Other versions were recorded, but none had the ambient spirit or spontaneity captured on the original. “After all the jacks are in their boxes / And the clowns have all gone to bed,” he croons over the laziest of accompaniments, “you can hear happiness staggering on down the street.” Hendrix had apparently played it to the band as they were wrapping up a session in the studio, and with 20 minutes left, they laid the track down more or less at the first take. If The Wind Cries Mary is reminiscent of the interregnum between the end of a party and the laborious clean-up the following day, Hendrix actually wrote it after an argument about mashed potato with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, which culminated in plate throwing and flying pots and pans. Hendrix’s lyric is less an exploration of mental illness than a despairing ode to difficult relationships and a desire to form a physical bond with the elusive music itself.Įxperience unlimited … The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing at the Marquee in London in 1967. If Hendrix was Chandler’s secret weapon, then Mitch Mitchell was Hendrix’s. The 9/8 jazz shuffle of Manic Depression is a rare time signature for a pop song, but it swings along at a fierce pace, led majestically from the back by Mitchell. Hendrix was quickly teamed up with guitarist-turned-bassist Noel Redding (who’d never picked up the instrument before his audition) and drummer Mitch Mitchell, a jazz prodigy who fused his musical milieu with the outlandish showmanship of Keith Moon the three-piece would be known as the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He brought Hendrix to London to challenge the established hierarchies of guitar divinity, from Eric Clapton down: “Chas Chandler knew that Hendrix was his secret weapon to demolish the caste structure of London’s hipoisie,” wrote Charles Shaar Murray in his Hendrix biography Crosstown Traffic. On tracks such as the gorgeous Drifting, right at the end of his career, Hendrix exhibits a tenderness regarding relationships that was sorely absent early on.Īnimals bassist-cum-impresario Chas Chandler knew he had something special in Hendrix when he saw him playing in a New York basement. With the traditional rocky verses juxtaposed against staccato choruses, and the subtle harmonic phrases at the end of each line in the first verse contrasting with the discordant conclusions in the second, Hendrix gives us the good side followed by the bad (and naturally the downside outweighs all the pluses). While the conjugal subjects can’t wait for the 51st to roll around, earlier marriage milestones are beset with troubles, infidelities and frequent visits to the whiskey house. He did err into misogyny now and again, though 51st Anniversary lays out a balanced case for and against marriage, envisioning the gold, pearl, china and tin anniversaries, and vivid recollections of the cheatin’ third, where nobody gets any presents. The song continues a theme already explored – albeit somewhat gracelessly – in Stone Free, about Hendrix’s fear of commitment. As monumental and monolithic as Purple Haze is, 51st Anniversary on the B-side is more nuanced and sassier. He quickly followed it up with the self-composed Purple Haze, a psychedelic stomper showcasing the devil’s chords (the flatted fifths of the intro were known in medieval times as the diabolus de musica and strictly interdict). Jimi Hendrix introduced himself to the world in December 1966, when he turned Hey Joe, a Los Angeles garage rock standard that had been a hit for the Leaves, into a murder ballad with some wild guitar pyrotechnics.
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