A 1966 debut single, a murder ballad about a man shooting his woman and fleeing to Mexico, taken to number six in Britain (1966)
'Hey Joe' — the song was already an American garage standard; this arrangement made his name.
Popular music · Rock
Jimi Hendrix
1942–1970 · American
Psychedelic rock and blues; the electric guitar as an orchestra
Jimi Hendrix was an unknown sideman on the American chitlin' circuit when Chas Chandler of the Animals brought him to London in September 1966 and built a trio around him. In four years he redrew what an electric guitar could do, using feedback, wah-wah, fuzz and the whammy bar as musical material rather than noise. He died in London on 18 September 1970, aged 27, and is routinely named the greatest rock guitarist of all.
How to spot them
- ▸Left-handed, playing a right-handed Fender Stratocaster turned upside down and restrung
- ▸The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hendrix, Noel Redding on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums; later Band of Gypsys with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles
- ▸Brought to Britain by Chas Chandler of the Animals; his first British sessions used Marshall stacks and a Vox wah-wah
- ▸Burning a guitar at Monterey in June 1967; closing Woodstock at dawn in August 1969
- ▸Born Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle, renamed James Marshall Hendrix by his father
Songs & albums
A 1967 single that begins by kissing the sky, its opening interval a tritone once called the devil in music (1967)
'Purple Haze' — the misheard lyric is 'kiss this guy'.
A distorted, feedback-drenched 1969 solo reading of the American national anthem, played at dawn to a thinned-out festival crowd (1969)
Performed at Woodstock on the morning of 18 August 1969, complete with simulated bombs and sirens.
A 1968 double album with an underwater-photographed title track suite and a cover of nineteen nude women that the artist disowned (1968)
Electric Ladyland — his only US number one album; the nude sleeve was a British record-company decision he objected to.
A 1968 recording of a Dylan song about a joker and a thief, which the composer said he thereafter played the new way (1968)
'All Along the Watchtower' — his highest-charting US single, reaching number 20.
A 1967 debut album opening with a question about the wind's direction and closing with a promise to stand on a mountain (1967)
Are You Experienced — kept off the UK number one spot by Sgt. Pepper.
A 1970 live album recorded over New Year at a New York venue by a new, all-Black trio (1970)
Band of Gypsys, with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles, recorded at the Fillmore East; it includes the anti-war piece 'Machine Gun'.
A tender 1967 ballad in the persona of an angel-like woman, later a hit for Eric Clapton's band and covered endlessly (1967)
'Little Wing', from Axis: Bold as Love; Derek and the Dominos and Stevie Ray Vaughan both recorded it.
Quick-fire facts
- •The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 by Neil Young
- •He died in London on 18 September 1970, aged 27, after taking sleeping tablets; the inquest returned an open verdict
- •He is a member of the so-called '27 Club' with Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse
- •He served in the US Army as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne before being discharged in 1962
- •He built Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, opened weeks before his death
- •At Monterey Pop in June 1967 he doused his Stratocaster in lighter fuel and set it alight, following the Who on the bill
- •He played the Isle of Wight Festival on 30 August 1970, less than three weeks before he died
- •Only three studio albums were released in his lifetime: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland
- •A blue plaque at 23 Brook Street, Mayfair, marks his London flat, next door to the house where Handel lived
- •Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and countless later guitarists date their sense of the instrument's possibilities to first hearing him in 1966
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Sources
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — The Jimi Hendrix Experience — Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee page
- Charles R. Cross — Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix