My guys and me love Jimi Hendrix, but for different reasons. They love his mental freedom and the way he was able to transcend the world in a way that messed with time. I love the fact that he could meld electronics and space together and make it sound like it came from the dirt. I’ve already touched on this in a previous post, but on this one I thought I’d list a random selection of reasons why he was more than just an uber-guitarist. He was a man out of time that killed fashion and shredded showbiz. He defines words like “rock”, “cool”, “psychedelic” and “freak”, but he was also none of these. He defied labels. He knew a label was trap. He wanted to be a gypsy and his desire for freedom eventually killed him. Or rather, the world killed him because it couldn’t contain him.
My own experience of the Jimi effect came in a land a long time ago, when goths were treading the boards pretending they ruled the cool. I was chilling in a room at a party when a couple of gothic wannabe posers came in and acted like they owned it. They viewed everyone with smug contempt then sat down, scanning the room for hip artefacts they could connect themselves to, when their eyes landed on a poster of Jimi up on the wall. It was a good poster. Jimi in full flight at a concert wearing his nineteenth century military waistcoat, his guitar upside down in his left hand, eyes closed, mind elsewhere. The goths stared at it for while, taking it in. They looked impressed and asked their host “who is the left handed guitarist up there?” I thought they were taking the piss, but no, they had no idea who Jimi Hendrix was. But they knew he was something special. Something they couldn’t classify into cool or not cool. Something that represented a lot of familiar things but in a way that’s unfamiliar.
I have the same problem trying to define him, so I don’t bother. I relate to what he represents instead. He represented the freedom rock stood for. He blew away all the bullshit inherent in human society – religion, politics, race, culture. He was a primal force that linked us back to a time when the rhythms of the earth defined our lives and gods were elemental forces that could could be conquered through the power of soul. He was also a lot of fun. Bob Marley is the only other musician who has the same presence, but where Bob represents the bonds that make the people, Jimi represents the people that make the bonds.
Presented below is a baker’s dozen of Jimi moments that define his intangible power. They are listed in no particular order and are purely personal to me. There are 100s of other moments that could be put up and they would still resonate in some way. I haven’t bothered putting in links to most as you all know what to do and there are likely to be multiple sources for most anyway.
1. The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice. Let’s start with the greatest B-side ever recorded. In the world of recorded music there is nothing else like this. Maybe Funkadelic’s “Wars of Armageddon” is a close relative, but it lacks the fire and intensity of this. The title is one of those barely concealed 60’s references to acid (Laughing Sams’s Dice = LSD, geddit?) and it sounds like it had a part to play - but no amount of acid could induce the combined humour and abandon of this track. From the second he starts soloing you are on a wild ride. Intensity, feedback, backward tracking, it’s all chucked in. The only trouble with it is that it has a thin sound as it’s likely to have been done on a 4-track tape (!). That aside this is pure 60’s madness that will never be repeated. Ever. The kiss off “I hope you’re enjoying your ride, I am!” pretty much says it all.
2. Gloria. Taking it one step further is a studio outtake that manages to even beat Laughing Sam. Gloria was the Them track that pretty much every garage band in the 60s cut as a single (either that or Louie Louie). Here Jimi does his own take on it, out-garaging every garage band in the land. The rhythm track sounds like something an R’n’B inspired punk band like Slaughter and the Dogs or The Saints would have produced with dirty bass and nasty guitar sound. Over the top of that Jimi ad-libs a ribald tale of sex and drugs that has the whole band as the butt of the joke. This is no Top of the Pops material (eg “I said hey girl what’s your name?, she said it don’t make no difference anyway” “I said Hey Gloria, get off my chest”). But what clinches this track as defining rock’n’roll is some of the most searing guitar playing ever caught on tape. It outdoes Laughing Sam because he crams the intensity of that track into half the number of bars then lets his band mates take solos to finish it off. Eight minutes later you are left exhausted but happy. Like a good shagging. Which is what rock’n’roll is all about.
3. Monterey 1967. Probably a bit obvious, but you can’t ignore it. This is the gig that exploded Jimi onto the international stage. Loaded on coke and grass he is having a ball and blows the audience away with the intensity of “Can you see me?” and “Rock me baby” before ending the show with his fiery guitar sacrifice at the end of “Wild thing”. Watch the movie and check the audience reactions. The flip side of this gig was that it cemented his label as the ‘wild man of pop’ in the press - something he would have to work hard to shake for the rest of his short life. It also took him far away from his roots into the white dominated hippie culture, something that impacted negatively on his later work when he self-consciously tried to win back an african-american audience.
4. Hush Now. This is a single recorded when he was a side man for low rent R’n’B star Curtis Knight in 1966, but released in 1967 when Jimi had already left for England. Pre-fame and anonymous, the wah-wah guitar throughout this is all Jimi. He was the one person who pioneered the effect to the fullest extent and at times he makes it sound like a human voice doing backing vocals. Incredible and utterly alien for the time. No wonder it wasn’t a hit.
5. LA Forum, 26/4/1969. This gig exists as a soundboard quality bootleg and captures one of the wildest shows of his career. The audience is worked up so much that there is a near riot going on at the end with stage invasions and police threatening to pull the plug. Noel Redding is at his grumpiest while Jimi is coolly detached, gently admonishing the crowd while slyly taking their side. Just before the last jam on Voodoo Chile he plucks his guitar to make it say “fuck you motherfucker, fuck you too” in response to police threats to stop the show. Worth the price of admission alone.
6. Red House. His most famous blues track, if only for the closing lines “If my baby don’t love me no more, I know her sister will”. The version recorded on the UK release of “Are You Experienced?” is so funky it’s like a dance track. It wasn’t included on the US release because the Reprise label decided Americans don’t buy blues. As a sly jibe to them the UK release includes a trail off conversation between Jimi and the studio engineer. Jimi: “How was that?”. Engineer: “Yeah that’s cute that one. You should put that on an album”.
7. Are You Experienced? Jimi’s first album is so beyond mere classic status it’s almost criminal. There is only one average track on it,“Remember”, and even that would cut it against any other R’n’B track released in the 60s. In amongst this company the title track manages to stand out as something utterly unique. Well actually that and “Third Stone from the Sun”, but that’s another list. “Are you experienced?” features a drum track played backwards to produce a ghostly shuffling beat and a guitar solo also backwards tracked to mind-melting effect. Jimi’s party trick with the solo was that he learned to play it live in a way that matched the backwards track on the LP. The best recorded live version was captured on 10 October 1968 at Winterland, available on the Jimi Hendrix Concerts LP.
8. Oakland Coliseum 27/4/1969. This is an audience recording but is high quality and quite amazing for the time. Recorded the day after the LA Forum show, this is another incredible gig. The year 1969 was Jimi at his peak and he seemed to be on a roll on this tour. No riot this time, but the highlight comes at the end when he does a 15 minute encore jam on Voodoo Chile with Jack Cassidy from the Jefferson Airplane joining on bass. One of Jimi’s few failings musically was that he underused his bass players. They were told to stay deep in the pocket so he had a reference point when he needed to get back into the song. He didn’t syncopate the bass with the guitar to build a groove, or allow the bass to drive the changes. That is rectified in this jam as Cassidy takes the lead in places and sets up some playful interplay with Jimi’s barely controlled soloing. Awesome. The reactions of the guys nearest the tape deck say it all. One extra bonus – one of the bootleg versions of this concert has a photo taken from the crowd showing the thin blue line of police lined up along the front of the stage, keeping an eye on the crowd. All except one are white and are dutifully staring ahead. The lone african-american cop is looking over his shoulder. He’s watching Jimi play instead.
9. Hear My Train a’Comin’. His best blues track. Never recorded on a commercial release in his lifetime, it’s never-the-less one of the high points of his live shows during 1968-69. Lyrically it sounds like a classic delta blues track, but it has a deep groove that could only come from the late sixties. The “Film about Jimi Hendrix” released by Warner Brothers in 1973 has a solo version of the song performed by Jimi in a TV studio, played on an acoustic 12 string guitar. It’s the only time he was filmed playing unplugged and is mesmerisingly good. By way of contrast, the encore version he plays during his three night stand at Winterland from 10-12 October 1968 is loud, deep and funky. It’s also found on the Jimi Hendrix Concerts LP. When he gets through the story of loss, despondency and revenge to the line “if you make love to me one more time little girl, I might even give a piece to you” the hairs invariably stand up on the back of my neck.
10. Drivin’ South. This is an instrumental track released on BBC Sessions. It’s Jimi at play, running through a kaleidoscope of blues styles at break neck speed. The drumming from Mitch Mitchell as always matches Jimi’s skills, but on this he is almost the star as he drives the changes with funky-as breaks. As the liner notes state: guaranteed to get you a speeding ticket.
11. Lulu Show, 1969. This was recorded on live TV just before the BBC six o’clock news. Jimi obviously missed the memo as he first of all stops playing “Hey Joe” and launches into an instrumental tribute to Cream, who had just broken up. As he jams on “Sunshine of your love” the producers wonder what to do. The news can’t wait for this wild haired guitar freak can it? Jimi relishes the confusion and keeps going, leaving poor little Lulu wide eyed and gobsmacked. Mitch and Noel just keep their heads down and ride it out with quiet smiles on their faces, having seen it all already with Jimi by then.
12. Stockholm 9/1/1969 2nd Show. The first show played at the Stockholm Concert Hall that day was a weird live practice session with no real highlights. The band hadn’t played together for weeks and it shows. The second show was a different shade of blond altogether. The opening track is “I don’t live today”, which usually appeared much later in the set. It’s a heavy track to open with and it must have left the audience wondering what they were in for. After lots of improvising during the freak-out section, Jimi enters the closing jam on a mission. He hits an escalating scale of sustains near the end that build in tension and intensity before releasing it in a myriad screed of notes at the highest end of the fret board. Anyone in the crowd on acid would have felt like their head was about to explode at this point. He ends on a whammy bar effect that would have made them feel like they were sinking into the ground. Brutal. Other worldly. He then goes into a pulverising version of “Spanish castle magic” to really finish them off. This gig also features some of his most lateral between song comments, dedicating “Spanish castle magic” to the “little band of gypsies of there in the amen section”, before apologising that the show might be a bit loud. This isn’t entertainment, it’s a primal experience.
13. Rainbow Bridge. This is a documentary movie and cash-in LP from Jimi’s 1970 concert on the island of Maui in Hawai’i. The music is forgettable and badly recorded for a commercial album, but the doco is unintentionally hilarious. It’s full of period pseudo-guru crap with commune living hippies spouting shit about stuff they don’t understand, but which will ultimately get them laid. Free love in full cynical action. Just when you can’t stand it any more, Jimi arrives and sits down in the corner getting quietly pissed on beer. Once he’s settled in he sets about mercilessly taking the piss out of the pseuds, whilst unsubtly hitting on the female host of the documentary. His blunt honesty is like someone opening a window to let out the cabbage smoke. The concert itself is okay, but by this stage of his career it’s clear he is only just keeping the evil influences of half-baked counter culture, murder politics, race war and money men at bay. Within months it would all be over.
And that’s it. I haven’t even mentioned Woodstock as that was a musical low point despite the whole “Star spangled banner” Vietnam protest and his subsequent Dick Cavett interview in which he described it as “beautiful”, or other random tidbits like how he lost the original master tape for “If six was nine” at a party because he got so loaded he forget he had it with him. It’s safe to say there will never be anyone like him again.
I play a little bit of guitar but I won’t be using this post to plug it. I have a go and play what I feel, and that’s what I learnt from listening to Jimi. Our releases are listed top right anyway, as you no doubt know by now.
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