Music: Remembering Jimi

September 18th, 2009 will mark thirty-nine years since Jimi Hendrix died in a London hotel room in 1970 at the age of twenty-seven. Nearly forty years after his death, his albums still sell more than a million copies a year. Many books have been written about the life and death of Hendrix by people far more knowledgeable than me. Movies have been made about him. As I write this blog, there is a big-budget Hollywood movie in the works with the singer of the rap-rock band Outkast in the lead role as Hendrix. I am a fan and have been one for the last twenty-five odd years. This blog is my own little tribute to the greatest popular musician of the twentieth century. He wasn’t the most popular musician of all time, though he was and remains very popular. But he definitely was the most innovative and phenomenally talented musician of the last century.

After many months, I took out my copy of Hendrix’s 1968 double album “Electric Ladyland” today and listened to it in its entirety. Forty-one years after the album was released, many of the songs still sound so fresh, so new, so innovative. The album is only one of the great albums Hendrix released between 1967 and 1970. He released three albums in 1968 alone, and each was a sonic landmark. The songs on “Electric Ladyland” range from the dreamy Beatlesque “Little Miss Strange” to the soaring cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” and the impossibly heavy “Voodoo Chile – Slight Return”. And who can forget the effortless guitar solo at the bridge of “Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)”. That solo feels like a warm ray of sunshine on a bitterly cold, wintry day. In contrast, his peers such as Clapton, Townshend and Jimmy Page sound forced and laboured.

But for me, the brief, blinding guitar solo at the end of “All Along the Watchtower” is the best piece of music I have ever heard. I remember the first time I heard it twenty-six years ago on a beat-up old bootlegged cassette. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It still does. Hendrix pours his entire soul into that solo. Listening to it is a spiritual experience and for me, it is the closest I have ever felt to being in the presence of God (except for trekking up above the tree-line in the Himalayas possibly). How can something sound so sublime, so perfect, so heartbreaking?

Jimi Hendrix invented heavy metal. Just listen to “Voodoo Chile – Slight Return” or “I Hear My Train A-Comin” to know what I am talking about. This is cosmic blues; B.B. King raised to the power N; intergalactic stuff, music for the Star Trek generation. Esteemed musicians such as Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd sound like pale imitations of the real thing, once you have heard Hendrix. And what is “Crosstown Traffic” if not the first rap song ever written and performed? But Hendrix was not all about blood and thunder. He also had a deft light touch and he wrote and played some of the most delicate ballads you will ever hear. Listen to “If 6 were 9” or “Little Wing” and you will know what I am talking about. And who can forget that bittersweet instrumental romp at the end of his epic two hour set at Woodstock?

The 1960s were a very turbulent decade. By 1968, Jimi Hendrix was being pulled in many different directions by activist groups who wanted him to be their spokesman for their causes. Anti-war activists wanted him to be more outspoken in his opposition to the Vietnam War. African-American activists, demanding civil rights, wanted Hendrix to be their spokesman, since he was the most famous black man alive at the time. Hippies wanted Hendrix to continue to make spaced-out psychedelic music that represented the aspirations of a new generation. The mild-mannered Hendrix could never say no to anyone, and tried very hard to be all things to all people. The pressure on him as a performer was enormous.

Offstage, Hendrix was a shy, retiring man of few words, with a keen intelligence, great sense of humour and an almost child-like sense of innocence. Watch his old interviews with Dick Cavett on YouTube to find out more. He was an unwilling celebrity; and all the adulation made him look like a deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing car. He was ill equipped to deal with fame. When he was alive, he was exploited by groupies, hangers-on, managers and record companies. After his death, nothing changed, as many “recordings” were put out in his name. Most of them were poor in quality, and incomplete studio jams at best.

Onstage, Hendrix had a different persona. He was probably the most charismatic performer of his generation, and this was a generation that gave us live acts like the Rolling Stones and the Who. Hendrix had a sinewy lithe grace onstage, which combined his own onstage charisma with Keith Richards’ swagger and Pete Townshend’s acrobatic ability. He had audience members eating out of the palm of his hand, and women clamouring to gain his attention.

Other musicians often felt completely inadequate in his presence, though Hendrix himself was an extremely reticent individual. The great American guitarist Michael Bloomfield said that after he saw Hendrix perform for the first time, he was so intimidated that he “gave up playing the guitar for a year”. In London, Pete Townshend of the Who and Eric Clapton were so stunned when they saw Hendrix play for the first time in early 1967, that they left the club he was playing at and went and saw a movie together. “Neither of us said a word” Pete Townshend recalled many years later; “since words could not express how overwhelmed we felt”.

Clearly, Hendrix made an unforgettable impact on those whose lives he touched. Recently in Vancouver, I saw a televised concert by Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. Half the songs they played were Jimi Hendrix songs. The Who still play a version of Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” at most of their live concerts as a tribute. Pete Townshend says he still thinks of his friend Jimi Hendrix every day. So does Bob Dylan. A few years ago, I watched an interview with Kathy Etchingham, one of Hendrix’s old girlfriends. She moved on, got married to a member of the English nobility and started a family. But she never forgot Hendrix. Thirty years after she saw him for the last time in 1970, she broke down and cried as she described the kind of person Jimi Hendrix was.

Hendrix lives on through his influence on other guitar players. John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers often sounds a lot like Hendrix, as did Stevie Ray Vaughan (especially his live concerts). Pretty much every modern guitarist owes a debt to Hendrix, who expanded the guitar’s vocabulary so greatly that post-Hendrix, the electric guitar became an entirely different instrument. Hendrix greatly influenced jazz as well – especially people like Miles Davis, John McLaughlin and Herbie Hancock. Apart from inventing heavy metal and taking electric blues music to an entirely new level, Hendrix also invented jazz rock. The great guitar player Carlos Santana thought Hendrix was God Incarnate. Ironically, Hendrix himself was a humble, quiet man who thought of himself as only an average guitar player. His guitar playing skills were so prodigious that his considerable song-writing skills are often overlooked. He was a brilliant songwriter as well.

You can’t help but ask – what would Jimi Hendrix have accomplished if he hadn’t died at the age of twenty-seven? What would this quiet musical genius have done if he had lived through the 1970s and 1980s? The mind boggles, but the question is a moot one anyway. Jimi Hendrix was a force of nature, a comet that blazed across the dark night sky, leaving everybody mesmerized and everything else far behind in its wake.

Some things in life will always remain a mystery and can never be understood, only appreciated. So I am going to play all the Jimi Hendrix albums I have back-to-back on his death anniversary of September 18th, as my personal tribute. Join in – play a couple of his songs off YouTube if you don’t own any of his albums. There are plenty of them available, last time I checked. Join me in remembering the greatest popular musician of the twentieth century on his death anniversary on September 18th.