Jimi Hendrix - The chrysalis of rock

Jimi Hendrix, or rather, the guitar that made rock history. The musician from Seattle completely and irreversibly changed the approach to the electric guitar, for a long time the undisputed king instrument of rock (at least until the arrival of the synthesizer) and, in any case, the one who, more than anyone else, from the very start, gave the genre that adrenaline-fuelled, slightly savage stamp, that quid that sets it apart from every other musical expression. More than the piano of Jerry Lee Lewis or Richard Pennyman, alias Little Richard (with whom Jimi Hendrix played as a session man for a brief spell, incidentally), more than the ghostly icon of Elvis Presley. Chuck Berry docet. Can you imagine rock without the guitar? Yes, of course, kraut-rock (not always), ELP, the Nice, Cop Shoot Cop… but these are all evolutions of a genre born and raised with the guitar reigning supreme, they're the "exceptions" that prove the rule.

With his instrument, Hendrix carried out a Copernican revolution comparable, perhaps, only to the innovations brought to six-string playing by Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Chuck Berry and, at a stretch, Robert Johnson. With Hendrix, feedback becomes an art form, no longer an annoying flaw (perhaps Sonic Youth & co. know something about that), distortion, pushed to its absolute limits, is power and delicacy at once (the "hard" sound that today has crept in almost everywhere, especially among certain bands on the indie scene, is born here), the melodic and harmonic lines of the electric guitar intertwine and merge with a naturalness and perfection never seen before. The cathartic power of the musical act takes on a new and explosive meaning with the guitarist from Seattle.

Hendrix is a whirlwind that sweeps through the rock scene, precisely because rock is the musical genre where, more than in any other, sound and image matter most — form, that is, as well as content, something that would become ever more evident with the passing years and the rise of electronics and the evolution of rock iconography.

Hendrix is at once an excellent rhythm guitarist and a great soloist — a forerunner of countless "guitar heroes" in the history of rock — but this latter aspect, paradoxically, is the most sterile side of his art (even if the most conspicuous). Or rather: his followers misread the message Jimi Hendrix left behind, pushing electric guitar playing to the point of circus spectacle and almost entirely neglecting the substance of his music, which goes well beyond piling up solos.

His life came to a tragic end. It was 18 September 1970: Hendrix was found lying on a bed in a room at the Samarkand Hotel in London, killed by an overdose of barbiturates. Ever since, there has been an endless stream of tributes to his memory, but also insinuations about his death, deemed "mysterious" as, to some degree, are all rock star deaths. A hornet's nest of legal disputes and speculative ventures has raged around Hendrix's estate. As in life, even after death the great Black guitarist was manipulated by unscrupulous managers. Hendrix was, in fact, one of the artists most squeezed dry by the record industry, which kept churning out every kind of recording of his performances. Take, for example, the imposing The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a box set of hits and unreleased material put together by the Hendrix Foundation (in practice, Jimi's father, Al).

But beyond the merits of his records, the American musician left his mark on rock history by inventing a new way of playing guitar, a volcanic style that broke with tradition and opened up new frontiers for experimentation on musical instruments in general.

Born on 27 November 1942 in Seattle, of mixed Native American, Black and white descent, James Marshall Hendrix started playing guitar at eleven, shortly after his mother's death. At 16 he dropped out of school and began scraping a living playing with rhythm and blues and rock'n'roll outfits. After doing his military service as a paratrooper, at 21 he began an intense career as a session man. He became the guitarist for Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, Tina Turner, and King Curtis.

In 1965, in Greenwich Village, he formed his first band, signed a contract and began performing regularly. Jimi already commanded a superior technique, pure blues flowed along the strings of his guitar, but America, swept up in the beat craze, was entirely taken with its young white phenomenons. Word of the prodigious guitarist's talent, however, reached the ears of Chas Chandler, former Animals member, now a manager in New York scouting for new talent. Chandler took him to London, where he introduced him to the colourful world of English flower power, and where he struck up a friendship with Donovan.

Hendrix conquered Europe with the electric blues, raw and searing, of the singles "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze", followed by a couple of tours, during which the guitarist's entourage fed the image of Hendrix as a Mephistophelian figure, given over to the most extreme experiences of drugs and sex. Jimi played along, setting audiences alight with a theatrical repertoire that has become an inseparable part of his legend: his Fender Stratocaster was, by turns, a projection of his manhood, or a partner in torrid electric lovemaking, played with his teeth, his elbows, his clothes, rubbed against the mic stand or against the amps in search of the most corrosive feedback.

It's 1967. After various unfortunate ventures in his home country, Hendrix, under Chandler's guidance, flew to the United Kingdom, where he was paired with two musicians: bassist (a stand-in role, really, as his actual instrument was guitar) Noel Redding (who died recently) and drummer Mitch Mitchell. Thus was born the Jimi Hendrix Experience, one of the most important bands in rock history. It was in fact 1967 that saw the Monterey Festival, where a still largely unknown Hendrix set fire to and smashed his guitar for the first time, leaving everyone stunned, first and foremost the other guitarists present at the gathering (among them, Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton, considered at the time to be the top guns).

The songs on Are You Experienced? come across as complete even when heard through different lenses, from the purely technical to the more strictly artistic or compositional. An album of historical importance matched by very few others, which left us a handful of gems that today can be filed away as rock classics, "standards" to borrow the language of jazz.

A few titles alone will suffice (with one necessary caveat: some of them came out as singles, also in 1967, but we consider them one and the same with the album under discussion, all the more so since they're included on current reissues): "Hey Joe", or how to turn a run-of-the-mill cover into rock history, with that guitar intro on the E pentatonic scale (or rather E flat, since Hendrix almost always played with his guitar tuned down a semitone, both to adapt the songs to his limited vocal range and to make the guitar more manageable, especially when executing bends) that left an indelible mark.

"Purple Haze", which opens with a phrase hammered out over an augmented fourth interval (regarded in medieval times as nothing less than the devil's interval), continues with one of the most celebrated riffs of all time, backed by martial drumming, and explodes into a typically bluesy progression enriched harmonically by the chords Hendrix used, which go well beyond simple minor sevenths—most notably the minor seventh chord with a diminished third, which fittingly became famous in rock as the Hendrix chord; "Stone Free", another lesson in grit and power, has by this point almost entirely shed the origins of rock and roll, with no sign of the pop path other groups were pursuing, the Beatles above all; "Fire", a track running at a thousand miles an hour and decidedly ahead of many future developments in rock music, with the drums almost duetting with the opening guitar riff, is another milestone, no exaggeration.

But it's not all fire and flames on this album: "The Wind Cries Mary" is a tender, melancholy electric ballad, the kind of which we'd see many more in years to come; "May Be This Love" and, above all, "Third Stone From The Sun" bluntly spotlight Hendrix's psychedelic side (the latter also hints at a nod to jazz), a quality that would go on to exert a considerable influence on Jimi's art in later records too; "Red House" shows how to play electric blues without losing the genre's typical pathos.

And then there's "Manic Depression", opening with a chromatic scale broken up by a pause (almost like the calm before the storm) set to a 9/8 time signature, a kind of diabolical waltz, featuring a solo that lets through all of Hendrix's explosive rage—one of the most devastating on the album; the famous "Foxy Lady", with a structure (harmonic too) all too similar to "Purple Haze", is one of Hendrix's most overrated tracks, salvaged only by that opening feedback, which by now everyone knows by heart; Are You Experienced? also showcases another of Hendrix's trademarks, the use of reverse guitar, a studio technique that would later be used extensively and of which the man was one of the first—and, in any case, one of the best—experimenters.

There are no B-sides or filler tracks on this album; even the songs not yet mentioned have something to say, from "I Don't Live Today" to "Can You See Me", from "Highway Chile" to "Love Or Confusion" and "51st Anniversary", with the sole exception of "Remember", one of the lesser tracks in Hendrix's entire body of work. But that doesn't change the substance: Are You Experienced? is, as already said, a seminal album, a record that laid the groundwork for a good deal of rock music right up to the present day.

Monterey Pop Festival, June 18, 1967: at the end of his exhausting performance (featuring a demonic version of "Wild Thing"), after setting his guitar on fire, Hendrix is met with an ovation from an adoring crowd. His Fender—phallic symbol, sacrificial idol, immolated on the altar of the stage at the close of his shows amid blazing fires and wild destruction—becomes rock's most powerful icon.

After the release of Axis Bold As Love, a gentler record with tender ballads like "Little Wing", "Bold As Love" and "Castles Made Of Sand", came the third album, the double Electric Ladyland, where Hendrix delves deeper into his psychedelic and hard rock streak, the same one found in "Purple Haze" and "Foxy Lady".

The record shows promise right from the cover (censored in the CD version): a collage of photos, some of which showed bare breasts, and were deemed pornographic. It opens with a track that evokes Broadway music, "And the Gods Made Love", before moving into a bit of falsetto-sung blues ("Have You Ever Been"); the third track is a wild, breakneck rock'n'roll number, "Crosstown Traffic", of which Hendrix played a scorching eight-minute version during the album's tour, followed by one of the record's great masterpieces, featuring the great Steve Winwood (Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith) on organ and Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane) on bass: "Voodoo Chile", the mesmerizing, famous fifteen-minute electric blues, one of the first tracks to break the classic song-length mold, preceded by "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly.

With side A done, side B opens with "Little Miss Strange", written and sung by the band's bassist, Noel Redding, followed by another song featuring a guest: "Long Hot Summer Night", with Al Kooper (Super Session) playing masterfully on piano; at first, Hendrix wasn't sure about the order of this song and the one that follows it, "Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)", a cover of Earl King, which kicks off with an unmistakable burst of pure energy and unleashes four frantic, distinct solos—one of which lasts over two minutes—within the song's four-minute runtime (!). With a now-famous drum intro, another of the record's many masterpieces arrives: "Gypsy Eyes", dedicated to the great guitarist's mother, who died when he was only eleven; side B closes with one of Hendrix's most psychedelic songs (the only one on this record, along with "1983"): "Burning Of the Midnight Lamp".

Side C opens with a cough and "Rainy Day, Dream Away", a song with lightweight lyrics ("Giorno piovoso, sogna tutto il giorno"), featuring contributions from Mike Finnigan on organ, Freddie Smith and Larry Faucette on congas, while the drummer is Buddy Miles, who would go on to work with Hendrix again in "Band Of Gypsies". The song has a second part in "Still Raining, Still Dreaming", on side D. After "Rainy Day", Hendrix gives us another great display of his compositional skill, with perhaps the most beautiful song on the whole record, "1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)", a thoroughly psychedelic blues (featuring flautist Chris Wood, another member of Traffic), which stretches out until it almost imperceptibly becomes "Moon, Turn the Tides".

The last side contains the three most famous songs on the record; after "Still Raining, Still Dreaming", as already mentioned the second part of "Rainy Day", with the same collaborators, "House Burning Down" kicks off with an explosive attack, and has since become famous thanks to its chorus ("Look at the sky turn a hell fire red, somebody's house is burnin' down down, down down") and its closing section, with Hendrix's guitar imitating the collapse of the house (a tonal device he would later use at Woodstock to evoke the bombings in Vietnam during his version of "Star Spangled Banner"). Once this ends, here's another masterpiece: "All Along the Watchtower", the gorgeous cover of the Bob Dylan song, of which there is also a version (found on South Saturn Delta) with Dave Mason of Traffic on bass and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones on percussion. The album closes with one of the most powerful and striking tracks in the whole Hendrix catalogue, another testament to his hard rock vein, "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)", with three solos interspersed with delirious lines ("Mi ergo accanto a una montagna e la abbatto con il taglio della mano"), and a now-legendary refrain, "Cause I'm a Voodoo Chile, Lord knows I'm a Voodoo Chile". In the original plan, the album was also meant to include "Tax Free", which was nonetheless played during the tour; it too can be found on "South Saturn Delta".

Together with the concerts at the Fillmore East and Woodstock, and the earlier Are You Experienced?, Electric Ladyland represents the peak of Hendrix's music and a pivotal album in the history of rock.

It's also a chance to better grasp the meaning of Hendrix's lyrics, always restless and ambiguous, full of references to death, religion, magic and the supernatural. "My lyrics often come from the dreams I have," he once said. "For instance, 'Purple Haze' is the reconstruction of a dream I had about walking underwater". And the blues ballads bring out all the composure of his singing, which manages to be both limpid and searing, calm and anguished, acidic and warm.

Already by 1968, however, Hendrix's physical, moral and artistic decline had begun. The Experience started to fall apart. The guitarist himself seemed more devoted to provocative behaviour than to music. In Sweden he trashed a hotel room and ended up in handcuffs. The following year he parted ways with Chandler and was arrested twice more. He then moved to New York, where he began spending time with the Black Panthers. But the stage was still his kingdom. In August, he triumphed at Woodstock with an irreverent, scarred rendition of the American anthem ("Star Spangled Banner"), using his guitar to mimic the bombings in Vietnam.

His craving for freedom spilled over into constant excess. "I'm kind to people until they start yelling around me," he said in an interview with Melody Maker. "Sometimes I'd like to tell the whole world to go to hell, but that's not in my nature. What I hate is today's society, with its plastic relationships and its watertight compartments. I reject all of that. Nobody will ever cage me inside a plastic box". But Jimi was starting to feel crushed by the machine of success of which he himself had been a docile cog. And the anguish kept building inside him. As critic Paolo Galori writes, the last Hendrix was "a solitary, visionary musician, ready to fly even higher, right up to the point of burning his wings, destroyed by excess in a desperate attempt not to repeat himself in the face of those demanding proof of his divinity". And he had already written his own epitaph: "People cry when someone dies, but the dead person isn't crying. When I die, I want people to play my music, lose control, and do whatever they want".

After forming the first all-Black rock band, Band of Gypsies, with Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass, he performed in August 1970 at the Isle of Wight. A month later, he was found dead in London, a victim of a barbiturate overdose. "Sooner or later it had to happen", Chandler would laconically remark.

African-Americans, who had already lost both the "apostle" Martin Luther King and their pride's leader Malcolm X to violent death, now lost the man who had restored rock'n'roll's Black paternity. Hendrix's death, followed 16 days later by that of Janis Joplin and nine months later by that of Jim Morrison, closed an era: that of the great mass gatherings, of protest set to music, of boundless psychedelia, of rock as extreme utopia. Farewell hippie dreams, farewell Age of Aquarius. The acid flowers wilt, and an age of ghosts, grief and bitterness begins.

The 70s are already knocking at the door, with new genres and new rock stars on the way, but the echo of Hendrix's distorted guitar would go on resounding through all the music we'd listen to from then on.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google