&B acts like Little Richard and the Isley Brothers, gave him an instantaneous visceral appeal - a fact that I can attest to, a teenager watching him awestruck from the front row of the Cafe au Go Go during a "Blues Bash" in late August of that year. Hendrix, then going under the name of Jimmy James, had stopped by from his regular gig at the Cafe Wha to jam with John Hammond Jr. He picked the guitar with his teeth, he played it behind his neck, he poured sounds out of it that I'd never heard before.
more »But Chandler, bringing him to England in September, was wise enough to realize that guitar playing alone wouldn't be enough to set Jimi apart from the six-string slingers then populating the hit charts. He dotted his "I", helping him find a band that matched his explosive energy - drummer Mitch Mitchell had a jazzy skittering style that danced around the beat, while guitarist-turned-bassist Noel Redding held down the rhythm (not unlike the Who's sense of power trio with Keith Moon and John Entwistle) - and allowed Hendrix' sense of outrageous fashion to run wild in London's avant-clothes shops. More, he encouraged him to write songs and sing, a pop slant that, over the fall and winter, following chart success with a slowed version of "Hey Joe," took shape within the songcraft of his debut album.
To say Are You Experienced? is a classic is to overlook how assured and innovative it remains, a sonic landscape - shaped by engineer Eddie Kramer - that plunged deep into the mind-expansion of the psychedelic revolution then gathering speed (not to mention psilocybin), a dream universe in which the music entered the realm of free association and surreal lyrical juxtaposition, all enhanced by riffs and guitar figures that pulled these flights of interstellar fancy down to the solid earth of rock and roll. The album radiated raw sexual energy and - released in a year that saw the music attain its most outre limits - raised the hallucinogenic whammy bar.
The first 11 cuts on this edition of Hendrix' introductory bow comprise the track listing of the album as released in America shortly after Jimi's show-stopping appearance at the Monterey Pop festival in June of 1967. It contains milestone tracks like "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary" that had been left off the English edition as they were singles (a common practice then), adds in bonus b-sides like "Stone Free" and "Highway Chile," and restores his blues excursion on "Red House," recorded at the same time and discarded from the original issue. A magnificent debut, one that made Hendrix a certified superstar by the time he celebrated his first "Blues Bash" anniversary, much to my prescient delight.
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In the midst of the whirlwind surrounding him, Hendrix was required to make another album in 1967, and if Axis: Bold As Love seems somewhat mercurial when compared with the no-holds-barred of Experienced, it reflects both his expanded interest in the possibilities of the recording studio and his own growing confidence as an artist. "Little Wing," with its melodic statement and stateliness, is Jimi reaching back into sweet-voiced Impressionistic r&b singers (especially Curtis Mayfield) and letting his guitar speak for itself, all the more remarkable for its vulnerability.
more »The album's science fictional bent is enhanced by an opening spaced and third-stoned dialogue between Hendrix and Mitchell discussing extraterrestrial encounters as the tape slows and quickens and darts between speakers like those moving train stereo demonstration records from the 1950s. He lets his freak flag fly in the topsy-turvy of "If 6 Was 9," and conveys eternal truths in "Castles Made of Sand." Traces of southern funk appear in "Little Miss Lover," "Wait Until Tomorrow," and "Ain't No Telling," harbingers of some of the more rhythmic grooves Hendrix would pursue as he began exploring and returning to his roots. The title cut, graced by a beautifully sung Jimi poetry-in-motion, is an exquisite manifesto of purpose, and when the phased guitar begins its final coda of whoosh and warp, the axe-is truly asked.
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This "double-album" (when such things were divided into four sides) is a masterwork despite the chaotic conditions under which it was made. Finally finished in August of 1968, it would break apart the Experience - a frustrated Noel Redding would jump ship for a solo career, and Chas Chandler would leave Hendrix to his own studio devices - even as it opened Hendrix to the possibilities of following his muse through many musicians and settings.
more »Jimi set up camp in the Record Plant on W. 44th St. in New York, around the corner from Steve Paul's club The Scene, which had become the watering hole of choice for at-liberty rockers; and combining business with pleasure, invited the party into his creative lair. The album that resulted contains late-night jams (especially you-are-there in the afterhours feel of "Voodoo Chile"); solid urban rockers ("Crosstown Traffic," "Gypsy Eyes"); ever more tributaries of the Mayfield songbook ("Have You Ever Been...," which in turn would influence Curtis when he went Superfly); and songs that could only be genre'd as now-you-see-it now-you-don't Hendrixiana: "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" and "House Burning Down" (the latter his response to the turmoil following Martin Luther King's assassination). All this and the majestic Dylan turnabout of "All Along the Watchtower."
But it is within the liquid currents of the epic that covers side 4, Jimi's longest aural journey, "1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)," that his imagination - along with Mitchell's intuitive and telepathic drumming - was finally gifted the wavelengths to dive beyond the verse-chorus boundaries of pop music and swim unencumbered in a boundless sea. Jimi waded into his phantasmagoric and engulfing stream of consciousness "not to die but be reborn," a phrase that would return to haunt his muse only a too-short two years later.
I Live Today
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Hendrix closed the legendary festival early on Monday morning, and his version of the "Star Spangled Banner," witnessed by the bedraggled survivors of this epochal '60s tribal gathering, contained all the exalted contradictions, battered idealisms, and elegiac wish fulfillments of a tumultuous and divisive decade. At this moment in time, Jimi himself seemed caught on the horns of the '60s urge for confrontation, a black man in a white world, an entertainer who too often felt confined by a role he was forced to play, that indeed, he had helped invent. Did the audience come to hear him play music, or the caricature of a wild man guitar arsonist? The band he brought to Woodstock was a work-in-progress. Hendrix was not overtly political, but he aspired to be multi-cultural, and Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, the moniker of this hastily assembled "big band" (the Experience had played its last show only a month and a half before, though Mitchell remained behind the drum kit) reflected his quest to broaden his music. He brought in a pair of percussionists, called upon an old Army buddy, Billy Cox, to play bass, and added a second guitarist, Larry Lee, whom he had met back on the R&B circuit.
more »Under-rehearsed and still getting to know each other, the band hardly gelled at Woodstock, and Hendrix apologized throughout the set for their ragged edges. Listening to the complete performance, however, one can feel Jimi refusing to give in, grabbing the music by the scruff of his guitar neck and whirlwinding it. "Lover Man" accelerates into the familiar bash of "Foxy Lady," "Izabella" - one of the only new songs that seemed to have a unified band feel - soars, and the overwhelming return-return of "Voodoo Child" shows Hendrix had lost none of his hellbent ability to stick pins in his massive talent, dragging it kicking and screaming through any frustrations he might have felt in his presentation, channeled through his single-coil pickups and amplified to ever larger-than-life. More, Jimi's between-songs chatter is up close and personal, an audio verite of the devil's-deal crossroads not only in store for the counterculture (see Altamont) but his own looming hoped-for and still cloudy future. And now, please stand for our National Anthem...
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As a scuffling artist, Jimi was vulnerable to signing any contract that might come his way, a promiscuous pen that would haunt him when a short stint with Curtis Knight and the Squires in late 1965 brought a proprietary lawsuit from that band's producer, Ed Chalpin. The terms of the settlement were harsh, and by the end of 1969, Hendrix owed an unforeseen album to Capitol Records.
more »With the Woodstock aggregation dissolved, and Mitch Mitchell back in England, Buddy Miles stepped into the drummer slot, joining Billy Cox on bass. The newly-christened Band of Gypsys set up a New Year's gig at the Fillmore and over four shows in two nights, gave Hendrix a rock-solid foundation on which to explore the fret board. Miles had a different feel than Mitchell, straight ahead and heavy on the bass drum, and there is a reliable empathy between Cox and Jimi. This compilation is a considerable expansion on the released album, and with the exception of Buddy's vocal turn on "Changes," most of the action is a Hendrix solo-fest, with two versions of "Machine Gun" - one on the last eve of the '60s, the other on the first night of the '70s - framing an "Auld Lang Syne" that would prove ever more poignant as the fateful year began.
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If Jimi had his way, he would've spent the spring of 1970 closeted away in his newly built Electric Lady Studios working on the many songs he was assembling for his fourth album. But the construction of his recording haven was direly over budget, and Hendrix' manager, Mike Jeffery, needed to keep cash flowing. Along with sending him out on the road for short bursts, a film was conceived to document Jimi's shows in Berkeley's Community Theatre at the end of May. Mitch Mitchell had returned to the fold, Billy Cox was held over from the Band of Gypsys, and the performances were stellar. Parts of the early show have appeared randomly on albums like In The West (a ferocious "Johnny B. Goode"), but this assemblage places you in the front row of a late-show-is-the-great-show. The group is relaxed, loose-limbed, Jimi testing out new material ("New Rising Sun") and launching into gravity-defying flights on "Stone Free" and "I Don't Live Today." Close enough to hear the buzz from the amplifiers, the scrape of the guitar neck against the microphone stand, each overtone and harmonic as they pour out of a musician at the height of his powers.
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Jimi's last recorded performance takes on a hindsight that shadows whatever he might have played on August 30, 1970. Accompanied by Mitchell and Cox, he puts on a workmanlike show that hits peaks and valleys and tries its best to struggle against the deplorable festival conditions. At times, as in "Machine Gun," he seems almost desperate to wring new sounds out of his guitar, mashing and bending notes as the tubes in his amplifier crackle, distort, begin to arc and short. "We're having little difficulties here and there," he admits to the crowd, "but if you can hold on a little bit I think we can all get it together. 'Cause I'm gonna stay here all night until somebody moves."
more »The tour continued through Scandinavia and Germany, until, dispirited, Hendrix returned to England. And then the night was over.
I Don’t Live Today
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The promised dawn never came for Jimi Hendrix, who died on the verge of completing a double-album intended to be a true follow-up to Electric Ladyland. He left behind countless reels of tape in the studio he had built on W. 8th Street in New York, with some songs completed, others sketched, and the conceptual framework of a work of art never fully realized. Following his death, like children sent to different families after being orphaned, they were split for contractual reasons between three posthumous releases; now, under the guidance of his closest studio collaborator, engineer Eddie Kramer, they have been reunited in a work that, if still unknowable in its final form, at least represents the body of compositions that Hendrix was attempting to pull together in the months before his demise.
more »On August 26, 1970, he came up the stairs of Electric Lady, on his way to Europe after a party to celebrate the studio's opening. There he encountered a shy girl named Patti Smith, who hadn't yet gathered the courage to go inside. "I'm shy, too," he admitted, and in their brief conversing, he told her that he was working on a music that would prove a universal language, beyond race or nationality.
The irony is that Hendrix was that Esperanto lingual, and if First Rays sounds less like some cosmic breakthrough and more like top-shelf Jimi, then all praise be to the Creator. He had worked incessantly in Electric Lady, glad to get away from business pressures to follow his muse, and the concentration bolstered his confidence even as having his own studio gave him time to experiment, layer, revise and superstructure. More, with Mitch Mitchell back in the fold, and Billy Cox spending long hours in Jimi's apartment helping him to concretize ideas, songs and fragments continued to mount up. It was a fecund time, and the album reveals a joy in the making of music and Jimi's considerable and ever-restless talent.
In the face of such a cornucopia of inheritance, it seems beside-the-point to single out individual tracks. This is a complete album - no filler, thank you - but I would be remiss in not pointing out the heart-breaking and celestial "Angel," the overlaid multi-guitars of "Night Bird Flying," the lunge-and-parry of "Stepping Stone," the flange-fest that is "Ezy Rider," "Drifting"'s ethereal floating beauty, and the pre-Sabbath metal riffing of "In From The Storm." "My Friend" is Hendrix' all-too-true sideways glance at "Everybody Must Get Stoned;" "Dolly Dagger" is his whetstone tribute to girlfriend Devon Wilson; "Belly Button Window" was inspired by Mitchell's impending baby. Birth, rebirth, amidst the spectre of death. Sun arise.
Greatest of the Great
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An early overview of the Hendrix oeuvre as it looked from the vantage point of 1969, Smash Hits concentrates mainly on Jimi's first album, skips Axis completely, adds a couple from Electric Ladyland, and makes room for the (then) first American release of "Stone Free," "Can You See Me" and "Red House" (albeit a different take then the one on the English edition of Are You Experienced, which had omitted the Experience's hit singles, and thus provided the rationale for Smash Hits' UK release in the first place). If all this is discographically confusing, no matter. This Hendrix redux is a perfect introduction to his uncanny artistry and - despite his reputation as a guitarist's guitarist - his ability to craft pop singles of infectious and memorable hookiness. If they weren't all top 40 "smash hits" when first released, they surely are now.
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"Best" usually signifies a value judgment, but here it is undeniable: a better compilation of Jimi's genius could not be compiled from the four major studio albums that comprise his canon. Covering all the genuflecting stations of Jimi's cross from breathtaking first to awestruck last, adding in his hand-over-heart Woodstock rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner," one can only behold with wonder the boundless talent he packed into his comet-like streak across the musical heavens. That his impact is at once so accessible, with little need of explanation or context, and so fraught with emotion, even as it grazes the stratospheres of sound, brings home its transformational magic beyond time and space, the have-you-ever-been that lets you know He Has.
Facets of the Diamond
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Depending on perspective, Jimi's music can be approached from any number of directions, but the twelve bars that comprise the Blues are the most direct. "Blues is my backbone," he once famously said, adding that though "easy to play, you've got to know much more than the technicalities of notes. You've got to know sounds and what sound goes between the notes."
more »Musicians like the blues because it gives a simple and repetitive chordal framework, complete with anticipations and resolves, providing a common ground for improvisation. Following the I-IV-V progression through its implied intricacies allows limitless interpretational possibilities, and Hendrix, who absorbed Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed and Elmore James through his father's record collection, was quick to apply their guitar and vocal styles to his apprenticeship.
Blues captures him indulging his affection for the classic blues, working out on the acoustic 12-string guitar ("Hear My Train A Comin') and full electric (a great live version from the Berkeley Community Theater in May, 1970), revisiting classics like Albert King's "Born Under A Bad Sign," Muddy's "Mannish Boy," and Elmore's "Bleeding Heart," along with a host of impromptu jams that reveal the depth of the blues in his soul and the wellsprings of American song.
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A study in process, this fascinating collection gathers Jimi in mid-thought, working on demos, utilizing jam sessions and the ubiquitous tape recorder (remember those?) as a laboratory to develop and expand his compositional growth. The assembled tracks show a musician ever questing for perfection, the right overdub or rhythmic feel, the spatial positioning between paired speakers, the song realized.
more »Here are his first attempts at "Little Wing," "All Along The Watchtower," and "Angel"; a studio version of his live barnstormer "Here He Come (Lover Man)"; off-the-cuff improvisations ("Pali Gap") and intriguing covers (Dylan's "Drifter's Escape"). Hendrix with horns? "South Saturn Delta" pairs him with a section in spring of 1968 that gives a hint as to what might have transpired had Jimi ever gotten a chance to trade fours with the jazz community. "The Stars That Play With Magic Sam's Dice" is Jimi putting the masculine in mescaline with his effects pedals. "Power of Soul" is from the only sessions to feature Band of Gypsys, with Buddy Miles holding down the funky butt. And perhaps most poignant of all is "Midnight Lightning," just Jimi with his guitar and voice and tapping foot, caught in a storm, "see it flashing all around me." All alone.
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The alternate universe contained in this Pandora's box set, comprising "previously unreleased" and "outtake" and "live," is a four-disc immersion into Hendrixiana that should thrill any aficionado who desires to see Jimi in all his behind-the-scenes glory. From the opening "Purple Haze," not yet accessorized by speeded guitar parts and brought to completion, to the two selections (including "Hey Joe") taken from one of Jimi's earliest live shows at the Olympic Theater in Paris in October of 1966, to the mysterious "Take 3" from the Are You Experienced sessions, a basic track that never found its way to being a song, to the starship repartee that cosmic rays "Third Stone From the Sun," complete with headphone bleed...and that's just a sampling from disc one. This is not where one should start with Jimi's alchemy, but it surely expands our sense of him as a being, human or otherwise. Of special note is a live version of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (yes!) from Sweden in 1967, as well as a rambunctious studio jam of "Gloria" (disc two); yet another unbelievable live "Red House," from San Diego in 1969 (disc three); and later that same week (!), a rip-roaring "Johnny B. Goode" from Berkeley that tells the tale of rock and roll guitar from the inside out (disc four). A marvel of archeology.
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Well, let's be honest here. Noel Redding's position in rock history is cemented by virtue of having been the bass player for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. But the fact is that he was not actually a bass player, but a converted guitar player who was hired, at least in part, because Jimi liked his hair! By the time of Electric Ladyland, Redding was feeling creatively frustrated in the group, which basically led to the breakup of the Experience. He did, however, get two of his songs recorded by the Experience: "She's So Fine" on Axis: Bold As Love and "Little Miss Strange" on Electric Ladyland. Both are pleasant enough little tunes, but they do pale in comparison to Hendrix's songwriting abilities. Redding's later bands, Fat Mattress and the Noel Redding Band, were commercial duds with little to recommend them. So The Experience Sessions has been offered up by Experience Hendrix to fill out Noel's legacy. Unfortunately, there isn't really much to fill out. When you take out the live version of "Red House" by the Experience and the two cuts each of "She's So Fine" and "Little Miss Strange" (the album version and an alternate for both), you're left with only seven tracks, and two of those are alternates of the same tune. "There Ain't Nothing Wrong" has been available for years in bootleg circles, the difference here being cleaner sound and a vocal track that had never been heard because Noel cut the vocals for it in 1988! The best tunes here are nice psychedelic pop ditties much like "Little Miss Strange": "Walking Through the Garden," "Dream," and "Little, Little Girl," all of which demonstrate the fact that Noel Redding was not a particularly gifted lyricist. There are some nice touches, like the phased vocals on "Little, Little Girl" or Jimi's bass playing on "Dream," but they aren't especially remarkable. "How Can I Live" sounds unfinished, lacking a bass track, and "Noel's Tune" is a pretty loose jam, redeemed only by Jimi's soloing. The alternate version doesn't even have Hendrix, and suffers in comparison. The alternate take of "She's So Fine" is quite interesting stripped of both the lead and backing vocals, but the alternate of "Little Miss Strange" is rendered pretty uninteresting by removing all the stuff Jimi added, primarily the guitar leads. The live version of "Red House" from 1968 is nice, featuring Noel on rhythm guitar instead of bass, but again, does little to enhance Redding's legacy. Basically, any interest here is in these little-known performances of Jimi Hendrix, who plays guitar and/or bass on eight of the 12 tracks and percussion on one more. There are no major revelations, and it's pretty apparent that Noel Redding is not the great unsung hero of rock who was overshadowed by his flamboyant bandmate. The Experience Sessions may not do much to enhance Noel Redding's place in the rock & roll pantheon, but there are enough interesting moments courtesy of Jimi that Hendrix collectors will probably be satisfied.
