Behind Jimi Hendrix's Music: Studio Stories and Song Inspirations
Seven tracks that rocked my young world
I know, I know…I posted about Jimi last fall with my recollections of the Day That Jimi Hendrix Died. But I’ve been tracking a lot of Hendrix lately, and it occurred to me that he’s an artist, one of many, that I simply never grow tired of. Then I ran across a few stories about how songs and recordings of those songs came about and finally thought I should just do another post about Jimi.
Jimi Hendrix was a perfectionist in the studio, a magnificently inventive and talented guitarist, and a singer who was insecure about his voice and often recorded his vocals behind studio screens. He often allowed friends and guests to join him in the studio, creating a chaotic and crowded environment. Noel Redding, Jimi’s bassist, once said, “There were tons of people in the studio. You couldn’t move. It was a party, not a session.”
I got wind of Jimi Hendrix in 1967 in two ways when “Are You Experienced” came out. My older brother purchased a copy, which intrigued me when I heard it bouncing around our shared bedroom. And I remember an 8th-grade social studies class where each student was to make a presentation. One fellow student used a glass pie-tin filled with water, displayed on an overhead projector, in which he swirled and dropped bits of food color while he played Jimi Hendrix music for about five minutes. It was trippy, and I’ve always wondered what the teacher thought about it. It was the Sixties, so he must have just gone with the flow. Being aware of Jimi Hendrix, I thought playing it in a junior high classroom was pretty sweet.
Jimi Hendrix’s career was only four years, in which he released just four albums: Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), Electric Ladyland (1968), and Band of Gypsys (1970). After his death in September 1970, a slew of posthumous albums followed and appear to be still following.
There’s no argument that Jimi’s guitar work was stellar and impressed the hell out of fans and other guitarists in his day, and to me, it’s stood the test of time. As a big fan, I’ve heard his material for over half a century, and several songs have floated to the stop as favorites. Here’s an unranked list with links to several that I never tire of. Many of them have fascinating backstories, most detailed in Wikipedia. And yes, I donate monthly to Wikipedia since I use it so much. You might consider it, as well!
Dolly Dagger
Let’s start with Dolly Dagger, a song included on the posthumous “soundtrack” to Rainbow Bridge. The album isn’t the soundtrack for the movie but was mostly instead a collection of songs recorded by Hendrix after the breakup of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Despite the cover, which shows Hendrix performing in concert, and the subtitle “Original Motion Picture Soundtrack,” it contains no songs recorded during the concert appearance, which was his second-to-final American concert. The film was a dud, but the album was a gas. At least, I thought so when it came out in ’71. I was 16 when it came out, so I picked it up right away. Hendrix had died the previous year, and I loved this album. Much of the music came from live and studio recordings between ’68 and ’70 and contains a few full-on bangers, such as “Room Full of Mirrors,” “Earth Blues,” “Hear My Train A Comin, ”and of course, “Dolly Dagger,” which was released as a single and made it to #58 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
The flip side of Dolly Dagger was a solo rendition of “Star Spangled Banner,” a burning guitar and effect-infused version of the national anthem that still can send shivers down my back.
So what’s “Dolly Dagger” about? I always wondered; the lyrics describe a woman who never takes no for an answer:
Been riding broomsticks since she was fifteen
Blowin' out all the other witches on the scene
She got a bull whip just as long as your life
Her tongue can even scratch the soul out of the devil's wife
And, of course, the line “she drinks the blood from a jagged edge.” I mean, what the hell? What’s that all about? As a teenager with no experience with women, I had no idea, and for half a century, it intrigued me. Biographers, as noted in Wikipedia, consider the song to be about Hendrix’s girlfriend, Devon Wilson, with the song name referencing her relationship with Mick Jagger. The lyrics “she drinks the blood from a jagged edge” refer to a party where Mick Jagger cut his finger, and Wilson edged her way to Jagger and sucked the blood off of Mick’s finger as Jimi looked on. Yeah, what the hell, indeed?
The song starts with a light percussive 5-count before Jimi’s guitar kicks in with a descending series of phrases and kicks into gear with a mid-tempo rock rhythm, shortly followed by the first line, “here comes Dolly Dagger, her love’s so heavy, gonna make you stagger.”
I’m pretty sure I misheard the line about Dolly drinking the blood from a jagged edge as something-something about a dragon egg, but I finally gave up on that notion.
Machine Gun
At 15, my album selection process was as random as possible. It was 1970, and I bought stuff mainly on impulse. And with a limited allowance and not much of a part-time job, I had to focus as best as possible. One day in the department store, I ran across a recent Jimi Hendrix album called Band of Gypsys. On the back, the text indicated it was recorded on New Year’s Eve 69-70, and it had a batch of songs that were new to me. Band of Gypsys, although a live album, was the last album Jimi Hendrix released before passing away in September of that year. I also noted that it wasn’t the old Jimi Hendrix Experience; instead, the band consisted of Billy Cox on bass and Miles Davis on drums. I’m pretty sure that I was aware of who Buddy Miles was, but I’d never heard of Billy Cox. The cover photos, a pair of colorful, not sharply-focused images, showed Hendrix live in concert. It all intrigued me, down to the font used for the single word “HENDRIX” in the upper left-hand corner.
I took it home, put it on the turntable, and let ‘er rip. And damn, if it didn’t rip. All the tracks were outstanding, including Buddy Miles’ “Changes” and “We Gotta Live Together.” Let’s see what a brief Wikipedia entry says about the song:
"Machine Gun" is another song that Hendrix had spent time developing.[53][54] By the Fillmore East concerts, it had become an extended guitar improvisational piece, which "would completely change the perception of Hendrix's capabilities as an improviser and musician", according to Shadwick.[28] Although based on a "minor drone-blues" in the line of "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", Hendrix's performance has been compared to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane's approach to improvisation.[50][55] Miles Davis, with whom Coltrane had recorded several albums in the 1950s, including the influential Kind of Blue, noted the connection: "Jimi liked what I had done with Kind of Blue and some other stuff and wanted to add more jazz elements to what he was doing. He liked the way Coltrane played with all those sheets of sound, and played his guitar in a similar way".[56] As indicated by Hendrix's dedication of the song "to all the soldiers that are fighting in Chicago and Milwaukee and New York, oh yes, and all the soldiers fighting in Vietnam", "Machine Gun" is as much about the late 1960s American race riots as the war in Vietnam.[57] Guitarist Vernon Reid describes it as "like a movie about war without the visuals. It had everything—the lyrics, the humanism of it, the drama of it, the violence of it, the eeriness of it, [and] the unpredictability of it".[58] In many commentaries about Band of Gypsys, "Machine Gun" is singled out as the highlight of the album.[34][57][59] Both McDermott and Shadwick call it one of Hendrix's greatest achievements, setting a standard that the rest of the album does not live up to.
I’d politely disagree with the last assessment; I feel the whole album is strong, although I would admit that Machine Gun is the standout track. The album was recorded over two nights at Fillmore East in New York. There’s also a double CD version of the concerts, which came out in 1999, and to my mind, it improves the experience.
Third Stone from the Sun
I loved the longer songs from Hendrix's albums as they allowed the band to expand sounds and structures much different from the typical pop song approach, such as you find in Purple Haze or Foxey Lady. Third Stone from the Sun was one of the earliest songs attempted by the band when they laid down a demo version in December 1966. However, it was not finished at the time due to a dispute over studio fees. They eventually returned to it and finished it in time for the first album, Are You Experienced.
The song starts with a mock communication between alien space explorers, played by Hendrix and producer/manager Chas Chandler, slowed down to about half-speed:
After a fairly long intro, which Hendrix biographer Keith Shadwick described as a structured group performance with several identifiable sections featuring hints of Coltrane, Elvin Jones-inspired drumming, and Wes Montgomery-style octave melody lines, which is one of Hendrix’s most recognizable:
Being a young teen, this particular passage sounded as cool as possible. The song meanders along, swooping through several phases accented with vibrato, feedback, and a ton of improvisation from Hendrix and drummer Mitch Mitchell.
According to Chas Chandler, the band’s new manager, Hendrix was a big science fiction fan, and the inspiration came from a Philip Jose Farmer book, Earth Abides. Chandler recalled
I had dozens of science fiction books at home ... The first one Jimi read was Earth Abides. It wasn't a Flash Gordon type; it's an end-of-the-world, new beginning, disaster-type story. He started reading through them all. That is where 'Third Stone from the Sun' and 'Up from the Skies' came from.[7]
If Six Was Nine
The first two notes of If Six Was Nine hit you over the head and keep pounding but in a cumbersome and laidback approach. It was released on “Axis: Bold as Love” in December 1967. The lyrics are described as an ‘individualist anthem,’ and the line that has always stuck with me is:
I'm the one that's gonna have to die
When it's time for me to die
So, let me live my life the way I want to
The other lyrics make it clear that Jimi was setting himself apart from “white-collar conservatives” who point their fingers at him, which always makes me think of the outlandish clothing that Jimi used to wear, and damn, I wish I could get away with stuff like that.
Musically, it’s another of what you might call acid-fueled psychedelic blues/rock, which I was all over at the time, even though I wasn’t introduced to acid for another seven or eight years. I suppose one reason I soaked up these types of sounds at the age of 14 or 15 is that when I was eleven, my favorite album for months on end was the Beatles “Revolver,” which featured the crazy-psychedelic recording “Tomorrow Never Knows.” If that won't imprint a young mind, I don’t know what will
Voodoo Chile
“I’d love to have Steve Winwood in my band,” Jimi Hendrix said more than once to Eddie Kramer, one of the producers at Record Plant in NYC. Jimi often jammed with other musicians in clubs and brought them back to the studio. On this particular night in May of 1968, the number of people so incensed bass player Noel Redding that he stormed out, missing the session. Steve Winwood ended up on organ, and Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane played bass. Guitarist Larry Coryell was also there, and although he was invited to play, he declined, so it was just Hendrix, Winwood, Casady, and Mitch Mitchell.
Winwood recalled, "There were no chord sheets, no nothing. He [Hendrix] just started playing. It was a one-take job, with him singing and playing at the same time. He just had such mastery of the instrument, and he knew what he was and knew his abilities."
Hendrix tuned his guitar down a whole note for the take and played his guitar through a Fender Bassman top, giving his guitar a very warm amp sound. I loved the live feel with the crowd, and the intense guitar playing and improvised drumming. All of it was a great inspiration.
Known as Jimi’s longest studio recording at 15:00 minutes, Voodoo Chile is a slow-burning blues song based on the Muddy Waters song “Rollin’ Stone,” but with new lyrics.
Crosstown Traffic
Back to Electric Ladyland (1968) for an up-tempo two-minute rocker, Crosstown Traffic. And again, I misheard a handful of lyrics. For example, what I thought was “Tire tracks all across your bed, I can see you had your fun, but darlin’ can’t you see my zipper’s turned from green to red..” was actually…
Tire tracks all across your back
I can see you had your fun
But darlin' can't you see my signals turn from green to red
Hmm. Okay. I wonder why I thought he was singing about zippers and beds. In any event, the song rocked, and that was what I loved about it. Dave Mason of Traffic was a good friend of Jimi’s, and when he was hanging out at the studio one day, Jimi asked Dave to sing some backup vocals, so that’s who you’re hearing.
The song was released as a single in late 1968, moved to #52 on the Billboard Hot 100, and released as a follow up to “All Along the Watchtower.” Speaking of…
All Along the Watchtower
Written by Bob Dylan and originally released on the 1967 album “John Wesley Harding,” All Along the Watchtower is another track from Electric Ladyland and became Jimi’s highest chart record, hitting #20 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Jimi managed to get reel-to-reel tapes of Bob Dylan’s unreleased recordings by publicist Michael Goldstein, who worked for Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman. No doubt you’ve heard Dylan’s version, but the song is so identified as a Hendrix song that in later years, Dylan said that when he played it in concert, he always felt like it was a tribute to Hendrix.
In 1995, Dylan described his reaction to hearing Hendrix's version:
"It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day."
Lyrically, there’s a lot to unpack, and I won’t do it here, but click through to the Wikipedia page on the song, and you’ll discover a bunch of fun stuff. Like, who was the joker, and who was the thief? Some authors have suggested that Dylan was the Joker and his manager, Albert Grossman, was the thief. Others have said the song is an allegory of the the music industry, where artists are often exploited. But there’s more, including the idea that a handful of bible verses inspired Dylan. We could go on forever analyzing the song, but to my mind, it painted vivid word pictures, describing events that could happen at any time. An era has no specifics, so I sometimes picture it as describing the old West. At other times, I imagine a guard sitting idly in a watchtower on the Great Wall of China a couple of thousand years ago.
The song's recording took place over several months in 1968 as Hendrix and other musicians kept adding overdubs. Noel Redding became frustrated at the progress and walked out, which led Jimi to draft his friend Dave Mason to play bass, although producer Eddie Kramer says Hendrix himself played the final bass part. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones contributed to the dry rattles heard at the song's beginning, played on a vibraslap.
Spotify Playlist
Here’s a playlist of the seven songs detailed and another half dozen to make a baker’s dozen of my favorite Hendrix tracks:
Really enjoyed this, Tim! My favs are All Along The Watchtower and Purple Haze. So glad I got to see him play. And move. He was just stand there and watch good.