Jimi Hendrix and the Making of Are You Experienced

by Unknown

• ISBN13: 9781556524714
• ISBN10: 1556524714
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Table of Contents

Introduction	6	(4)
Before the Experience	10	(19)
Arriving in London	29	(15)
Forming the Experience	44	(16)
Recording begins	60	(18)
Toward a record deal	78	(25)
The first single	103	(18)
The Olympic sessions	121	(21)
The release	142	(28)
Aftermath	170	(8)
Critical reactions	178	(7)
The songs	185	(19)
Acknowledgments	204	(3)
Index	207

Excerpts

before the Experience

"I don't think that Jimi would ever have made it in America had he not come here first and formed the Experience. When they went back to the States they'd already become stars here, which made it easier. If he was just on his own over there and he'd never have come here and hadn't got a group, I think he'd never have been discovered. Nobody knows whether he would or he wouldn't but the fact of the matter is he'd been playing long enough and hadn't."

These are the words of Kathy Etchingham, the woman Jimi Hendrix met on his first night in London in 1966 and who became the major love interest of Hendrix's life. She is referring to the fact that, despite his incredible talent, Jimi Hendrix had achieved nothing truly substantial in his career until Chas Chandler discovered him and took him over to Britain to make him a star. By then, Hendrix was nearly 24 years old. His career in his homeland had been dogged by missed opportunities and bad luck, so much so that the various musical adventures in which he took part before the recording of Are You Experienced must, in their mediocrity and modesty, comprise the most inauspicious preamble to a classic album there ever was.

Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942, to a negligent mother, Lucille, while his father Al was on army duty overseas. Jimi was originally registered under the name Johnny Allen Hendrix. Following the departure of Lucille with a man with whom she was romantically involved, Hendrix was cared for by friends and relatives until his father returned home and claimed him. "I don't think he was very, very close to his family at all," says Etchingham. "He enjoyed seeing them when he went back and everything, but he wasn't close like a child would be to an extended family they were all part of. The only one he ever mentioned to me was somebody called Celestine, whom he'd lived with in California." As for Hendrix's relationship with his father, Etchingham reveals, "He hadn't even met his dad until he was over three years old, and the first thing his dad did when he went down to California is to get him on the train and then give him a good old beating to show him who's boss, so that gives you some indication of their relationship."

Al renamed the boy James Marshall Hendrix, although he was henceforward referred to as Jimmy. Jimmy Hendrix's first instrument was a harmonica, which he played when he was about four. He then played violin for a period. It's unclear whether he owned either instrument and for how long he worked at them, although the fact that he never played either during his exotic musical explorations toward the end of his life indicates that these were simple childhood dalliances. "Then I started digging guitars," he later recalled. "Every house you went into seemed to have one lying around." Every house except Hendrix's. Buying Jimmy a guitar was not an option for Al, even had he been so inclined. Hendrix's childhood was extraordinarily impoverished. As well as being a single parent, Al Hendrix was further financially hampered by his occupation of gardener, which was a seasonal job. At one point, circumstances were so bad that Al had to temporarily place Jimmy's younger brother Leon with foster parents. Al Hendrix found it difficult to accommodate the musical ambitions his young son started to harbor. "Discouraged it completely," says Etchingham. Nonetheless, Etchingham reveals, it was through his father that the teenage Jimmy acquired the instrument of his desires: "Jimi said his dad was playing cards with some other old bloke who had a guitar and Jimi was playing with the guitar, and the guy said, `If you win, your son can have the guitar for five dollars,' or something like that. That's how he got the guitar."

Although Hendrix later admitted he had lost his passion for the guitar not long after starting to play it, his interest was reawakened by Chuck Berry, and, although he had the same teething problems as did fellow leftie Paul McCartney, Hendrix worked hard on the instrument. Once his imagination had been fired up by Berry-and once he'd learned that, as a lefthanded player, he needed to reverse the order of the strings-he practiced incessantly. Spurning instruction manuals, he learned six chords and six inversions from friend Lacy Wilbon and took it from there. His relentless "plunk, plunk, plunking"-to quote Al-was assisted by a keen ear, and he would have riffs and chord sequences memorized after just a few tries.

In junior high school, Jimmy played with schoolmates in a band called the Velvetones, which covered material by the likes of the Coasters. He was dismayed to find that his instrument was drowned out by his colleagues' playing. At some point in 1959, Al's attitude toward Jimmy's musical ambitions evidently softened (and his financial situation improved), as he bought Jimmy his first electric guitar, a Supro Ozark 1560S. This helped rectify Jimmy's problem: electrified, he was inaudible no longer.

Hendrix maintained his musical pursuits when he volunteered for the army in 1961. It was while in the 101st Airborne Division that Hendrix met Billy Cox, a bassist whom Hendrix would ultimately employ in the Band of Gypsys. It was Cox (who was discharged two months after an ankle injury caused the premature end of Hendrix's own army life) who got Hendrix his first taste of recording when he landed him a gig doing session work for Starday-King in November 1962. The session producer ended up mixing Hendrix's guitar out of the recordings (which have never surfaced since) because he was overpowering everybody else.

Hendrix began taking work as a backup man where he could get it. Among the relatively big names with whom he acquired gigs were Slim Harpo, the Marvelettes, and Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. Hendrix decided to try his luck in New York. There, he would make his first proper recordings, albeit as a backing man. In 1963, he recorded several songs at Abtone Studios for Lonnie Youngblood, a saxophonist, vocalist, and songwriter specializing in what was then still called R & B but that was in reality something more akin to soul.

"I had just come out of the army and I was looking for some work," recalls Youngblood. "Hendrix was working with a friend of mine named Curtis Knight. They found out I was home from the service and they wanted a saxophone player, so Curtis hired me. First of all, I wasn't gonna work with Curtis Knight because Curtis Knight wasn't a great musician, but he told me he had this great guitarist named Jimmy James who was working with him. When I heard the band and I heard Jimmy, I said, `Ah hell, I'd love to play with this guy.' So I started playing with Curtis. We were working all over the city."

The pseudonym Hendrix had adopted was a tip of the cap to his main guitar hero. "See, he liked Elmore James a lot," explains Youngblood. "He liked all the guys a lot. He was a guitar fanatic. He liked all different people, but I think he had this thing about Elmore James `cos he took his name." Elmore James (1918-1963) was a bluesman who was prolific neither as a recording artist (his stop-start career didn't get underway until he was into his thirties, and was subsequently hindered by ill health) nor as a songwriter (he tended to popularize the songs of others, particularly Robert Johnson, whom he had known). James was, however, hugely influential in slide, or bottleneck, guitar playing. Interestingly, his tendency toward massive amplification and distortion predated Hendrix's own experiments in those areas.

Not that Youngblood knew at the time that "James" was Hendrix's pseudonym. "And we knew a lot about each other-we talked a lot. We were good friends." That he could become so close to his new colleague and not even know his birthname is something Youngblood attributes to Hendrix's shyness: "He wasn't much of a guy who could talk. The way he was and the way he played the guitar was two different people."

The work the band was getting was threatened by Knight's idiosyncrasies: "Curtis was a nice guy and everything, [but] he couldn't really play, plus he had other interests," says Youngblood. "Curtis was like a ladies' man. He was like a pimp. So it interfered sometime with the little business we had. I said, `Well, I'm splitting.' Naturally, the whole band wanted to go with me. I was already established as a band leader in Harlem. I could get plenty of work. It was great for me `cos I had a ready-made band, so I took them with me.

"Then I started recording because I've always been in and out of studios, doing my own sessions. Jimmy didn't have no amplifier, so I had to go out myself and buy Jimmy an amp." The investment in Hendrix paid off. "It's always good playing with somebody that can really make you feel good on the job," Youngblood recalls with enthusiasm. "He was more effective, because he was probably more confident. Jimmy played the hell out of what he know. Jimmy knew quite a bit." Was he the best guitarist Youngblood had ever heard? "I would say he was damn near. Before that, I had backed up Chuck Berry. Chuck was a master, don't get me wrong, but Jimmy had the edge of Chuck because Jimmy could do more. He had more colors, he could do more stuff than Chuck. Jimmy could play a ballad as pretty as damn near Wes Montgomery."

Hendrix's energies at this point seem to have been focused entirely on playing. "He sung some Lee Dorsey songs and a few things, maybe some Muddy Waters, but he wasn't into singing," says Youngblood. Nor was his colleague interested in composition, although Youngblood says, "Certain things I wrote, he would have some suggestions."

Youngblood's music was actually rather pleasant soul-the slinky "She's a Fox" being particularly easy on the ear-but, in truth, is mainly only noteworthy today because of the presence of a certain budding genius. Hendrix's role in Youngblood's music was, of course, limited: what with soul's brass parts and its chinka-chinka guitar conventions, there was little room for the type of guitar virtuosity Hendrix was capable of. Nevertheless, that an extraordinary talent was in attendance at these sessions is patently obvious at several junctures in the recordings. The blurred-hand flourish in the introduction to "Go Go Shoes" is in no way an average piece of playing. Hendrix's guitar playing throughout "She's a Fox" evinces the fatness and larger-than-life sound of the Experience: in some places, his playing is uncannily like his work on "Little Wing" from the second Experience album, Axis: Bold As Love . Buyers should beware of other Hendrix-less Youngblood recordings, which were later overdubbed without Youngblood's knowledge by a Hendrix soundalike.

Confusion surrounds Hendrix's next recording venture, which occurred in March 1964 on the opposite coast. Arthur Lee-who sings backup on it-claims that "My Diary" is one of Hendrix's compositions. Rosa Lee Brooks, Hendrix's lover and colleague in an Ike and Tina Turner-style act called Jimmy & Rose, says she wrote most of the lyric and Hendrix wrote the melody. (The song's intro, she says, is almost identical to that of "One Rainy Wish" from Axis: Bold As Love .) The record was released in mid-1965 on local label Revis along with a B-side, improvised by Hendrix on the day of recording, called "Utee."

By then, Hendrix had left Los Angeles and Brooks and was moving onto bigger things, having been offered a role in the backing band of the Isley Brothers, whose "Twist and Shout" had been a Top Twenty national hit in 1962 and, even more lucrative, had recently been covered by the Beatles. The Isley Brothers generously allowed Hendrix to become a star of the show, giving him longish solos and indulging his showmanship, which was already leading him to play guitar with his teeth. In addition, Hendrix got to record with the act. As well as on Isley Brothers recordings including "Testify," "The Last Girl," and "Looking for a Love," Hendrix played on "Have Mercy Baby" by Don Covay and the Midnighters in this period and, possibly, on said act's album Funky Yo-Yo .

Toward the end of 1964, Hendrix suffered one of his periodic bouts of weariness of dancing to another act's tune and left the Isley Brothers. Around the same time, he sought out Booker T & the MG's guitarist and studio arranger Steve Cropper but, though they jammed for several hours, nothing came of the meeting. The next significant time Cropper ran into Hendrix was at the Monterey International Pop Festival, where Cropper was playing with Otis Redding and Hendrix was about to launch himself into global superstardom.

Hendrix's next significant career move was playing guitar for `50s rock `n' roll legend Little Richard, who, like the Isley Brothers, also allowed him to display the various tricks that were becoming part of his stage personality, including performing extravagant solos, playing behind his back, and playing with his teeth. This in some way alleviated Hendrix's resentment at having to pay fines for his long hair and his frilly shirts. During his time with Little Richard, Hendrix went by the name Maurice James. The only known recordings of Hendrix with Little Richard took place in early 1965 at an unidentified Los Angeles studio: "Dancing All Around the World" (also known as "Dance a Go-Go") and "I Don't Know What You've Got But It's Got Me." The latter was released as a single and reached number 92 in the U.S. Hot 100. As with Youngblood's recordings, there are also several fraudulent Little Richard recordings on the market that feature an overdubbed Hendrix imitator.

In mid-1965, Hendrix either quit or was fired from (depending on whom you believe) Little Richard's band. He subsequently rejoined the Isley Brothers, playing gigs with them and recording two sides of a single in Atlantic Studios on August 5, 1965: "Move Over Let Me Dance" and "Have You Ever Been Disappointed."

In July of that year, Hendrix had signed a contract with Sue Records and Copa Management of New York City, but nothing seems to have resulted from it. A somewhat more meaningful contract was the one Hendrix agreed to on October 15, 1965, with PPX Enterprises, run by one Ed Chalpin. Chalpin later claimed that in his 40 years as a producer and manager, Hendrix had been one of only eight people he considered special enough to sign. Lonnie Youngblood was well acquainted with Chalpin. "Ed had this studio," the saxophonist says. "Then he started doing things and making a lot of copy records: records that sounded like a record, making a hit because you're re-releasing it on somebody's name." As can be imagined from Youngblood's explanation of Chalpin's modus operandi , the recording work Chalpin secured for the very special guitarist he'd discovered doesn't seem to indicate particularly grand plans for him. In late 1965, Hendrix played guitar on "Suey," a track that would be the B-side of a Jayne Mansfield single.

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Excerpted from Jimi Hendrix and the making of ARE YOU EXPERIENCED by Sean Egan Copyright © 2002 by Sean Egan
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.