Jimi Hendrix
The Cry of Love

Damn money. Damn money and damn heroin.

Damn money, especially since it has become the measure of everything: the more it costs, the better it is, the more it costs, the more it performs. Not to mention how money affects the evaluation of people, just remember the saying "A poor fool is a fool, a rich fool is a rich man."

Damn heroin, which swallowed in one bite the dreams and men of the '68 illusion. How someone with a penchant for opiates (the official thesis upon Hendrix's death speaks of barbiturates) could be so active is a mystery to me. The jams, concerts, festivals gathered in myriad recordings, official and bootleg, all in less than half a decade!

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix, born Johnny Allen Hendrix, was a restless type, never satisfied. Once I heard Ron Wood, who shared a house with him in London during his first stay there, tell about when they sat facing each other chatting about music and how Jimi would complain about his voice and modest writing skills. All while switching the guitar from one hand to the other, improvising blues scales just for fun!

According to the judgment of my first curse, "The Cry Of Love" has 1/6 of the wonders contained in "Axis: Bold As Love" (try seeing what an NM first press of both vinyls costs), but are we sure about that? Or maybe it's just because it's a posthumous album, the first—alas—of a long series that indeed saw the release of anything recorded by the legendary guitarist. Someone has called it the best posthumous album ever. To my ears, it sounds like when the crasser continentals tell me, thinking it's a compliment, "but did you know you don't seem Sicilian?" I am superbly Sicilian and "The Cry Of Love" is a great album, period (exclamation point)!

First and foremost, it should be clarified that, in the case of the reviewed tracks and others included in the two works released in 1971 and 1972, "Rainbow Bridge" and "War Heroes," Hendrix was in the recording studio and was working on a new album, probably a double one. The fact that Hendrix was, besides eternally unsatisfied, a studio workaholic, led to the prevailing thought about the "Angel" album being that it relegates it to an incomplete work where the honest production by Eddie Kramer and Mitch Mitchell didn't manage to achieve Jimi's vision at the Electric Ladyland Studios. Especially considering that it collects most of the tracks completed, or nearly so, before his death. Yes, but what did Jimi have in mind when he was working on a fourth album of which we can only hypothesize the content given that two albums weren't enough to contain all the tracks? Not even the Experience Hendrix, the family company managing his recording legacy, can know how things could have turned out, despite publishing "First Rays of the New Rising Sun" in 1997, filling it with further overdubs largely already published in the first three posthumous albums. Rather, what we have here is probably the closest thing to the album (or part of it) as it would have been released had Jimi still been alive.

It's true that in 1970 the guitarist seemed confused about the path to take and, for the first time, was taking his time, postponing the moment to start definitive recordings. Between '68 and '69, Hendrix was looking for a breakthrough. He had long dreamed of playing alongside a brass section or against an orchestral background: he wanted the electric guitar to journey on a richer and more important soundscape, envisioning the "concert" dimension for guitar and orchestra. Therefore, the fact that "The Cry of Love" is a polished work, not very abrasive and "too elaborate," with a ton of guitars and crazy layering—which for the record has always been present in Hendrix, more inclined to work on the mixer than on writing—perhaps is the result of that quest, of how the mood of his music was transforming, less wild and more ponderously meditated.

Some tracks, like "Angel" and "Ezy Rider," have become well-known pieces in Hendrix's repertoire, but they are joined by lesser-known gems like "Night Bird Flying," "Drifting," or the Dylan-esque "My Friend." Or "Straight Ahead," a track that could have become something truly grand but which, in my opinion, needed more work (or less in production phase...) to be a great piece, also because it has one of the most accurate lyrics: "You've got to tell the children the truth/They don't need a whole lot of lies/Because one of these days, baby, it's gonna be them that's gonna rule the world/So when you give them love, you better give it right." Perhaps the right way to approach this album are the opening lyrics of this track "Hello my friends/So happy to see you again ..." Happy to be with Jimi a little longer because with him died, from an overdose of utopia, the protest generation and nothing could stop the total consensus to the money god, become the measure of everything.

P.S. my vintage print (Reissue Japan 1979 NM) has that sound that is gone and cannot return. If you love listening "inside" a recording, being able to "see" the musicians and feel like you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. This is what all vintage analog recordings are known for: this sound!