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Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (November 27, 1942 - September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer who is widely considered to be the most important electric guitarist in the history of popular music. As a guitarist, he built upon the innovations of blues stylists such as B. B. King, Albert King and T-Bone Walker, as well as those of R&B guitarists like Curtis Mayfield. In addition, he extended the tradition of rock guitar: although previous guitarists, such as the Kinks' Dave Davies, and the Who's Pete Townshend, had employed feedback and distortion as sonic tools, Hendrix, due to his grounding in blues, soul music and R&B, was able to use these devices in a way that transcended their sources. He was also an accomplished songwriter whose compositions have been covered by countless artists. As a record producer and musical architect, he was one of the first to use the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas. Finally, his image as a rock star places him in the lineage of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger.
Formative years
Born in Seattle, Washington, he grew up shy and sensitive, and (like his contemporaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney) he was deeply affected by his parents' divorce in 1951 and the death of his mother in 1958, when he was 16. The same year, his father Al gave him a ukele, and later bought him a $5 acoustic guitar, setting him on the path to his future vocation.
Before professional career
After playing with several local Seattle bands, Hendrix enlisted in the Army, joining the 101st Airborne Division (stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, about fifty miles from Nashville, Tennessee) as a trainee paratrooper. He served less than a year and received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle due on his 26th parachute jump.
Hendrix, who volunteered for service in the Vietnam War, never saw action, but his recordings would become favorites of soldiers fighting there. He initially made a precarious living performing in backing bands for touring soul and blues musicians, including Curtis Knight, B. B. King, and Little Richard during 1965. His first notice came from appearances with The Isley Brothers, notably on the two-parter "Testify" in 1964.
1965-1966
On October 15, 1965, Hendrix signed a three-year recording contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin, receiving $1 and 1% royalty on records with Curtis Knight. The contract was later to cause serious litigation problems with Hendrix and other record labels.
By 1966 he had his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, and a residency at the Cafe Wha? in New York City. While with the Blue Flames, he was discovered by Chas Chandler, of British rock group The Animals, who brought him to England, where Chandler, as the record producer, helped Hendrix form a new band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell.
Within his first few London appearances, Hendrix gained a huge reputation among his contemporaries, impressing reigning guitar heroes Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, as well as members of The Beatles and The Who, whose management signed Hendrix to their record label, Track. This promise was borne out in their first single, a cover of "Hey Joe", a stylized blues song that was virtually a standard for rock bands at the time.
Further success came with the follow-up, the incendiary original "Purple Haze", whose heavily distorted guitar sound would be highly influential for the next 20 years, and the soulful ballad "The Wind Cries Mary". These three songs were all Top 10 hits.
1967
1967 also saw the release of the group's first album, Are You Experienced?, whose mix of melodic ballads ("Remember"), pop-rock ("Fire"), psychedelia ("Third Stone From The Sun"), and traditional blues ("Red House") would prove the template for much of their later work. Hendrix was taken to hospital suffering burns to his hands after setting his guitar on fire for the first time at the Astoria Theatre in London on March 31, 1967. He was later warned by Rank Theatre management to "tone down" his stage act after causing damage to amplifiers and stage equipment at his shows.
At the strong instigation of festival board member Paul McCartney, the Experience was booked for the Monterey Pop Festival, and the concert, featuring Hendrix's iconic burning and smashing of his guitar, was immortalized by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker in his film Monterey Pop. The Monterey festival was a triumphant homecoming. It was followed by an abortive support slot opening for the pop group The Monkees on their first American tour.
The Monkees asked for Hendrix simply because they were fans, but unfortunately, their audience didn't warm to his outlandish stage act and he abruptly quit the tour after few dates, just as "Purple Haze" was beginning to chart in America. Chas Chandler later admitted that being 'thrown off' The Monkees tour was designed to gain maximum media impact and outrage for Hendrix. At the time, a story circulated claiming that Hendrix had been removed from the tour because of complaints made by conservative women's organisation the Daughters of the American Revolution that his stage conduct was 'lewd and indecent'. In fact, the story was false: it had been concocted by Australian journalist Lillian Roxon, who was accompanying the tour with her friend, singer Lynne Randell, the other support act. The claim was facetiously repeated in Roxon's famous 1969 'Rock Encyclopedia' but she later admitted it had been fabricated.
Meanwhile back in England, Hendrix's wild-man image and musical gimmickry (such as playing the guitar with his teeth) continued to garner him publicity. 1967 also saw the release of his second album. Axis: Bold as Love was in the vein of the album Are You Experienced, with tracks such as "Little Wing" and "If 6 Was 9" showing his continuing mastery of his instrument. A mishap almost prevented the album's release, however -- Hendrix lost the master tape of Side 1 of the LP after he accidentally left it in a taxi. With the release deadline looming, Hendrix, Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer were forced into a hurried remix from the multitracks, which they completed in a marathon all-night session; this was the version released in December 1967, although Kramer and Hendrix later said that they were never entirely happy with the results.
1968
By this time, increasing personality differences with Noel Redding combined with the influence of drugs, alcohol and fatigue, leading to a trouble-plagued tour of Scandinavia. On January 4, 1968, Hendrix was jailed by Stockholm police, after completely trashing a hotel room in a drunken rage.
The band's third recording, the double album Electric Ladyland 1968, was more eclectic and experimental, featuring a lengthy blues jam ("Voodoo Child"), the jazz inflected "Rainy Day, Dream Away"/"Still Raining, Still Dreaming", and what is probably the definitive version of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". (Hendrix credited British band The Alan Bown for inspiration on the arrangement.) The recording of the album was extremely problematic, with Hendrix's work habits becoming erratic, and a studio filled with his hangers-on causing longtime producer Chandler to quit on December 1, 1968. Chandler complained that Hendrix's insistence on doing multiple takes on every song ("Gypsy Eyes" apparently took 43 takes and he still wasn't satisfied with the result), combined with what he saw as incoherence caused by drugs led to him to sell his share of the management to Mike Jeffrey.
Many critics now believe that Jeffrey was a decidedly negative influence on Hendrix's life and career. It has been alleged that Jeffrey (who had previously managed Eric Burdon & The Animals) embezzled much of the money Hendrix earned during his lifetime and secreted it in offshore bank accounts. It has also been suggested that Jeffrey had links to US intelligence organisations (he openly boasted about being a secret agent) and to the Mafia.
Despite the difficulties of its recording, many of the album tracks show Hendrix's expansion beyond the scope of the original trio (it is said that the sound of this record would help inspire Miles Davis' sound on Bitches Brew) and saw him collaborating with a range of outside musicians including Dave Mason, Chris Wood and Steve Winwood from Traffic (band), drummer Buddy Miles and former Dylan organist Al Kooper.
1969
Due to this expansion of horizons, and a deterioration in his relationship with his bandmates (particularly Redding), the Experience broke up. His relations with the public also came to a head when on January 4, 1969 he was accused by television producers of being arrogant after playing an impromptu version of "Sunshine of your Love" past his allotted timeslot on the BBC1 show Happening for Lulu.
On May 3 he was arrested at Toronto International Airport after a quantity of heroin was found in his luggage. He was later bailed on a US$10,000 surety; when the matter came to trial Hendrix was acquitted, successfully claiming that the drugs had been slipped into his bag by a fan without his knowledge. On June 29, Noel Redding formally announced to the media that he had quit the Jimi Hendrix Experience, although he effectively ceased to be with Hendrix during most of the recording of Electric Ladyland.
By August of 1969, however, Hendrix had formed a new band, called Gypsy Suns and Rainbows, in order to play the Woodstock festival. It featured Hendrix on guitar, Billy Cox on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums, Larry Lee on rhythm guitar and Jerry Velez and Juma Sultan on drums and percussion. The set, while notably under-rehearsed, ragged, and played out to a slowly emptying field of revelers, featured an improvised instrumental version of "The Star Spangled Banner", distorted almost beyond recognition. The rendition has been described by some as a generation's statement on the unrest in US society, and others as an anti-American mockery, oddly symbolic of the beauty, spontaneity, and tragedy that was endemic to Hendrix' life. It was an unforgettable rendition remembered by generations. When asked on the Dick Cavett Show if he was aware of all the outrage he had caused by the performance, Hendrix himself stated simply "I thought it was beautiful."
1970
The Gypsy Suns and Rainbows were short lived, and Hendrix formed a new trio with old friends, the Band of Gypsys (sic), comprising Billy Cox, his old army buddy, on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, for two memorable concerts on New Year's Eve 1969/70. Happily, the concerts were recorded, capturing several superb pieces, including what many feel to be one of Hendrix's greatest live performances, an explosive 12-minute rendition of his anti-war epic 'Machine Gun'.
His association with Miles however was not to last and ended abruptly during a concert at Madison Square Gardens on January 28, 1970, when Hendrix walked out after playing just two songs, telling the audience "I'm sorry we just can't get it together". Miles later stated during a television interview that Hendrix felt he was losing the spotlight to other musicians. The rest of that year was spent recording sporadically, often with Mitchell, and attempting to carry out the shambolic Rainbow Bridge project, an ambitious combination of film/album/concert set in Hawaii. On July 26, Hendrix played at his hometown of Seattle at Sick's Stadium, where under the influence of drugs he started verbally abusing members of the audience.
In August he played at the Isle of Wight festival with Mitchell and Cox, expressing disappointment onstage at his fans' clamor to hear his old hits rather than his new ideas. On September 6, during his final European tour, Hendrix was greeted by booing and jeering by fans while performing at the Fehmarn Festival in Germany in a riot-like atmosphere. Bassist Billy Cox quit the tour and headed back to the United States after reportedly being dosed with PCP (phencyclidine). Hendrix remained in England, and on September 18th, he was found senseless in bed in the flat of his German girlfriend Monika Dannemann after taking too many sleeping pills and choking on his own vomit. He died later in a hospital. His body was returned home and he was interred in the Greenwood Memorial Park, Renton, Washington, USA.
Legacy
Hendrix's guitar of choice was a right-handed Fender Stratocaster, played upside down. He left behind more than 300 unreleased recordings, and became legendary as one of the 1960s' rock-n-roll musicians who, like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, died at a young age.
After Hendrix's death, hundreds of unreleased recordings caused controversy when producer Alan Douglas supervised the mixing, overdubbing, and release of several albums' worth of material that Hendrix had left behind in various states of completion. These albums are generally considered to be substandard in quality and it is probable that Jimi would not have allowed them to be released.
In 1972 British producer Joe Boyd put together a film documentary on Hendrix's life, which played in art-house cinemas around the world for many years; the double-album soundtrack to the film, which included his full Monterey performance and many rarities, was one of the best of the posthumous releases.
Although the film itself is generally regarded as a being of only minor interest, the posthumously released soundtrack of 'Rainbow Bridge' was much more worthwhile. It included several tracks which were intended for Hendrix's projected fourth studio album, 'First Rays Of The New Rising Sun', the never-completed follow-up to 'Electric Ladyland'. The excellent studio tracks, including 'Dolly Dagger' 'Earth Blues' and 'Room Full of Mirrors', showed Hendrix taking on strong influences from contemporary soul and funk. The 'Rainbow Bridge' soundtrack LP is highlighted by the full-length recording of another of Hendrix's very best live recordings, a tour-de-force ten-minute electric version of the blues standard 'Hear My Train A Comin', a song he had originally recorded for a 1967 promotional film, and which he there performed impromptu on 12-string guitar. The 1969 electric version (which stands alongside 'Machine Gun' as one of his best live recordings) was taped live at a concert at the Berkeley Community Center in California; a short filmed segment of this performance was also included in the concert film "JImi Plays Berkeley".
Estate, legal wranglings
In the absence of a will, Jimi's father Al Hendrix inherited Jimi's recordings and royalty rights, and entrusted this estate to an attorney, who allegedly tricked Al into selling these rights to shell companies owned by the attorney. Al sued in 1993 for mismanaging these assets. The litigation was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, a lifelong and devoted Hendrix fan. In a 1995 settlement, Al Hendrix finally regained control over all his son's recordings. Several albums were then re-mastered from the original tapes and re-released. Al Hendrix died in 2002 at age 82. Control of the estate and the Experience Hendrix company that was set up to administer the Hendrix legacy then passed to Jimi's half-sister Janie.
During 2004 Janie Hendrix is being sued by her half-brother, Leon Hendrix, Jimi's younger brother, who was written out of his father's will in 1997. He is seeking to have his inheritance restored and his half-sister removed from her position of control over the Hendrix estate.