Jimi Hendrix: Best Guitarist Ever
'Are You Experienced?': Psychedelic Recordings and First Gigs
Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe' and 'Are You Experienced?' made the UK take notice of his unique brand of psychedelic rock. This UK success led to Monterey and fame in the US
James Marshall Hendrix was born in Seattle in 1942, spent most of his life in obscurity, soared across the 1960s psychedelic rock scene changing modern music forever, and died in 1970 at the age of just 27 less than a month after playing a storming set at that year's Isle of Wight Festival. He was, of course, better known as Jimi Hendrix.
London
Jimi’s early life is well-documented, as is his meeting with former Animals bassist Chas Chandler who brought him to London to introduce him to his heroes Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. London, and the wider UK, was where Jimi made his name, before returning to the US to take, first, the 1967 Monterey Festival by storm and, then, in 1969 headline Woodstock.
Hendrix’s first public appearance in London was at a Cream gig when he asked to sit in for a few numbers in place of Eric Clapton. This was something nobody did, Clapton being thought of as a ‘god’ by his fans, but he was allowed to do this. Confounding expectations, Hendrix simply blew the audience away, gave Clapton a lesson in virtuosity, and left Cream wondering whether they should continue.
The Experience and Recording 'Are You Experienced?'
Chandler recruited two musicians to play with Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell on drums and Noel Redding on bass. Redding had come to the audition hoping to play lead guitar, but was transformed into a bass player. The resulting outfit was called the Jimi Hendrix Experience and they embarked on a heavy schedule of touring the UK, whilst fitting in the recording of the album ‘Are You Experienced?’ into the odd day off and into overnight sessions in the recording studios between gigs.
The album, like the single ‘Hey Joe’ (released earlier), was revelatory both to those who listened to it and also to those involved in producing it. Studio technicians were being asked to record music at higher levels than they believed their equipment could handle. Amplifiers were turned high until they were at that fine point between clean sound and feedback with the output crossing back and forth between the two. Distortion was produced by judicious use of developments in the equipment produced by Marshall Amplifiers. And the sound of the newly invented ‘wah-wah’ pedal was brought to peaks of perfection by Hendrix’s superbly controlled foot movements. All in all, the album was, and remains, a musical masterpiece.
Some Concluding Thoughts
The album and the explosive live shows played by The Experience brought Hendrix to the forefront of attention in the UK and Europe. (Some of the tours Hendrix’s band played seem incongruous in retrospect. For example, the Experience backed Englebert Humperdink in a tour of the UK and Redding played lead guitar from the wings for Humperdink’s backing band. In France, they opened for Johnny Halliday, the French equivalent of Cliff Richard.) Monterey helped Hendrix break America, leading to gigs at the Fillmore and, most famously, Woodstock, where he played an awesome version of the US national anthem, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, secured his reputation as, quite possibly, the greatest guitarist of all-time.
