The guitar is the symbol of rock `n` roll. And the symbol of the guitarist, to many, is Jimi Hendrix.
During his life-at least the last four years of it when he stormed the rock world-Hendrix reinvented the instrument with his virtuosity and flamboyance. Since his death on Sept. 18, 1970, he has achieved an almost mythic stature.
Recently, two new examinations of his life and music have been released, both sure to solidify his position in the rock pantheon. ”Lifelines-The Jimi Hendrix Story” (Reprise 9 26435-2) is a four-CD set that traces his music from its earliest recorded days to his final sessions. ”Jimi Hendrix: Inside the Experience” (Harmony Books, 176 pages, $27.50) is a personal account of the man and his music by his friend Mitch Mitchell, the drummer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Although these releases weren`t conceived in combination, they do work extraordinarily well as a package. Separately or as a unit, they provide new insights that reinforce and re-examine the forces that forged the Hendrix legend.
For a start, ”Lifelines” takes a new tack on the idea of what a multi-disc set should be about. While many such sets outline, in song, the careers of fabled rockers, ”Lifelines” takes the additional step of including a narrator who cuts in and out of the music with a spoken history, which is embellished by comments from various Hendrix collaborators.
Conversely, ”Inside the Experience” eschews the usual narrative format for a sort of dialogue between Mitchell and co-writer John Platt, who provides the historical context for Mitchell`s firsthand accounts.
Taken together, the two make for a compelling account. At one point in the book, Mitchell recounts several of the first recordings he made with Hendrix that were never released on record. Then, in the case of an Experience rendition of Dylan`s ”Like a Rolling Stone,” ”Lifelines” provides it.
At times, the two disagree. Thus, the notes of ”Lifelines” refer to Disc 4 as a recording of Hendrix`s ”legendary” show at the Los Angeles Forum, April 26, 1969. Writing of the same event, Mitchell notes wryly, ”The Forum gig was not very memorable. We went in, did the gig and left and it shouldn`t have been that way.” So much for historical objectivity.
But it is that very subjectivity that rings true. If ”Lifelines” is, at times, too adulatory, it backs its hyperbole with a remarkable, staggering set of 45 Hendrix performances. A live, 1967 version of the slow blues ”Red House” is stunning, with Hendrix playing with a fire that, to this day, burns the soul. And, the assessment of Mitchell notwithstanding, the songs from the Forum are the stuff of legend.
”Lifelines” also makes the point-perhaps inadvertently-that Hendrix was as much a sublime borrower as an innovator. The initial cuts of Disc 1 provide an enlightening picture of Hendrix in his pre-revolutionary days. On
”Testify” (recorded in 1964 with the Isley Brothers) and ”Lawdy Miss Clawdy” (with Little Richard, also in 1964) his playing is unexceptional-typical R & B licks of the day with a trebly sound that bears no real resemblance to the distorted phrases of his heyday. But on ”I`m a Man” (with Curtis Knight and the Squires, recorded a year later), he is obviously getting on track. His blues-inflected playing and screaming tones are the precursors of the sound he was to create with the Experience.
The point is that Hendrix`s sound did not come from him alone. He drew heavily from British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, who invented distorted rock-blues in 1964-65.
Thus, ”Lifelines” not only gives us that sound in all its finery on such Hendrix warhorses as ”Hey Joe” and ”Purple Haze,” it also provides the context in which it was created.
Hendrix the man-not the genius-and the milieu in which he created are central to the intrigue and allure of ”Inside the Experience.” Mitchell is warm and witty and remarkably straightforward in his recollections. His comments, which read like transcripts of recorded interviews (with provocative digressions and witty asides), provide a captivating and riveting account of Hendrix and the `60s rock world.
There is his picture of a newly arrived (in London) Hendrix who seemed
”almost shy” and uncharacteristically conservative, ”this black guy with very, very wild hair wearing a Burberry raincoat.” Mitchell notes that Chas Chandler, the Animals bassist who signed Hendrix in New York, didn`t really know what to do with his budding star-the original plan seemed to be to create a soul revue for him.
The Experience was one of the flashiest groups of the time, but Mitchell recounts the days in 1967 when the group was playing in biker bars near Paris, opening for the Walker Brothers and the Monkees and constantly begging Chandler for stage clothes and bigger amplifiers.
He sets the record straight on several historical questions. He notes that Hendrix`s ”legendary” act of setting his guitar aflame began as a joke on the tour with the Walker Brothers and made its way to rock history via the Monterey Pop Festival. But it was never a part of Hendrix`s shows. ”In fact,” Mitchell writes, ”he hardly ever did it.”
