Cream

Formed 1966

• Principal Members
• Ginger Baker
• Jack Bruce
• Eric Clapton

Biography

Cream was a 1960s British rock band, which consisted of guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. Celebrated as one of the first great power trios and supergroups of rock, their sound was characterised by a melange of blues and psychedelia. Cream combined Clapton’s blues guitar playing with the airy voice and intense basslines of Jack Bruce and the jazz-influenced drumming of Ginger Baker.

Cream’s music included songs based on traditional blues such as ‘Crossroads’ and ‘Spoonful’, and modern blues such as ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’, as well as more eccentric songs such as ‘Strange Brew’, ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’ and ‘Toad’. Cream’s biggest hits were ‘I Feel Free’, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, ‘White Room’, ‘Crossroads’ and ‘Badge’.

Cream, together with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, made a significant impact upon the popular music of the time, providing a heavy yet technically proficient musical theme that foreshadowed the emergence of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and The Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s. The band’s live performances influenced progressive rock acts, jam bands such as The Allman Brothers Band, Rush, Grateful Dead and Phish, and even heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath. Although Cream’s studio work has stood the test of time, their true influence lies in their live sets. Cream took the idea of jamming to a new level, incorporating their individual virtuosity into long 20-minute jams.

History

[edit] Formation

Cream debuted on July 17, 1966. By that time, Eric Clapton’s career with The Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers had earned him a reputation as the premier blues guitarist in Britain. Clapton’s virtuosity and raw power with the instrument inspired one fan to spray paint the words “Clapton is God” on the wall of an Islington underground station. ^[3] Clapton, however, found the environment of Mayall’s band confining, and sought to expand his playing in a new band.

In 1966, Clapton met Baker, then the leader of the Graham Bond Organisation, which at one point featured Jack Bruce on bass, harmonica and piano. Baker, too, felt stifled in the GBO, and had grown tired of Graham Bond’s drug addictions and bouts of mental instability. “I had always liked Ginger”, explained Clapton. “Ginger had come to see me play with John Mayall. After the gig he drove me back to London in his Rover. I was very impressed with his car and driving. He was telling me that he wanted to start a band, and I had been thinking about it too.” Each was impressed with the other’s playing abilities, prompting Baker to ask Clapton to join his new, then-unnamed group. Clapton immediately agreed, on the condition that Baker hire Jack Bruce as the group’s bassist.

Clapton had met Bruce when the bassist/vocalist did a short stint with the Bluesbreakers in March 1966; the two had also worked together as part of a one-shot band called Powerhouse (which also included Steve Winwood and Paul Jones). Impressed with Bruce’s vocals and technical prowess, Clapton had wanted to work with him on an ongoing basis.

What Clapton did not know was that while Bruce was in Bond’s band, he and Baker had been notorious for their quarreling. While both were excellent jazz musicians and respected each other’s skills, the confines of the GBO had proved too small for their egos. Their volatile relationship included on-stage fights and the sabotage of one another’s instruments. After Baker fired Bruce from the band, Bruce continued to arrive for gigs; ultimately, Bruce was driven away from the band after Baker threatened him at knifepoint.

Nevertheless, Baker and Bruce were able to put aside their differences for the good of Baker’s new trio, which he envisioned as collaborative, with each of the members contributing to music and lyrics. The band was named “Cream”, as Clapton, Bruce, and Baker were already considered the “cream of the crop” amongst blues and jazz musicians in the exploding British music scene. Before deciding upon “Cream”, the band considered calling themselves “Sweet ‘n’ Sour Rock ‘n’ Roll”. Of the trio, Clapton had the biggest reputation in England; however, he was all but unknown in the United States. He left The Yardbirds before “For Your Love” hit the American Top Ten.^[4][5]

Shortly after the band’s formation in 1966, Cream received an invitation to perform at the July 1966 “Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival”. Being new and with few original songs to their credit, Cream performed spirited blues reworkings that thrilled the large crowd and earned them a warm reception. In October, they also got a chance to jam with Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix was a fan of Eric Clapton, and wanted a chance to play with him onstage. Hendrix was introduced to Cream through former Animal, Chas Chandler.

It was during the early organization that they decided Bruce would serve as the group’s lead vocalist. While Clapton was shy about singing, he occasionally harmonized with Bruce and, in time, took lead vocals on some notable Cream tunes including “Four Until Late”, “Strange Brew”, “Crossroads”, and “Badge”.

[edit] Fresh Cream

Cream’s debut album, Fresh Cream, was recorded and released in 1966. The album reached #6 in the UK charts and #39 in the United States. It mainly consisted of blues covers, including “Four Until Late”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, “Spoonful“, “I’m So Glad” and “Cat’s Squirrel”. The rest of the album featured songs written (or co-written) by Jack Bruce, most notably “Wrapping Paper” and “I Feel Free” (which was a UK hit single, but only released on the American edition of the LP), and a couple of songs written by Ginger Baker (one of which, “Toad“, contained one of the earliest examples of a drum solo in rock music).

The early Cream bootlegs show that the band had not developed their signature jamming capabilities. These recordings capture a much tighter band showcasing more songs. All of the songs are reasonably short five-minute versions of “N.S.U.”, “Sweet Wine” and “Toad”. But a mere two months later, the setlist had been shortened with the songs now much longer.

Disraeli Gears

Cream first visited the US in March 1967 to play nine dates at the RKO Theater in New York. They returned to record Disraeli Gears in New York between May 11 and May 15, 1967. Cream’s second album was released in November 1967 and reached the Top 5 in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. It was recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York. Disraeli Gears is often considered to be the band’s defining effort, successfully blending psychedelic British rock with American blues. It was also the first Cream album to consist primarily of original songs, with only three of the eleven tracks written by others outside the band. Disraeli Gears not only features hits “Strange Brew” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses“, but also “Sunshine of Your Love“, arguably Cream’s most popular song.

Although the album is considered one of Cream’s finest efforts, it is not well represented in Cream’s live sets. Although they consistently played “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and “Sunshine of your Love”, a setlist consisting of several songs from Disraeli Gears was quickly dropped from the set in mid-1967 favouring longer blues jams instead of short pop songs. Only “We’re Going Wrong” saw some occasional play time in their live sets. (In their 2005 reunion shows, Cream only played three songs from Disraeli Gears: “Sunshine of Your Love”, “We’re Going Wrong”, and “Outside Woman Blues”.)

During late 1967, they incorporated more jamming time in their repertoire, some songs stretching out to 20 minutes. According to Jack Bruce, they were obliged to play 20-minute jams or the audience would angrily ask for their money back. Long drawn-out jams in songs like “Spoonful“, “N.S.U.” and “Sweet Wine” became live favorites. Nonetheless, songs like “Sunshine of Your Love”, “Crossroads” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses” remained reasonably short.

[edit] Wheels of Fire

In 1968 came Cream’s third release, Wheels of Fire, which topped the American charts. Wheels of Fire showcased Cream moving slightly away from the blues and more towards a semi-progressive rock style highlighted by odd time signatures and various orchestral instruments. However, the band did record a live blues favorite, “Sitting on Top of the World“. The opening song, “White Room”, became a popular radio staple. Another song, “Politician”, was written by the band while waiting to perform live at the BBC. According to a BBC interview with Clapton, the record company, also handling Albert King, asked the band to cover “Born Under a Bad Sign“, which became a popular track off the record.

The album’s second disc featured three live recordings from the Winterland Ballroom and one from the Fillmore. Eric Clapton’s solo in “Crossroads” has made it to the top 20 in multiple “greatest guitar solo” lists. The 16-minute “Spoonful”, from their March Winterland show, became their most epic song and a concert favourite. Ginger Baker’s “Toad” is now widely-regarded as one of the greatest live drum solos in rock history.

After the completion of Wheels of Fire in mid-1968, the band members had had enough and wanted to go their separate ways. As Baker would state in a 2006 interview with Music Mart magazine, “It just got to the point where Eric said to me: ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ and I said so have I. I couldn’t stand it. The last year with Cream was just agony. It’s damaged my hearing permanently, and today I’ve still got a hearing problem because of the sheer volume throughout the last year of Cream. But it didn’t start off like that. In 1966, it was great. It was really a wonderful experience musically, and it just went into the realms of stupid.” Also, Bruce and Baker’s combustible relationship proved even worse as a result of the strain put upon the band by non-stop touring, forcing Clapton to play the perpetual role of peacekeeper.

Clapton had also fallen under the spell of Bob Dylan‘s former backing group, now known as The Band, and their debut album, Music from Big Pink, which proved to be a welcome breath of fresh air in comparison to the incense and psychedelia that had informed Cream. Furthermore, he had read a scathing Cream review in Rolling Stone magazine, a publication he had much admired, where the reviewer, Jon Landau, called him a master of “the blues cliché.” It was in the wake of that article that Clapton wanted to end Cream and pursue a different musical direction.

At the beginning of their farewell tour on October 4, 1968, in Oakland, nearly the entire set consisted of songs from Wheels of Fire: “White Room”, “Politician”, “Crossroads”, “Spoonful”, “Deserted Cities of the Heart“, and “Passing the Time” taking place of “Toad” for a drum solo. “Passing the Time” and “Deserted Cities” were quickly removed from the setlist and replaced by “Sitting on Top of the World” and “Toad”.

[edit] Goodbye

Cream was eventually persuaded to do one final album. That album, the appropriately titled Goodbye, was recorded in late 1968 and released in early 1969, after the band had broken up. It featured six songs: three live recordings dating from a concert at The Forum in Los Angeles, California, on 19 October, and three new studio recordings (the most notable, “Badge“, was written by Clapton and George Harrison, who also played rhythm guitar). “I’m So Glad“, which first appeared as a studio recording on Fresh Cream, appeared as a live track on Goodbye. It was the only song to appear on both Cream’s first and last albums.

Cream’s “farewell tour” consisted of 22 shows at 19 venues in the United States between October 4 and November 4, 1968, and two final farewell concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on November 26, 1968. Initially another double album was planned, comprising live material from this tour plus new studio tracks, but a single album, Goodbye was released instead with three live tracks taken from their performance at The Forum in Los Angeles on October 19, 1968, and three studio tracks, one written by each of the band members. The final United States gig was at the Rhode Island Auditorium, November 4, 1968.

The two Royal Albert Hall concerts were filmed for a BBC documentary and released on video (and later DVD) as Farewell Concert. Both shows were sold out and attracted more attention than any other Cream concert, but their performance was regarded by many as below standard. Baker himself said of the concerts: “It wasn’t a good gig … Cream was better than that … We knew it was all over. We knew we were just finishing it off, getting it over with.” Cream’s live performances were already declining. In an interview from Cream: Classic Artists, Ginger Baker himself agreed that the band was getting worse by the minute.^[6]

Cream’s supporting acts were Taste (featuring a young Rory Gallagher) and the newly formed Yes, who received good reviews.

[edit] Reunions (1993, 2005)

In 1993, Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and set aside their differences to perform at the induction ceremony. Initially, the trio was wary about performing, until encouraging words from Robbie Robertson inspired them to try. The end result was an incendiary set consisting of “Sunshine of Your Love”, “Crossroads”, and – interestingly, as the band had never played it live during their original tenure – “Born Under a Bad Sign”. Clapton mentioned in his acceptance speech that their rehearsal the day before the ceremony had marked the first time they had played together in 25 years.

Cream backstage at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction

The performance spurred rumours of a reunion tour. Bruce and Baker went so far as to say in later interviews that they were, indeed, interested in touring as Cream. A formal reunion did not take place immediately, however, and Clapton continued to pursue solo projects, as did Bruce and Baker, although the two did work together again in the mid-1990s as two-thirds of a power trio, BBM, with Gary Moore.

In 2004, it was officially announced that Cream would finally reunite for a series of four shows, on May 2, 3, 5, and 6, 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the venue of their final concerts in 1968. Even more surprising was that the reunion came at Clapton’s request: although the three musicians chose not to speak publicly about the shows, Clapton would later state that he had become more “generous” in regard to his past, and that the physical health of Bruce and Baker was a major factor: Bruce had recently undergone a liver transplant for liver cancer, and had almost lost his life, while Baker had severe arthritis.

Cream in 2005

Tickets for all four shows sold out in under an hour. Touts were soon charging outrageous prices for what became one of the hardest-to-get tickets in rock and roll history. The performances were recorded for a live CD and DVD. Among those in attendance were Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Steve Winwood, Roger Waters, Brian May of Queen, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and also Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman, formerly of the Rolling Stones. The reunion marked the first time the band had played “Badge” and “Pressed Rat and Warthog” live.

The Royal Albert Hall reunion proved a success on both a personal and financial level, inspiring the reformed band to bring their reunion to the United States. For reasons unknown, Cream chose to play at only one venue, Madison Square Garden in New York City, from October 24-26, 2005. The shows were marred by some controversy in regard to tickets: the show’s promoters had made a deal with credit card company American Express to make tickets available to American Express customers only in an unprecedented week-long pre-sale. Again, touts charged high prices for tickets; nevertheless, the shows were a financial success and received critical praise.

Fans of Cream hoped for a full-scale tour, but a statement from Cream’s publicist days after the last performance put the nail in that particular coffin, when it was announced that Cream would not tour the United States. In an interview with Jack Bruce in the December 2005 issue of Bass Player magazine, Bruce hinted that he would like to see Cream continue in one way or another, possibly in the form of a new album, but that a tour was out of the question: “It would be quite a challenge to try to create music that would stand up to the classic songs. I’ve got a few ideas already — in fact, I wrote a song yesterday that I think would work. I just don’t know if it will happen, because we all feel the band is so special we don’t want to do it that often, if we go on. We’ve had offers you wouldn’t believe — I didn’t believe — for long world tours, and it’s tempting. But none of us wants to accept because it would take away from the rarity and special nature of getting together. I’d like to do it every now and again and just play somewhere, but we could do an album amidst that, and I’m going to suggest it.”

[edit] Post-Cream

Later years (1968-present)

Inspired by more song-based acts, particularly The Band, Clapton went on to perform much different, less improvisational material with Delaney & Bonnie, Blind Faith with Baker, Derek and the Dominos, and in his own long and varied solo career. Blind Faith came about immediately after the demise of Cream following an attempt by Clapton to recruit Steve Winwood into the band in the hope that he would help act as a buffer between Bruce and Baker. However, Cream broke up before Winwood had the chance to consider the offer. Bruce began a successful solo career with the release of Songs for a Tailor in 1969. Baker later formed a jazz-fusion ensemble out of the ashes of Blind Faith, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, which featured Winwood, Blind Faith bassist Rick Grech, Graham Bond on sax, and Denny Laine of the Moody Blues, among others.

The future (2006-present)

Cream’s future is uncertain: in February 2006, Cream received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of their contribution to, and influence upon, modern music. That same month, a “Classic Albums” DVD was released detailing the story behind the creation and recording of Disraeli Gears. On the day prior to the Grammy ceremony, Bruce made a public statement that more one-off performances of Cream had been planned: multiple dates in a few cities, similar to the Royal Albert Hall and Madison Square Garden shows. He would not state when or where those shows would occur, claiming that he “would get chopped” if he said anything.

However, this story was rebutted by both Clapton and Baker, first by Clapton in a Times article from April 2006. The article stated that when asked about Cream, Clapton said: “‘No. Not for me. We did it and it was fun. But life is too short I’ve got lots of other things I would rather do, including staying at home with my kids.’ The thing about that band, he says, was that it was all to do with its limits. ‘Here were three people who were essentially in disagreement with each other. You latched on to those rare moments of cohesion and made the most of them. But they were rare. It was an experiment.’”

In an interview regarding the release of a DVD of Blind Faith‘s 1969 performance in Hyde Park, Baker commented to the United Kingdom-based magazine Music Mart about his unwillingness to continue the Cream reunion. These comments were far more specific and explosive than Clapton’s; his reasons stemmed from Jack Bruce’s behavior at the Madison Square Garden performances: “When he’s Dr. Jekyll, he’s fine… It’s when he’s Mr. Hyde that he’s not. And I’m afraid he’s still the same. I tell you this – there won’t ever be any more Cream gigs, because he did Mr. Hyde in New York last year.”

When asked to elaborate, Baker replied: “Oh, he shouted at me on stage, he turned his bass up so loud that he deafened me on the first gig. What he does is that he apologises and apologises, but I’m afraid, to do it on a Cream reunion gig, that was the end. He killed the magic, and New York was like 1968… It was just a get through the gig, get the money sort of deal. I was absolutely amazed. I mean, he demonstrated why he got the sack from Graham Bond and why Cream didn’t last very long on stage in New York. I didn’t want to do it in the first place simply because of how Jack was. I have worked with him several times since Cream, and I promised myself that I would never work with him again. When Eric first came up with the idea, I said no, and then he phoned me up and eventually convinced me to do it. I was on my best behaviour and I did everything I could to make things go as smooth as possible, and I was really pleasant to Jack.”

Clapton would later expand on his reasons for ending the reunion: Baker’s response to Bruce’s attitude on the first night of the New York shows. Believing that the two would never see eye-to-eye almost forty years after the break-up of Cream, he chose to return to the path of solo artist. Surprisingly, despite the negative comments from Baker regarding Madison Square Garden, Jack Bruce told Detroit’s WCSX radio station in May 2007 that there are plans for a Cream reunion later in the year: “There is some talk about us getting together later this year, which I can’t really say too much about. But it’s not a commercial thing … but we may get together for something.” ^[7]

It was later revealed that the potential performance was to be a set at the November, 2007 London tribute to Ahmet Ertegün. The band decided against it, as was confirmed by Bruce in a letter to the editor of the Jack Bruce fanzine, The Cuicoland Express dated September 26, 2007:

“Dear Marc,

We were going to do this tribute concert for Ahmet when it was to be at the Royal Albert Hall but decided to pass when it was moved to the O2 Arena and seemed to be becoming overly commercial.”

The headlining act for the O2 Arena Ertegun tribute show (postponed to December 2007) turned out to be another reunited English hard-rock act, Led Zeppelin. So while the band members are talking again, no Cream reunions are planned for the near future.(wikipedia.com)

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers

Formed 1963

Biograp

John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers are a pioneering English blues band, led by singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist John Mayall, OBE. Mayall used the band name between 1963 and ’67 then dropped it for some fifteen years, but in 1982 a ‘Return of the Bluesbreakers’ was announced and it has been kept since then. The name has become generic without a clear distinction which recordings are to be credited just to the leader or to leader and his band. The Bluesbreakers have included luminaries such as:

• Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce (both later in Cream),
• Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood (later all in Fleetwood Mac),
• Mick Taylor (later in The Rolling Stones),
• Harvey Mandel, Walter Trout, Larry Taylor (later in Canned Heat),
• Don “Sugarcane” Harris, Randy Resnick, Aynsley Dunbar, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Andy Fraser (Free), Chris Mercer, Henry Lowther, Johnny Almond and Jon Mark (later of Mark-Almond).

History

The Bluesbreakers were formed in January 1963 and became an ever-evolving lineup of more than 100 different combinations of musicians performing under that name^[1]. Eric Clapton joined in 1965 just a few months after the release of their first album. Clapton brought the blues influences to the forefront of the group, as he had left The Yardbirds in order to play the blues.

The group lost their record contract with Decca that year, which also saw the release of a single called “I’m Your Witchdoctor” (produced by Jimmy Page), followed by a return to Decca in 1966. The album Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, also known as The Beano Album, was released later that year; it reached the Top Ten in the UK.

Clapton and Jack Bruce left the group that year to form Cream. Clapton was replaced by Peter Green for A Hard Road, after which he left to form Fleetwood Mac. Finally, in 1969, the third Bluesbreaker-guitarist departed when Mick Taylor joined the Rolling Stones.

By the time the 1960s were over, the Bluesbreakers had finally achieved some success in the United States.

With some interruptions, the Bluesbreakers have continued to tour and release albums (over 50 to date), though they never achieved the critical or popular acclaim of their earlier material. In 2003, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor and Chris Barber reunited with the band for John Mayall’s 70th Birthday Concert in Liverpool — the concert was later released on CD and DVD. In 2004, their line up included Buddy Whittington, Joe Yuele, Hank Van Sickle and Tom Canning, and the band toured the UK with Mick Taylor as a guest musician.

Wikipedia.com

Jimi Hendrix

Born 27th Nov, 1942
Died 18th Sep, 1970

Biography

Jimi Hendrix (27th November, 1942, Seattle, Washington – 18th September, 1970, London, England) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. Hendrix is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential guitarists in rock music history.

After initial success in Europe, he achieved fame in the USA following his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. Later, Hendrix headlined the iconic 1969 Woodstock Festival.

Hendrix helped develop the technique of guitar feedback with overdriven amplifiers.^[2] He was influenced by blues artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Albert King, and Elmore James,^[3][4][5][6] rhythm and blues and soul guitarists Curtis Mayfield, Steve Cropper, as well as by some modern jazz.^[7]

Carlos Santana has suggested that Hendrix’s music may have been influenced by his Native American heritage.^[8] As a record producer, Hendrix also broke new ground in using the recording studio as an extension of his musical ideas; he was one of the first to experiment with stereophonic and phasing effects during recording.

Hendrix won many of the most prestigious rock music awards in his lifetime and has been posthumously awarded many more, including being inducted into the USA’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. An English Heritage “Blue plaque” was erected in his name on his former residence at Brook Street, London in September 1997 and his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6627 Hollywood Blvd.) was dedicated in 1994. In 2006, his debut USA album, Are You Experienced, was inducted into the United States National Recording Registry and Rolling Stone named Hendrix number 1 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003

Early life

Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington, USA, while his father was in army camp in Oklahoma. He was named Johnny Allen Hendrix at birth by his mother, 17 year old Lucille Hendrix née Jeter^[10]. His mother, having difficulties, had put him in the temporary care of friends of the family, a couple in California. On his release from the army his father, James Allen “Al” Hendrix, retrieved him and re-named him James Marshall Hendrix in memory of his deceased brother, Leon Marshall Hendrix.^[11][12] He was known as “Buster” to friends and family, from birth.^[13] Shortly after this Al reunited with Lucille. Al found it hard to gain steady employment after the Second World War, and the family experienced financial hardship. Hendrix had two brothers, Leon and Joseph, and two sisters, Kathy and Pamela. Joseph was born with physical difficulties and at the age of three was given up to state care. His two sisters were both given up at a relatively early age, for care and later adoption, Kathy was born blind and Pamela had some lesser physical difficulties. Hendrix’s parents divorced when he was nine years old, and his mother died in 1958. On occasion, he was sent to live with his grandmother in Vancouver, British Columbia because of his unstable household, and his brother Leon was put into temporary welfare care for a period^[14]. Hendrix grew up as a shy and sensitive boy, deeply affected by the conditions of poverty and neglect that he was raised in, and by the troubling family events of his childhood. In a relatively unusual experience for African Americans of his era, Hendrix’ high school had a relatively equitable ethnic mix of African, European (including Jews) and Asian (Japanese, Filipino and Chinese) Americans.^[15] Most American inner cities of the 1950s were heavily segregated by race, as was Seattle, so for most of his upbringing he lived in the predominantly African American Central District along with white, Asian and Native American residents.^[16]

At age 15, around the time his mother died, he acquired his first acoustic guitar for $5 from an acquaintance of his father. This guitar would replace both the broomstick he would strum in imitation and the one-stringed ukulele his father had found while cleaning out a garage, on which Jimi reportedly managed to play several tunes.^[17][18] He learned by practicing almost constantly, watching others play, through tips from more experienced players and listening to records. In the summer of 1959, his father, Al Hendrix, bought Jimi a white Supro Ozark, his first electric guitar, but without an amplifier. That same year his only failing grade in school was an F in music class. According to fellow Seattle bandmates, he learned most of his acrobatic stage moves—a major part of the blues/R&B tradition—including playing with his teeth and behind his back, from a local youth, Raleigh “Butch” Snipes,^[19] guitarist with local band The Sharps, and also performed the “duck walk” of Chuck Berry. He played in a couple of local bands, occasionally playing outlying gigs in Washington state and at least once over the border in Vancouver, British Columbia.^[20]

Hendrix was particularly fond of Elvis Presley, whom he saw perform in Seattle, in 1957.^[21] Leon Hendrix claims in an early interview that Little Richard appeared in his Central District neighborhood and shook hands with his brother, Jimi Hendrix, although unattested elsewhere and vehemently denied by his father.^[22] Hendrix’s early exposure to Blues music came from listening to records by Muddy Waters and B.B. King that his father owned.^[23] Another impressionable image came from the 1954 western Johnny Guitar, in which the hero carries no gun but instead wears a guitar slung behind his back.

His first gig was with an unnamed band in the basement of a synagogue. After too much wild playing and showing off, he was fired between sets. The first formal band he played in was The Velvetones who performed regularly at the Yesler Terrace Neighborhood House without pay. His flashy style and left-handed playing of a right-handed guitar already made him a standout. He later joined the Rocking Kings who played professionally at such venues as the Birdland. When his guitar was stolen (after he left it backstage overnight), Al bought him a white Silvertone Danelectro which he painted red and emblazoned with the words “Betty Jean” (Morgan), the name of his high school girlfriend.

Hendrix had completed middle school with little trouble but didn’t graduate from Garfield High School, although he would later be awarded an honorary diploma, and in the 1990s, a bust of Hendrix was placed in the school library. After he became famous in the late 1960s, Hendrix told reporters that he had been expelled from Garfield by racist faculty for holding hands with a white girlfriend in study hall. However, Principal Frank Hanawalt says that it was simply due to poor grades and attendance problems.^[24]

In the Army

Hendrix got into trouble with the law twice for riding in a stolen car. He was given a choice between spending two years in prison or joining the army. Hendrix chose the latter and enlisted on May 31, 1961. After completing boot camp, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. His commanding officers and fellow soldiers considered him to be a sub-par soldier: he slept while on duty, had little regard for regulations, required constant supervision, and showed no skill as a marksman. For these reasons, his commanding officers submitted a request that Hendrix be discharged from the military after he had served only one year. Hendrix did not object when the opportunity arose to do so.^[25] Hendrix would later tell reporters that he received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump. The 2005 biography Room Full of Mirrors by Charles Cross claims that Hendrix faked being homosexual—claiming to have fallen in love with a fellow soldier—in order to be discharged, but has never produced any sound evidence to support this contention.

At the post recreation center, he met fellow soldier and bass player Billy Cox, and forged a loyal friendship that would serve Hendrix well during the last year of his life. The two would often play with other musicians at venues both on and off the post as a loosely organized band named The King Kasuals.^[26]

As a celebrity in the UK, Hendrix only mentioned his military service in three published interviews, one in 1967 for the film See My Music Talking, (much later released under the title Experience) which was intended for TV to promote his recently released Axis: Bold As Love LP, in which he spoke very briefly of his first parachuting experience: “…once you get out there everything is so quiet, all you hear is the breezes-s-s-s…” This comment has later been used to claim that he was saying that this was one of the sources of his “spacy” guitar sound. The second and third mentions of his military experience were in interviews for a magazine “Melody Maker” in 1967 and 1969, where he spoke of his dislike of the army.^[27] In interviews in the US, Hendrix almost never mentioned it, and when Dick Cavett brought it up in his TV interview, Hendrix’ only response was to verify that he had been based at Fort Campbell.^[28]

Early career

After his release, Hendrix and army friend Billy Cox moved to nearby Clarksville, Tennessee, where they formed a band called “The King Kasuals”, Jimi had already seen Butch Snipes play with his teeth in Seattle and now Alphonso ‘Baby Boo’ Young the other guitarist in the band was featuring this.^[29] Not to be upstaged, it was then that Hendrix learned to play with his teeth properly, according to Hendrix himself: “… the idea of doing that came to me in a town in Tennessee. Down there you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot. There’s a trail of broken teeth all over the stage…”^[30] They played mainly in low-paying gigs at obscure venues. The band eventually moved to Nashville‘s Jefferson Street, the traditional heart of Nashville’s black community and home to a lively rhythm and blues scene.^[31] There, according to Cox and Larry Lee, who replaced Alphonso Young on guitar, they were basically the house band at “Club del Morrocco”.^[32] Hendrix and Cox shared a flat above “Joyce’s House Of Glamour”.^[33] Hendrix’ girlfriend at this time being Joyce Lucas. Bill ‘Hoss’ Allen’s memory of Hendrix’s supposed participation in a session with Billy Cox in November 1962, which he cut Hendrix’s contribution due to his over the top playing, has now been called into question, a suggestion has been made that he may have confused this with a later 1965 session by Frank Howard And The Commanders, that Hendrix participated in.^[34] For the next two years, Hendrix made a precarious living with the King Kasuals and on the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association (TOBA) or Chitlin Circuit otherwise known as “Tough On Black Asses,” performing in black-oriented venues throughout the South with both Bob Fisher and the Bonnevilles,^[35] and in backing bands for various soul, R&B, and blues musicians, including Chuck Jackson, Slim Harpo, Tommy Tucker, Sam Cooke, and Jackie Wilson. The Chitlin Circuit was an important phase of Jimi’s career, since the refinement of his style and blues roots occurred there.

Frustrated by his experiences in the South, Hendrix decided to try his luck in New York City and in January 1964 moved into the Hotel Theresa in Harlem,^[36] where he quickly befriended Lithofayne Pridgeon (known as “Faye”,^[37] who became his girlfriend, and later married Arthur Allen) and the Allen twins, Arthur and Albert (now known as Taharqa and Tunde-Ra Aleem). The Allen twins became friends who kept Hendrix out of trouble in New York. The twins also performed as backup singers (under the name Ghetto Fighters) on some of his recordings, most notably the song “Freedom”. Pridgeon, a Harlem native with connections throughout the area’s music scene, provided Hendrix with shelter, support, and encouragement. In February 1964, Hendrix won first prize in the Apollo Theater amateur contest. The win was encouraging, but in general he found breaking into the New York scene difficult. In the spring, Hendrix was hired as the new guitarist for the Isley Brothers‘ band and joined their national tour, which included the southern Chitlin’ circuit. Hendrix played his first successful studio session on the two-part Isley Brothers single “Testify”.^[38] In Nashville, he left the band to work with Gorgeous George Odell on an R&B package tour, that had Sam Cooke as the headliner.^[39]

In Atlanta, he was hired by Little Richard for his new backing band, “The Royal Company”.^[40][41][42] During a stop in Los Angeles while touring with Little Richard in 1965, Hendrix played a session for Rosa Lee Brooks on her single “My Diary”. This was his first recorded involvement with Arthur Lee of the band “Love”.^[43][44] While in LA he also played on the session for Richard’s final single for VeeJay “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got, But It’s Got Me”.^[45] He later made his first recorded TV appearance on Nashville’s Channel 5 “Night Train” with “The Royal Company” backing up “Buddy and Stacy” on “Shotgun”.^[46] Hendrix clashed with Richard, over tardiness, wardrobe, and, above all, Hendrix’s stage antics.^[47] For a short while, Hendrix quit and played briefly with Ike and Tina Turner, but quickly returned to Richard’s band. Months later, he was either fired or he left after missing the tour bus in Washington, D.C...^[48]

Later in 1965, Hendrix joined a New York-based band, Curtis Knight and the Squires, after meeting Knight in the lobby of the Hotel America, off Times Square, where both men were living at the time.^[49]

Hendrix then toured for two months with Joey Dee and the Starliters before rejoining the Squires in New York. 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. While the relationship with Chalpin was short-lived, his contract remained in force, which caused considerable problems for Hendrix later on in his career. The legal dispute continues to this day.^[50] During a brief excursion to Vancouver in 1965, it was reported that Hendrix played in the (much later in 1968 Motown) band Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers with Taylor and Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong fame). Chong, however, disputes this ever happened and that any such appearance is a product of Taylor’s “imagination”.^[51]

In 1966, Hendrix seems to be quite in demand, playing on sessions with King Curtis and Ray Sharpe; Lonnie Youngblood; The Icemen; Jimmy Norman; Billy Lamont and get’s his first composer credit on the Curtis Knight and The Squires’s instrumental single “Hornets Nest”.^[52] At this time he formed his own band, Jimmy James and The Blue Flames, composed of Randy Palmer (bass), Danny Casey (drums), a 15-year-old guitarist who played slide and rhythm, named Randy Wolfe and the occasional stand in.^[53] Since there were two musicians named “Randy” in the group, Hendrix dubbed Wolfe “Randy California” (as he had recently moved from there to New York City) and Palmer (a Tejano) “Randy Texas”. Randy California would later co-found the band Spirit with his step father, drummer Ed Cassidy. It was around this time that Hendrix’s only (officially claimed and partly recognised) daughter Tamika was conceived with Diana Carpenter (aka Regina Jackson) a teenage runaway and prostitute that he briefly stayed with. Acknowledged indirectly as his daughter by both Hendrix, when Diana started a paternity suit prior to his death and unofficially by his father Al after his death. Her claim has not been recognised by the US courts where, after death, even if she could legally prove he was her father she would not have a claim.^[54]

Hendrix and his new band played several venues in New York, but their primary spot was a residency at the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. The street runs along “Washington (Square) Park” that Jimi sang of at least twice. Their last concerts were at the Cafe A Go Go, as John Hammond Jr.‘s backing group, billed as “The Blue Flame”. Singer-guitarist Ellen McIlwaine and guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, also claim to have briefly worked with Hendrix in this period.^[55].

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Main article: The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Early in 1966 at the Cheetah Club on West 21st Street, Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, befriended Hendrix and recommended him to Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and producer Seymour Stein. Neither man took a liking to Hendrix’s music, however, and they both passed. She then referred him to Chas Chandler, who was ending his tenure as bassist in The Animals and looking for talent to manage and produce. Chandler was enamored with the song “Hey Joe” and was convinced that he could create a hit single with the right artist.

Impressed with Hendrix’s version, Chandler brought him to London and signed him to a management and production contract with himself and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. Chandler then helped Hendrix form a new band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with guitarist-turned-bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, both English musicians. Shortly before the Experience was formed, Chandler introduced Hendrix to Pete Townshend and to Eric Clapton, who had only recently formed Cream. At Chandler’s request, Cream let Hendrix join them on stage for a jam on the song Killing Floor. Hendrix and Clapton remained friends up until Hendrix’s death. The first night that he arrived in London, he began a relationship with Kathy Etchingham, that lasted until February of 1969. She later wrote a well received autobiographical book about their relationship and the sixties London scene in general. ^[56]

Hendrix sometimes had a camp sense of humor, specifically with the song “Purple Haze“. A mondegreen had appeared, in which the line “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky” was misheard as “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.” In a few performances, Hendrix humorously used this, deliberately singing “kiss this guy” while pointing to Mitch or Noel, as he did at Monterey^[57]. In the Woodstock DVD he deliberately points to the sky at this point,^[58] to make it clear. In one live recording, Hendrix can easily be heard saying “Excuse me while I kiss that police officer”; he quickens his pace for the last few words so he remains in time with the music.^{[citation needed]} A volume of misheard lyrics has been published, using this mondegreen itself as the title, with Hendrix on the cover.

UK success

After his enthusiastically received performance at France’s No.1 venue the Paris Olympia Theatre on the Johnny Halliday tour, an onstage jam with Cream a showcase gig at the newly-opened, pop-celebrity oriented nightclub Bag O’Nails and the all important appearances on the top UK TV pop shows “Ready, Steady, Go” and the BBC’s “Top Of The Pops”, word of Hendrix spread throughout the London music community in late 1966. His showmanship and virtuosity made instant fans of reigning guitar heroes Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, as well as Brian Jones and members of The Beatles and The Who, whose managers signed Hendrix to their new record label, Track Records.

Hendrix’s first single was a cover of “Hey Joe“, using Tim Rose‘s uniquely slower arrangement of the song including his addition of a female backing chorus. Backing this first 1966 ‘Experience’ single was Jimi’s first songwriting effort, “Stone Free“. Further success came in early 1967 with “Purple Haze” which featured the “Hendrix chord” and “The Wind Cries Mary“. The three singles were all UK Top 10 hits and were also popular internationally including Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan (though failed to sell when released later in the USA). Onstage, Hendrix was also making an impression with fiery renditions of the B.B. King hit “Rock Me Baby” and a fast version of Howlin Wolf‘s hit “Killing Floor“.

Are You Experienced

Main article: Are You Experienced

Original cover of Are You Experienced

The first Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Are You Experienced, was released in the United Kingdom on May 12, 1967 and shortly thereafter internationally, outside of USA and Canada. It contained none of the previously released (outside USA and Canada) singles or their B sides (“Hey Joe/Stone Free“, “Purple Haze/51st Anniversary” and “The Wind Cries Mary/Highway Chile“). Only The Beatles‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band prevented Are You Experienced from reaching No. 1 on the UK charts.

At this time, the Experience extensively toured the United Kingdom and parts of Europe. This allowed Hendrix to develop his stage presence, which reached a high point on March 31, 1967, when, booked to appear as one of the opening acts on the Walker Brothers farewell tour, he set his guitar on fire at the end of his first performance, as a publicity stunt. This guitar has now been identified as the “Zappa guitar” (previously thought to have been from Miami), which has been partly refurbished. Later, as part of this press promotion campaign, there were articles about Rank Theatre management warning him to “tone down” his “suggestive” stage act, with Chandler stating that the group would not compromise regardless.^[59] On June 4 1967, the Experience played their last show in England, at London’s Saville Theatre, before heading off to America. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album had just been released on June 1st and two Beatles (Paul McCartney and George Harrison) were in attendance, along with a roll call of other UK rock stardom: Brian Epstein, Eric Clapton, Spencer Davis, Jack Bruce, and pop singer Lulu. Hendrix chose to open the show with his own rendition of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band“, rehearsed only minutes before taking the stage, much to McCartney’s astonishment and delight.^[60]

While on tour in Sweden in 1967, Hendrix jammed with the duo Hansson & Karlsson, and later opened several concerts with their song “Tax Free”, also recording a cover of it during the Electric Ladyland sessions.^[61] As just one example of his strong connection with that country, he played there frequently throughout his career, and his only son James Sundquist was born there in 1969 to a Swede, Eva Sundquist, recognized as such by the Swedish courts and paid a settlement by Experience Hendrix LLC.^[62]. He wrote a poem to a woman there (probably Sundquist). Sundquist had anonymously sent Hendrix roses on each of his opening nights in Stockholm, only revealing herself after his third visit in January 1969, and conceiving Daniel with him. He also had an expatriate musician friend who lived there, “King” George Clemmons, who played backup at one concert and socialized with him on at least two of his visits there. Hendrix also dedicated songs to the Swedish-based Vietnam deserters organization in 1969.^[63].

Months later, Reprise Records released the US and Canadian version of Are You Experienced with a new cover by Karl Ferris, removing “Red House”, “Remember” and “Can You See Me” to make room for the first three single A-sides. Where the (Rest of the World) album kicked off with “Foxy Lady“, the US and Canadian one started with “Purple Haze”. Both versions offered a startling introduction to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the album was a blueprint for what had become possible on an electric guitar, basically recorded on four tracks, mixed into mono and only modified at this point by a “fuzz” pedal, reverb and a small bit of the experimental “Octavia” pedal on “Purple Haze”. A remix using the mostly mono backing tracks with the guitar and vocal overdubs separated and occasionally panned to create a stereo mix was also released, only in the US and Canada.

US success

Although very popular internationally at this time, the Experience had yet to crack America, his first single there having failed to sell.^[64] Their chance came when Paul McCartney recommended the group to the organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival. This proved to be a great opportunity for Hendrix, not only because of the large audience present at the event, but also because of the many journalists covering the event that wrote about him. The performances were filmed by D. A. Pennebaker and later shown in some movie theaters around the country in early 1969 as the concert documentary Monterey Pop, which immortalized Hendrix’s iconic burning and smashing of his guitar at the finale of his performance.

The opening song was Hendrix’ very fast arrangement of Howlin’ Wolf’s 1965 R&B hit “Killing Floor”. He played this frequently from late 1965 through 1968, usually as the opener to his shows. The Monterey performance included an equally lively rendition of B.B. King’s 1964 R&B hit “Rock Me Baby”, Tim Rose’s “Hey Joe” and Bob Dylan’s 1965 Pop hit “Like a Rolling Stone“. The set ended with The Troggs “Wild Thing” and Hendrix repeating the act that had boosted his profile in the UK (and internationally) with him burning his guitar on stage, then smashing it to bits and tossing pieces out to the audience. This show finally brought Hendrix to the notice of the US public. A large chunk of this guitar was on display along with the other psychedelically painted Stratocaster that Hendrix smashed (but didn’t burn) at his farewell concert in England before he left for the US and Monterey, at the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

At the time Hendrix was playing sets in the Scene club in NYC in July 1967, he met Frank Zappa, whose Mothers of Invention were playing the adjacent Garrick Theater, and he was reportedly fascinated by Zappa’s recently-purchased wah-wah pedal.^[65] Hendrix immediately bought one from Manny’s and starting using it right away on the sessions for both sides of his new single, and slightly later, on several jams he played on at Ed Chalpin’s studio.^[66]

Following the festival, the Experience played a series of concerts at Bill Graham’s Fillmore replacing the original headliners Jefferson Airplane at the top of the bill. It was at this time that Hendrix became acquainted with future musical collaborator Stephen Stills and re-acquainted himself with Buddy Miles, who introduced Hendrix to his future partner – Devon Wilson, who had a turbulent on/off relationship with him, from then right up until the night of his death, the only one of his women to record with him. She died only six months after Hendrix in mysterious circumstances, apparently falling from an upper window in the Chelsea Hotel, not long after her only interview (filmed) for the Warner’s Film About Jimi Hendrix. Her interview along with several other peoples – including Pete Townsend’s original – was mistakenly thrown out, never to be seen again.^{[citation needed]}

Following this very successful West Coast introduction, which also included two open air concerts (one of them a free concert in the “Pan handle” of Golden Gate Park) and a concert at the Whiskey A Go Go, they were booked as one of the opening acts for pop group The Monkees on their first American tour. The Monkees asked for Hendrix because they were fans,^[67] but their (mostly early teens) audience sometimes did not warm to their act, and he quit the tour after a few dates. Chas Chandler later admitted that being thrown off the Monkees tour was engineered to gain maximum media impact and publicity for Hendrix^[68], similar to that gained from the manufactured Rank Theatre’s “indecency” “dispute” on the earlier UK Walker Brothers tour. At the time, a story circulated claiming that Hendrix was removed from the tour because of complaints made by the Daughters of the American Revolution that his stage conduct was “lewd and indecent”. Australian journalist Lillian Roxon, accompanying the tour, concocted the story. The claim was repeated in Roxon’s 1969 ‘Rock Encyclopedia’, but she later admitted it was fabricated.^{[citation needed]}

Meanwhile in Western Europe, where Hendrix was also appreciated for his authentic blues renditions as well as his hit singles there, and was often recognised for his avant-garde musical ideas, his wild-man image and musical gimmickry (such as playing the guitar with his teeth and behind his back) had faded; but they later plagued him in the US following Monterey. He became frustrated by the US media and audience when they concentrated on his stage tricks and most well known songs.

Axis: Bold as Love

Main article: Axis: Bold as Love

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s second 1967 album, Axis: Bold as Love was his first recording made with a view to a stereo release and was where he first experimented with this format, using much panning and other stereo effects. It continued the style established by Are You Experienced, but showcased a profound use of melody, along with his well-known technical virtuosity, with tracks such as “Little Wing” and “If 6 Was 9“. The opening track, “EXP”, featured a stereo effect in which a ruckus of sound emanating from Jimi’s guitar appeared to revolve around the listener, fading out into the distance from the right channel, then returning in on the left. This album marked the first time Hendrix recorded the whole album with his guitar tuned down one half-step, to E♭, which he used exclusively thereafter and was his first to feature the wah-wah pedal and on ‘Bold As Love’ was probably the first record to feature the stereo phasing technique.

A mishap almost delayed the album’s pre-Christmas release: Hendrix lost the master tape of side one of the LP, leaving it in the back seat of a London taxi. With the release deadline looming, Hendrix, Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer had to re-mix most of side one in an overnight session, but they couldn’t match the lost mix of “If 6 was 9″. It was only saved by the discovery that bassist Noel Redding had a copy of it on tape, which had to be flattened as it was wrinkled.^[69] Hendrix was disappointed that the album had to be finished so quickly and felt it could have been better, given more time. He was also somewhat disappointed with Track Records British designers who created the album’s cover art. He remarked that it would have been more appropriate if the cover had highlighted his American-Indian heritage. The cover art depicts Hendrix and his Experience bandmates as the various forms of Vishnu, incorporating a painting of them by Roger Law (from a photo-portrait by Karl Ferris).^[70]

The album was released in the UK near the end of their first headlining tour there, after which the pace briefly settled down a bit for a Christmas break. In January 1968 the group went to Sweden for a short tour, and after the first show Hendrix, reportedly after drinking and according to Hendrix his drink being spiked, went berserk and smashed up his hotel room in a rage, injuring his hand and culminating in his arrest. Then on the 6th in Denmark his famous hat was stolen.^[71] The rest of the tour was uneventful, though Hendrix had to spend some time in Sweden waiting for his trial and eventual large fine.^[72]

Electric Ladyland

Main article: Electric Ladyland

Hendrix’s third recording, a double album, Electric Ladyland (1968), was a departure from previous efforts. Following his third and penultimate French concert at the Paris Olympia, Hendrix flew to the US to start his first tour there, after two months of this he returned to his Electric Ladyland project at the newly opened Record Plant studios with engineers Eddie Kramer and Gary Kellgren and initially Chas Chandler as producer. As the album’s recording progressed, Chas Chandler became so frustrated with Hendrix’s perfectionism and with various friends and hangers-on milling about the studio that he decided to sever his professional relationship with Hendrix. Chandler’s professional and musical education was very business-oriented, and it taught him that songs should be recorded in a matter of hours, and written with a view to releasing them as singles. His influence over the Experience’s first two albums is clear in light of the facts that very few of the tracks are more than four minutes long, that both albums were recorded in a short time, and that most of the songs on both albums conformed to the structure of a typical pop song. However, as Hendrix began developing his own vision and started to assert more control over the artistic process in the studio, Chandler decided to move to other opportunities and ceded overall control to Hendrix. Chandler’s departure had a clear impact on the artistic direction that the recording took.

US and Canadian CD cover of Electric Ladyland

Hendrix began experimenting with different combinations of musicians and instruments, and modern electronic effects. For example, Dave Mason, Chris Wood, and Steve Winwood from the band Traffic, drummer Buddy Miles and former Bob Dylan organist Al Kooper, among others, were all involved in the recording sessions. This was one of the other reasons that Chandler cited as precipitating his departure. He described how Hendrix went from a disciplined recording regimen to an erratic schedule, which often saw him beginning recording sessions in the middle of the night and with any number of hangers-on.

Chandler also expressed exasperation at the number of times Hendrix would insist on re-recording particular tracks; the song “Gypsy Eyes” was reportedly recorded 43 times. This was also frustrating for bassist Noel Redding, who would often leave the studio to calm himself, only to return and find that Hendrix had recorded the bass parts himself during Redding’s absence. The effects of these events can clearly be identified in the album’s musical style. On a purely superficial level, the tracks no longer conformed to the standard pop song format, often lacked easily identifiable patterns or sections, and would sometimes lack even a recognizable melody. More particularly, however, the themes that the songs addressed, and the music that Hendrix set out to record, went far beyond anything that he had attempted to achieve before.

Electric Ladyland includes a number of compositions and arrangements for which Hendrix is still remembered. These include “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” as well as Hendrix’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower“. Hendrix’s version was a complete departure from the original, and includes one of the most highly praised guitar arrangements in modern music.^{[citation needed]}

Throughout the four years of his fame Hendrix often appeared at impromptu jams with various musicians, such as BB King.^[73] In March 1968, Jim Morrison of The Doors joined Hendrix onstage at New York‘s Scene Club. Albums of this Electric Ladyland-era bootleg recording were released under various titles, originally “Woke up this Morning and Found Myself Dead“, then “Sky High”, “High, Live, ‘N Dirty”, and “Live at the Scene Club” some falsely claiming the presence of Johnny Winter, who has denied, several times, being a participant at that jam session, and to ever having met Morrison.^[74]

Breakup of Jimi Hendrix Experience

After a year based in the US, Hendrix temporarily moved back to London and into his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham’s rented Brook Street flat, next door to the Handel House Museum, in the West End of London. During this time The Jimi Hendrix Experience did a tour of Scandinavia, Germany and included a final French concert, later performing two sold-out concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 18 February and 24 February 1969, which were the last European appearances of this line-up of the “Jimi Hendrix Experience”. A Gold and Goldstein-produced film titled Experience was also recorded at these two shows, which, according to Experience Hendrix LLC. they are at last preparing for release in 2008.

Noel Redding felt increasingly frustrated by the fact that he was not playing his original and favored instrument, the guitar. In 1968, he decided to form his own band “Fat Mattress”, which would sometimes open for the Experience (Hendrix would jokingly refer to them as “Thin Pillow”). Redding and Hendrix would begin seeing less and less of each other, which also had an effect in the studio, with Hendrix playing many of the bass parts on Electric Ladyland.

Fruitless recording sessions at Olympic in London; Olmstead and the Record Plant in New York that ended on 9th April, only produced a remake of Stone Free for a possible single release, were the last to feature Redding. Jimi then flew Billy Cox up to New York and started recording and rehearsing with him on 21st April as a replacement for Noel.^[75]

Redding was also uncomfortable with the hysteria surrounding Hendrix’ performances.^{[citation needed]} The last Experience concert took place on June 29, 1969 at Barry Fey’s Denver Pop Festival, a three-day event held at Denver’s Mile High Stadium that was marked by police firing tear gas into the audience as they played Voodoo Chile. The band escaped from the venue in the back of a rental truck which was partly crushed by fans trying to escape the tear gas. The next day, Noel Redding announced that he had quit the Experience.^[76]

Legal troubles

Throughout 1969, Hendrix also experienced a number of legal difficulties. First, a contractual dispute arose in relation to an unfavorable agreement Hendrix had entered into with producer Ed Chalpin long before he became successful. The USA dispute ended up with Hendrix having to record an album “of new songs” for Chalpin, from which Hendrix and Reprise records would receive no financial return from USA sales, including Hendrix’ songwriting royalties, and worse Chalpin was granted 2% of profits from Hendrix’ back catalog sold in USA. This was the genesis of the live album entitled ‘Band of Gypsys’. Then on May 3, 1969, Hendrix was arrested at Toronto‘s Pearson International Airport after heroin and hashish were found in his luggage. Hendrix argued in his trial defense that the drugs were slipped into his bag by a fan without his knowledge, and he was acquitted.

Gypsy Sun and Rainbows

After the departure of Noel Redding from the group, Hendrix rented the eight-bedroom ‘Ashokan House’ in the hamlet of Boiceville^[77]near Woodstock in upstate New York, where he spent some time through the summer of 1969. Manager Michael Jeffery, who had a house in Woodstock, arranged the stay, with hopes that the respite would produce a new album. To replace Redding as bassist, Hendrix had been rehearsing and recording with Billy Cox, his old and trusted Army buddy, since at least 21 April.^[78] Mitchell was unavailable to help fulfill his last commitment at the time, which was an appearance on The Tonight Show so Hendrix and Cox appeared with session drummer Ed Shaughnessy.^[79] In an effort to expand his sound beyond the power trio format, Hendrix then added rhythm guitarist Larry Lee (another old friend from his R&B days), and percussionists Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez.

He dubbed the new band Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, although this was never formally announced by management. ^[80] they recorded some jam based material such as “Jam Back at the House”, “Shokan Sunrise” (posthumous title for untitled jam), “Villanova Junction”, and early renditions of the funk driven centerpieces of Hendrix’s post-Experience sound: “Machine Gun” “Message to Love” and “Izabella”.

Woodstock

Hendrix playing The Star-Spangled Banner, Woodstock, 1969

Hendrix’s popularity eventually saw him headline the Woodstock music festival on August 18, 1969.

Bad weather and logistical problems caused long delays, so that Hendrix did not appear on stage until Monday morning. By this time, the audience (which had peaked at over 500,000 people) had been reduced to, at most, 180,000, many of whom merely waited to catch a glimpse of Hendrix before leaving. Festival MC Chip Monck introduced the band as “The Jimi Hendrix Experience”, but Hendrix quickly corrected this to “Gypsy Sun and Rainbows” and launched into a two hour set, the longest of his career. As as well as the two percussionists, the performance notably featured Larry Lee performing three songs and Lee sometimes soloing while Hendrix played rhythm in places, most of this has been edited out of the officially released recordings, including Lee’s three songs, reducing the sound to basically a three piece.The concert was relatively free of the technical difficulties that frequently plagued Hendrix’s performances, although one of his guitar strings snapped while performing Red House (he kept playing regardless). The band, unused to playing large audiences and exhausted after being up all night, could not always keep up with Hendrix’s pace, but in spite of this the guitarist managed to deliver a memorable performance, climaxing with his highly-regarded rendition of the The Star-Spangled Banner,^[81] a solo improvisation which is now regarded as a special symbol of the 1960′s era.^[82]

The band did not last long. After the Woodstock festival they appeared on only two more occasions. The first was a street benefit in Harlem where, in a scenario similar to the festival, most of the audience had left and only a fraction remained by the time Hendrix took the stage. Within seconds of Hendrix arriving at the site two youths had stolen his guitar from the back seat of his car, although it was later recovered. The band’s only other appearance was at the Salvation club in Greenwich Village, New York. After some studio recordings, Hendrix disbanded the group. Some of this band’s recordings can be heard on the MCA Records box set The Jimi Hendrix Experience and on South Saturn Delta. Their final work together was a session on 6th September^[83]. Hendrix’s 9th September appearance on TV’s Dick Cavett Show, backed by Cox, Mitchell and Juma Sultan, was credited as the “Jimi Hendrix Experience”^[84].

Band of Gypsys

After attending to the successful defense of his drug possession charges in Toronto, Hendrix, in order to free his USA royalties that had been suspended by the USA courts, addressed his obligation to provide Ed Chalpin with an LP “of original material”. Along with Billy Cox he hired another of his friends, drummer Buddy Miles (formerly with Wilson Pickett and The Electric Flag) for his Band of Gypsys project, they rehearsed for ten days at “Baggies” studio. They then performed a series of four concerts over the two nights of New Year and New Years day, which created the Band Of Gypsys LP, produced by Hendrix (under the name “Heaven Research”). This is the only official complete live LP released in his lifetime. This group also released a single Stepping Stone which was quickly withdrawn, and recorded several studio songs slated for Hendrix’ future LP. Litigation involving Ed Chalpin continues until this day.

The second and final Band of Gypsys appearance occurred one month later (January 28, 1970) at a twelve-act show in Madison Square Garden a benefit for the massively popular anti Vietnam war Moratorium Committee, titled the “Winter Festival for Peace”. Similar to Woodstock, set delays forced Hendrix to take the stage at an inopportune 3am, only this time he was obviously in no shape to play. He played a dismal rendition of “Who Knows” before snapping a vulgar response at a woman who shouted a request for “Foxy Lady“. He lasted halfway through a second song, then simply stopped playing, telling the audience: “That’s what happens when earth fucks with space—never forget that”.^[85] He then sat down on the drum riser for a minute and then walked off stage. Various unverifiable assertions have been proffered to explain this bizarre scene. Buddy Miles claimed that manager Michael Jeffery dosed Hendrix with LSD in an effort to sabotage the current band and bring about the return of the Experience lineup,^[86] and guitarist Johnny Winter said it was Hendrix’s girlfriend Devon Wilson who spiked his drink with drugs for unknown reasons.^{[citation needed]}

Cry of Love tour

Jeffery’s reaction to the botched Band of Gypsys show was swift and firm; he immediately fired Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, then rushed Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding over from England to begin press for the upcoming tour dates as a reunited Jimi Hendrix Experience. Before the tour began however, Jimi fired Redding from the band and reinstated Billy Cox. Fans refer to this final “Jimi Hendrix Experience” lineup as the ‘Cry of Love’ band, named after the tour to distinguish it from the original. Billy Cox has several times commented on this, to make it clear that this lineup considered themselves “The Jimi Hendrix Experience” before they even went on tour and that any other title is bogus. All billing, adverts, tickets etc. on the tour used “Jimi Hendrix Experience” or occasionally, as previously, just “Jimi Hendrix”.

Two of Hendrix’s later recordings were the lead guitar parts on Old Times Good Times from Stephen Stills hit eponymous album (1970), and on The Everlasting First from Arthur Lee‘s new incarnation of Love‘s, not so successful and aptly named LP False Start both tracks were recorded with these old friends on a fleeting visit to London in March 1970, following Kathy Etchingham’s marriage.^[87]

The next four months of 1970 was spent recording during the week and playing live on the weekends. “The Cry of Love” tour, begun in April at the LA Forum, was structured to accommodate this pattern. Performances on this tour featured Hendrix, Cox, and Mitchell playing new material alongside extended versions of older recordings. The tour included 30 performances and ended at Honolulu, Hawaii on August 1, 1970. A number of these shows were professionally recorded and produced some of Hendrix’s most memorable live performances.

Electric Lady Studios

In 1968, Hendrix and Jeffery had invested jointly in the purchase of the Generation Club in Greenwich Village. Their initial plans to reopen the club were scrapped when the pair decided that the investment would serve them much better as a recording studio. The studio fees for the lengthy Electric Ladyland sessions were astronomical, and Jimi was constantly in search of a recording environment that suited him. In August, 1970, Electric Lady Studios was opened in New York. Hendrix was among the first major music artists to own his own recording studio (the Beatles had opened their Apple studios in London in January 1969).^{[citation needed]}

Designed by architect and acoustician John Storyk, the studio was made specifically for Hendrix, with round windows and a machine capable of generating ambient lighting in a myriad of colors. It was designed to have a relaxing feel to encourage Jimi’s creativity, but at the same time provide a professional recording atmosphere. Engineer Eddie Kramer upheld this by refusing to allow any drug use during session work.

Hendrix spent only four weeks recording in Electric Lady, most of which took place while the final phases of construction were still ongoing. Following a recording/dubbing session that generated his last studio recorded song, Belly Button Window on 23 August, an opening party was held on 26 August.^[88] He then boarded an Air India flight for London (with Billy Cox in tow), joining Mitch Mitchell to perform at the Isle of Wight Festival.

European tour

The group then commenced on a tour of Europe designed to earn money to repay the studio loans, temper Jimi’s mounting back taxes and legal fees, and fund the production of his next album, tentatively titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun. Longing for his new studio and creative outlets, the tour was a requirement by Jeffery that the already restless Hendrix was not eager to perform. In Aarhus, Hendrix abandoned his show after only two songs, remarking: “I’ve been dead a long time”.

In the months before Hendrix’s death, a British music paper alleged that Hendrix had plans to join the band Emerson, Lake & Palmer.^[89]

On September 6, 1970, his final concert performance, Hendrix was greeted with some booing and jeering by fans at the Isle of Fehmarn Festival in Germany, due to his non-appearance at the end of the previous nights bill, (due to the torrential rain and risk of electrocution). Shortly after he left the stage, in a riot-like atmosphere reminiscent of the failed Altamont Festival, it went up in flames during the first stage appearance of Ton Steine Scherben. Billy Cox quit the tour and headed home to Memphis, Tennessee, reportedly suffering paranoia after taking LSD or being given it unknowingly, earlier in the tour.^[90]

Hendrix returned to London, where he reportedly spoke to Chas Chandler, Eric Burdon, and others about leaving his manager, Michael Jeffery. He met with Linda Keith, the woman who had introduced him to Chas Chandler and who he still admired, reportedly giving her a brand new black Fender Stratocaster, as a token of his appreciation for her discovery efforts years earlier and the guitar case containing all of her letters to him. Jimi’s last public performance was an informal jam at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho with Burdon and his latest band, War.

Death

Early on September 18, 1970, Jimi Hendrix died in London under circumstances which have never been fully explained. He had spent the later part of the evening before at a party and was picked up by girlfriend Monika Dannemann and driven to her flat at the Samarkand Hotel. According to the estimated time of death, he died shortly afterwards.^[91]

Dannemann claimed in her original testimony that Hendrix the evening before, unknown to her, had taken nine of her prescribed Vesperax sleeping pills. According to the doctor who initially attended to him, Hendrix had asphyxiated (literally drowned) in his own vomit, mainly red wine.^[92] For years, Dannemann publicly claimed that Hendrix was alive when placed in the back of the ambulance. However, her comments about that morning were often contradictory, varying from interview to interview.^[93] Police and ambulance statements reveal that there was no one but Hendrix in the flat, and not only was he dead when they arrived on the scene, but had been dead for some time.^[94]

Lyrics to a song written by Hendrix and found in the apartment, led Eric Burdon to make a premature announcement on the BBC TV program 24 Hours, that he believed Hendrix had committed suicide.^[95] Following a libel case brought in 1996 by Hendrix’s long-term English girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, Monika Dannemann committed suicide, though her later lover, Uli Jon Roth, has made accusations of foul play.^[96]

Personality

Fashion

Hendrix was well known for his unique sense of fashion and wardrobe and his Bob Dylan hairstyle. A set of hair curlers was one of the few possessions that traveled with him to England upon his discovery in 1966. When his first advance check arrived, Hendrix immediately took to the streets of London in search of clothing at famous shops like “I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet” and “Granny Takes A Trip”, both of which specialised in vintage fashion, where he purchased at least two army dress uniform jackets, including an old Hussar’s one adorned with tasseled ropes. A group of policeman once ordered him to remove a Royal Veterinary Corps dress jacket, saying it was an offense to the men who had worn it.^[97]

Many photographs of Hendrix show him wearing various scarves, rings, medallions, and brooches, and in the early days Hendrix occasionally wore badges (pins or buttons) that professed his support for the hippie movement or his fascination with folk singer Bob Dylan. He initially wore a dark suit and plain silk shirts that progressively became “louder” and more psychedelically patterned. He later favored a bright blue velvet suit, then a bright red one, antique military dress jackets, a very broadly striped suit, psychedelically patterned silk jackets, various exotic waistcoats and brightly coloured flared trousers. At Monterey, he wore a hand-painted silk jacket by Chris Jagger (Mick’s brother) and a bright pink feather boa. In late 1967 he started to wear a wide-brimmed Western style hat (brand name “The Westerner”)^[98]. It was adorned with a narrow purple band and various brooches, as shown in the original Jimi Plays Monterey film. This hat was stolen in 1968, and replaced later with another, crowned variously with a longer purple scarf, a star-like brooch in front and a set of silver bangles, sometimes with an angled feather, though he went hatless for protracted periods after this.

From late 1968 he began tying scarves to one leg and one arm, and in mid-1969 he gave up the hat permanently for bandanas. He started wearing increasingly fantastic custom-made stage costume with long trailing sleeves, culminating in his African-styled “Fire Angel” outfit that he wore throughout most of his final “Cry Of Love” tour, until it began to come apart during the Isle Wight concert. He appeared in this outfit only once more (in just the jacket half) at the disastrous concert in Aarhus, Denmark. His only non-work-related vacation was a two-week trip to Morocco in July 1969 with friends Colette Mimram, Stella Benabou (Douglas), the ex-wife of Alan Douglas (record producer) and Deering Howe. Upon his return Hendrix decorated his Greenwich Village apartment with Moroccan objets d’art and fabrics. Mimram and Benabou created some of Hendrix’s most memorable later attire, the shortened blue kimono-style jacket that he wore in three TV appearances and the white fringed jacket, ornamented with blue glass beads, he wore at the Woodstock Festival^[99].

Politics

Hendrix was also sometimes requested to contribute to various civil rights oriented activist and extremist groups who wished to use his fame to further their own cause. Hendrix was a supporter of Martin Luther King, and while he spoke several times of his (sometimes qualified) support for the Black Panther Party (from 1968 to 1970), they reportedly caused him some problems, as when they advertised his appearance at a benefit concert that Hendrix never even knew existed.^{[citation needed]}

Drug use

Hendrix is widely known for and associated with the use of hallucinogenic drugs, most notably LSD, as were many other famous musicians and celebrities of that time. He supposedly had never taken hallucinogens until the night he met Linda Keith, but smoked marijuana and drank alcohol previously. Amphetamines are also recorded as being used by Hendrix, as they are still by many touring musicians etc. Although taken for granted, the only actual recorded use of sleeping pills by him ended tragically with his death.

Hendrix was notorious among friends and bandmates for sometimes becoming angry and violent when he drank too much alcohol. Kathy Etchingham spoke of an incident that took place in a London pub in which an intoxicated Hendrix beat her with a public telephone handset because he thought she was calling another man on the pay phone. Carmen Borrero, another girlfriend, says she required stitches after being hit with a bottle by him after drinking and becoming jealous. Alcohol was also cited as the cause of Hendrix’s 1968 rampage that badly damaged a Stockholm hotel room and led to his arrest. Paul Caruso’s friendship with Hendrix (he played harmonica on “My Friend” and other songs) ended in 1970 when Hendrix, while under the influence, punched him and accused him of stealing from him.

The most controversial topic however, concerns his alleged use of heroin. There was, however, no mention of heroin at the autopsy. Later untrue statements about special toxicology reports were only released to quiet the unfounded speculation that Hendrix had overdosed on heroin, as was the statement about the lack of needle marks, although no-one had specifically accused him of injecting and this has never been a point of contention.^[100]

Gravesite

The original gravestone of Jimi Hendrix, incorporated into the granite base of his memorial where a large brass statue will someday be installed.

Although Hendrix had verbally requested to be buried in England, his body was returned to Seattle and he was interred in Greenwood Memorial Park, Renton, Washington. As the popularity of Hendrix and his music grew over the decades following his death, concerns began to mount over fans damaging the adjoining graves at Greenwood, and the growing extended Hendrix family further prompted Al to create an expanded memorial site separate from other burial sites in the park. The memorial was announced in late 1999, but Al’s deteriorating health led to delays. He died two months before its scheduled completion in 2002. Later that year, the remains of Jimi Hendrix, his father Al Hendrix, and grandmother Nora Rose Moore Hendrix were moved to the new site. The headstone contains a depiction of a Fender Stratocaster guitar, the instrument he was most famed for using —– although the guitar is shown right-side up, and Hendrix, being a left-hander, played it upside down.

The memorial gravesite of Jimi Hendrix in Renton, Washington.

The memorial is a granite dome supported by three pillars under which Jimi Hendrix is interred. Hendrix’s autograph is inscribed at the base of each pillar, while two stepped entrances and one ramped entrance provide access to the dome’s center where the original Stratocaster adorned headstone has been incorporated into a statue pedestal. A granite sundial complete with brass gnomon adjoins the dome, along with over 50 family plots that surround the central structure, half of which are currently adorned with raised granite headstones.

To date, the memorial remains incomplete: brass accents for the dome and a large brass statue of Hendrix were announced as being under construction in Italy, but since 2002, no information as to the status of the project has been revealed to the public. In addition, a memorial statue of Jimi playing a Stratocaster stands near the corner of Broadway and Pine Streets in Seattle.

In May 2006 Seattle honored the music, artistry and legacy of Jimi Hendrix with the naming of a new park near Seattle’s historic Colman School in the heart of the Central District.^[101]

Unfinished Work/Posthumous Releases

Reports that Hendrix’s tapes for a concept album Black Gold had been stolen and lost from the London flat, are wrong. Hendrix gave those tapes to Mitch Mitchell at the Isle of Wight Festival three weeks prior to his death.^[102] They are now in the possession of Experience Hendrix LLC.

Hendrix’s unfinished album was partly released as The Cry of Love. The album was well received and charted in several countries. However, the album’s producers, Mitchell and Kramer, would later complain that they were unable to make use of all the tracks they wanted to include at the time. This was due to some tracks being used for Rainbow Bridge and War Heroes for contractual reasons. Material from the Cry of Love album was re-released, along with the rest of the tracks that Mitchell and Kramer had wanted to include, in 1997 as First Rays of the New Rising Sun.

Hendrix’s personal items, tapes, and pages of lyrics and poems, are now in the hands of collectors and have attracted considerable sums at auctions.^[103] These materials surfaced after two employees, under the instructions of Mike Jeffery, cleared Hendrix’s Greenwich Village apartment. Also, reports indicate Jeffery gave Devon Wilson permission to take what she wanted from the flat soon after Hendrix died.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy

Hendrix synthesized many styles in creating his musical voice and his guitar style was unique, later to be abundantly imitated by others. Despite his hectic touring schedule and notorious perfectionism, he was a prolific recording artist and left behind more than 300 unreleased recordings.

His career and untimely death has grouped him with Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison as one of contemporary music’s tragic “three J’s”, iconic ’60s rock stars that suffered drug-related deaths at age 27 within months of each other, leaving legacies in death that have eclipsed the popularity and influence they experienced during their lifetimes.

Musically, Hendrix did much to further the development of the electric guitar’s repertoire, establishing it as a unique sonic source, rather than merely an amplified version of the acoustic guitar. Likewise, his feedback, wah-wah and fuzz-laden soloing moved guitar distortion well beyond mere novelty, incorporating other effects pedals and units specifically designed for him by his sound technician Roger Mayer (such as the Octavia and Univibe) with dramatic results.

Hendrix affected popular music with similar profundity; along with earlier bands such as The Who and Cream, he established a sonically heavy yet technically proficient bent to rock music as a whole, significantly furthering the development of hard rock and paving the way for heavy metal. He took blues to another level. His music has also had a great influence on funk and the development of funk rock especially through the guitarists Ernie Isley of The Isley Brothers and Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic, Prince and Jesse Johnson of The Time. His influence even extends to many hip hop artists, including ?uestlove, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Ice-T (who covered “Hey Joe” with his heavy metal band Body Count), El-P and Wyclef Jean. Miles Davis was also deeply impressed by Hendrix and compared his improvisational skills with those of saxophonist John Coltrane,^[104] and Davis would later want guitarists in his bands to emulate Hendrix.^[105] Hendrix was ranked number 3 on VH1‘s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock behind Black Sabbath at the second spot, and Led Zeppelin, ranked number one. Hendrix was ranked number 3 on VH1′s list of 100 Best Pop Artists of all time, behind the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. He has been voted by Rolling Stone, Guitar World, and a number of other magazines and polls as the best electric guitarist of all time.

In 1992, Hendrix was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Financial legacy

When Al Hendrix died of congestive heart failure in 2002, his will stipulated that Experience Hendrix, LLC was to exist as a trust designed to distribute profits to a list of Hendrix family beneficiaries. Upon his death, it was revealed that Al had signed a revision to his will which removed Jimi’s brother Leon Hendrix as a beneficiary. A 2004 probate lawsuit merged Leon’s challenge to the will with charges from other Hendrix family beneficiaries that Janie Hendrix, Al’s adopted daughter, was improperly handling the company finances. The suit argued that Janie and a cousin of Jimi Hendrix’ (Robert Hendrix) paid themselves exorbitant salaries and covered their own mortgages and personal expenses from the company’s coffers while the beneficiaries went without payment and the Hendrix gravesite in Renton went uncompleted.

Janie and Robert’s defense was that the company was not profitable yet, and that their salary and benefits were justified given the work that they put into running the company. Leon charged that Janie bilked Al Hendrix, then old and frail, into signing the revised will, and sought to have the previous will reinstated. The defense argued that Al willingly removed Leon from his will because of Leon’s problems with alcohol and gambling. In early 2005, presiding judge Jeffrey Ramsdell handed down a ruling that left the final will intact, but replaced Janie and Robert’s role at the financial helm of Experience Hendrix with an independent trustee. To date, the gravesite of Jimi Hendrix remains incomplete.

The Jimi Hendrix Foundation

In 1987, Leon Hendrix and some fans of Hendrix, commissioned the James (Jimi) Marshall Hendrix Foundation. This foundation is based in Renton, Washington. In August, 2006 a child-hood friend of Jimi Hendrix – James (Jimmy) Williams took control of the Foundation. It would appear that it has done very little.^[106] There is also a warning against doing any business with said foundation posted on the Univibes site.^[107]

Guitar legacy

Fender Stratocaster

Hendrix owned and used a variety of guitars during his career. His guitar of choice however, and the instrument that became most associated with him, was the Fender Stratocaster, or “Strat”. He started playing with Stratocasters in 1966 and thereafter used it almost exclusively for his stage performances and recordings.

Hendrix’s emergence coincided with the lifting of post-war import restrictions (imposed in many British Commonwealth countries), which made the instrument much more available, and after its initial popularizers Buddy Holly and Hank B. Marvin, Hendrix arguably did more than any other player to make the Stratocaster the biggest-selling electric guitar in history. The Strat was a very popular guitar in the UK, due to Hank Marvin of The Shadows, a very influential early UK rock guitarist, Many leading guitarists, including Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore and Eric Clapton, also played Stratocasters. Hendrix bought many Strats and gave some away as gifts. Some were stolen, and a few were destroyed during his notorious guitar-smashing finales. Hendrix actually set fire to two of them, the first time on the opening night of his first UK tour. The only other documented guitar-burning incident was at the Monterey Pop festival, his USA debut appearance as the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The original sunburst Stratocaster that Hendrix burnt and broke the neck off at the Astoria in 1967, and that he kept as a souvenir, was given to Frank Zappa by a Hendrix roadie at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. Zappa assumed it was the one Hendrix had played there.^[108]

A remarkable fact about Hendrix is that he was left-handed, and like most lefties used right-handed guitars, naturally turned upside-down and re-strung for playing left-handed, so that the heavier strings were in their standard position at the top of the neck.^[109] This had an important effect on the sound of his guitar: because of the slant of the Strat’s bridge pickup, his lowest string had a bright sound while his highest string had a mellow sound, the opposite of the Stratocaster’s intended design.^[110]

A new Stratocaster model (with a wide headstock) was launched in late 1968, and as the cohesion of the Experience began to deteriorate, Hendrix wished to vary his playing and his repertoire with this new design^{[citation needed]}. Choosing Stratocasters with a light-tone maple fretboard (supposedly giving a “brighter” sound than the “darker” rosewood)^{[citation needed]}, he wanted to balance the high-power play with further versatility and velocity, so in early 1969, he opted for heavy-gauge strings^{[citation needed]}which he combined with a tuning lowered a half-step from normal pitch, a technique which he picked up from Albert King in 1966^{[citation needed]}. This enhanced the possibilities offered by the interlaced rhythm and solos during the Olmstead Studios sessions of April 1969^{[citation needed]}. Later on tour, this stringing caused the drawback of more frequent losses in tuning after pushing down (or pulling) the tremolo bar^{[citation needed]}; Hendrix would often ask the audience for a “minute to tune up” several times during the same concert.

In addition to Fender Stratocasters, Hendrix was also photographed playing Jazzmasters, Duosonics, two different Gibson Flying Vs, a Gibson Les Paul, three Gibson SGs, a Gretsch Corvette he used at the 1967 Curtis Knight sessions and miming with a right strung Fender Jaguar on the “Top Of The Pop’s” TV show, as well as several other brands.^[111]. Jimi used a white Gibson SG Custom for his performances on the Dick Cavett show in the summer of 1969, and the Isle of Wight film shows him playing his second Gibson Flying V. While Jimi had previously owned a Flying V that he’d painted with a psychedelic design, the Flying V used at the Isle of Wight was a unique custom left-handed guitar with gold plated hardware, a bound fingerboard and “split-diamond” fret markers that were not found on other 60s-era Flying Vs.

On December 4, 2006, one of Hendrix’s 1968 Fender Stratocaster guitars with a sunburst design was sold at a Christie’s auction for USD$168,000.^[112]

Amplifiers and effects

Hendrix was a catalyst in the development of modern guitar effects pedals. His high-energy stage act and the high volume at which he played required robust and powerful amplifiers. For the first few rehearsals he used Vox and Fender amplifiers. Sitting in with Cream, Hendrix played through a new range of high-powered guitar amps being made by London drummer turned audio engineer Jim Marshall, and they proved perfect for his needs. Along with the Stratocaster, the Marshall stack and amplifiers were crucial in shaping his heavily overdriven sound, enabling him to master the use of feedback as a musical effect. His use of this brand made it very popular.

The sound of Hendrix’s recordings seemed to have progressively changed from the “sharp edge” of 1966 and 1967 to the warmer sounds of 1969 and 1970^{[citation needed]} . The first two albums were recorded in England with his British-made Marshall amps operating at 240 volts/50 Hertz. He then recorded in the US (beginning in May 1968 on Electric Ladyland), under 110 volts/60 Hertz.^[113] The evolution in the Stratocasters used (pre-1968 versus post-1968 models) may have contributed to this change as well. Weather conditions may also have had an effect on his amps: the warm sound of Woodstock contrasts to the “edgy” sound of the Isle of Wight recordings^{[citation needed]}. During the Isle of Wight video Hendrix has numerous equipment problems, during “All Along the Watchtower” his wah pedal squeals at a high pitch instead of functioning normally, after struggling with it during a solo Hendrix can be clearly seen to turn toward the camera and his support crew and say “wah wah, get me another wah wah” as the show progresses further pieces of equipment are replaced.^[disputed]Both Fender Stratocasters and Marshall amps were evolving to a more edgy sound^{[citation needed]}, the Marshall amps in particular went through numerous electronic changes between 1966 and 1970 with the 1970 amp having considerably more treble edge than the earlier units^{[citation needed]}. These supposed sound changes are more likely caused by^{[citation needed]}the erratic performance of Arbiter Fuzz Face units which were highly inconsistent, and subject to changes in tone due to both temperature and battery conditions. As Hendrix’s recording career progressed he made greater use of customized and custom voiced fuzz units or reworked Fuzz Faces. In contrast the first albums were made under more basic, low budget conditions with less time spent^{[citation needed]} obtaining guitar sounds and effects.

Hendrix constantly looked for new guitar effects. He was one of the first guitarists to move past simple gimmickry and to exploit the full expressive possibilities of electronic effects such as the Arbiter Fuzz Face and wah-wah pedal. He had a fruitful association with engineer Roger Mayer who later went on to make, the Axis fuzz unit, the Octavia octave doubler and several other devices based on units Mayer had created or tweeked for Hendrix. The Japanese made Univibe was another effect and is particularly interesting, designed to electronically simulate the modulation effects of the rotating Leslie speaker it provided a rich phasing sound with a speed control pedal. The Band of Gypsies track “Machine Gun” highlights use of the univibe, octavia and fuzz face pedals.

The Hendrix sound combined high volume and high power, feedback manipulation, and a range of cutting-edge guitar effects. He was also known for his trick playing, which included playing with only his right (fretting) hand, using his teeth or playing behind his back and between his legs, although he soon grew tired of audience demands to perform these tricks. Hendrix had large hands and used his thumb almost constantly to fret bass notes, leaving his fingers free to play melodic fills on top, thereby facilitating his noted ability to play lead and rhythm parts simultaneously. This technique was made easier by his Stratocasters’ 7.25″ fingerboard radius; more rounded than the modern standard 9.5″^{[citation needed]}. A clear demonstration of this thumb technique can be witnessed in the Woodstock video, during the song Red House there are excellent closeups of Hendrix’s fretting hand.

Discography

Main article: Jimi Hendrix discography

Albums released before his death:

Studio albums

Live albums

Wikipedia.com

The Yardbirds

Formed 1962

• Principal Members
• Jeff Beck
• Eric Clapton
• Chris Dreja
• Jim McCarty
• Jimmy Page
• Keith Relf
• Paul Samwell-Smith

Biography

Formed originally as the Metropolitan Blues Quartet in 1962–63 in the London suburbs, and having emanated out of the atmosphere of Bohemianism fostered by the Kingston Art School, the Yardbirds first performed as a backup band for Cyril Davies, and achieved notice on the burgeoning British blues scene (or “rhythm and blues“, as the British music press alluded to it) when they took over as the house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond— succeeding the Rolling Stones in September 1963, and flying in the face of London’s ‘serious music’ ‘trad jazz‘ club scene circuit in which the new ‘R&B’ groups got many of their first professional bookings.

With a repertoire drawn from the Delta-soaked Chicago blues titans Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Elmore James, the Yardbirds began to build a following of their own in London before very long. Their inexperience and their less-than-stellar musicianship was obvious, but their commitment was just as powerful, as they hammered away at versions of such blues classics as “Smokestack Lightning“, “Got Love If You Want It“, “Here ‘Tis“, “Baby What’s Wrong“, “Good Morning Little School Girl“, “Boom Boom“, “I Wish You Would“, “Done Somebody Wrong“, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’“, and “I’m a Man“.

• September, 1963: The group play their first shows billed as the ‘Yard-birds’.

They made their first significant lineup addition when singer/harmonica player Keith Relf, rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty, replaced original lead guitarist (Anthony) Top Topham with a very boyish-looking art student named Eric Clapton in October 1963. Clapton already knew what he was doing with his instrument; his solo turns, while far enough from the gripping little gems for which he became famous soon enough, already set him apart from most of his peers among the British blues clubbers. Between his sleek guitar playing and Keith Relf’s improving harmonica style, the group could at least boast two attractive players that made listeners overlook their still-incomplete rhythmic attack. And, of critical importance, Crawdaddy Club impresario Giorgio Gomelsky—who had all but discovered the Rolling Stones but thought it beyond his range to become their manager—learned enough from his previous miss to become the Yardbirds’ manager and, as it turned out, first producer.

Under Gomelsky’s guidance, the Yardbirds got themselves signed to EMI‘s Columbia label in February, 1964; they set a precedent of a sort when their first album turned out to be a live album, Five Live Yardbirds, recorded at the legendary Marquee Club in London. The group was well enough reputed that none other than blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson II himself invited the group to tour England and Germany with him, a union that survives to this day on a live album memorable for Williamson’s trouper-like adaptation of his deep troubadour style of blues to the Yardbirds’ raw, unpolished rock version. (“Those English kids,” Williamson famously said of the Yardbirds and other British blues groups like the Animals and the Stones, “want to play the blues so bad—and they play the blues so bad”, though he had a personal affection for the Yardbirds’ members and even thought of moving to England permanently, until the illness that resulted in his early death in 1965.)

Breakthrough success and Clapton secession

The quintet went from there to cut several singles, including “I Wish You Would”, but it was their third single, “For Your Love”, a Graham Gouldman composition that was anything but the blues, which put the band to their highest chart position yet in England—and gave them their first major hit in the United States when it was released Stateside in 1965. The group’s move into pop outraged lead guitarist Eric Clapton, at the time a no-holds-barred blues purist, who had already doubted the ability of “nice college kids” like bassist Paul Samwell-Smith to play the “real blues”. Clapton left the group in protest.

The loss could have been devastating to the Yardbirds; Clapton had already shown the striking, stabbingly virtuosic style he would later expand and deepen with Mayall and unfurl as a full-fledged virtuoso statement with the improvisational blues rock/psychedelic Cream. Clapton recommended Jimmy Page, a studio guitarist he knew (and with whom he would soon cut a series of stirring blues guitar duets, including “Tribute to Elmore” and “Draggin’ My Tail”), as his replacement, but Page—uncertain at the time about giving up his lucrative studio work and worried about his health—recommended in turn his friend Jeff Beck, whose fleet-fingered style and bent for experimentation pushed the Yardbirds to the direction from which they became widely credited for opening the door to “psychedelic rock“. Beck played his first gig with the Yardbirds only two days after Clapton’s departure.

In 1965, the Yardbirds issued a pair of albums in the U.S., slapped together somewhat haphazardly from their British recordings, For Your Love (which included an early take of “My Girl Sloopy”; their recording has more in common with the 1964 American top-30 hit by the early soul group “The Vibrations” than the later hit version by the McCoys, practicing the loose ad-lib style and stacked harmonies [ala "Twist And Shout"] of the original) and Havin’ A Rave Up With The Yardbirds, half of which came from Five Live Yardbirds.

Jeff Beck’s tenure

Rather than presenting the Yardbirds with a setback after Clapton’s departure, Jeff Beck‘s tenure in the band actually propelled the group forward into new artistic realms that were revolutionary at the time, as well as upward commercially, and saw the band at their absolute zenith in terms of their influence and prominence within the contemporary music scene in the UK and abroad. The Yardbirds embarked on their first US tour in late August, 1965, and would return for 3 more US tours during Beck’s time with the group, further solidifying his reputation as the most exciting and innovative guitarist on the international ‘pop’ music scene. A brief European tour took place in April, 1966.

The Beck-era Yardbirds produced a number of memorable, groundbreaking recordings, from single hits like “Heart Full of Soul”, Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man”, and “Shapes of Things” to the Yardbirds album (known more popularly as Roger the Engineer, and first issued in the U.S. in a bowdlerised version called Over Under Sideways Down), and established him as a top-rank guitarist.

Beck’s guitar experiments with fuzz tone, feedback, and distortion jolted British rock forward with a bold dropkick, punching a psychedelic time-clock, and evincing world-music influences. In addition, the Yardbirds began serious experiments with things like adapting Gregorian chant and world-music influences (“Still I’m Sad”, “Turn Into Earth”, “Hot House of Omagarashid”, “Farewell”, “Ever Since The World Began”) and various European folk styles into their blues and rock rooted music, and this gained them a new reputation among the hipster underground even as their commercial appeal had begun already to wane.

Beck was voted #1 lead guitarist of 1966 in the British music magazine Beat Instrumental, and his work during this period influenced major musicians (such as the then-unknown Jimi Hendrix), as well as amateur musicians in garages and stages the world over (the Yardbirds’ music from the Beck-era was one of the staples of garage-rock and cover bands’ repertoires during the mid-to-late 1960s). In the rarefied world of rock star guitar-heroes on the very cutting edge of new and integral sounds, Beck then stood alone at the top of the heap, and his tenure with the Yardbirds is rightfully viewed by many as their ‘golden’ era, with his presence and talent lending an undeniable contribution.

The Beck/Page Lineup

The Yardbirds, 1966. Clockwise from left: Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Keith Relf, Jim McCarty, and Chris Dreja.

• June 18, 1966: Paul Samwell-Smith (bassist/songwriter/producer) leaves the Yardbirds; Jimmy Page takes his place.

It was shortly after the sessions that produced Yardbirds (aka, Roger The Engineer) that Paul Samwell-Smith decided to leave the group and work behind the console as a record producer. Jimmy Page re-entered the picture, agreeing to play bass until rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja could become comfortable with that instrument, and then teaming with Beck for tantalising twin-guitar attacks.

The Yardbirds were now blessed with two world-class lead guitarists. Pronounced examples of what the Beck-Page tandem could do were the concert dates they played as the opening band for The Rolling Stones, in which they were described by critics as “World War Three”, and the single “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago“. The “Happenings” single featured Beck and Page on twin lead guitar, with John Paul Jones brought in to the recording session to play bass; it was backed with “Psycho Daisies”, which featured Beck on lead guitar and Page on bass (The B-side of the U.S. single, “The Nazz Are Blue”, features a rare lead vocal by Beck). The Beck-Page era Yardbirds also recorded “Stroll On”, their half-crazed rendition of the standard “Train Kept A-Rollin’“, which they recorded for the Antonioni film Blowup. Relf changed the lyrics and title the night before it was recorded because there was not enough time to acquire permission from the copyright holder. “Stroll On” features a twin lead-guitar break, so it is almost without a doubt that the Beck-Page tandem was at work on this recording (Beck had earlier played his same solo on live renditions of ‘Train…’, while Page would later play the second lead part alone in the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin; put the separate Beck-Page solos together, and it sounds like the combined twin-solo on ‘Stroll On’).

Unfortunately, the Beck-Page lineup recorded little else in the studio, and no live recordings (save a scratchy cover of the Velvet Underground‘s Waiting for the Man) of the dual-lead guitar lineup have yet surfaced. The Beck-Page Yardbirds are believed to have made one other recording, a commercial for a milkshake product “Great Shakes”—a short rehash of “Over Under Sideways Down”. Yet there was also one additional recording that Beck and Page made in secret—”Beck’s Bolero”, a piece inspired by Ravel‘s “Bolero” yet credited to “Page” (Beck also claims to have written the song). The rest of the lineup was John Paul Jones on bass, Keith Moon on drums, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. “Beck’s Bolero” was first released as the B-side of Beck’s first solo single, “Hi Ho Silver Lining“, and was included on his first solo album, Truth.

Their appearance in Blowup was accidental: originally, The Who were approached, but they declined, and then The In-Crowd had been planned but they were unable to attend the filming. The Yardbirds filled in at short notice, and the guitar that Beck smashes at the end of their set is a replica of Steve Howe‘s instrument. Director Michelangelo Antonioni instructed Beck to smash his guitar in emulation of The Who’s Pete Townshend.^[1]

The Yardbirds’ final days: the Page era

The powerful synergy between Beck and Page proved short-lived; Beck was fired from the group after a tour stop in Texas in late October 1966, and the Yardbirds continued as a quartet for the remainder of their career.

Page became the new lead guitarist and he was just as bent toward experimentation as Beck, particularly his striking technique of scraping a violin or cello bow across his guitar strings to induce a round of odd and surreal sounds, and his dextrous use of a wah-wah pedal. He also proved an adept finger-style guitarist, as evident on the shimmering “White Summer“, a raga- and folk-styled instrumental composition that employs the melody of “She Moves Through The Fair” and owes an evident debt to Davy Graham‘s “She Moved Through the Bizarre”.

Increasing chart indifference, record company pressure (their British label EMI pressed hitmaking producer Mickie Most upon them in a failed bid to re-ignite their commercial success), and drug-related problems meant that by 1967, the Yardbirds’ days were numbered. The “Little Games” single released in the spring flopped so badly in the UK that EMI did not release a Yardbirds record in Britain for another year. A cover of Manfred Mann‘s “Ha Ha Said The Clown” — on which only one band member, Relf, actually performed — was the band’s last single to crack the U.S. Top 50, peaking at No. 44 in Billboard in the summer of ’67. Their final album, Little Games, released in America in July, was a commercial and critical non-entity.

The Yardbirds spent most of the rest of that year touring in the States with new manager Peter Grant while living a schizophrenic pop life: their records became more benign (a cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Ten Little Indians” hit the U.S. in the fall of ’67 and quickly sank) as their live shows were becoming heavier and more experimental. The band rarely played their 1967 singles live, preferring to mix the Beck-era hits with blues standards and covers by groups such as the Velvet Underground and an American folk singer Jake Holmes. Holmes’ “Dazed and Confused“, with lyrics rewritten by Relf and cranked up to a blues-metal frenzy by Page, McCarty and Dreja, was a live staple of the Yardbirds’ last two American tours — and it went down so well that Page decided to keep it in the quiver even after the band’s demise.

A concert and some album tracks were recorded in New York City in March 1968 (including the currently unreleased song “Knowing That I’m Losing You”, an early version of a track that would be re-recorded by Led Zeppelin as “Tangerine“). All were shelved at the band’s request, although once Led Zeppelin hit big, Epic tried to cash in by releasing the concert material as the bootleg Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page. The album was quickly withdrawn after Page’s lawyers filed an injunction on it.

The Yardbirds’ final single, “Goodnight Sweet Josephine“, was recorded in January 1968. Released two months later, it failed to crack the Billboard Top 100 but is notable in retrospect for its B-side, “Think About It“, which featured a proto-Zeppelin Page riff and snippets of the “Dazed” guitar solo in the break.

Such efforts did not improve the commercial success of the band. In addition, the members were split over the band’s direction: Relf and McCarty wanted a folk sound, while Jimmy Page wanted to steer blues-rock into new, more intense directions of dynamics and depth — the kind of music that Led Zeppelin would become famous for.

• July 7, 1968: The Yardbirds play their final gig at Luton Technical College in Bedfordshire, England (twelve years to the day later Led Zeppelin would play their final concert in their original line-up in Berlin).

The new Yardbirds: evolution into Led Zeppelin

But Jimmy Page, left with a touring commitment yet unfulfilled in Scandinavia for the fall, was compelled to put a new lineup together. Procol Harum‘s B.J. Wilson, Paul Francis, and noted session man Clem Cattini, who’d guested on more than a few Yardbirds tracks under Most’s supervision, were considered for the vacant drummer’s throne. Young vocalist and composer Terry Reid was asked to replace Relf, but he turned down the offer because of a new recording contract with Most. But he enthusiastically recommended to Page and Grant a then-unknown singer from the Midlands by the name of Robert Plant. Plant, in turn, recommended his childhood friend John Bonham on drums. Dreja bowed out to pursue a career as a rock photographer; enter bassist/keyboardist/arranger John Paul Jones, who, like Cattini, had worked with Page on countless sessions, including several with the Yardbirds.

In early September, Page’s revised Yardbirds hit the road; fans at the Scandinavian shows were confused by new members, expecting to see Keith Relf up front, but the band quickly found themselves clicking. After this brief tour, Page’s new lineup returned home to England to produce, in a very short time, a landmark debut album. Interestingly, what was to become Led Zeppelin was still being billed as “Yard Birds” or “The Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page” as late as October 1968; indeed, some early studio tapes from the Led Zeppelin album were marked as being performed by “The Yardbirds.”

However, a very different band was soon working under a very different identity — reportedly hastened, in part, by a legal threat from Dreja, who claimed that he maintained legal rights to the “Yardbirds” name. The moniker ‘Led Zeppelin’ was an old inside joke among Page and his closest musical friends, several of whom would later take credit for the idea. Coined as early as 1966, “Lead Zeppelin” was The Who‘s Keith Moon‘s tongue-in-cheek description of the prospective “supergroup” that would have comprised himself, John Entwistle, Steve Marriott, Beck and Page, because he felt they would go over “like a lead balloon.” Once the idea was revived, Plant elected to change the spelling of “lead” so that the name wouldn’t be mispronounced, effectively closing the books on the Yardbirds for the rest of the century.

After the Yardbirds

The remaining ex-Yardbirds did not exactly go gently into that good night. Vocalist Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty formed an acoustic-rock group (then very much in vogue) called Together and, with the help of Paul Samwell-Smith, who had gone on to fame as Cat Stevens‘ producer in 1970, the seminal prog-rock band, Renaissance, which recorded two albums for Island Records over a two-year period. However, the impending dissolution of Renaissance brought on by the hazards of touring caused McCarty to reform the band into a very different lineup, with McCarty himself also soon departing midway through their second album.

Jim McCarty thereafter formed the group called Shoot in 1973, which performed on the BBC several times but never toured, releasing an album called “On the Frontier” and another one that never saw the light of day. Finally, Keith Relf resurfaced in 1975 with a new quartet, Armageddon, a hybrid of hard, thrusting rock and folk that included former Renaissance mate Louis Cennamo. They recorded one promising album before Relf died in an electrical accident while playing an ungrounded guitar in his home studio on May 14, 1976. In 1977, Illusion was formed, featuring a reunited lineup of the original Renaissance, including drummer Jim McCarty and Keith’s sister Jane Relf. (By this time the Renaissance name was already appropriated by a reinvented lineup fronted by Annie Haslam, thus the original Renaissance assumed the name “Illusion” from the title of their second Renaissance album.)

In the 1980s Jim McCarty, Chris Dreja and Paul Samwell-Smith (who had remained Cat Stevens‘ producer to the day Stevens converted to Islam and withdrew from pop music entirely) offered a nucleus for a short-enough lived but fun-enough kind of Yardbirds semi-reunion called Box of Frogs, which occasionally included Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page plus various friends with whom they’d all recorded over the years.

Jim McCarty was also part of a super-group of sorts in the 90s… ‘The British Invasion All-Stars’ with members of Procol Harum, Creation, Nashville Teens, The Downliners Sect and The Pretty Things.

Phil May and Dick Taylor of the The Pretty Things, together with drummer Jim McCarty, recorded 2 albums in Chicago as The Pretty Things-Yardbirds Blues Band “The Chicago Blues Tapes 1991″ and “Wine, Women, Whiskey”, both produced by George Paulus.

The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. All six living musicians who had been part of the group’s heyday, including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, appeared at the ceremony. Jeff Beck cracked at the ceremony: “Someone told me that I should be happy, but I’m not…because they kicked me out… fuck them! (Laughs)…”.

Reformation

Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja reformed the Yardbirds in the 1990s, with John Idan handling bass and lead vocals, and touring regularly since then with a number of guitarists and harmonica players passing through their ranks.

In 2003, a new album, Birdland, was released under the Yardbirds name on the Favored Nations label by a lineup including Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty, and new members Gypie Mayo (lead guitar, backing vocals), John Idan (bass, lead vocals) and Alan Glen (harmonica, backing vocals), which consisted of a mixture of new material mostly penned by McCarty and re-recordings of some of their greatest hits, with guest appearances by Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Slash, Brian May, Steve Lukather, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, John Rzeznik, Martin Ditchum and Simon McCarty. Also, Jeff Beck reunited with his former bandmates on the song “My Blind Life”. And then there was the rare and improbable guest appearance on stage in 2005 by their first guitarist from the sixties, Top Topham.

Since the release of Birdland, Gypie Mayo has been briefly replaced by Jerry Donahue, and subsequently by 22 year old Ben King, while Alan Glen has been replaced by Billy Boy Miskimmon from Nine Below Zero fame.

Note: The Yardbirds released a live 2007 CD, “Live At B.B. King Blues Club” (Favored Nations).

According the Total Rock website. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page are to possibly rejoin the Yardbirds for a reunion tour some time in 2008.

Lead vocalist John Idan would retain his front man position. Ben King would also remain as lead guitarist as any reunion with Page and Beck would be temporary.

The first episode of the 2007/2008 season for “The Simpsons” featured The Yardbirds’ “I’m A Man” from the CD “Live At B.B. King Blues Club” (Favored Nations).

Members

Current members

• John Idan – bass, lead vocals (1992-present)
• Ben King – lead guitar (2005-present)
• Chris Dreja – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1963-1968, 1992-present)
• Billy Boy Miskimmin – harmonica, percussion (2003-present)
• Jim McCarty – drums, backing vocals (1963-1968, 1992-present)

wikipedia.com

“Back in April 2006, I found myself in the plush basement of a Chelsea boutique hotel, with a film crew, waiting to interview Noel Gallagher. He was due to be turn up at 11am, but we were ready half an hour early. While I used the time to redraft my questions for the nineteenth time, I overheard my colleagues chatting about the mid-90s moment when the man we were waiting for ‘owned’ British rock.

Tony, the film’s researcher, had worked next door to Oasis’ old record company, Creation, in Primrose Hill and recalled seeing the legendary indie label balloon in size as the millions started rolling in. Desperate for extra staff, the label employed his girlfriend.

Louis Caulfield, our camera-man, had done his first ever day of paid work as runner on the band’s first video: a task that apparently involved keeping them constantly supplied with alcohol and their favoured flavour of herbal refreshment.

Less glamorously, I had spent the heady years of Brit-pop working at a Birmingham call centre, and it was there in 1996 that I had spent a frantic day manning the phones, taking credit card details from anxious fans desperate to secure tickets to Oasis’ statement shows at Knebworth. It was a short day for me – within hours, tickets for what was already being dubbed the biggest concert in British history had all gone.

It struck me that in the mid-90s Oasis had presided over their own mini-economy. Of the four thirty-somethings waiting for Noel that morning, two of us had indirectly worked for him, another’s girlfriend had worked for him. The only person untainted by the Gallagher shilling was our Russian sound-recordist who had been in the former Soviet Union.

I was interviewing Noel about the “over-grounding” of British indie – something for which his band was largely responsible. In approaching the film, I hadn’t dared attempt a dutiful chronicle of British indie scene from the late 70s to the present day – we would need an entire series to do justice to that story. Rather, I narrowed my focus to show the trajectory of the music through a few key bands from the mid-80s onward – The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Suede, Blur, Oasis, The Libertines – and in the process show that what happened to the “indie” scene in the 90s was similar to how Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd took “underground” music into stadiums in the 1970s.

When Noel turned up, he was on time, funny, and only started swearing when the camera was switched on. He held court for two hours. My main memory is of biting my tongue hard during some of his stories, so that my guffaws wouldn’t appear. As he shook my hand to say goodbye, he told me he could have kept talking all day.

When I look back at Noel’s interview and the 12 year-old old archive of Blur and Oasis, there’s a clear sense that Britpop coincided with the end of the rock industry’s glory days.

Top of The Pops was still the important shop window for a band as it had been in the 60s; the internet was yet to happen, and the record industry was awash with cash. Now, with personal play-lists, digital radio, and iTunes, everything has fragmented. In the last ten years something has definitely changed, and we are in a new era of rock that is still taking shape.

Noel is clearly aware of this. In his interview he said: “Back in the 90s there was so much money floating about it was unbelievable. I remember us being invited to bashes in proper stately homes. We were getting f***ing DVDs given to us… These days you’re lucky if you get a f***ing Christmas card.”

A band becomes a phenomenon when people who couldn’t care less about music start talking about them; when their success somehow defines a cultural moment in the life of the nation. What’s interesting about Oasis isn’t that they were a British rock phenomenon – that can’t be disputed – but the fact that they were possibly the last.”

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The Smiths . The Stone Roses . Blur . Oasis . The Libertines . Suede . Arctic Monkeys . Franz Ferdinand . Coldplay

“In the days when ‘Teen Spirit’ was a brand of deodorant, grunge was something that blocked the sink and R.E.M. still had religion, ‘alternative rock’ was hard to find. Those in the know followed the advice of The Replacements and tuned their radio to ‘the left of the dial’ in search of more challenging, authentic and passionate guitar music than the spandex and hairspray acts that straddled mainstream rock in the 80s.

As we embarked on a pilgrimage across America in search of the people and places that helped pioneer alternative rock, it almost felt like we were following in the tyre-tracks of the bands who’d started it all nearly 25 years before.

Four hours drive from Seattle is the mist-shrouded logging town of Aberdeen, Kurt Cobain’s home and a place he described as ‘Twin Peaks without the excitement.’ The welcome sign reads ‘Come As You Are’, but it’s the musty music shops, thrift stores and boarded up houses that most eloquently evoke Kurt Cobain’s troubled childhood.

In Seattle, where grunge was born, we filmed a rare interview with Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, no longer the goofy bass player who used to leap around the stage but a thoughtful, lugubrious man who still brightens when recalling the thrill of discovering bands like Black Flag and Hüsker Dü for the first time.

In Los Angeles, we had an appointment with R.E.M. producer Scott Litt and the original studio master tapes of classic R.E.M. tracks including ‘The One I Love’ and ‘Losing My Religion.’ Scott reverently pored over tapes and handwritten track-sheets that he hadn’t seen in over two decades and as the vintage reels turned, he was back in 1987 with Michael Stipe bashing lyrics out on an old typewriter while Peter Buck strummed the guitar.

In the steamy heat of Athens, Georgia, we filmed R.E.M. landmarks – the railway sleepers on the ‘Murmur’ sleeve – and ate soul food from Weaver’s D’s restaurant, where ‘Automatic for the People’ is still the refrain. Later that night, we convened at John Keane’s studio, where the band recorded ‘Out of Time’, to interview R.E.M.’s Mike Mills. We struggled to light a black grand piano, raiding a linen cupboard for bed-sheets to cope with the reflections, as Mills benignly sipped red wine before regaling us with wonderful tales about the band’s early days and impromptu piano versions of songs like ‘Nightswimming’ and Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla.’

The tour also took us to two small towns as fittingly strange as alternative rocks’ quirkiest band, The Pixies: the hippie enclave of Eugene, Oregon, home to guitarist Charles Thompson, and the industrial, midwest city of Dayton, Ohio, where bassist Kim Deal was born and raised.

Our shoot drew to a close in London with an audience with Michael Stipe, where the R.E.M. singer fondly recalled the band’s gruelling years on the road and spoke movingly about the fragile, destructive talent of Kurt Cobain…

The road’s a distant memory now, and it’s filled with glimpses of what might have been – signposts we didn’t get a chance to follow that would have led us to bands like Sonic Youth or Pearl Jam, both worthy of a film in themselves. But I’m hopeful that this programme will introduce people to a few less familiar names who played their part, as well as providing a fresh and intriguing take on some of the biggest bands who took the road less travelled… and made all the difference.”

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Nirvana . Black Flag . R.E.M. The Pixies . Mudhoney . Husker Du . The Replacement . The White Stripes . The Strokes

“Stadium rock is not a genre – it exists somewhere far above the ebb and flow of genre and fashion, and is a term used to describe the music played by bands and artists as musically diverse as Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Police or U2 – acts who can regularly perform to upwards of 50 000 people.

In a strictly musical sense, there is little that connects these bands – the hopped up glam riffs of Kiss are far removed from the futuristic sonics of Bono and Edge. Rather, the link is in the outlook and actions of the musicians themselves. To start with, all these bands share a similar sense of ambition – a desire to use their music to connect with as many as they can.

Showmanship is clearly a shared common element – all have figured out how to make a large stage work for them. Performers like Springsteen, Freddie Mercury and Bono have gone beyond this, sharing a genius for performance that allows them to bond tens of thousands of individuals together – sending them home with a sense that they have been part of something greater than a mere rock’n'roll show. But at the heart of the best of these bands is, dare I say it, a generosity in their music: a sense that everyone is invited to the party.

All of this means that when a band reaches the heights of the stadiums, they face the accusation that they have “sold out”, and risk forfeiting whatever critical kudos they have built up over their career. Bands who are revered by rock purists – The Velvet Underground for example – often barely sold any records during their career. And yet all of the artists featured in the film found their own way to fill large spaces without diluting the essence of what made them great, and in some very rare cases (Queen, Springsteen, U2), I would argue that the large venues magnified what they were projecting rather than diminished it.

In approaching this film, I wanted to get a sense directly from the musicians themselves about how they learned to work these big spaces, how they connected with their audience, and how they dealt with their success.

We got some remarkable interviews. Brian May shared his memories of Freddie Mercury, as well as explaining to us how Queen‘s career was built around their interaction with their audience – songs like “We Will Rock You” were specifically written to allow the audience to become one with the band.

Bob Geldof gave us his own perspective of Live Aid, while Gene Simmons charmed us with some of the most outrageous things committed to tape. Mark Knopfler, in a typically modest and understated interview, spoke about how he fought hard to retain his band’s integrity as one of their albums suddenly became one of the most successful in history.

If I had to choose a favourite interview, it would be the one we filmed with Stewart Copeland, the drummer of The Police, who had obviously been thinking quite a bit recently about the ride that he’d taken with The Police over 25 years ago.

Not only had he recently produced a film memoir of his own about the experience (Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out) but had just signed up for their current reunion tour, although we didn’t know this at the time of the interview.

He delivered the most precise and compelling dissection of what immense global success can do to a band and an individual that I have ever heard. Apparently the experience of being in an enormously successful band is like, “being an Aztec sun god. You know it’s only temporary. You’re surrounded by all this luxury and yet you know one morning you’ll be dragged to the top of a pyramid, and the priest will come and rip out your heart.”"

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Queen . Bruce Springsteen . U2 . Led Zeppelin . The Police . Kiss . Dire Straits

“I can already hear the cries of where are AC/DC? Van Halen? Slipknot? Slayer? Alice Cooper? And so many more bands and artists who aren’t in this film. All I can say is sorry. Metal as rock music’s longest survivor has potentially four decades worth of tales to tell.

Our story begins with the origins of the heavy rock sound in 1970′s Britain with Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. It continues with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and the success and excess of Hair Metal in the 80′s. The story ends with Metallica, who brought metal back to its roots and with the Black Album took the music forward into its third decade.

With the script in place, Lighting Cameraman Robin Cox, Researcher Tony Higgins and I headed out to America on a three city tour to interview the giants of Metal. We started with Black Sabbath in LA and ended with Vince Neil in New York. In between we visited Metallica in San Francisco, where we discovered that the rock lifestyle was still alive and kicking.

At Metallica HQ we set up the equipment in the studio and waited for founding band member Lars Ulrich to show up. He didn’t. It was the first no show of the shoot. Zach, who runs the studio couldn’t have looked more embarrassed as the minutes ticked by, and still no Lars. Eventually James Hetfield showed up – in a huge monster truck – and whispers started to circulate that maybe Lars was a little worse for wear that morning.

We went ahead with James’s interview in the hope that Lars would show up. James definitely had the allure of a rock dude and I found myself quite mesmerised chatting to him for over 2 hours. Finally I had to admit that I didn’t have any more questions and the crew dragged me away. In the meantime the interview with Lars had been re-scheduled for later that day at his home.

Our next appointment was with Deep Purple’s vocalist Ian Gillan in a disused warehouse in the Presidio district of San Fran. Gillan was on a solo tour of the States and was playing a gig that night which he kindly invited us to – result!

Ian sounded a little hoarse and as it happened he’d been out on the lash with Lars the night before. Gillan had been dragged back to Lars’s house and been force-fed film archive of Purple performing Smoke on the Water on repeat until the wee hours. Lars was rumbled.

I felt a twinge of embarrassment when I asked Gillan to tell the story of how “Smoke on the Wate”r came about. He must have answered that question a million times. Still, I had to have the story of one rock’s most enduring anthems and Gillan obliged, resignedly.

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Deep Purple . Black Sabbath . Metallica . Iron Maiden . Judas Priest . Ozzy Osbuorne . Motley Crue

“It’s the summer of 1976. I am sitting in a huge crowd at the Knebworth Festival waiting for the Rolling Stones to appear. As the hours pass I remember thinking ‘I’ve had enough of this. These rock stars are taking the piss. This is bollocks’. And I hoped I wasn’t alone in feeling cheated.

But at the same time in London, in small clubs and pubs there was hope – a punk salvation for my generation. A friend of mine buys the first punk single and plays it for me. I am stunned. “New Rose” by the Damned is a brilliant burst of primal rock energy. Nothing will be the same.

Thirty years later I am asked to make a programme about Punk. I feel strange. Unlike most subjects I deal with, this IS my life! I can remember hearing the records for the first time and going to my first punk gigs. So how am I going to make a documentary which tries to make sense of it all?

Punk has complex and fascinating roots. In the US there were proto-punk bands like the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop and the Stooges and the New York Dolls. In the UK you can see influences on Punk from sixties groups like the Who and the Small Faces through to seventies bands like Alex Harvey, Mott the Hoople, the Faces and Dr Feelgood.

But how can you tell the story of Punk in one hour of Television? It is impossible. So you will have to excuse me in having kept the story a simple one of New York and London – concentrating on what we believed to be the key punk bands. Excuses. I know, not very punk.

We of course affected to be cool in our professional detachment when conducting interviews. But the mask would slip. These pioneers of punk were my heroes.

In New York there was Debbie Harry, inches away, wrapped up and glamorous, coping with the cold of a morning in a night club without the heating on. She was that close to me – patiently answering my questions!

In New York we met Tommy Ramone, the last original member of the Ramones alive. We interviewed Tommy at the Lower East Side loft where the band used to live and rehearse and which is now the home of their friend Arturo Vega.

In New York we got a full punk tutorial from guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith Band. They showed us just how they put three chords together with poetry to produce the classic album ‘Horses’. That was cool.

In Los Angeles John Lydon entertained us for nearly two hours with his own inimitable commentary on his story of punk insurrection and rebellion. That was very funny!

In London, Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols showed us how he came up with the riffs for Pretty Vacant, Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen. I now know that Punk’s “bad boys” had Abba as one of their influences!

Pete Shelley from Buzzocks explained how he came up with the one note guitar solo for the song Boredom. Viv Albertine from the Slits made it very clear that Punk wasn’t just something for the boys in the band.

So sit back and enjoy The Sex Pistols playing ‘Anarchy in the UK’, the Clash – ‘White Riot’, Patti Smith – ‘Horses’ and the Ramones – ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. And with these punk “standards” appreciate a mesmerising performance by John Lydon’s PIL and the pop perfection of Buzzcocks ‘Ever Fallen in Love’.

I hope there will be questions and queries about our decisions, about who, why, what and when in this story of Punk. Everybody will have their own history. So I hope fans – of my vintage and young folk too – will tune it and then leave their comments below. And I want them to mean it, man!”

“‘Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,’ I thought as I watched my bag disappear down the chute at Heathrow’s Terminal One, on my way to New York to interview one of Rock’s legends. Admittedly, ‘The Legend’ in question had masterminded the most awe inspiring debut in rock history but he also had a formidable reputation outside the recording studio. His hatred of journalists, particularly English ones, has become part of rocklore. He once described us as a species of foul vermin who he “wouldn’t hire to guard his sewer.” He’s called us “morons and idiots” and sworn that “he doesn’t perform for idiots.”

His name is Lou Reed. He was my date for the weekend. This was going to be such fun.

But it had to be done, Lou was an essential part of my story. His pioneering work with the Velvet Underground, especially in collaboration with John Cale, was at the heart of my film. The Velvets were the true pioneers of a form of music that emerged in the mid sixties, which fused poetry, theatre, light shows and art with rock, to create a hybrid called ‘art rock’.

Everyone we interviewed had claimed that the Velvet’s first album ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico’ was the Holy Grail of Art Rock. Pink Floyd’s first manager, Peter Jenner heard a tape and phoned up the band to ask whether he could manage them. When he was informed politely that actually they had a manager called Andy (Warhol) he went in search of the British equivalent. He found Pink Floyd and their wayward wizard Syd Barrett whose small body of work ranged from the inspirational to the deranged and who, like Lou, was to influence a generation.

Bryan Ferry through his connections with Andy Warhol’s factory had similarly adored the revolutionary mix of raw street subject matter with plaintive melodies. And David Bowie had heard the Velvets characteristically before anyone else and went on to make his own version of both “Venus in Furs” and “Waiting for the Man”.

So whatever my reservations about Lou he was the lynchpin to my film and I needed him. A few insights into the workings of the Velvets would suffice. Could it be that hard?

As I arrived at JFK, I realised that yes, it could well be that hard, maybe even impossible. I received an alarming message from Lou’s agent: “Lou finds your list of questions inappropriate… he will not discuss either his music or his lyrics. We’ll see you at 12pm tomorrow.” I wondered quite what that left me with, and a fitful night ensued.

The following morning, I re-drafted my questions, leaving only those that I felt had any chance of success. My list was now quite short.

When Lou arrived, he looked like the legend of my imaginings. He certainly had presence. But there was more bad news. The agent took me aside and put lines through many of my new questions. What was left was a two minute interview.

As I took my chair and began to describe the series to Lou, he stared beyond me, clearly not remotely interested. I stumbled and stuttered asking him about the importance of Andy Warhol to the Velvet’s early success. Lou liked the question and was almost chatty, remembering how Warhol had given them a place to sleep, food and most importantly a place to record: “I miss him. I really do.”

As things were going OK I didn’t think I should tempt fate and ask him why he had fired Warhol, after only the first album. Instead I asked about John Cale, who we had interviewed a few weeks earlier. As soon as the name came up Lou exclaimed that I was going off my ‘approved question list’ and refused to answer.

Things then became a bit tense, as one question after another was deemed off limits. But as I probed him on the possible meaning of ‘art rock’ he opened up slightly and discussed how he had introduced subjects like transvestism and drug use, that had formerly been reserved only for literature and cinema.

As I moved on to David Bowie, and their musical partnership, Lou responses became mono syllabic. I mentioned that early Velvet Underground was inspirational to the young Bowie. Lou claimed to be unaware of the fact. I offered to prove Bowie’s fascination by sending him a rare bootleg copy of Bowie’s interpretation of “Venus in Furs” in return for him answering another question. He replied, stony faced, “This is not a hostage situation.”

Time was then called and the interview terminated. I had been lucky. I had got thirty five minutes with ‘Laughing Lou’ some of which I might actually be able to use.

As Lou collected his things I asked him to sign my copy of ‘Berlin’. He grinned and for the first time became animated, chatting about how excited he was that he was about to play the whole album on tour. He then signed my cover “best wishes”, said what an enjoyable time he had, and left the room.

I wondered which particular part he found so enjoyable.”

FEATURED ARTIST

David Bowie . Pink Floyd . The Velvet Underground . Roxy Music . Genesis