Jimi Hendrix

PERHAPS no other rock-and-roll trailblazer was as original or as influential in such a short span of time as Jimi Hendrix. Widely acknowledged as one of the most daring and inventive virtuosos in rock history, Hendrix pioneered the electric guitar (he played a right-handed Fender Stratocaster — his "Electric Lady" — upside-down and left-handed) as an electronic sound source capable of feedback, distortion, and a host of other effects that could be crafted into an articulate and fluid emotional vocabulary. And though he was on the scene as a solo artist for less than five years, Hendrix is credited for having a profound effect on everyone from George Clinton and Miles Davis to guitarists Stevie Ray Vaughan and Vernon Reid.

Born Johnny Allen Hendrix on November 27, 1942, Hendrix's father, James "Al" Hendrix, later changed his son's name to James Marshall. Young Jimi taught himself to play the guitar during his schoolboy days in Seattle, drawing influence from blues legends like B.B. King and Robert Johnson. He slung his guitar over his back and left home to enlist in the 101st Division of the Air Force (the "Screaming Eagles"), where he served as a parachute jumper until an injury led to his discharge. Hendrix then began working as a session guitarist under the name Jimmy James, playing behind such marquee acts as Sam Cooke, Ike and Tina Turner, and the Isley Brothers. After gigging extensively with Little Richard in 1964, Hendrix became entangled in a contract dispute with the mercurial artist and left to form his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. With the exception of an obscure single, "My Diary," with Rosa Lee Brooks, none of the music Hendrix cut with other artists was made more remarkable by his presence.

After playing Greenwich Village coffeehouses for the better part of a year (still under the moniker Jimmy James), Hendrix encountered Chas Chandler, of Animals fame, at a New York City club. Impressed with his playing, Chandler, who was then looking to switch gears to management, took Hendrix to London in the fall of 1966 and masterminded the creation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Backed by Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, the Experience offered Hendrix the wide-open rock-and-roll format he needed to exercise his dazzling skills as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Chandler unleashed the band on the London pop scene, and in short order, Hendrix et al. became the talk of the town.

Hendrix's first single, "Hey Joe," a cover of a song written by the L.A. band the Leaves, hit the U.K. charts in early 1967, followed in quick succession by "Purple Haze," "The Wind Cries Mary," and the trio's ferocious debut album, Are You Experienced?, which featured those tracks and the Hendrix staples "Foxy Lady" and "Manic Depression." Hendrix's popularity Stateside was a bit slower in igniting, but Are You Experienced? finally broke through in a major way after a defining moment at the famed Monterey Pop Festival when the notoriously outlandish frontman created a sensation by coaxing flames from his Strat during the band's performance. The next year, Hendrix's eclectic psychedelia reached a zenith with two albums, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland — the latter ranks as one of the greatest works of the rock era. But the experience at the top didn't last long — Hendrix and bassist Redding grew apart, and muddled by overindulgence in drugs and groupies, Hendrix came to believe — wrongly — that his management was cheating him. In 1969, the Experience disbanded.

In the summer of 1969, Hendrix played Woodstock with an informal ensemble called the Electric Sky Church, in a performance highlighted by another career-defining moment: a startling, renegade rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Hendrix subsequently formed the Band of Gypsys, with old Air Force friend Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles (Electric Flag) on drums. The band's New Year's Eve concert at the Fillmore East in New York City provided them with material for their first album, Band of Gypsys (more material from the show was released on Band of Gypsys 2 in 1986). Hendrix brought Mitch Mitchell back into the fold in mid-1970 to begin work on a new double album Jimi had tentatively titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun. Several tracks were recorded for the project, but the sessions were sandwiched between tour dates, and, sadly, the album was left unfinished when Hendrix died September 18, 1970. The cause of death noted on the coroner's report was inhalation of vomit after barbiturate intoxication. In 1993, the investigation into Hendrix's death was reopened by Scotland Yard, but when no new evidence was unearthed, the matter was dropped.

In 1971, several of the tracks intended for First Rays were compiled and released as The Cry of Love, and the ensuing years have witnessed a flood of releases of Hendrix tributes, books, videos, and albums, including pre-fame barrel-scrapings of Hendrix takes from his pickup guitarist days. Posthumous releases took on new life in the CD era. In 1994, MCA released three Hendrix thematic compilations: one devoted to blues songs recorded between 1966 and 1970 (Jimi Hendrix: Blues), one to his live performance at Woodstock (Jimi Hendrix: Woodstock), and a third (Voodoo Soup) that represented an attempt to recreate Hendrix's unfinished fourth studio album. In April of 1997, yet another attempt was made to recreate the album Hendrix was working on at the time of his death, but this time the project was overseen by Hendrix co-producer Eddie Kramer and historian John McDermott — and it had the Hendrix family stamp of approval. The seventeen-track album, First Rays of the New Rising Sun, is arguably the best assemblage of Hendrix leftovers so far.

Despite these transgressions against his nearly faultless musical legacy and attempts to create what could have been, Hendrix's innovations and soul live on in the playing of every rock-and-roll guitarist.

In his brief four-year reign as a superstar, Jimi Hendrix expanded the vocabulary of the electric rock guitar more than anyone before or since. Hendrix was a master at coaxing all manner of unforeseen sonics from his instrument, often with innovative amplification experiments that produced astral-quality feedback and roaring distortion. His frequent hurricane blasts of noise and dazzling showmanship -- he could and would play behind his back and with his teeth and set his guitar on fire -- has sometimes obscured his considerable gifts as a songwriter, singer, and master of a gamut of blues, R&B, and rock styles.

When Hendrix became an international superstar in 1967, it seemed as if he'd dropped out of a Martian spaceship, but in fact he'd served his apprenticeship the long, mundane way in numerous R&B acts on the chitlin circuit. During the early and mid-'60s, he worked with such R&B/soul greats as Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, and King Curtis as a backup guitarist. Occasionally he recorded as a session man (the Isley Brothers' 1964 single "Testify" is the only one of these early tracks that offers even a glimpse of his future genius). But the stars didn't appreciate his show-stealing showmanship, and Hendrix was straight-jacketed by sideman roles that didn't allow him to develop as a soloist. The logical step was for Hendrix to go out on his own, which he did in New York in the mid-'60s, playing with various musicians in local clubs, and joining white blues-rock singer John Hammond, Jr.'s band for a while.

It was in a New York club that Hendrix was spotted by Animals bassist Chas Chandler. The first lineup of the Animals was about to split, and Chandler, looking to move into management, convinced Hendrix to move to London and record as a solo act in England. There a group was built around Jimi, also featuring Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass, that was dubbed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The trio became stars with astonishing speed in the U.K., where "Hey Joe," "Purple Haze," and "The Wind Cries Mary" all made the Top Ten in the first half of 1967. These tracks were also featured on their debut album, Are You Experienced?, a psychedelic meisterwerk that became a huge hit in the U.S. after Hendrix created a sensation at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967.

Are You Experienced? was an astonishing debut, particularly from a young R&B veteran who had rarely sung, and apparently never written his own material, before the Experience formed. What caught most people's attention at first was his virtuosic guitar playing, which employed an arsenal of devices, including wah-wah pedals, buzzing feedback solos, crunching distorted riffs, and lightning, liquid runs up and down the scales. But Hendrix was also a first-rate songwriter, melding cosmic imagery with some surprisingly pop-savvy hooks and tender sentiments. He was also an excellent blues interpreter and passionate, engaging singer (although his gruff, throaty vocal pipes were not nearly as great assets as his instrumental skills). Are You Experienced? was psychedelia at its most eclectic, synthesizing mod pop, soul, R&B, Dylan, and the electric guitar innovations of British pioneers like Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, and Eric Clapton.

Amazingly, Hendrix would only record three fully conceived studio albums in his lifetime. Axis: Bold as Love and the double-LP Electric Ladyland were more diffuse and experimental than Are You Experienced? On Electric Ladyland in particular, Hendrix pioneered the use of the studio itself as a recording instrument, manipulating electronics and devising overdub techniques (with the help of engineer Eddie Kramer in particular) to plot uncharted sonic territory. Not that these albums were perfect, as impressive as they were; the instrumental breaks could meander, and Hendrix's songwriting was occasionally half-baked, never matching the consistency of Are You Experienced? (although he exercised greater creative control over the later albums).

The final two years of Hendrix's life were turbulent ones musically, financially, and personally. He was embroiled in enough complicated management and record company disputes (some dating from ill-advised contracts he'd signed before the Experience formed) to keep the lawyers busy for years. He disbanded the Experience in 1969, forming the Band of Gypsies with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox to pursue funkier directions. He closed Woodstock with a sprawling, shaky set, redeemed by his famous machine-gun interpretation of "The Star Spangled Banner." The rhythm section of Mitchell and Redding were underrated keys to Jimi's best work, and the Band of Gypsies ultimately couldn't measure up to the same standard, although Hendrix did record an erratic live album with them. In early 1970, the Experience re-formed again -- and disbanded again shortly afterward. At the same time, Hendrix felt torn in many directions by various fellow musicians, record-company expectations, and management pressures, all of whom had their own ideas of what Hendrix should be doing. Coming up on two years after Electric Ladyland, a new studio album had yet to appear, although Hendrix was recording constantly during the period.

While outside parties did contribute to bogging down Hendrix's studio work, it also seems likely that Jimi himself was partly responsible for the stalemate, unable to form a permanent lineup of musicians, unable to decide what musical direction to pursue, unable to bring himself to complete another album despite jamming endlessly. A few months into 1970, Mitchell -- Hendrix's most valuable musical collaborator -- came back into the fold, replacing Miles in the drum chair, although Cox stayed in place. It was this trio that toured the world during Hendrix's final months.

It's extremely difficult to separate the facts of Hendrix's life from rumors and speculation. Everyone who knew him well, or claimed to know him well, has different versions of his state of mind in 1970. Critics have variously mused that he was going to go into jazz, that he was going to get deeper into the blues, that he was going to continue doing what he was doing, or that he was too confused to know what he was doing at all. The same confusion holds true for his death: contradictory versions of his final days have been given by his closest acquaintances of the time. He'd been working intermittently on a new album, tentatively titled First Ray of the New Rising Sun, when he died in London on September 18, 1970, from drug-related complications.

Hendrix recorded a massive amount of unreleased studio material during his lifetime. Much of this (as well as entire live concerts) was issued posthumously; several of the live concerts were excellent, but the studio tapes have been the focus of enormous controversy for over 20 years. These initially came out in haphazard drabs and drubs (the first, The Cry of Love, was easily the most outstanding of the lot). In the mid-'70s, producer Alan Douglas took control of these projects, posthumously overdubbing many of Hendrix's tapes with additional parts by studio musicians. In the eyes of many Hendrix fans, this was sacrilege, destroying the integrity of the work of a musician known to exercise meticulous care over the final production of his studio recordings. Even as late as 1995, Douglas was having ex-Knack drummer Bruce Gary record new parts for the typically misbegotten compilation Voodoo Soup. After a lengthy legal dispute, the rights to Hendrix's estate, including all of his recordings, returned to Al Hendrix, the guitarist's father, in July of 1995.

With the help of Jimi's step-sister Janie, Al set up Experience Hendrix to begin to get Jimi's legacy in order. They began by hiring John McDermott and Jimi's original engineer, Eddie Kramer to oversee the remastering process. They were able to find all the original master tapes, which had never been used for previous CD releases, and in April of 1997, Hendrix's first three albums were reissued with drastically improved sound. Accompanying those reissues was a posthumous compilation album (based on Jimi's handwritten track listings) called First Rays of the New Rising Sun, made up of tracks from the Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge and War Heroes.

Later in 1997, another compilation called South Saturn Delta showed up, collecting more tracks from posthumous LPs like Crash Landing, War Heroes, and Rainbow Bridge (without the terrible '70s overdubs), along with a handful of never-before-heard material that Chas Chandler had withheld from Alan Douglas for all those years.

More archival material followed; Radio One was basically expanded to the two-disc BBC Sessions (released in 1998), and 1999 saw the release of the full show from Woodstock as well as additional concert recordings from the Band of Gypsies shows entitled Live at the Fillmore East. 2000 saw the release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience four-disc box set, which compiled remaining tracks from In the West, Crash Landing and Rainbow Bridge along with more rarities and alternates from the Chandler cache.

The family also launched Dagger Records, essentially an authorized bootleg label to supply harcore Hendrix fans with material that would be of limited commercial appeal. Dagger Records has released several live concerts (of shows in Oakland, Ottawa and Clark University in Massachusetts) and a collection of studio jams and demos called Morning Symphony Ideas. ~ Richie Unterberger & Sean Westergaard, All Music Guide