   
|
||
 March 15, 2007 Are You Experienced? In 1966, the first incarnation of Eric Burden and the Animals split up and the band’s bass player, Chas Chandler, decided he’d rather manage and produce rock musicians than be one. The stories of how Chandler first heard Jimi Hendrix vary, but he caught the guitarist in performance at the Café Wha? in New York City, and was impressed. Hendrix, who was then fronting a group called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, had been playing professionally since his release from the US Army in 1962. He had toured on the Chitlin’ Circuit, where he’d backed a number of blues and R&B musicians, including Sam Cooke, B.B. King, Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, and Ike and Tina Turner. Chandler took Hendrix to England and helped him track down two other musicians, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, to form the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The band soon began recording and gigging, and in early 1967 had its first hit in England, a cover of Billy Roberts’ "Hey Joe." Word about Hendrix quickly spread though the British pop scene, and he was soon admired and envied by his peers. Pete Townshend remembers getting together with Eric Clapton during that time just to talk about Hendrix’s virtuosity and exciting stage presence.
It’s common to use superlatives such as genius, virtuoso, innovator to describe Hendrix. All of these are accurate, but none conveys what made him so original. He is, ultimately, indescribable. The other great guitarists of the era -- Clapton, Jimmy Page, and even Jeff Beck, who, of all 1960s rock guitarists, is closest to Hendrix in his complete command of the instrument -- seem more approachable. Lesser guitarists can understand what they do, and even copy it. But while Hendrix’s influence on other guitarists has been incalculable, they’ve been able to get to the bottom of only some of what he played. When Hendrix died in 1970, he seemed to take many of his secrets with him. I remember the first time I heard Are You Experienced. It was 1968, and the album had been out for nearly a year. I’d heard "Purple Haze" on the radio, though not often -- it was too unusual to be in heavy rotation on any AM station. Playing the LP the first time, I felt a charge from the opening notes of "Purple Haze" -- a surge of energy that intensified with each tune that followed. The music was so exotic that it was like hearing songs from another culture. The harsh dissonances of "I Don’t Live Today" and the title track were balanced by the beauty of "May This Be Love" and "The Wind Cries Mary." Yet even those last two tracks -- which, with "Hey Joe," are the most easily grasped on first hearing -- show an unusually sophisticated and skillful musical imagination. Are You Experienced demonstrated something beyond skill, something unique and indefinable: a vision of music unlike anything in popular music before or since. Hendrix used distortion, feedback, and guitar effects as tools instead of gimmicks, and with them expanded the tonal and expressive possibilities of the electric guitar. In addition, Hendrix, with help from producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer, used the recording studio to help further solidify the sound he was after. The recording is multilayered and complex, taking, for example, phase shifting between stereo channels even further than it had been taken by the Beatles and other bands at the time. While there’s no getting around the fact that some of Hendrix’s music shows the influence of the late-‘60s drug culture, his music transcends such influences. His songwriting on the albums released while he was alive was versatile and often showed a poetic vision as impressive as Bob Dylan’s. His chord progressions were more complex and less predictable than those used by most rock guitarists, and his solos were carefully developed and brilliantly executed. More than that, they sound like no one else’s, even 36 years after his death. To choose just one example, Hendrix used distortion and a guitar pedal called an Octavia to create a high-pitched tone for his solo in "Purple Haze," which combines the pentatonic scale with Middle Eastern-based melodies. In many of his recordings and live shows, Hendrix’s use of feedback was revolutionary, and a means for him to express things he couldn’t say with traditional guitar techniques. In much the way John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Albert Ayler coaxed strained, pain-filled sounds from their instruments, Hendrix used feedback to evoke the horrors of racism, war, and the pressures of modern life.
It’s common for Hendrix’s admirers to wonder what he might have done had he lived. In the last year of his life he jammed with jazz musicians, including organist Larry Young and guitarist John McLaughlin, and Miles Davis and Gil Evans made plans to record with him. That doesn’t mean Hendrix would have become a jazz musician. He was a restless artist who never resisted the urge to try as many things as he could. Had he lived, he would have remained what he was when he first burst on the scene: beyond category. …Joseph Taylor
|
||
|
The Jimi Hendrix Experience released
its first LP, Are You Experienced, in England in May 1967, and in the US
three months later, with a different track lineup. Hendrix appeared at the Monterey Pop
Festival in June, and a portion of his performance was included in D.A. Pennebaker’s
film of the festival. That performance, along with the Who’s similarly dazzling,
explosive display, would define late-’60s rock. For Hendrix, who had probably learned
a lot about grabbing an audience from watching the many musicians he’d backed,
especially Little Richard, Monterey was a mixed blessing. It made him a sensation
overnight in the US (at that point he’d released only one single here, "Hey
Joe"), but it created an image of him as an over-the-top performer that he would
later try to shake.
No discussion about Jimi Hendrix
would be complete without paying tribute to Mitch Mitchell. His drumming was quick and
graceful, and he could play any style Hendrix demanded. Mitchell’s brushwork on
"Up from the Skies," from the Experience’s second album, Axis: Bold as
Love, highlights his jazz chops, but he could play rock as hard as the
Who’s Keith Moon. Mitchell was crucial to the impact made by Hendrix’s
recordings. Listen to his explosive drumming at the end of "All Along the
Watchtower," from the Experience’s third album, Electric Ladyland, or
"If Six Was Nine" (Axis). Hendrix was the leader and reigning
genius, but Mitchell was every bit as important to the greatness of the Experience’s
recordings. Their unique synergy propelled the music.
Jimi Hendrix’s reputation rests
on the music completed and released during his lifetime. Are You Experienced,
Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland demonstrated his increasing
mastery of the recording studio, and Band of Gypsys remains his most consistent and
powerful live statement. Much of the rest of the music currently available in the Hendrix
catalog should be approached with some discernment and, on occasion, forbearance. In 1970,
Hendrix recorded most of the tracks now available as First Rays of the New Rising Sun (1997)
for the album that would have followed Electric Ladyland. They often sound sketchy,
and surely would have been refined had the guitarist lived to complete the album. Many of
the tracks on New Rising Sun and South Saturn Delta (also released in 1997)
originally appeared on posthumously released Hendrix albums such as The Cry of Love,
Rainbow Bridge, and War Heroes.
Aside from The Cry of Love and
:Blues, most of the music released from the time of Hendrix’s death in
1970 until 1997, when his family regained control of his musical legacy, is suspect.
Producer Alan Douglas added overdubs to the recordings left behind, with mixed results.
The many live performances now available on disc vary in quality. The Woodstock set
has some good moments, along with some that are merely passable. Live at the Fillmore
East, recorded during the shows that were the source for Band of Gypsys, lacks
the concentrated power of the earlier disc, but still shows Hendrix in full command of his
abilities. Discover Hendrix through the four original releases and :Blues, then
move on to the remaining music now available.