The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Electric Ladyland

THE REVIEW

The Passion of Gianni. And the gods made love.

And the day came when She rose from bed after a night of LSD, took her guitarist, the faithful Fender Stratocaster, and began the final Journey. At the end of the night. When hell extinguished its flames because the Guitar was hotter. Because those so innocently psychedelic designs peeled off under the fire, the stage of Monterey the theater of the most expressive and powerful musical eroticism in all music. Hendrix was the Guitar, to paraphrase imminent figures who have long crossed the threshold of 60 but still have something in their eyes that seems to be concentrated in these words: I know something you don’t.

Magic. Hendrix was magic, above all else.

Slash and Wylde busting it on stage on Voodoo Child Slight Return with two guitars to manage to get at least one percent of what Buster could achieve with just one. And, needless to say, they failed.

Because the Summer Of Love ended under the notes of Under My Thumb...because that girl with the red sweater at Woodstock in '69 and hands raised to the sky like a priest while Hendrix communicated with God on the notes of Purple Haze...because thinking of Jimi I can't find guitarists to place next to him on the same level...because he was the Meteor of rock and all music...because he was too much in the grip of his own flames to withstand a bit longer...the '70s would not have seen him anymore, the hearts of all the flower children did, and Seattle serving as the Holy Land.

Chas with his dropper had disappeared and then Jimi painted 1983...A Mermaid I Should Turn To Be...long car rides pelted with Crosstown Traffic...the joints under House Burning Down...the gunfire of the Voodoo Chile finale with the crazed Hammond and Buster’s Strat destroying echoes, feedbacks, a Fuzzbox brutally thrown in a dusty room after he had walked over it, with his winged foot.

I took the vinyl, threw it into the fire and became an alchemist. Molten gold poured into the room, and I hadn't even taken hallucinogens or eaten mushrooms. With certain sounds, drugs lose meaning. They’re not needed, get lost. The covers of His records were the opposite of what He would have wanted. They messed up the cover of Axis: Bold As Love for him, he wanted evident references to his Cherokee blood and they stuck Mitch, Redding and Him as deities of who knows what religion, Electric Ladyland had no better luck.
Indeed, they messed it up for him twice. Naked women, Jimi in the grip of sonic visions.

After magic, Jimi was Musical and Corporeal Eroticism.

The sound of this vinyl is that finely tuned mercury Dylan spoke of and which his lyrical disciple had found in All Along The Watchtower, by the Minstrel himself. There must be some way out of here... drips sweat the moment the needle meets the grooves, the guitar harasses you. Deflowered by James Marshall Hendrix, what the hell.

Electric Ladyland could be considered Hendrix’s Blonde on Blonde, the ultimate musical testament of a genius, of someone who managed to teach his guitar to sing without ever setting foot in a conservatory. The Experience was composed of 6 members, one of them was long and belonged to member Hendrix, and this is obvious. Just listen. Then, one must live through the colors of the guitar. Oh, yes.

Finally, Jimi was the Experience. Ask anyone who witnessed the Monterey Pop Festival in ’67. Killed by a nearly claustrophobic Wild Thing. He played Space Rock before the Floyd. Hawkind included in the price.

It had to happen, said Chandler. It was 1970. Hendrix came to light on a stormy night, coming from some other planet. Three years after his debut, he returned there. He was too perfect for this world.