Is Jimi Hendrix still the future of the electric guitar?
By Neil McCormick
January 22nd, 2010
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Jimi Hendrix,
the greatest ever exponent of the art of the electric guitar. Death
hasn't exactly kept him quiet: eternally enshrined at 27 years old,
Hendrix has a posthumous output to rival many of his still living
contemporaries, with over forty studio and live albums to add to the
three he produced before he shuffled off this mortal coil.
And still they keep coming, with the slightly creepy news this week
that Hendrix will be releasing a brand new studio album in March.
Where do they dig this stuff up? Is there an Afghan wearing,
afro-sporting zombie, the actual voodoo child, chained up in a
basement studio somewhere, endlessly twiddling away?
'Valleys Of Neptune' (out in March) has 12 tracks, sixty minutes of
music, mainly recorded by Hendrix and The Experience (bassist Noel
Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell) over four months in 1969, with
the guitarist exploring new musical avenues in the wake of his (last)
double album, 'Electric Ladyland'. These are the turbulent sessions
that led to Hendrix breaking the group up and briefly forming the
Band Of Gypsies (with whom he released one live album). Some of this
material has previously been available in dubious versions of poor
sound quality on illegal bootlegs, but it presumably took the death
of the last surviving member of The Experience (Mitchell passed away
in 2008), a lot of contractual wrangling and technological
improvements in audio mastering to get it to a stage where anyone but
an obsessive collector would want to hear it.
Sonically spruced up and sympathetically edited, what you get is an
album of jazzy psychedelic experimentation. Hendrix was going
through his Miles Davis phase, trying to create a rock guitar
equivalent of 'Sketches Of Spain'. It is probably not for the faint
of heart, yet there are at least three tracks where it really comes
into focus, studio versions of Elmore James 'Bleeding Heart' and
Cream's 'Sunshine Of Your Love' and the seven minute title track, a
psychedelic funk epic. It all points in directions Hendrix would
attempt to explore more fully on what should have been his next
album, posthumously assembled as 'First Rays Of The New Rising Sun'.
The fact that there is anything left worth hearing at all is a
testament to Hendrix's extraordinary creativity. In just four years
as a recording artist, the man burned as brightly as any musical
genius ever. Every time he played, every time he went into a studio,
sparks would fly, sparks that have lit the path of every electric
guitarist to follow. Hendrix once dryly noted "I've been imitated so
well, I've heard people copy my mistakes." In the forty years since
his death, those mistakes have mutated into whole genres, while
Hendrix still reliably tops every poll of the greatest guitarists
ever. It's a strange notion. The electric guitar has been the key
instrument of rock and pop culture for nearly six decades, yet its
greatest exponent has been dead for most of that time.
I have been wondering lately what is the future of the electric
guitar, and indeed whether it even has one? If you were to listen to
a collection of the best selling singles of recent years, the guitar
is noticeable by its absence. When it comes to pop music, its all
about synths and electronically treated sound, so even where there is
a guitar, its not necessarily recognisable, or the featured
instrument. Guitar based rock is still capable of filling arenas and
stadiums but if a generation is growing up with their ears attuned to
a different sonic palette, is the electric guitar in danger of
becoming an inherently retro instrument, only of appeal to the converted?
Then last week I saw Delphic, a Manchester band forging a techno rock
hybrid, a kind of epic, post-rave 21st century psychedelia. Delphic
look like trainee accountants and sound like computer programmers, a
bleeping, pulsing, shimmering, digital dream. Their ranks include
geeky guitar prodigy Matt Cocksedge, making sounds I never thought I
would hear emerge from a Rickenbacker. Yet he still occasionally
looks up from his array of space-age effects to let rip with a
soaring, screaming solo that inspires his young audience to raise
their arms in dazed surrender. It's a long way from Hendrix but you
can still see the join. Maybe there's life in the electric guitar yet.
--
3 Posthumous Hendrix Classics
Angel (from First Rays Of The New Rising Sun released 1997)
Slow jam of beautiful chords and evocative voicings.
Pali Gap (from Rainbow Bridge released 1971)
Groovy instrumental with long, lovely focussed solo
Like A Rolling Stone (from Jimi Plays Monterey released 1986)
Loping, muscular version of the Dylan classic.
--------
Bragging rights, fond memories from 1968 Hendrix concert
http://www.theunion.com/article/20100121/OPINION/100129963/1056%26parentprofile=1056
Dave Moller
January 21, 2010
Whenever I get together with a bunch of Baby Boomers and the talk
turns to music, things inevitably move to who we saw in the heyday.
Some people saw the Beatles, but couldn't hear them for the screaming
in the stadiums. Others fondly remember Jefferson Airplane, The Band,
Santana, the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin.
The first major concert I remember was in 1968, when I saw Cream,
featuring a young Eric Clapton. I saw the Rolling Stones in 1972,
with a guy opening for them who wasn't even on the bill Stevie Wonder.
Somewhere in there, I also saw Janis Joplin in a free concert at a
park in St. Louis, my old hometown. I can still see her wild mane of
hair flowing as she wailed and played percussion hand instruments
with a frenzy.
I've seen Steely Dan and The Who in recent years, but when I really
want to bring down the house during one of those nostalgic,
old-hippie discussions, I utter this simple statement:
"I saw Jimi Hendrix."
That usually is followed by a collective hush of those gathered, who
remember Hendrix as a streaking comet compared to all the others, who
merely circled the globe.
Much of Hendrix's time was spent in England, and he died there in
1970 after only a few tours in the United States. He simply wasn't
around that long, and coupled with his incredible sound, people want
to know what it was like, so I will tell you.
I rode to the Nov. 3, 1968, concert in St. Louis with my friend Cat
Man in his Austin-Healy 3000 convertible, listening to the
underground radio station on the way down incredible fun on any
occasion. We arrived and sat in our 10th-row seats, having paid top
dollar: $5.50.
A funky, one-hit wonder band opened, and we waited patiently as they
played their set.
After a lengthy intermission, Hendrix sent drummer Mitch Mitchell and
bassist Noel Redding out to warm up.
It wasn't until years later that I realized he did it as part of his
incredible sense of showmanship.
Hendrix waited for the crowd to summon him, which it did with five
full minutes of rhythmic clapping.
Everyone burst into cheers when he came running out on stage.
There he was with that huge grin, wearing purple tights and white,
patent leather boots. He had silk scarves tied around his leg and his
huge Afro, and was wearing a fur vest with a thunderbird on the back
of it, and no shirt.
People already were on their feet, and Hendrix hadn't even played a
note. When he cut into "Purple Haze," the place exploded, and the
next 45 minutes were something I still think about almost daily.
This was still in the day when rock 'n' roll bands didn't show much
emotion on stage. Many of them just stood there and played.
Not Hendrix. He played with the guitar behind his back and between
his legs; he played it with his teeth.
At one point, he stuck his left hand straight in the air and
continued to play "Fire" on the neck with his right. I also realized
he was playing three notes for every one note we had heard on the records.
At another juncture, Hendrix broke a string on his guitar, walked
back to his bank of replacement instruments, slipped off the one he
was playing and put on another. He never missed a note or a beat. If
I'd had my eyes closed, I never would have known.
His years playing on the chitlin' circuit in the early 1960s with
Little Richard, the Isley Brothers and other black rhythm-and-blues
groups taught Hendrix how to put on a show, and that it wasn't enough
to just show up and play.
I'm not one of those groupie freaks who hangs on every word Bono or
Mick Jagger utters, but I did find myself standing over Hendrix's
grave one rainy day in Seattle nine years ago, paying my respects.
It was the least I could do for once being allowed to see the best
showman and hear the best guitar player I have ever heard, before or since.
With the Hendrix family soon releasing a new CD of some old tapes and
The Ralph Woodson Experience playing tribute to him in a concert here
Friday night in Nevada City, it's nice to know that a semblance of
the old master still exists.
Jimi rocks on.
--
To contact Senior Staff Writer Dave Moller, e-mail
dmoller@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4237
.
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