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If only one name from the entire history of rock remains in a hundred years, it will inevitably be Jimi Hendrix, said Pete Townshend.
But in rock, there is no time to lose, and the iconography forever crystallizes the Seattle guitarist during his lysergic and distorted transfiguration of the American anthem(1). In the half-mast flag, it is the red that dominates white and blue; in a few moments, Woodstock plunges into the nightmare of Vietnam, with increasingly higher columns of black smoke in the background, until the acrid smell of napalm dissolves into a purple haze.
To the history of rock is delivered one of the most emblematic and profane cathartic moments of all time; to the collective imagination, a demigod to worship and venerate; to posterity, a musician increasingly alone and visionary, destroyed by excesses, ready to fly even higher, until he burns his wings, in a desperate attempt not to replicate himself to those who asked for proof of his divinity(2).
As the years go by, numerous cracks have indeed undermined the surface of that crystal, revealing an unedited Hendrix, shy and stammering, tired of his sexual transgression, enslaved by a theatricality that perhaps no longer belongs to him, not strong enough to survive his own musical evolution as the weight of success is slowly but inexorably dragging him down. Yet just two years separate Woodstock from the hallucinatory and wild performance of Monterey. Two years that for rock and for Hendrix himself have had the weight and importance of a hundred.
At Monterey, his fame does not yet precede him. A coin toss decided that Townshend would go on stage first that evening, and a certain Brian Jones, who did everything(3) to ensure the Experience was on the festival's main bill, is there solely to announce him. When his moment comes, the crowd still has the vision of the piles of equipment the Who left on the ground after a pyrotechnic finale(4), now a true trademark, expected by the public and critics perhaps even more than the performance itself. A finale even more violent and angry this time, because in Pete's mind echoes, like a mantra, the challenge words addressed to him backstage: "if I'm going to follow you, I'm gonna pull all the stops"(5).
With the lights still off, a semi-unknown Jimi Hendrix opens with a furious and supersonic version of "Killing Floor"(6), a blues by Howlin' Wolf, threateningly overshadowed by the specter of Robert Johnson, being simultaneously rhythm guitar, soloist, and voice. The impact is devastating. The impression is that not two, but four or maybe more hands are furiously playing on the same instrument simultaneously. And the Who are already just a memory.
In the crucial moment of his career, the choice to debut with a blues song is far from random because before being the greatest electric guitarist of all time, Jimi Hendrix is, first and foremost, a blues guitarist. Blues is the music that drove him to pick up a guitar, blues is his instinctive and passionate way of playing it. Blues is the hand's positioning, with the thumb firmly anchored to the neck's edge. Blues are the vinyl records he listens to and collects(7); blues are the artists he draws inspiration from, just like blues are over a third of the tapes he records. Blues is his adolescence on the fringes of society, between misery and loneliness, spent playing only and exclusively blues. But mostly, "Blues" is the only non-live document in the massive and disorganized posthumous discography of Jimi Hendrix that deserves to be listened to. Because "Blues" offers an alternative journey into the guitarist's musical universe, through a coherent path that sneaks between the cracks of the crystal and traces them back, searching for his deepest roots. A path that carefully avoids visiting the most famous monuments of his brief yet intense career, focusing instead on the dirtiest and most infamous alleys. Needless to say, it is a one-way ticket.
Released in 1994, "Blues" opens and closes with the same track, "Hear My Train A-Comin'", first in an unusual and reverent acoustic Hendrix(8), then in an acidic and elongated electric version, highlighting that in the end, Pete's message is the same as Neil Young's; the king is gone, but he will not be forgotten, even in a hundred years. In between, nine recordings, unearthed during repeated raids of his archives, set aside for their inability to find a commercial placement in a market, the American one, always uncomfortable with one of the most immediate and vital genres in contemporary music.
Nine recordings in which Hendrix, in the oldest voodoo ritual, invokes and lets himself be possessed by the spirits of the great masters of the past(9), in a haunted album that sounds halfway between a Delta Voodoo Possession Experience and a Jimi Hendrix Blues Implosion Inevitable. A cacophonic orgy in which Jimi's Stratocaster becomes everyone's whore in turn, with intensity peaks such as "Catfish Blues", where the eerie presences of Elmore James, Lightnin' Slim, and John Lee Hooker can be felt, or "Once I Had A Woman", where the filigree reveals Hubert Sumlin, Lonnie Johnson, Jimmy Reed, and above all B.B. King.
"Blues" is finally a coherent document, from the artwork to the choice of tracks, in which the most hallucinogenic and Mephistophelean Hendrix is encapsulated, free from the chains of the record industry and the obsession with volume warfare, able to effortlessly transition from aggressive and piercing outbursts to more rarefied and sensual atmospheres without ever betraying his blues heritage. Eleven tracks in total, eleven raw diamonds that Hendrix is not forced to refine, which for this reason remain the most reliable testimonies of his pure and unruly genius. In short, plenty of substance over hype.
Over the years, an aura of divinity has helped cover the increasingly deep cracks on the surface of that crystal, even when the time was ripe for a lucid and impartial analysis of the Hendrix phenomenon. Although it's impossible to quantify the influence of his production on future music or downsize its revolutionary scope, one can rightly consider his revolution to be purely formal. Hendrix moves, although in a completely personal way, within well-defined boundaries.
Since Link Wray's declaration of war, two parallel paths have developed in the United States and England, two different ways to crank up the volume: the garage-rock led by Count Five, Electric Prunes, and especially Sonics, and the blues-rock of Stones, Who, and Yardbirds. Two paths where distortion, fuzz, feedback, and Larsen effect have already been widely used and abused, and which begin, in some sporadic episodes such as the Litter(10), to be fused together. When Hendrix arrives in London, Cream has already institutionalized hard-blues (or hard-rock), radicalizing the language of the blues and training the public for long improvised jams and endless solos. It is no secret that the Jimi Hendrix Experience was intentionally crafted and shaped in the image and likeness of the London trio, with Noel Redding enlisted on bass just because of his look. During his first encounter with Cream, Hendrix gets to try a Marshall amplifier, back then little more than a small shop on the outskirts of London that Eric Clapton first and Pete Townshend later had helped make famous through support in amplification evolution, culminating in the creation of the two most loved models, respectively the Bluesbreaker and the Stack. At this point, the Experience begins to develop its own sound, but it will take a few months and some Jeff Beck performances before Hendrix can master the Marshall-Stratocaster-fuzz box combination(11) without creating that annoying background noise.
Hendrix is now ready to redefine the role of the electric guitar in contemporary music. The architect of an unprecedented revolution, but still a formal revolution, Hendrix does not change the rules of the electric guitar, he simply breaks them all. There is no musician as influential in the evolution of rock who is as tied to his tradition, and this album is the incontrovertible proof.
The true revolution, no longer formal but of content, Jimi Hendrix was about to implement shortly before his death when he seemed seriously intent on prog-revising his blues and, presumably, once again and irreversibly changing the course of rock history.
But unfortunately, we will never know, not even in a hundred years.
Notes
1. ^ Jimi Hendrix, "The Star-Spangled Banner". Woodstock, August 18, 1969.
2. ^ cit. Paolo Galori.
3. ^ John Philips, cit. Brian Jones: "you've got to have this guy. He's tearing Europe to pieces".
4. ^ The Who, "My Generation". Monterey Pop Festival, June 18, 1967.
5. ^ Pete Townshend, cit. Jimi Hendrix. Monterey, June 18, 1967.
6. ^ Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Killing Floor". Monterey, June 18, 1967.
7. ^ James Rotondi, "Jimi Hendrix's Personal Record Collection". Guitar Player, April 1996, pp. 37-42.
8. ^ Jimi Hendrix, "Hear My Train A-Comin'". See My Music Talking, 1969.
9. ^ Inside cover of "Blues", Jimi Hendrix. MCA, 1994.
10. ^ The Litter, "I'm A Man". Distortions, 1967.
11. ^ Jimi Hendrix Gear. Did you notice the photo part was repeated?
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