Jimi Hendrix

“Electric Ladyland” is probably the masterpiece of Jimi Hendrix, a highly complex record that's hard to fully grasp. It doesn't help that it was almost entirely overlooked in the track selection for the 1997 anthology, with the exception of “Crosstown Traffic”, “All Along the Watchtower” and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”. To really understand this record, it's worth noting that Hendrix was after the “breakthrough”, looking for validation from both audiences and critics, and it helps to look at the great Seattle guitarist's first two albums, “Are You Experienced?” and “Axis: Bold As Love”: while the former is a showcase of his technical skill, the latter gives voice to his gift for songwriting, particularly through the three great blues ballads that define it (“Bold As Love”, “Castles Made Of Sand” and the gorgeous “Little Wing”). “Electric Ladyland”, on the other hand - which is also a double album, the only one Hendrix released in his lifetime - finds Jimi diving into his psychedelic and hard rock side, the same vein that produced “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Lady”.

It opens with a track that nods to 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”, which Hendrix stretched into an infernal eight-minute version during the tour for the album. After that comes 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 Child”, the mesmerizing, famous fifteen-minute electric blues epic, one of the first songs to break free of the standard song length, following in the footsteps of Iron Butterfly's “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.

With side A done, side B opens with “Little Miss Strange”, written and sung by the band's bassist, Noel Redding, followed by another track with a guest star: “Long Hot Summer Night”, on which Al Kooper (Super Session) delivers a masterful piano performance. At first, Hendrix wasn't sure about the running order of this song and the one that follows it, “Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)”, a cover of Earl King's song, which kicks off with an unmistakable burst of pure energy and explodes into four frenzied, distinct solos - one of which runs over two minutes - all within the song's four-minute length (!). With a now-famous drum intro, another of the album's many masterpieces arrives: “Gypsy Eyes”, dedicated to the great guitarist's mother, who died when he was just eleven years old; side B closes with one of Hendrix's most psychedelic songs (the only other one on this record, alongside “1983”): “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp”.

Side C opens with a cough and “Rainy Day, Dream Away”, a song with breezy, easygoing lyrics (“Rainy day, dream away”), featuring contributions from Mike Finnigan on organ, Freddie Smith and Larry Faucette on congas, with Buddy Miles on drums, who would go on to work with Hendrix again in Band Of Gypsys. 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 songwriting gifts, with what might be the most beautiful song on the whole record, “1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)”, a deeply psychedelic blues (featuring flautist Chris Wood, another member of Traffic), which stretches out and almost imperceptibly morphs into “Moon, Turn The Tides”.

The final side contains the three most famous songs on the record; after “Still Raining, Still Dreaming”, as mentioned the second part of “Rainy Day”, featuring the same collaborators, “House Burning Down” kicks off with an explosive intro, and has since become famous for its chorus (“Look at the sky turn a hell fire red, somebody's house is burnin' down down, down down”) and for its ending, with Hendrix's guitar mimicking the collapse of the house (a sonic trick he would later use at Woodstock to evoke the bombings in Vietnam during his version of “Star Spangled Banner”). Once that fades out, here comes another masterpiece: “All Along The Watchtower”, the gorgeous cover of the Bob Dylan song, of which there's also a version (found on South Saturn Delta) featuring Dave Mason of Traffic on bass and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones on percussion. The album closes with one of the most powerful, striking tracks in Hendrix's entire catalog, another testament to his hard rock side, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”, with three solos interspersed with delirious spoken lines (“Well, I stand up next to a mountain, and I chop it down with the edge of my hand”), and its now-iconic chorus, “Cause I'm a voodoo child, Lord knows I'm a voodoo child”. In the original plan, the album was also meant to include “Tax Free”, which was nonetheless performed during the tour; it too can be found on “South Saturn Delta”.

Alongside the Fillmore East shows and Woodstock, “Electric Ladyland” stands as the peak of Hendrix's music and a pivotal album in the history of rock.

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30/10/2006