Jimi Hendrix: Three albums revisited

Electric Ladyland was the first Jimi Hendrix Experience studio album I bought (as two LP set), then more than thirty years later I bought Axis: Bold As Love (CD) and it was only in early 2019 that I bought Are You Experienced as a download from Apple Music. I knew all the best tracks from this debut album already anyhow, from compilation albums I bought over the years.

The first purchases of Hendrix’s music were the double albums I Don’t Live Today (‘best of’ studio recordings from the first three albums) and the soundtrack from the documentary Jimi Hendrix (live recordings) and from these I had a pretty good introduction to the Hendrix canon, or at least the songs and performances the compilers thought of as essential, though some of the inclusions on I Don’t Live Today were as baffling as the exclusions.

(I’ve looked at the Hendrix discography on Wikipedia and it doesn’t mention Don’t Live Today, which I think was on the Polydor label and could be South Africa only release, or perhaps a Europe only release that was also pressed in South Africa. There’s a similar case with Earring’s Believing, a greatest hits collection of Dutch band Golden Earring, from probably 1975, that I’ve also not seen on discographies of the band.)

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED (1967)

Are You Experienced was released in the same year as other notable albums, like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Disraeli Gears, Surrealistic Pillow, The Doors, and others as remarkable, and was perhaps the most revolutionary simply in terms of sound and influence, probably no longer astonishing to the English musicians who were stunned by Hendrix’s playing when he arrived in London, because for them a Black American guitarist was one of the three Kings, Buddy Guy or Otis Rush, and capable as they were, none of them sounded, or looked, remotely like Hendrix who, even as blues guitarist, took the music to a different planet than the rest, Black or White. The pop audience must have been as overwhelmed and impressed as Hendrix’s peers, though the studio recordings couldn’t have replicated the weirdness and ferocity of Jimi playing live.

If memory serves, 9 of the 11 eleven tracks from the UK version of Are You Experienced were included on I Don’t Live Today, as well as the non-album singles “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary.” The exclusions were “Fire,” can “You See Me” and possibly (memory is fickle) “Are You Experienced?”  The B-sides of the first three singles were also left off.

Debut single “Hey Joe” (in a reworking of the more commonly known version by, for example, The Leaves) was an excellent calling card but not far from a traditional, if more powerful, approach, and does not reveal any of the freak out guitar pyrotechnics Hendrix was capable of, and that he showcased later and comes across in second single, “Purple Haze” and album opener “Foxey Lady.”

“Foxey Ladey” with its feedback intro and crunching riff, is of similar hue to “Purple Haze” and is a perfect way to open the album and to announce a new musical force, unlike anything before. The performance is key; the lyrics are simplistic blues braggadocio. That Hendrix introduces himself as a highly sexual being first, and not as a sensitive singer-songwriter, sets the tone for the myth to follow, and for the adoration of young women everywhere, part of the misconception of who and what he was that soon bothered Hendrix. He considered himself as an artist with ambitions beyond pop stardom and the image of, in the parlance of the time, a “psychedelic super spade stud.”

The chief importance of “Manic Depression,” a churning, restless track, is that it properly introduces us to the dexterous, technically advanced drumming of Mitch Mitchell who is, so to speak, the Ginger Baker of the Experience, though Noel Redding, primarily a guitarist, was by no means close to replicating Jack Bruce’s style. Mitchell’s busy, jazz influenced style elevates many of the trucks and is the foil to Hendrix’s guitar pyrotechnics, where Redding mostly just provides bass grooves, the steady centre between the guitar and drums.

Third track (in the three opening tracks, Hendrix sets out his stall, from pounding rocker to thoughtful psychedelia to blues), “Red House” is the only overt, direct blues Hendrix recorded and released and it was a concert staple as a usually lengthy centrepiece of shows. Again, it’s lyrically very simple, an updating of a traditional blues trope, but the guitar playing proves Hendrix’s roots as bluesman, and, if enhanced by Hendrix’s rock influences, is from the school of Buddy Guy or Otis Rush. The concise version of the songs is superior to most live renditions that seem to be excuses for excessive jamming, using all the sonic tricks Hendrix had, so that the blues from is no more than a platform for departure and there  is no emotional depth or, mostly, other reason to be engaged in the performance unless you’re a superfan or guitarist. Eric Clapton’s lengthy improvisations with Cream are far more interesting, especially as the two guys behind him also play as furiously as he does. The backing for Hendrix on live performances of “Red House” seem to plod, possibly to allow full attention on his virtuosity and ultimately that makes it boring to listen to.

From here, the album gives us more examples of Hendrix’s rock style, with a mix of introspective lyrics, a mostly instrumental track, and the very slight “Remember” that I’ve always been very fond of because it also is not a freak out thing.  “Fire” is another horny song, in the vein of “Foxey Lady.” “I Don’t Live Today” and “Are You Experienced?” are mythmaking, pop philosophical treatises; a young man’s insights.

“Third Stone from the Sun” is a wonderful instrumental, based on Hendrix’s apparently dep, serious interest in science fiction, and perhaps a forerunner of the mostly instrumental tracks on one side of Electric Ladyland although those later compositions are more impressionistic and less straightforward.  This was not a compositional trend that was pursued much, it seems, which is a pity. Hendrix could have been a pioneer in the genre of space rock.

Of the songs on the original version of the album, fourth track “Can You See Me” is the most obscure, being neither anthologised or a regular concert staple, yet it’s not a bad song, dynamic enough and entertaining, unlike the stodge of “Wait Until Tomorrow” and “Ain’t No Telling” on Axis: Bold As Love, but in the context must have been just filler on the debut in an era when single. A-sides and their B-sides were not included on album releases. The debut would have been so much stronger if the first three single A-sides had been included and “Can You See Me” been left off, or even if it remained.

The version of Are You Experienced I downloaded from Apple Music, is the same as of the expanded CD version of the album with the six tracks from the first three singles, tacked on after the end of the original tracks.

“Hey Joe” and “Purple Haze” are deserved classics. The intro to the first thrilled me the first time I heard it and thrills me to this day. It’s one of the best introductions to a song and an artist ever, even if the opening riff of “Purple Haze” is more iconic.

“The Wind Cries Mary” seems to be an anomaly amidst the hard rocking songs of the debut album and the singles and when I first heard it, on I Don’t Live Today, I checked whether it was even written by Hendrix. It’s a sweet pop song and possibly goes to show, like so many genius musicians, that Hendrix’s influences were varied and not necessarily obvious. It might also be his manager or record company wanted something more palatable for pop radio, rather than the heavy blues or hard psychedelic rock of the preceding singles.

The three B-sides, “Stone Free,”  “51^st Anniversary” and “Highway Chile,” are just B-sides, though Hendrix seemed to like playing “Stone Free,” a young gunslinger’s celebration of being his own person, no matter what, live. “Highway Chile” is the least worthy of the three, a standard blues jam.

I like Are You Experienced a lot. These tracks, the three singles and the best tracks from Axis: Bold as Love would make a killer double album. The debut album, though, is pretty much prime first phase Hendrix. He was more ambitious later and the last recordings are more expansive and sophisticated in conception and execution but the primal force of Are You Experienced still resonates far more and is easier to love unreservedly.

AXIS: BOLD AS LOVE (1968) 

Seven of the thirteen tracks on this album, the second by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, were featured on the I Don’t Live Today compilation.)

It’s surprising that “Spanish Castle Magic” and “Little Wing” were left off, as their inclusion would have completed the inclusion of noteworthy tunes from Axis: Bold as Love. The other exclusions are `”EXP,” “Wait Until Tomorrow,”  “Ain’t No Telling,” and “One Rainy Wish.” 

It’s probably not surprising that “Wait Until Tomorrow” and “Ain’t No Telling” were left off.  They’re not exactly the most stellar of Hendrix songs and it’s always intriguing to speculate, if these weak songs were deemed worthy of release, that Hendrix had no better songs, or was not able to record acceptable versions of better songs by the time the master tapes had to be handed over for record manufacturing. These tunes sound like compositions influenced by Hendrix’s struggle years of backing Little Richard and the Isley Brothers, the kind of R & B he might have been playing to scrape a living, now tarted up for a rock audience. 

These two tracks, and “Long Hot Summer Night” and “House Burning Down” from Electric Ladyland, really grate and, to my mind, break the flow of the records and reduce the pleasure of listening to the albums; in the days of programmable CD players, one would program the playback to skip these tracks.

“Little Miss Lover” is probably of the same R & B provenance but is elevated by a wicked, thumping bass line and some psychedelia. “She’s So Fine,” Noel Redding’s contribution also benefits from harmonies and psychedelic touches to burnish what would have been rather plain otherwise. “You Got Me Floatin’ “would be bereft of charm too, if it weren’t smothered in psychedelic effects. The lyrics and the tune are as slight as any schmaltzy pop. The thing is: these tunes have a bounce and insouciance the R & B knock offs don’t have, and that’s the difference. They’re fun.

“Up From the Skies,” with a swinging, jazzy wah-wah guitar-and-brushes rhythm and a gentle, ruminative tone in the vocals was the first track on I Don’t Live Today and is the first proper song on Axis: Bold as Love too. It’s the complete contrast to the bravura blast of “Foxey Lady” that opens Are You Experienced, both in sound and lyrical concerns, and it’s long been a favourite of mine. The very long, intricate, feedback drenched solos that Hendrix played live, and which became the focal point of his influence on other guitarists, don’t appeal much to me. The concise guitar playing, mostly more innovative, on the records showcase what Hendrix was about as creative musician, and when he moved beyond the “wild man of pop” songs like “Foxey Lady” or “Purple Haze,” he often hit hardest.

The live rendition of “Little Wing” from Hendrix in the West (1972) blew me away and has always been the epitome of deeply emotional guitar playing, something I hadn’t associated with Hendrix before I heard him. For me, Eric Clapton’s long, melodic, hummable solo on “Sleepy Time Time” from Live Cream had always been, and still is, the gold standard of consummate “feel” (with the extraordinary, continuous emotional expression over the duration of a solo one didn’t want to end) but the live “Little Wing”  is up there and still touches me deeply every time I hear it. The studio version on Axis: Bold as Love kind of pales in comparison because it doesn’t seem as heartfelt or as expressive as that stage version; it’s as if it’s not fully complete because it’s not been played enough live until all the emotion has been extracted. The studio version is good, but the live version is masterful.

Conversely, I prefer the “live in the studio” version of “Red House” on Are You Experienced over all the rather lengthy live versions I’ve heard, because the long solos seem to squeeze the life out of the song. “Red House” is not the best blues ever, but in the short, sharp, concise studio performance Hendrix makes his point, plays the hell out of the songs, and gets outta there. On stage he doodles too much, and this dissipates whatever emotion blues is supposed to have.

“Castles Made of Sand” is cut from the same cloth as “The Wind Cries Mary,” both are languid, philosophical, melodic and tender songs that one can imagine were intended to appeal to those who compile pop radio play lists, wanted to programme some Hendrix tunes but feared that the target audience would be repelled by the sonic attack of, say, “If 6 Was 9” or even “Bold as Love.”  Hendrix shows with these tunes that he isn’t just a show off guitar slinger who humps his instrument and sets fire to it for outrage, but has a sensitive, poetic soul and can express himself in a much more thoughtful manner than the long hair and colourful Carnaby Street finery would suggest.  The message of “Castles Made of Sand” is depressing but it sure is a lovely tune.

“If 6 Was 9” and “Bold as Love” are by far the standout tracks on this album, head and shoulders above the rest most of which are pretty lightweight too, if not as grating as “Wait Until Tomorrow” and “Ain’t No Telling,” and at best Hendrix’s pop moments and at worst silly fluff saved only by the instrumentalists.  These two tracks have heft and menace, strong playing, inventiveness and exhilaration, full on psychedelic rave and so much power they could blow the grid if turned up too psychologically loud.  For me “Bold as Love” and “All Along the Watchtower” (from Electric Ladyland) represent Hendrix’s best as guitarist: melodic and hard charging, mystic and earthy, elegant simplicity and bravura dexterity, all in the same performance.

Although “One Rainy Wish” is lyrically and sonically streets ahead of “Wait Until Tomorrow” and “Ain’t No Telling,” it’s as obscure in the canon, never making it onto any “best of” compilation I know of and was never played live either. It’s doleful, measure pace is sandwiched between the upbeat bounce of “She’s So Fine” and “Little Miss Lover,” probably to avoid two rather slight songs in sequence and to allow the contrast to focus the listener on each track rather than just letting the two faster tracks pass by undifferentiated.

ELECTRIC LADYLAND (1968)

Ironically, given that it’s a double album, proportionally fewer of the tracks from Electric Ladyland made it onto I Don’t Live Today.  If memory serves, it was only “(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland,” “Crosstown Traffic,” “Little Miss Strange,” “Gypsy Eyes,” “All Along the Watchtower” and “Voodoo Chile (A Slight Return).”

Electric Ladyland is a sprawling double album, and along with Blonde on Blonde, The Beatles, arguably part of a select group of very important late Sixties rock double albums that stood the test of time and were evidence of a degree of ambition in their creators that was barely matched by their peers.

Or perhaps the artists just had too many songs and did not know how to discard the disposable.  That’s almost how I feel about Electric Ladyland, as quite a bit of it seems to be of such light weight that helium would be heavy, yet they nestle alongside the really very good stuff.

Like its predecessor, the album opens with some experimental stuff, not a joke like “EXP,” but a “electronic sound painting” called “… and the Gods Made Love,” what you might call and a progression from the effects on “Third Stone From the Sun” off Are You Experienced and its mercifully short, thought it might have been regarded as far out and groovy in 1968.

The jiggery pokery gives way to the one-two-three knockout punch of “(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland,” “Crosstown Traffic” and the long, blues jam version of “Voodoo Chile,” which, when I bought the album, I preferred to the album-closing, concise version that’s became one of the most covered Hendrix compositions. “Voodoo Chile” is a blues in form, with psychedelic, jazzy colouring and a languid, reflective style, rather than the more urgent invocation of “Voodoo Chile (A Slight  Return),”  and Hendrix’s interplay with the other musicians represents the only authorised release,  I know of, of the type of jamming with his peers that Hendrix  perpetually seemed to engage in, albeit mostly on stage and it’s an eye opener and makes one wonder whether this approach would’ve been worth exploring in the future, forming supergroups just for recording so that Hendrix could bounce off all  kinds of musicians and not just the three guys backing him, which was the live situation, and when, as time went by, it was clearly  no longer satisfactory or feasible to record only with teh live band. The music cried out for expansion of the audio palate, both guitar-related and other instruments and players.

The second side mostly rocks, with a second Noel Redding song, “Little Miss Strange” and “Gypsy Eyes,” though entertaining, both being fluff, and “Come On” mostly just an excuse for guitar histrionics. “The Burning of the Midnight Lamp,” previously a single, is the best track on the side, a harpsichord driven dreamy, meditative, slow burning tune that amps up as it goes along. Where the other songs on the side are okay and forgettable, this is the real deal, where one could see Hendrix going as a composer.

“Long Hot Summer Night” and “House Burning Down” on respectively  the second and  fourth sides of the album  are my least favourite tunes on Electric Ladyland because I don’t really appreciate the wordiness and the soulfunkrock aspects of them. They seem a tad stiff and wordy.

The  soul inflections are one thing. The attempt to fuse soul with psychedelic rock is altogether a different take.  Perhaps it would have been better if Jimi had a funk rhythm section, say the guys with Sly Stone or James Brown’s backing band, or even The Isley Brothers band.  Not even playing with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox cured that ill. It took Funkadelic to fuse Hendrix with funk.

Side three, comprising of three segueing tracks, was the side I played most often when I had only the LP version. Compared to the noisy, excitable tracks on the rest of the album, this side was tranquil, thoughtful, delightfully complex and just plain beautiful. It was also an excellent way, with headphones on, to drift into sleep while the waves of sound wafted over one’s ears. First cut, “Rainy Day, Dream Away” is languid, swinging groove with organ and saxophone, a new jazz inspired direction that could’ve been one of the directions Hendrix would explore as he matured and moved away from rock into a more progressive sphere. The other two tracks, all of them segueing into each other, build on the dreamy instrumental work and sci-fi imagery of “Third Stone from the Sun” off Are You Experienced. Hendrix plays beautiful, melodic, exploratory guitar on this side of the album, a long way off the feedback noise and speedy licks so many associate with him.

Side four ends the album strongly with “All Along the Watchtower” and “Voodoo Chile (A Slight Return),” As I’ve said above, the first. Is one of the best Hendrix performances on record, with both a good song (if not his) and a stellar interpretation, elevated by soaring, inspirational guitar work.  “Voodoo Chile (A Slight Return)” closes the album with  a blues subverted to hard rock with a raging guitar part. Together these two tracks encapsulate the Jimi Hendrix experience of basic principles and technical mastery, eloquence and simple expression, poetic impulse and hormonal rage.

I like this album. It has only four weak tracks and that’s a good hit rate. All in all, the double album is an excellent summation of what Hendrix was capable of, from sensitivity to rage, blues to rock, straightforward to experimental, noise to tunefulness.

CODA

Electric Ladyland is the conclusion of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and of personally di8recrted studio releases. What follows are the contract fulfilling live album Band of Gypsys and the posthumous Cry Love, both of which can still be included, if only marginally, in the canon or releases with Hendrix’s imprimatur. Then followed a steady stream of studio and live releases, with the studio albums mostly patched together from half- or unfinished tapes and with little, if any, of the quality of the albums released in Hendrix’s lifetime or even Cry of Love, and all of them sound like what they were, desperate, commercially driven attempts to make as much money from Hendrix as possible. Not only do these albums not sound like the Jimi Hendrix Experience, they also don’t even sound like a new direction Hendrix might have embarked on.

The live albums are just records of various performances, some more inspired than others, often of the under rehearsed, jamming version of the Experience, and though frequently interesting, these performances  and especially the long guitar solos, are always somewhat disappointing and far less engaging than the studio albums. Listening to Hendrix showcasing all his amazing technical tricks with the guitar during the course of a lengthy solo soon pales, unless you are a guitarist yourself, I guess.

Nowadays, the Hendrix estate, with its Experience Hendrix project, is in charge of the back catalogue and new releases,  and one must assume that  there is a great deal of financial benefit for the family, none of whom are descendants of the man but still feel an entitlement to share in the bounty, disguised as a mission to keep the Hendrix name alive by regular releases of more previously unreleased tracks from the vault. If you are a completist, this must be the stuff of dreams, especially because it took so long, after Alan Douglas’ trio of works in the Seventies, for the excavation of the vaults to be done so methodically.

For me, stick to Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland  and, if you want live Hendrix, Hendrix in the West, Jimi Plays Monterey, Jimi At The  Filmore East  (same gigs as the Band of Gypsys album) and The Jimi Hendrix Concerts, with Jimi at the Isle of Wight for the final blow out.  These albums will give you all you need to know about Hendrix’s music.