The 15-minute “Chile” is pure Chicago blues a slow grind where he talks up his strength and sexual prowess while trading licks with guest organist Steve Winwood. It’s what he did within the framework of the genres that truly proved his mettle. Hendrix was still beholden to those influences, however. These were the moments where, as Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane, who played bass on “Voodoo Chile”, put it in that aforementioned documentary, Hendrix surmounted his influences, where “sometimes he steps aside and it melts together and creates a new thing.” The proto-metal scene was built from the raw materials found in the overdriven pummeling and the psychedelic inquiries of “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”.Īnd just think of all the shredders who went on to start jam bands and glam metal groups, as well as the hundreds of electric blues players, studying and transcribing each solo, looking for the key that would unlock this new language. The extended, stereo field-spanning breakdown in the epic length “1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” forecasts the world of jazz fusion and prog as heard through the Mahavishnu Orchestra and King Crimson. Within months, dozens of other bands would pack their own experiences and interests into the same pipe, going even farther out and getting even heavier as they did.īut it’s Ladyland that feels like the locus, the main junction where much of music’s future spurred from. More than any time before or even the short period he was still on this planet afterward, Hendrix crossbred his myriad of musical influences into a hybrid strain that intoxicated the world. There’s not a rock fan alive that would argue against the greatness of Electric Ladyland. While nothing quite that extreme happened on the way to Electric Ladyland, a lot of egos, sleep patterns, friendships, and spools of tape had to be abused along the way.
And you can’t have Abbey Road without destroying the band that made it.
You can’t have Loveless without bankrupting Creation Records. That’s the way it is with many a masterpiece. We’d remix a song for 10 hours, all night, all week.” By the time Ladyland was finally in the can, Hendrix lost his manager, Chas Chandler, and Redding, both men expressing their frustration at his working methods and attitude on the way out the door. As Jack Adams from the Record Plant told Rolling Stone in 1972, “He’d have such a set idea of what he wanted a record to sound like that he’d remix a song 300 times. Even though one song had already been completed - “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” was released as a single in the UK in August of ‘67 - and he had laid down the framework for a handful of other tunes via a demo tape he had put together in a hotel room in New York, a lot of time at the Record Plant was given over to jamming, lighting the fuse of a nascent idea until it fizzled.Īnd when Hendrix got his hands on the mixing desk, he wouldn’t let go.
Once the sessions got underway, they could be frustratingly slow with Hendrix’s desire for both control and perfectionism (he is credited on the sleeve of Electric Ladyland as both producer and director). As bassist Noel Redding remarked in a 1997 documentary about the making of the album, he had to fight these assorted groupies for couch space in the control room. Hendrix would wander in as the spirit moved him, hours after the rest of the band and often accompanied by an entourage of hangers-on. And when The Experience were in the studio (primarily the Record Plant in New York City), there were copious distractions and frustrations to go around. When the trio wasn’t in the studio, they were on the road, fulfilling the demands of promoting their second album and the demand by rock audiences to absorb the impact of Hendrix’s guitar necromancy.
The jimi hendrix experience electric ladyland documentary full#
Jimi Hendrix and The Experience started laying down tracks for the record a month after they wrapped up work on 1967’s Axis: Bold as Love, and it would be a full year before they were finished. The sessions for the double album took forever by the otherwise quick-hit production standards of the ‘60s. Pick up a copy here.Įlectric Ladyland shouldn’t be as amazing as it is.
Jimi Hendrix Experience “Electric Ladyland” 1968 US / UK Psych Blues Rock double viinyl (The 40 Greatest Psychedelic Albums of All Time,The 40 Trippiest Albums Ever, Mojo magazine) (500 Greatest Albums of All Time,Rolling Stone) (plays Dave Mason,Al Kooper,Steve Winwod,Chris Wood,Jack Casady,Buddy Miles,Brian Jones)Įarlier this month, The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1968 double album, Electric Ladyland, celebrated its 50th anniversary with a new box set featuring previously unreleased demos, alternate takes, and a live bootleg.
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