Recommendations of the Editorial team
Jimi Hendrix is one of these very special musical figures in which everyone ends up. Every musician comes through the “Hendrix International Airport” at some point – whether you like Elmore James or on Black Sabbath, whether you like Hanson or the Grateful Dead. His music is the common denominator of all styles we have.
His game had so many facets. Was he a bluesman? Listen to “Voodoo Chile” and you will discover the creepiest blues that you can think of. Was he a rock musician?
Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Chile:
He used volume as a stylistic device – this is rock. Was he a sensitive singer-songwriter? In “Bold as Love” he sings “My Yellow in This Case is not so mellow/ in fact i’m trying to say it’s Frighted Like Me” – so a man speaks what it looks like in his own heart. It is mostly portrayed as this loud, psychedelic rock superstar, who lights his guitar. But when I think of Hendrix, first of all his enchantingly gentle guitar sounds in songs such as “Little Wing” and “Drifting”. “Little Wing” is so short and beautiful that it hurts.
As if your grandfather came back from the dead, you would stay with you for a minute and a half and then disappear again. It’s perfect, then it’s over.
I think musicians love Jimi Hendrix ‘play so much because his musical language was simply innate. He had a secret relationship with the guitar, and there was a lot of technology and theory in it, but his theory. And I think that was sacred to him. Therefore, you hardly ever read an interview with him in which he tells something about his stage equipment or his favorite monitor.
The man also had a social security number, he did not come from Mars
I discovered him over Stevie Ray Vaughan. I heard Stevie played “Little Wing” and worked back to Hendrix. The first Hendrix plate that I then bought was “Axis: Bold as Love” because “Little Wing” was on it. Then I heard “Electric Ladyland” for months, a very scary album. The darkness that prevails in places – probably Hendrix was too honest to hide it.
You like to see him as this lonely, locked guy who only opened up on stage and sent his colors through the audience. That has something heroic. Everyone is always so fascinated by its world -distant. I prefer to imagine his human side. The man also had a social security number, he did not come from Mars.
The Merchandising companies invented the space god, and somehow he became this picture. But when I hear Hendrix, I hear a person. If you understand that another human being was capable of what he did.
I will always try to achieve this type of control on the guitar. It follows who I am from how I failed on Hendrix. This applies to many. Where you stop at your ascent to him – that is you.