Dez's Top Rock/Pop Artists: #29 - Jimi Hendrix

What Could Have Been...
I don’t really need to explain Jimi Hendrix’s greatness. Do I? It has been proclaimed for decades, the fact that he was only on the scene for four short years, only releasing three studio, one live and one compilation album during his lifetime. His work with The Experience stands as a Rock & Roll monolith, with Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland each a masterpiece and landmark record. The live, post-Experience excursion of Band of Gypsys was released as a transitional toss-off at the time, but since it was comprised of all new material and hinted at Jimi’s new direction, it is also essential (even though nothing on it is as transcendently great as his first three records, save the slowburn of “Machine Gun”). Fortunately for us, Jimi was a prolific studio hound, and he recorded miles of tape. To this day we still get a steady stream of previously unheard material released, some of it remarkably good, as deep as we have now delved into the vaults.

That is what I want to focus on here. Jimi’s posthumous recording life, especially the record that he was preparing at the time of his death. First, a little background. Many artists of Jimi’s generation were not too business savvy. They were desperate to make it, and often signed predatory recording and management deals just for a shot at the big time. It's not like they had the money to hire lawyers to review the deals. But even by the industry’s and time period’s standards, Jimi was more careless than most. He would sign conflicting contracts with multiple studios and companies, with little regard to the effects on his career. In fact, that is the only reason Band of Gypsys was ever released, he had signed some forgotten contract years prior, and with his fame cresting the holder of the contract came out of the woodwork to collect. So Jimi agreed to release a live record of some new material he was tinkering with in order to fulfill the contract. Little did he know that it would be his sole live record (out of many now on the market) that he would ever get to personally authorize. And it was one that he was less than enthused about, releasing it mainly to avoid a lawsuit.

After his death, the legal labyrinth that he had inflicted upon himself wrecked havoc for over a decade on his recorded legacy. The Cry of Love, War Heroes, Rainbow Bridge, Crash Landing, Midnight Lightning, Voodoo Soup…these are just the most infamous posthumous releases that took his work-in-progress recordings and various unreleased tracks, doctored them up and “finished” them with studio musicians who had never even met the man, and were released in the 70’s and 80’s. Fortunately, Hendrix’s family eventually stepped in and bought out the rights to all of his remaining recordings, pulled all of these faux records from the shelves, and attempted to bring some much needed order to his posthumous releases.

I have to say they have done a great job. South Saturn Delta, Valleys of Neptune, West Coast Seattle Boy, Jimi Blues, The BBC Sessions and various live recordings are all worthwhile for the Hendrix collector. But by far the most significant is First Rays of the New Rising Sun. This record is as close as we will ever get to what was going to be Hendrix’s next record. Jimi was incredibly ambitious about his next step in his evolution, making his death that much more of a tragic loss. With the Experience disbanded and behind him, he was prepping a double record that would boldly emphasize R&B, soul, blues and jazz roots featuring Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell and U.S. Army buddy / Band of Gypsys bassist Billy Cox as the core of his new band; yet supercharging them with his unique brand of psychedelic rock. Recall that Hendrix started his career as a session and road musician backing the likes of Little Richard and King Curtis, so he had deep roots in R&B and soul music.


ABOVE: First Rays of the New Rising Sun is the best guess we have of what Hendrix's next record would have sounded like

Hendrix had many tunes that were in-progress at the time of his demise. Some (“EZ Rider,” “Freedom,” “Angel,” “In From the Storm”) sound near completion and are probably very close to what he would have eventually released, while others were still clearly in their working phase. Nobody knows, of course, what Hendrix’s next record would have been. While working on this stuff, he was allegedly also in serious discussions with Miles Davis regarding a collaboration. (Listen to Miles’s stuff from the period (In a Silent Way, Jack Johnson, Bitches Brew, etc.) and you can definitely imagine how a Hendrix-Miles record would have worked and possibly blown our collective minds.) But much of the material on FROTRS is what he was most seriously prepping for the next record. What you’ve got are tunes with deeper grooves than before rooted in soul music with Hendrix’s ever inventive jamming on top, as he worked out the lyrics and song structures. I think that Hendrix would have taken this rock/soul/R&B hybrid to a new place, forever changing the genres. Some of this material matches his Experience material in quality, and remember that these were still works in progress.

Rock has many “what if’s,” but this is one of the more tantalizing ones. We throw around the word “genius” way too loosely, but Jimi Hendrix was one of our true musical pioneers/geniuses who fundamentally changed the landscape. What would have Hendrix done to the music we call rock had he been able to produce thirty years of work vs. just four?


ABOVE: Here is "Freedom," one of his more finished songs for the record he was recording at the time of his death. It still features his superlative guitar work, of course, but what is different is the deeper groove rooted in soul and R&B


ABOVE: Then there is something like "Angel," which is beautiful new cosmic soul music

What to Listen To:
Obviously, his three Experience records are foundations for any rock collection. Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland are must haves. First Rays of the New Rising Sun is the best of the posthumous collections, and the best approximation of his new direction at the time of his death. If you are weak sauce and want a hits compilation, the once flooded market of Hendrix compilations has now been narrowed to essentially two, since the others have been pulled from shelves by the Hendrix family: Smash Hits (the concise hits collection issued during Hendrix’s lifetime) and Experience Hendrix. Of those two, go with Experience Hendrix because it has broader coverage. As far as live material, there is so much out there. Over ten live albums are readily available. I like Live at Monterrey (probaby his most significant live performance, career-wise) and Live at Winterland. The BBC Sessions has many revelations and is loads of fun.