I just realized that with this story, I have written 100 stories for GuitarWorld.com (or maybe more; it’s hard to keep track!).
To commemorate this milestone, I've turned my 100th story into a list of 100 things. And since I just finished producing the second annual Women’s Music Summit, those 100 things would all be about the Summit, including my favorite moments from this inspiring event.
Then I realized, damn, 100 is a lot of things. So, at the risk of copping out, I bring to you 50 awesome things about the 2013 Women’s Music Summit. And, don’t you know, 50 is a lot too!
We laughed, we cried, we made music. I hope you can join us sometime, but until then, read on…
50 of my favorite things about the Women’s Music Summit:
01. The workshop presented by Jennifer Batten. Not to mention her playing. Wowza.
02. Holly Knight’s performance of the song she wrote, “Love is a Battlefield.” A special moment.
03. Leading the collaboration workshop. Getting people to work together is a great feeling.
04. Listening to the results of the collaboration workshop on Sunday night. Kick ass.
05. Starr Parodi sharing the theme she and her partner wrote for the Universal Pictures screen logo.
06. Giving away a Fender Ron Emery signature small-body guitar to Alexandra Nicole. I heard earlier that day that she had no instruments, because she lost them all in a divorce. I swear it was not rigged. Just really good karma.
07. Watching Meredythe Dee Winter sing her spiritual songs a capella.
08. Talking about publishing and licensing with a bunch of women who really know their stuff. The panel: Michelle Belcher, Universal Music Publishing; Maddie Madsen, Current Music; Danica Lynch, Red Temple Music; Briana Alexis, guitarist.
09. Watching the ballsy and vivacious Australian Justine Jones take the stage with her saxophone. Fearless.
10. Michelle Oglevie’s (MLO) mashup performance. Riotous and awesome. Watch the video here:
11. Listening to the beautiful and talented Marchan Noelle. She’s based in LA. Check her out!
12. Amy Englehardt’s performance of her song, “Not Gonna Be Pretty.” So funny.
13. The facilities at Musicians Institute. Couldn’t have asked for better!
14. The production folks from Musicians Institute. So smart. So easy to work with.
15. The sushi across the street at Kino Sushi. So good, we ate there twice.
16. Holly Knight sharing her insight as a producer. Awesome; and I appreciated her frank use of language. She rocks.
17. The fact that the schedule stayed on time. Clock master!
18. Divinity Roxx. This woman is awesome. Have you checked out her music? She came and jammed all weekend. BTW, did you know she played bass with Beyoncé?
19. Dean Markley USA for giving away a fabulous Ultrasound AG15 Acoustic Amp. The lucky winner? Bettie Ross, who will use it well!
20. Tom Gilbert, who works with me at Mad Sun Marketing. You could not have asked for a better production assistant.
21. Fender's Pauline France, who participated in a panel and performed for us on classical guitar. Love it!
22. The moment when Tamara Boyes asked Karen Webb from PR Squared PR about how to draw some attention to the cause of cystic fibrosis with a musical tie-in. Karen had some amazing advice. We all got teary. Oh, and she won the Lucina keyboard Roland donated. How wonderful!
23. Martin’s Indaba scholarship winner Kelsey Hunter. A very talented musician. She flew in from the East Coast!
24. The surprisingly kick-ass lead guitar playing of Anessa Arnold. Quiet, and then — ka-pow! Nice.
25. Dinner with Jennifer Batten. We ate Mexican and drank margaritas. How do you top that?
26. The PR panel featuring Karen Webb from PR Squared PR (Orianthi’s publicist!), Evangelia Livanos from Synergy Management and Pauline France from Fender. So much good info!
27. My new Prius V, which fit a gazillion things in the back. A cooler, drinks, food, two guitars, suitcases and more ... and all with 40 miles to the gallon. Psyche.
28. Missing traffic both ways on the drive down from San Fran. The most pleasant drive to and from LA ever.
29. The first night’s open mic was like unwrapping a present. So much amazing talent. You don’t know what’s coming next!!
30. AudioFly reached out to us and sent us four sets of in ear headphones to give away. How nice is that?
31. Barbara Silva won a Casio scholarship and flew out from Boston. What a talented vocalist! She was phenomenal.
32. Allison Tartalia came back and played keys with just about everyone! What a trooper. An alumna of the first Women’s Music Summit in 2012, it was just awesome to see her!
33. Syd Everett trading licks with Jennifer Batten. How ballsy is that?!
34. Ashante Perkins sang to a track she had just finished recording. Blow-your-mind moment!
35. The humbling chops of Lorena Perez Batista on percussion. Wow. This woman really listens and is so talented.
36. Leanne Summers, president of the Los Angeles Women in Music organization, came out and did a vocal workshop. The best tips ever. Period.
37. Casio donated a Privia PS-350 digital piano that went to the lucky winner, Cansu Gilbas, a student at Musicians Institute. She was thrilled!
38. Electro-Harmonix sent over a Big Muff and a Micro POG for giveaways. I was so jealous.
39. NewBay Media was an amazing media partner for the Summit. Not only did it share ads and blasts with the readers of Guitar World, Guitar Player, Bass Player, Keyboard and more, they sent over magazines for the goodie bags.
40. Val Sepulveda, winner of the "hit like a girl" contest, did a great clinic sponsored by TRX Cymbals about incorporating Latin rhythms into pop music. So much energy! Whaaatttt?!!!
41. Leslie Stem’s cool video she shared about wine and French films and American films ... I kinda got lost, but it was cool.
42. Did I mention the excellent margaritas at Loteria? Yum!!
43. The fabulous rate we got at the Hilton Garden Inn, within walking distance. A very good experience.
44. Guitar Center Hollywood, which loaned us a very nice Cordoba classical guitar so that Pauline France could play. Thank you, fine people!
45. Divinity Roxx, who returned this loaner guitar for us so we didn’t have to wait around until 10 a.m. Monday for GC to open. Saved us two hours!
46. Indaba Music helped us identify the winners of the Martin Scholarship. So much great talent. I love you, Indaba.
47. Starbucks was across the street from our hotel. Latte, Greek yogurt — all of my favorite things.
48. Lilah Shreeve, who also came to the 2012 Summit and came back to share the incredible progress she has made in the past year. You go, girl!
49. All the other amazing attendees and people who came to help out … too may to mention … who all shared and contributed and smiled and were supportive of each other. Thank you for coming. You are what make it great!
50. And finally, to everyone who shared articles and wrote comments and liked stuff on Facebook and re-Tweeted, thank you for spreading the word. The Women’s Music Summit is still in its infancy, but you are what help us grow.
Check out photos, videos and more fun stuff at www.thewimn.com/!
Laura B. Whitmore is a singer/songwriter based in the San Francisco bay area. A veteran music industry marketer, she has spent more than two decades doing marketing, PR and artist relations for several guitar-related brands, including Marshall and Vox. Her company, Mad Sun Marketing, represents Dean Markley, Agile Partners, Peavey, Jammit, Notion Music, Guitar World and many more. Laura was instrumental in the launch of Guitar World's Lick of the Day app. She is the founder of the Women's International Music Network at thewimn.com, producer of the Women's Music Summit and the lead singer for Summer Music Project. More at mad-sun.com.
The Jason Becker Special Needs Trust and ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI) have announced a special screening of Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet, the award-winning documentary about the life and music of guitarist Jason Becker.
The evening also will feature live performances by rock/metal musicians from Anthrax, Armored Saint, Fates Warning, Rollins Band, Mother Superior and more.
The event — Not Dead Yet: Movie and Music to End ALS — will take place 7 p.m. (doors 6:30 p.m.) September 19 at Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco.
General admission ($50) includes a light dinner buffet (while supplies last); $75 VIP tickets include the dinner buffet, reserved seating, a signed event poster and a meet-and-greet with Becker and the participating musicians. The event is a benefit for the Jason Becker Special Needs Trust and ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI).
The details:
WHAT: Not Dead Yet: Movie and Music to End ALS, made possible by a contribution from Cytokinetics. WHERE: Bimbo’s 365 Club, 1025 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, California, 415-474-0365, info@bimbos365club.com. WHEN: 7 p.m. (doors 6:30 p.m.) Thursday, September 19. HOW MUCH: $50 GA, $75 VIP. Click HERE to order.
Got a question for your favorite guitarist? Let us be your go-between. The concept is easy — you submit your queries and we pass them on to some of the world's greatest guitarists. Only the sharpest and funniest questions will be used.
This month, we're giving you the chance to ask longtime Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser anything you want! No part of his career is off limits!
Just email your questions to dearguitarhero@guitarworld.com and put "Andreas Kisser" in the subject line. Remember to include your name in the email body, so you can get credited in the magazine, and impress and annoy your jealous friends!
On October 8, Glitterati Incorporated will publish 108 Rock Star Guitars, a new book by photographer/author Lisa S. Johnson.
It's a collection of intimate portraits of cherished guitars owned by the gods of rock.
The 396-page hardcover book lets readers get up close and personal with an impressive assemblage of 108 guitars belonging to Les Paul, Eric Clapton, John Petrucci, Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana, Joe Satriani, Brian May, Eric Johnson, Rick Nielsen, Slash, Zakk Wylde, Billy Gibbons, Steve Vai, Steve Howe, Alex Lifeson, Ace Frehley, Jeff Beck and many others.
Below, you can check out Guitar World's gallery of 12 of the book's 300 photos.
108 Rock Star Guitars is the culmination of Johnsonʼs 17-year journey that began when she photographed Les Paulʼs guitar during one of his regular Monday-night sets at New York Cityʼs Iridium Jazz Club. Les Paul even wrote the bookʼs foreword a few months before he died in 2009.
“I remember the first black-and-white pictures Lisa took of my guitars. They were wonderfully evocative,” he wrote. “I never could have guessed she would one day produce the extensive, impressive collection of photographs presented here.”
A portion of the proceeds from book sales will benefit the Les Paul Foundation.
Glitterati also will issue a deluxe, limited edition of 540 signed and numbered copies, packaged in a die-cut collectorʼs box (SRP: $540). Those books will include a hand-woven, silk chiffon scarf in deep purple, featuring the book cover design. Both editions will include a 16-page booklet, “The Inspiration Behind 108 Rock Star Guitars,” with additional behind-the-scenes photos and stories as well as a guitar pick printed with one of three custom holographic foil designs.
Black Sabbath will release a new live DVD, Live...Gathered in their Masses, November 26 via Vertigo/Republic.
Live...Gathered in their Masses was recorded April 29 and May 1 in Melbourne, Australia, as the band kicked off their world tour in support of their much-lauded (and highly successful) 2013 album, 13.
Below, you can take your first look at Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare, the ultimate Halloween music and horror event.
The Great American Nightmare showcases three haunted houses — Lords Of Salem In Total Black Out, The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto 3D and Haunt Of 1,000 Corpses — plus concerts from various artists each night.
This event takes place Thursday to Sunday nights from October 10 through November 2 at the LA County FEARplex in Pomona, California.
Paul McCartney has revealed the tracklisting for New, his new album, which will be released October 15. You can check it out below.
New, the followup to 2012's Kisses on the Bottom, is McCartney's first album of predominantly original material since 2007's Memory Almost Full.
“It's funny; when I play people the album, they’re surprised it’s me," McCartney says. "A lot of the tracks are quite varied and not necessarily in a style you'd recognize as mine. I didn't want it to all sound the same. I really enjoyed making this album. It's always great to get a chance to get into the studio with a bunch of new songs and I was lucky to work with some very cool producers. We had a lot of fun.”
The album was produced by Paul Epworth, Mark Ronson, Ethan Johns and Giles Martin and mixed by Mark "Spike" Stent.
“The original idea was to go to a couple of producers whose work I loved, to see who I got on with best," McCartney added. "But it turned out I got on with all of them! We made something really different with each producer, so I couldn’t choose and ended up working with all four. We just had a good time in different ways.“
The album was recorded at Henson Recording Studios, Los Angeles; Avatar Studios, New York; Abbey Road Studios, London; Air Studios, London; Wolf Tone Studios, London and Hog Hill Mill, East Sussex.
01. Save Us (produced by Paul Epworth)
02. Alligator (produced by Mark Ronson)
03. On My Way to Work (produced by Giles Martin)
04. Queenie Eye (produced by Paul Epworth)
05. Early Days (produced by Ethan Johns)
06. New (produced by Mark Ronson)
07. Appreciate (produced by Giles Martin)
08. Everybody Out There (produced by Giles Martin)
09. Hosanna (produced by Ethan Johns)
10. I Can Bet (produced by Giles Martin)
11. Looking At Her (produced by Giles Martin)
12. Road (produced by Giles Martin)
September 18 marks the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death.
In my last few columns, I’ve been appealing to the mystic side of the guitar-playing community, and I feel it's safe to say that between the unending variations of deified imagery of Jimi Hendrix — and that even his self-proclaimed "mistakes" have become standard licks passed down through the new generations of guitarists — we all acknowledge him as high priest of the Muse.
His ferocity, humor, virtuosity and genius have stood the test of time and continue to incite bliss and reverence in his innumerable fans.
In this column, we’ll explore other facets of Jimi’s influence through some his lesser-known quotes on how he viewed himself and his world.
"I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around."
To pigeonhole Jimi as just an entertainer would be to ignore his very public and disruptive role as an anti-war activist. One of his most famous performances was to a relatively empty field at the end of the Woodstock festival on a rainy Monday morning. His improvised performance [read: sonic flag burning] of "The Star Spangled Banner" reinvented the anthem forever and expressed his distinct voice apart from "sheeple" blindly following the establishment and legitimacy of the Vietnam War.
In "If 6 was 9," he pushes back against "white-collar conservatives pointing their plastic fingers at [him]" by acknowledging the fact that everyone must meet their death alone, and so should be respected as an individual while they are alive. I still get chills when I hear him say, "I’m the one who’s got to die when it's time for me to die. So let me live my life, the way I want to."
"In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first ..."
As a warrior poet, Hendrix acknowledges the necessity of discipline and training to reach artistic and individual freedom, and that no one else can do this work for us. Heart by heart, minute by minute, we practice until we can trust ourselves to completely let go of the work of discipline, like atmospheric pressure slowly building up until lighting strikes.
His prowess as a poet is as developed as his mastery of twisting the feedback from his Marshall into music. On "Bold as Love," Jimi’s dedication to his inner-struggle for peace is laid bare in his lyrics:
Anger he smiles tow'ring shiny metallic purple armor
Queen jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground
Blue are the life giving waters taking for granted
They quietly understand
Once happy turquoise armies lay opposite ready
But wonder why the fight is on.
But they're all, bold as love.
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
Finally, his gentleness as a person and wildness as a performer were in no way a contradiction. Jimi was able to lay bare for his audiences the two-sided coin of being humble and ferocious at the same time: "You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven."
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
Michael Hewett is a composer, producer, guitarist and recording artist who has released four full-length albums and numerous singles. He played lead guitar in the hit Broadway musical “Wicked” (2004 to 2009), is a video instructor and blogger at Guitar World magazine and tours internationally with his own project. Preview his catalog of music on iTunes.
Was Jimi Hendrix spinning out of control during his final days in the studio, or on the verge of a new breakthrough? New evidence emerges on People, Hell and Angels, a new album of previously unreleased studio recordings.
Bassist Billy Cox has fond memories of his final days in the studio with Jimi Hendrix, recording at New York’s famed Record Plant in 1969.
But trips to and from the studio with Hendrix were another matter entirely. Cox recalls that the legendary guitarist was something of a reckless driver. A jaunt across Manhattan in Jimi’s silver Corvette could be a hair-raising experience.
“We’d go into the studio around eight o’clock in the evening,” Cox remembers, “and a lot of times we didn’t come out until noon the next day. When we came out of the studio, he’d have his guitar, I’d have my bass…and the Corvette was a two-seater. So we take off, and my face is hangin’ out the window, along with one of my legs, and Jimi’s got his guitar in the back. We’re goin’ through traffic, and I’m sayin, ‘Oh, lord, you gon’ run into somebody!’ He scared me. I’d get out at the hotel and say, ‘Whew, man! I made it safe and sound.’ ”
As fate would have it, it was drug-and-alcohol-related asphyxiation, not reckless driving, that claimed Hendrix’s life not long after the scene Cox relates. But by then, Jimi had already vastly enriched rock guitar’s lexicon of licks, tricks and aesthetics. He raised the bar for rock guitar heroism. Or as Cox puts it, “Here we are 42 years later, and we’re still celebrating his genius.”
Hendrix never got to finish the album he was working on at the time, leaving fans, rock historians and pop culture geeks perpetually wondering what he was up to in the studio during the final year and a half of his life. Back at the tail end of the Sixties, some said he’d lost the plot, that the glory days of Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland were behind him, and never to return.
Then again, there were those who said that he was on the verge of creating some new progressive form of music exponentially more revolutionary than what had come before. There was talk of a collaboration with Miles Davis arranger Gil Evans, although there’s not even a hint of that among the mountain of unfinished tapes Hendrix left behind.
“Jimi was frustrated before he died, because I think the public didn’t understand him,” says Eddie Kramer, the recording engineer who worked most extensively with Hendrix throughout his years of fame. “He was so confused as to which way to go.”
So was Hendrix on a crash course with musical disaster, wasted on dope and wasting tape while the studio clock ticked off dollars? Or was there some grand, redeeming vision that would have turned the whole thing into another Sgt. Pepper’s, Bitches Brew or Exile on Main Street?
Elucidating the musical truth of Hendrix’s final recordings has been the almost 20-year mission of Kramer, archivist/producer/historian John McDermott, and Janie Hendrix, who is Jimi’s half sister and the head of Experience Hendrix, the company that manages the late guitarist’s estate.
In 1997, they released their best educated guess as to what that final album might have been. It was called First Rays of the New Rising Sun, the name that they conjecture was at the top of Hendrix’s list of tentative titles for his work-in-progress.
They followed it up in 2010 with Valleys of Neptune, another scoop from Hendrix’s deep barrel of end-game demos, work tapes, jam tapes, party tapes, unfinished masters and so on. McDermott, Kramer and Experience Hendrix recently dropped another glimpse of Hendrix’s final days at work in the studio, People, Hell & Angels.
“We’re filling in the library with the last missing piece, from a thematic point of view,” McDermott says. “On Valleys of Neptune, we looked at the final recordings of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and then Jimi’s first steps with [bassist] Billy Cox. ‘Here,’ we said. ‘This is Jimi outside the Experience.’ So it includes the very first recordings the Band of Gypsys made in the studio, Jimi with the band he had at Woodstock and him playing and guesting with friends like [R&B sax man] Lonnie Youngblood and [vocal duo] the Allen twins. The idea for us was to say, ‘This is all the stuff that was among his portfolio of music that was cut after Electric Ladyland.’ Hopefully it shows some of the avenues that this guy was traveling down as he was trying to decide what the future held.”
The tracks span the period from March 13, 1968, through August 1970, although the main focus is on an extended run of sessions held at the New York Record Plant in mid 1969. It was a time of profound change for rock music and for Hendrix himself. He’d just moved back from London, where he’d first risen to fame and where he recorded the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s game-changing first three albums. He was back in his home country, but all was not well.
Hendrix had parted company with Chas Chandler, his co-manager and the producer who had given shape and substance to the first three Experience albums. Experience bass player Noel Redding would soon leave the fold as well. Redding and Chandler were both exasperated by the guitarist’s newfound fondness for tinkering endlessly with musical ideas in the studio and only occasionally coming away with a master take.
But that too was a sign of the changing times. The business and aesthetics of rock music were in the midst of a revolutionary transition. Where the music industry had once viewed rock music as a passing, cash-in-quick teenage fad, more-enlightened entrepreneurs were starting to realize that rock held enormous long-range business potential, not to mention all the excitement that comes with the forging of a bold new art form.
So in a sense, Hendrix had landed in the right place at the right time when he got off the plane in New York. Two gentlemen named Chris Stone and Gary Kellgren had joined forces to create a new kind of recording studio on West 44th Street. Stone was an MBA marketing wiz connected with the Revlon cosmetics empire at the time. Kellgren was one of the best engineers in New York, noted for his pioneering work with eight-track recording and tape-based effects like flanging and phasing.
While the best recording studios had historically been cold, antiseptic, lab-like environments attached to record labels like EMI or Columbia, Stone and Kellgren hit on the idea of building an independent state-of-the-art recording studio situated in a comfortable, hip living room–style environment. Along with Frank Zappa, Hendrix was one of their first and best clients, paying a handsome hourly rate to hang out, jam and party with friends, experiment with musical ideas, strive for master recordings and generally make the Record Plant his midtown pied–à–terre.
“Oh, Chris and Gary loved Jimi,” McDermott says with a laugh. “At the end of the day it was like, ‘Just keep stacking those tapes up, fellas. Let him be in there as long as he wants to.’ Because they’d be able to say, ‘Hey, we got the top guy at our facility.’ And the bills always got paid. It wasn’t like they had to chase someone to get paid. Jimi paid his bills.”
This is the somewhat amazing part. The recording funds weren’t coming from Hendrix’s record label, Reprise, recoupable against future album sales in the usual music manner. Instead, Jimi was footing the bill himself.
“It never went through the record company,” McDermott confirms. “It drove his management and his accountant crazy, but the bills went to his management company, and they paid for all those sessions.”
For Hendrix, the investment seemed well worth it. Before he hit it big, he toiled for years as a studio guitarist, playing budget, nail-it-in-one-take R&B sessions. Hendrix relished the idea of having the hippest new studio in America as his atelier and all-around bachelor pad. He’d also started to assemble his New York team. Kramer was shipped over from England, where he’d distinguished himself as an engineer at London’s celebrated Olympic Studios. Stone has vivid memories of Kramer alighting from the car sent to pick him up at the airport, decked out in a cape. And when Kramer wasn’t around, Kellgren’s world-class studio engineering chops were at Jimi’s disposal.
Even before setting up shop at the Record Plant, Hendrix had shown a marked tendency to view recording studios as party spaces, and the guest list was pretty wide open. “The hangers-on became a problem,” Kramer says. “They became a problem for Chas, and certainly for me. Sessions would be tough, because Jimi couldn’t say no to his buddies. He’d have invited the street sweeper and the cleaning lady and the record company president with him.”
But now, with Chandler out of the picture and the Experience on the skids, some of Jimi’s buddies started to make it out of the party room and into the band. Some of them earned their keep in that capacity better than others. With Redding’s imminent departure from the scene, Hendrix called on Billy Cox, an old friend from the guitarist’s days in the Army and a musical colleague who’d played many a chitlin circuit gig with the guitarist in the early Sixties. Cox had deep experience backing greats like Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Slim Harpo, Freddie King, Gatemouth Brown, Rufus and Carla Thomas and many others on stages, recording and TV studios. He was also solid as both a musician and a personality.
“Jimi Hendrix and I were musical confidants when he began his musical career,” the bassist says. “And I was his musical confidant till the end.”
Cox began by recording with Hendrix and Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, but soon another drummer entered the picture. Buddy Miles came from the same R&B roots as Hendrix and Cox, and had gone on to be a larger-than-life figure in rock music, a voluble, volatile veteran of the Electric Flag with guitar hero Mike Bloomfield and his own Buddy Miles Express. The Hendrix, Cox and Miles trio would soon be known to history as the Band of Gypsys.
“We were all the same age, and we had all come up under the R&B influence,” Cox says. “I mean Buddy was with Wilson Pickett, and I played behind Pickett when he came to Nashville. So we all played the same kind of music and had a lot in common.”
One of Cox’s many musical virtues was his ability to mesh equally well with both Mitch Mitchell and Buddy Miles. “Mitch was more soul influenced from a jazz perspective,” Cox explains. “And Buddy was a hard-hitting rock and roller. But both of them were good, and I had no problem playing with either one. I came out of the Pittsburgh/Philadelphia scene, and I was familiar with a lot of the jazz artists from there. I tried to play a little jazz years before, and I liked Mitch’s influence. And then with Buddy, you had the R&B, blues, gutbucket hard rock thing, and I liked that also. That was part of my DNA.”
In that light, it’s interesting to compare one of People, Hell and Angels’ standout tracks—the Hendrix standard “Hear My Train a Comin’ ” laid down with the Cox/Miles rhythm section in May 1969—with a version by the Experience just a month earlier. While the two recordings are very close in arrangement and tempo, Hendrix clearly sounds more relaxed with Cox and Miles and tears off a blindingly brilliant guitar solo. He’s one of the few guitarists on earth who’s amazing even when he’s noodling in the studio at four in the morning. The People, Hell and Angels set packs quite a few solo guitar epiphanies, albeit cast as diamonds in the rough among unfinished tracks.
“What’s so cool about Jimi is you can hear how excited he gets when there’s a dialed-in player or players on the track,” McDermott says. “It lifts him to a different place. You can hear it when you listen to ‘Voodoo Child’ on Ladyland, and you can hear it with Billy and Buddy on ‘Hear My Train.’ Whenever he feels like the people with him are locked in, he can soar.”
Fans of the Band of Gypsys’ one official recording, the highly regarded, self-titled live album from Fillmore East, will be especially interested in People, Hell & Angels, which contains no fewer than four studio recordings by the short-lived trio.
“When Jimi went to Billy, he didn’t say, ‘You’re gonna replace Noel,’ ” McDermott recounts. “He said, ‘Come up and help me.’ And when Billy first came in April of ’69, it was really about making good on some of these songs that Jimi had struggled on with Noel. Noel was a tremendous musician and deserves a lot of credit, but I think there was something with Billy. In all the turbulence of Hendrix’s life, it was important for him to have a steadying friend, who would understand his desire to work on demos over and over again until he felt he had it, whereas Noel was hoping to get it in one or two takes and move on. I think that kind of philosophical difference really was critically important.
“And as for Mitch Mitchell versus Buddy Miles,” McDermott continues, “I think Mitch was Jimi’s guy, but he did realize that Buddy brought something special for certain songs that was almost part of his personality. That thump and that excitement was different from Mitch, but it certainly fits a song like ‘Earth Blues’ [another frequently recorded Hendrix composition, performed with the Cox/Miles rhythm section on People, Hell and Angels]. You hear it. When you compare that with the version that has Mitch on drums, it’s markedly different. The R&B funk vibe is there. It becomes a different song.”
Hendrix was clearly searching for the right rhythm section sound for the material he was developing. A lot of the 1969 recordings seem like an effort to arrive at a definitive basic track over which Jimi could record vocals and the filigreed layers of guitar overdubs that were essential to the Hendrix magic.
But was the material really worth that much effort? Most of it is blues-based stuff or blues covers, which was not unusual for the time. Blues records were extremely popular in 1969, and blues-based artists like John Mayall, Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, and the Al Kooper–Mike Bloomfield tandem were enjoying major success. Traditional blues artists like B.B. King, Albert King and John Lee Hooker were also crossing over to the rock audience in a big way.
But the preponderance of blues-based material among Hendrix’s final recordings seems to disprove theories that he was onto some bold, new progressive jazz-rock direction. And if the folks at Reprise were expecting another Hendrix hit on the order of “Foxey Lady,” Purple Haze” or the guitarist’s popular cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” they would have been disappointed; there is certainly nothing of the sort to be found among the tracks on People, Hell and Angels. If anything, at the end of his life Hendrix seemed to be heading back to his bluesy roots. And few people had more of a right to go back there than him.
“By the time I got onboard, I’d say his direction had kind of changed,” Cox confirms. “Some of his songs from that time, like ‘Freedom,’ ‘Up from the Storm’ and ‘Dolly Dagger,’ were based on little riffs that we’d come up with together back in the early Sixties. Some of them were insane at the time. Jimi would say, ‘Man, if they heard us play some of this stuff, they’d lock us up.’ We didn’t write any of that stuff down. We remembered it. Jimmy called them ‘patterns.’ I call them ‘musical riffs.’ We had a lot of them in our heads.”
Another virtue of the Record Plant, complementing its great gear and a penthouse vibe, was the fact that it was right around the corner from the Steve Paul Scene, at the time one of New York’s hottest rock and roll clubs. Hendrix would drop by to jam with artists on the bill, including one notable run sitting in with the Jeff Beck Group. He’d also round up musicians from the club and bring them over to the Record Plant to hang out and cut some tracks, perhaps most famously tapping Steve Winwood (Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith) and Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna) to play on “Voodoo Child” from Electric Ladyland. But that kind of thing went on all the time, according to Cox.
“We’d start at eight P.M. but maybe stop at around 12 or one in the morning and go out. And at that time, the Scene, Ungano’s and a lot of clubs like that had a lot of the big artists playing there. Jimi would say, ‘I’m recording over at the Record Plant, come on by.’ And we’d go into studio B at four A.M. or so and just have fun for a couple of hours. I was the new kid on the block. Didn’t know a lot of people. And all of sudden I’m jamming with Stephen Stills, Johnny Winter, whoever.”
Or even some lesser lights of the rock fraternity. On the evening of April 21, 1969, Hendrix and Cox stopped by the Scene and ran into members of the Cherry People, a group that had got to Number 45 on the 1968 pop charts with the psychedelic bubblegum track “And Suddenly.” They were in town to get out of their deal with Heritage Records and had dropped by the Scene to console themselves, having failed to secure a meeting with the head of the label. Their road manager, Al Marks, himself a guitarist, had met Hendrix backstage on a few prior occasions. On the strength of this, Marks made bold to approach Hendrix’s table. Marks has vivid recollections of the evening.
“Jimi said, ‘Sorry I don’t remember you. But hey, you play in a band? You got a drummer?’ I said, ‘Yeah, he’s right here.’ He goes, ‘You wanna do a session with us tonight?’ I looked at him: ‘You gotta be kidding. You serious?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, man, meet me at four o’clock at the Record Plant.’ He meant four A.M.”
Marks, Cherry People drummer Rocky Issac and guitarist Chris Grimes couldn’t believe their luck when they were buzzed into the Record Plant building and shown into the studio. Gary Kellgren was already in the control room setting up for the session. The three Cherry People were even more amazed when Hendrix himself turned up at around 4:20. He sent Marks out to park his Corvette while he set up the recording room to suit his requirements. Marks recalls Hendrix using a pair of Acoustic amps and cabinets for the session, which may have belonged to the Record Plant.
Once everything was ready to go, Jimi asked, “Okay, who’s the drummer?” Issac was duly installed behind the studio’s kit; Marks and Grimes were assigned to play percussion. Both Marks and Issac recall working through versions of “Roomful of Mirrors,” the Elmore James song “Bleeding Heart,” “Stone Free,” a freeform jam called “Drone Blues” and “Crash Landing.” But things didn’t go particularly well. Issac was extremely nervous and not at all used to Hendrix’s practice of just kicking into a song and expecting all the players to follow him.
“I went over to Billy Cox and said, ‘Billy, I’m used to learning a song first,’ ” the drummer recalls. “I don’t know what’s going on here, and I’m scared.’ And Billy said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on either, but I’ve got the advantage of having played with Jimi quite a bit and I’m able to follow him.’ I said, ‘Well, he’s not cueing me in or anything, and I keep messing up.’ He said, ‘Do the best you can.’ ”
The evening went downhill from there. “I think it was around 10 or 11 in the morning when we got done with ‘Roomful of Mirrors,’ ” Marks says. “Meanwhile, we’d gone back into the control room after every take while Jimi stayed in the studio. He wouldn’t come out into the control room. And Gary Kellgren had a bowl full of rolled joints and an ashtray filled with cocaine. After every take, we’d light up a joint and pass it around.”
“Anything you wanted to take was available,” Issac adds. “Alcohol, coke, speed, pot everywhere. There was plenty of everything. The whole time I’m having an anxiety attack. I couldn’t drink enough. I couldn’t take enough speed. I was falling apart. But Jimi was so generous and gracious. I felt he was disappointed. But he took me in the control room where he was mixing down ‘Stone Free.’ He sat me down at the controls and showed me how to pan the drums from left to right. Pretty soon I’m sitting there with him doing a mix.”
Also in the control room that evening was Devon Wilson, Jimi’s main lady at the time and the subject to the song “Crash Landing,” a forerunner to “Dolly Dagger” that finds Hendrix excoriating Wilson’s hard-drug use and the toll he saw it taking on their relationship. One of the famed late-Sixties’ supergroupies, Wilson was also involved with Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Eric Clapton and Duane Allman at various times. She passed away under mysterious circumstances at New York’s Chelsea Hotel just six months after Hendrix’s death. Marks remembers her as, “very tall, very thin, very beautiful. She sat in the corner and just smoked. Didn’t talk. She was as high as the rest of us.”
So it is perhaps no surprise that the evening didn’t amount to much in terms of viable master recordings. “It was funny to watch Gary Kellgren as the night progressed,” Marks says. “He started messing up a little bit, and that’s when he called the session that night. He couldn’t make it sound right anymore, so it was like, ‘Okay, we’re done. We’re wasting time and tape.’ That’s exactly what he said. When the faders started looking like double faders, that was it.”
What is surprising, given the evening’s unrewarding musical trajectory, is that Hendrix asked Issac, Marks and Gaines to return for another session a few nights later. Jimi gave the drummer $400 for the night’s work and $100 each to Marks and Grimes, with the promise of the same again when they returned. When Issac got back to New York from the Cherry People’s D.C. home base for the second session, he garnered some further insights into his Hendrix’s life at the time.
He met Jimi at the office of his manager, Mike Jeffrey. A hard-bitten, old-school rock-and-roll business sharpie with a reputation as a gangster—some even say that he arranged Hendrix’s death—Jeffrey didn’t welcome Jimi’s latest protégé with open arms. He clearly wasn’t pleased to fork over cash to cover hotel, meal and incidental expenses for Issac and another member of the Cherry People, guitarist Punky Meadows, who hadn’t been engaged to play on the session but had tagged along to meet Hendrix.
“I felt like Mike Jeffrey would have rather just taken a gun and shot me than given me two dollars,” Issac says. “Jimi knew he was getting robbed, moneywise, but I don’t think that was the big thing for him. He wanted some freedom, it seemed to me. Jimi and I were talking, and he told me, ‘I’m so fucking unhappy. All the guy [Jeffrey] wants me to play is ‘Foxey Lady’ and ‘Purple Haze’ over and over and over. Everything I write he wants to sound like that.’ I think he was at a point where he had to do something. He was so unhappy with management. He didn’t say anything about being unhappy with Mitch or Noel Redding. And of course he didn’t say anything unkind about Billy Cox. But he did say that Mike Jeffrey was just about to kill him.”
Fortunately, everybody stayed away from the control room ashtrays during Hendrix’s second session with the Cherry People, on April 24, 1969, which yielded the take of “Crash Landing” heard on People, Hell & Angels. “Jimi came in very businesslike and knew what he wanted to do,” Marks recalls. “It wasn’t the same social atmosphere as the first night. He was very direct and to the point. Apparently he had listened to the roughs. He came in and said to me, ‘Okay, if you’re going to play maracas, you need to do this, this and this. He directed each musician. He had like a bandstand thing to hold sheet music. There were blank sheets of paper on it and he was writing lyrics for ‘Crash Landing’ as he was playing. He’d tell us to keep going and he’d be writing down lyrics and starting to sing them. Then he’d say, ‘Okay, from the top…let’s go.’ ”
“He was magical,” an awestruck Issac recalls of Hendrix’s studio performances. “Seeing him in the studio was like seeing him onstage. Maybe not quite as much theatrics as he displayed onstage, but he didn’t make mistakes. There was genius there. That’s the feeling I got.”
“His fingers were the size of rulers,” Marks marvels. “They were huge!”
The evening also yielded a version of the aforementioned “Bleeding Heart” posthumously released on the Valleys of Neptune set and arguably more adventurous than the Cox and Miles version of the same tune heard on People, Hell & Angels. The more up-tempo feel and funk-jazzy chord substitutions of the Cherry People version certainly offer a more radical recontextualization of the Elmore James original than the straight-ahead slow-blues reading that Hendrix, Cox and Miles gave the tune. With all due deference to the “anything Hendrix ever did was sheer genius” crowd, it’s possible that the law of diminishing returns had begun to set in as 1969 wore on.
Certainly, the Cherry People’s eyewitness account of their two evenings at the Record Plant with Jimi Hendrix puncture the myth of Hendrix’s infallibility. It’s clear that many of Hendrix’s Record Plant evenings were more like a party than a serious attempt to capture master recordings. Cox takes credit for reining a lot of that in.
“By the time I got on board, all that kind of stuff changed,” he says. “It had to change if we were going to get any quality work out there. Jimi and I talked about it, and he knew what he had to do. He had to buckle down and get it together.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, Cox says that Devon Wilson’s visits to the studio became less frequent once the bassist was firmly ensconced. “It tapered off and she didn’t come in as often,” he says. “It changed. Prior to me getting onboard they’d say, ‘Oh happy day, let’s go out and just have some fun.’ But we kind of got to the point where we had to get down to brass tacks and get serious about the thing. The studio no longer became a place of play; it became a place of work. A sacred place. I told Jimi, ‘We’re lucky to be here. We have to make the most of it.’ ”
As one of the world’s biggest rock stars, and one notorious for his sexual prowess, Hendrix certainly didn’t lack for female companionship. The ladies were more legion than the joints in Kellgren’s “hospitality bowl.” But Hendrix’s relationship with Wilson cut deeper than that. It was a dysfunctional pas de deux of drugs, music and love.
“There were certainly other women in his life, but I think Devon was the one,” McDermott says. “She was the one who was fascinating to him, in terms of personality, obviously her beauty and also her outlook. It was a very passionate relationship between her and Jimi, but it wasn’t always steady. She was fiercely protective of him, in a certain way. I’m told by friends that she always thought she was advocating for Jimi and his best interest. Although, when Jimi built his own studio, Electric Lady, one of the things they did—and something she was very much in favor of—was put a closed-circuit camera on the door so they could see who was trying to buzz their way in. And there were many nights when Jimi would see Devon at the door and not let her in. He didn’t want the drama. But what person doesn’t go through that in that kind of relationship?”
Adding to the romantic turbulence in his life, Hendrix was in the midst of a full-scale business and legal crisis. When Chas Chandler walked, Hendrix lost not only the creative partner who had helped shape his most successful songs and recordings but also the “good cop” on his management team. As a former bassist with the highly successful British Invasion group the Animals, Chandler was a musician and could empathize with Hendrix’s musical aspirations and relate them to his business concerns far more harmoniously than the more mercenary Jeffrey. Hence, Hendrix’s remarks to Issac about Jeffrey’s just wanting him to play “Purple Haze” over and over again.
Legally, Hendrix was battling drug charges at the time, as well as a lawsuit filed by Ed Chalpin of music publishing company PPX Industries. Chalpin claimed that the guitarist had a contractual obligation to PPX dating from 1965 and thus superseding Hendrix’s management agreement with Jeffrey and Chandler. Chalpin stood to gain a sizable chunk of all revenue earned by the Experience and their three top-selling albums, if not all of it.
The compromise was to give Chalpin the proceeds from a Jimi Hendrix album, the live Band of Gypsys recorded on New Year’s Eve 1970 at the Fillmore East, plus a piece of any and all future Hendrix profits. While revisionist critical zeal has placed the Fillmore disc on an artistic par with Hamlet and the Mona Lisa, it was nothing more than a quickie live album banged out fast and cheap in order to chill out Chalpin. According to Eddie Kramer, Hendrix himself was less than pleased with the album.
“I don't know that it was something Jimi liked 100 percent,” Kramer says. “I think he was disappointed in some of the excessive [vocal] warbling of Buddy Miles. There was a tremendous amount of editing done on it. There was a huge amount of jamming and stuff that didn’t quite fit on the record. The editing was a little untidy at points. But having said that, I think it’s a wonderful example of Jimi being able to play with a reasonable amount of freedom.”
“Mitch had gone to England when Jimi got into the problems,” Cox recalls. “[Jimi] was threatened with a lawsuit. So it was decided that we’d do a concert album, and I said ‘Well, I’m in.’ That’s what friends do. And Buddy was around at the time.”
But the Band of Gypsys didn’t always fare as well onstage as they did at the Fillmore shows. A subsequent concert, at Madison Square Garden, was a notable disaster, the band retreating from the stage halfway through its second number, offering apologies to the crowd. This proved to be the group’s final live performance. Events like these gave rise to turn-of-the-decade feeling that Hendrix had perhaps lost it. This impression was compounded by the uneven, somewhat shambolic performance that he turned in at Woodstock with his ill-advised, under-rehearsed and unfortunately named six-piece ensemble, Gypsy Sun and Rainbows. With Chandler gone, there was no one to tell Hendrix when he had a bad idea.
“I think the core band of Jimi, Mitch and Billy, were great at Woodstock,” McDermott says in defense of the guitarist and his ramshackle backing. “I think the other guys [guitarist Larry Lee, percussionists Jerry Velez and Juma Sultan] were trying, but they’d just never played something that big before, or with something that powerful. They were used to playing clubs and things like that.”
Larry Lee was another old buddy of Jimi’s who’d just come out of the Army, where he’d seen service in the Vietnam War. Lee would go on to many years of success as Al Green’s musical director and songwriter. But in 1969, he’d just begun making the uneasy transition from the killing fields to a society that had been radically remade in the wake of civil rights, the hippie scene, psychedelia, the sexual revolution and other sociocultural phenomena of the late Sixties. It was all a bit too much.
“Larry, God bless him, had just come back from Vietnam and wasn’t quite ready for the hurricane that was Hendrix’s popularity and all that went with it,” McDermott says. “Had Jimi employed him on select songs, you would have seen real value come out of his contributions.”
The two tracks on People, Hell & Angels that feature the Gypsy Sun and Rainbows lineup show them in a much better light than their Woodstock performance. Their studio recording of the ubiquitous “Izabella” is certainly tighter than the Woodstock rendition, with Lee effectively doubling Cox’s bass line much of the time and playing a supportive role overall. And those who mainly think of Larry Lee as the guy with the out-of-tune guitar and ridiculous headgear at Woodstock might be surprised to hear his artful jazzy comping on “Easy Blues,” a 12-bar jam from another one of Hendrix’s long nights at the Record Plant.
“I came up with this little riff,” Cox recalls of that impromptu recording. “I just kept playing it. I didn’t know the tape was going. Jimi looked at me and started laughing—jumped in and started jamming. We just did that to loosen up the fingers. We laughed because it was just a riff.”
“I think Jimi was really intrigued by the idea of having that second guitar, that rhythm guitar, in there,” McDermott says. “And Larry was a sympathetic figure. He wasn’t trying to out-duel Jimi or anything like that. He understood rhythm comping and things like that. And that’s one of his real benefits.”
“Larry was part of that same R&B thing as me and Jimi,” Cox adds. “He came from that time period. Jimi, at one point, felt like he needed assistance. Because a lot of times we were playing these riffs, the bass and the guitar together, but he wanted a guitar to keep doing that when he was playing solos. But he didn’t really need that. When the deal went down, he didn’t need any help.”
But what really brought an end to Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, in Cox’s view, was not musical considerations but the dictates of “the office,” by which he presumably means management. “That group had problems because the office didn’t want it to be,” Cox says. “And so it no longer was. [Management’s thinking was] ‘We started with this [three-piece power trio] formula. Stick with the formula.’ ”
In the midst of his own troubles and the search for a new, post-Experience musical direction, the legendarily generous Hendrix still had time to help out his friends. That side of him is reflected on People, Hell & Angels by two tracks where he happily played sideman to some of his old cronies. One of these recordings is a high-energy, old-school R&B track “Let Me Move You,” led by vocalist and sax player Lonnie Youngblood, with whom Hendrix had worked in the mid Sixties. Youngblood and Hendrix’s Record Plant recording of “Let Me Move You” is arguably the most outstanding track on People, Hell & Angels, an absolute scorcher.
“Just listen to what Jimi’s doing, comping under Lonnie,” McDermott says enthusiastically. “Crazy!”
The rhythm section of Hank Anderson on bass and Jimmy Mayes on drums is so unquenchably on fire that one wonders why Hendrix didn’t just draft them to be his new backing band. He’d worked with Mayes around 1966 when they were both in the touring lineup of Joey Dee and the Starlighters, a group that had scored a big hit back in 1961 with “The Peppermint Twist.”
“Yes, you could have seen Hendrix in a little club with Joey Dee in ’66,” McDermott says. “And then, six months later, he’s doing ‘Hey Joe’ and he’s a star in England. The time frame is amazing.”
And once Hendrix shifted operations from the Record Plant to his own brand new studio, Electric Lady, in mid 1970, one of the first projects he undertook was to overdub some hot guitar on “Mojo Man,” a track by the singing duo of Arthur and Albert Allen, a.k.a. the Allen twins. The two were old friends of Jimi’s and were recording at the time as the Ghetto Fighters. Like “Let Me Move You,” the tune offers eloquent testimony that Hendrix’s abilities as an accompanist and supporting player had been by no means diminished by his massive stardom.
Electric Lady was to have been Hendrix’s salvation—artistically, financially and otherwise. “The idea was, ‘Hey we’re going to stop paying the Record Plant a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Now we’re gonna have our own place,’” McDermott says.
“For almost a year and a half prior, Jimi had had no supervision. So a lot of time went into experimentation," Kramer says. “But as soon as Electric Lady was finished, he came in and it was like, ‘Wow, this is my place!’ The amount of work we accomplished in just four months—from May through August—was amazing.”
Today an institution on 8th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, Electric Lady had previously been a venue called the Generation Club, which Hendrix had planned to purchase and turn into another hip Manhattan nightspot. “But Eddie Kramer was the guy who came in and said, ‘Hey, don’t just have a little night club with a recording studio. We’ll make this the best recording studio in the world!’ ” McDermott says. “Eddie explained it to Jimi, and Jimi said, ‘Okay, I trust this guy. We’ll do it.’ ”
While Hendrix had paid for the Record Plant sessions out of his own pocket, had had to take a loan from his record label to float Electric Lady, deepening his obligation to Warner/Reprise and giving the company additional leverage when it came to his forthcoming, vexatious and long overdue album. One reason why Gary Kellgren, rather than Eddie Kramer, had engineered many of the Record Plant sessions in 1969 is that Kramer was downtown getting Electric Lady together much of the time. And while Hendrix’s Record Plant sessions may have seemed like one long party out of bounds, the guitarist allegedly knew exactly where the gold lay among the mountains of tapes he’d piled up there in mid 1969.
“Eddie Kramer told me that one of the first things they did when Electric Lady opened in May of ’70, even before they actually recorded anything, was that he and Jimi went through all the tapes that they had pulled over from the Record Plant,” McDermott says. “And that Jimi knew exactly which ones he wanted to play. He was like, ‘Hey, listen to this one. I want you to hear this song.’ And it would be ‘Roomful of Mirrors’ from November 1969. ‘Ezy Ryder’ was another one. And they started to figure, ‘Okay, we’ll put a fuzz bass on this, and I’ll overdub some guitar…’ And then there were other songs where they said, ‘Our new studio sounds so good, let’s just recut this one.’ ”
Of course Hendrix never got a chance to do any of that. By July he was back on the road, playing a troubled tour of Europe with Cox and Mitchell. Cox flipped out on acid; not everybody shared Hendrix’s legendary ability to eat loads of LSD and still be more or less functional. The group was booed in Germany. “I’ve been dead a long time,” Hendrix said, all too prophetically, at the end of a bad night onstage in Denmark. A few days later, on September 18, he died in London.
There is clear evidence that Hendrix knew he was in trouble musically. “When he went to England, he looked up Chas Chandler about three days before he died,” Kramer says. “And he talked to Chas about getting the old team together. I could see why he was frustrated. I’ve always maintained that what he needed was a year off—a time away from touring and the pressures of the record company and management, a time to think about where he wanted to go.”
But had he lived and even been able to take some time off, would Hendrix, producing himself for the first time, have been able to pull a coherent album from the sprawling mass of variant takes and alternate lineups he’d accumulated during the year and a half prior?
“At one point, he made notes about making it a three-album set,” McDermott says, “which was pretty ambitious. It was around the time when Electric Lady opened. People, Hell & Angels was one of the tentative titles he’d written down, so it comes out of that period. He knew he had this bounty of material and he said, ‘Okay, we’ll make a three-album set,’ when he had Reprise banging on his door for just a single album.”
McDermott is certain that, had Hendrix lived, he would have finished the sprawling album, if only because of his financial obligations. “He had to pay back Warner Bros. for the loan he’d taken to build Electric Lady, and had made his first payment in August prior to his death,” he says. “And with the pressure of having to deliver the Band of Gypsys album to settle that litigation, I think you would have seen Jimi pull the record together. Now would he have been able to keep it a double, much less a triple? Who knows? Management and the record label might have said, ‘Hey, we need 10 songs and we need them now.’ Or Jimi may have said, ‘Give me a month and we’ll have the rest done.’ He made a lot of progress prior to his leaving for Europe. It’s certainly possible that they could have had something, if not for the fourth quarter of 1970, then the first quarter of the following year.”
So what we’re left with on posthumous releases like People, Hell & Angels and Valleys of Neptune are essentially basic tracks—or attempted basic tracks—waiting for overdubs. But so much of the beauty of Hendrix’s music lies in his gift for weaving gossamer webs of guitar overdubs and lyrics that combine hallucinogenic, Dylan-esque imagery with the wry wit of a soul shaman. Without those things, we’re left with something that feels, at times, painfully incomplete.
“I think the basic work tracks were there and solid,” Cox says. “The problem was words. A lot of times Jimi was lost for words, trying to put words together and make them right. And then his overdubs—that was his way of talking to you. The man was incredible with backward tapes.”
So newcomers to Hendrix are heartily encouraged to start with Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland, the finished masterpieces. Releases like People, Hell & Angels will mainly be of interest to completists, the “any Hendrix is good Hendrix” demographic, and the kind of trainspotter market that has sprung up in the wake of the Deadhead board tape-trading phenomenon.
As for the rest of us, rather than force ourselves into another semi-sincere rapture about another set of marginal Hendrix outtakes, it would be more meaningful and respectful to view them for what they are: the sound of a great artist trying to jam himself out of a jam, not at all sure of where he was going and not entirely in control of the steering wheel. These rough-hewn and half-hatched tracks actually become more poignant in that light.
At the end of the Sixties, who really knew where he or she was going? At the time, Clapton, Page, Beck and Townshend were also in the midst of major artistic transitions and career reinventions. Hendrix was certainly determined to get there with them. Two days before his death, he said as much in his final conversation with Billy Cox.
“He said, ‘Hey man, we gotta get back in the studio Friday and change a few little things and get it right,’ ” Cox recalls. “ ‘They’re raising hell about getting it out.’ And I said okay. We had maybe 15 songs he wanted to work on.”
Cox seems to have mixed feelings about the fact that—for himself and Hendrix, unlike most other musicians—“even our practice tapes have been exposed to the public. And all of my wrong, bad notes have been exposed. But, hey, people can’t get enough of Hendrix.”
Does he think Hendrix would have been comfortable with all of us hearing his works in progress?
“I don’t think so,” Cox says. “With the perfectionist he was, I think he would like to have something completed. That’s what he was all about. He was a perfectionist when it came to the music. One wrong note and he was upset. ‘Oh man, I messed this up.’ That’s how he was. That’s what made him Jimi Hendrix.”
The following content is related to the August 2012 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store.
When Jimi Hendrix first exploded onto the scene, much attention was riveted on his radical reinvention of guitar-soloing vocabulary, technique and sound, inspired by a now-familiar roster of great blues soloists. But Hendrix had another musical asset that set him apart from similarly influence British blues-rock contemporaries: years of experience as a professional R&B rhythm guitarist.
Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive premiere of Monster Truck's new lyric video for "The Lion."
The song is from the band's latest album, Furiosity, which was released May 28 through Dine Alone Records.
Furiosity was produced by Eric Ratz (Billy Talent, Three Days Grace, Cancer Bats) at Vespa Studios in Toronto and Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, North Carolina.
Monster Truck took home the 2013 Juno Award for Breakthrough Group of The Year, toured their home country of Canada with Alice In Chains and established themselves as a major headlining attraction. In the US, they've appeared with Kid Rock, Slash, Guns N' Roses, Sevendust and others.
The band is ready to visit Europe for a 29-date run supporting Vista Chino (formerly Kyuss). Upon their return to North America, they'll set out on a 13-date coast-to-coast tour of Canada.
Monster Truck was formed in 2009 by Jon Harvey (bass, lead vocals), Jeremy Widerman (guitar, vocals), Brandon Bliss (organ, vocals) and Steve Kiely (drums, vocals). The band has released two EPs since their inception — a self-titled, self-released EP produced by Gus Van Go & Werner F (The Stills, Priestess, Les Trois Accords) and The Brown EP (produced by Ratz).
Jason Becker is not your typical guitar hero. His ability to inspire goes well beyond the fretboard.
From his time spent composing with fellow Shrapnel alum Marty Friedman to his being chosen as Steve Vai's replacement in David Lee Roth’s band in 1989, Becker was a star on the rise.
Shortly after hooking up with Roth, Becker was given the grim diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and given only three to five years to live. Although the disease would eventually take away his ability to play guitar, walk and even speak, Becker’s spirit and determination has enabled him to continue living and composing amazing music.
The 2102 documentary, Not Dead Yet tells the incredible story of Becker, a guitar legend who refuses to give up on his dream of being a musician, despite the most incredible odds. It’s a story of dreams, love and the strength of the human spirit.
Guitar World recently caught up with Becker via email and asked him about the film and his music. In this interview, Becker offers advice on how to play — and how to live.
GUITAR WORLD: How has the public reaction been to Not Dead Yet?
The reaction has been great! I hear from people all over the world, saying it's a great movie and they got a lot out of it. People like to know that, in spite of being diagnosed with a "terminal" disease, you can still have a fun life filled with love and productivity if you have people around who help make that happen, and care about you. Even non-musicians are digging it. I heard that Alec Baldwin loved it.
What satisfies you the most about Not Dead Yet?
It's all about getting my music out to the world, first of all. That is cool, although being a picky musician; I would have liked a bit more music in the film. I want everyone to hear my music and want to buy it. It is just satisfying to think that, somehow, my music and my story could touch someone and make them want to make their own life better. I am happy that my peeps got to get some of the credit they deserve. I am extremely happy that there was a lot of humor, too. I was worried that wouldn’t show, but Jesse [Vile, director] did an absolutely brilliant job!
You're a positive, creative inspiration to many people. What is it that keeps you moving forward?
I guess there is just so much I want to do; music to write, fun to have, nasty ass jokes to make, women to love, football to watch, friends and family to hang out with. I just like life and I love so many people. I would miss that. I have had the experience of dying, and it was really nice, but I would miss this life. I couldn't keep moving forward without a lot of help though. I am grateful and lucky to be surrounded by love and generosity.
What message would you like viewers to take away after watching the documentary?
Well, of course, I would like people to want to make their own lives better and to feel grateful and happy. But I am a musician, and I would like them to also be overcome with emotion by the brilliance of the music they hear [laughs]! Really, I just want people to take whatever they need from it. I am not one who gives lessons in life. I am not a perfect saint, by any means. Who am I to tell anyone how to see things?
Let’s discuss your song “Perpetual Burn." What inspired it and were there musical pieces that you put together, or did you hear it all as one big composition?
Man, it has been so long. I remember it was in the middle of Marty and me writing and creating like fiends. We were so inspired by the infinite possibilities of music. We kept inspiring each other to do things that we normally wouldn’t do. So I would say that Marty unintentionally inspired it. I wrote it on my Tascam four-track cassette recorder. I often wrote parts separately and later stuck them together, but this tune came out as one piece.
You know, I love that time in my life, and most of the music I made, but remember I was only 18 years old and I don’t feel like that was my crowning achievement. I was young and experimenting. I was still developing my style and feel.
What was your audition like for David Lee Roth?
It was a blast! I was young and all the guys in the band were so nice to me, and took me under their wings. Dave was cool and liked what I did. The guys told me they were stoked to have me because I brought "youth" and they had to keep on their toes. I had equipment trouble from the flight to LA, so I didn’t have great tone, but it didn’t matter. Dave and Bob Ezrin put me in a hotel for the night and gave me a bunch of new songs to learn for the following day.
I called Marty Friedman and my folks to let them know how it was going. The next day we jammed a lot. Then Dave wanted to hear “Hot for Teacher." We played it, and although my guitar went way out of tune, Dave was happy and asked me to be in the band. My guitar tuning problem made us laugh!
What do you find so appealing about classical music that many guitarists may overlook?
I had been exposed to classical music my whole life; even before I was born. My folks played it, and my dad was a classical guitar player and had studied with a student of Andres Segovia. Some of it can be boring and generic, but man, when it has a beautiful melody, or plays with interesting and unusual harmonies, or has a fascinating counterpoint, it moves me so much. It can bring tears to my eyes. I guess I just love all kinds of music. Classical is just one type of cool music.
Who are some of your favorite guitarists today?
There are so many great ones. I am still in love with old cats like Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Lee Firkins, Greg Howe, Richie Kotzen, Joe Satriani, Roy Buchanan, Neal Schon, Brian Setzer, Brian May, Uli Jon Roth, Trevor Rabin, Eric Johnson, Marty [Friedman], Steve Vai, Steve Morse, Paul Gilbert, Albert King ... I could go on and on. Steve Hunter’s newest CD, The Manhattan Blues Project, is an absolutely beautiful album.
Some of the newer players are Gretchen Menn, who never forgets about the composition; the funky and soulful Aleks Sever. There's also Guthrie Govan, who takes it to another level. Hmmm, Jeff Loomis, Chris Broderick, Daniele Gottardo, Jess Lewis. I'm sure I’m forgetting some people!
Of all of your musical compositions to date, is there one that stands out for you as a personal favorite?
Good question. Not one, but maybe a few. “Opus Pocus” and “Images” are two of my favorites from when I could still play because they are far different from any “neoclassical” crap [laughs]. Cool and different sounding with interesting harmonies and melodies.
The most obvious ones are “End of the Beginning” and “Higher." They are the most divinely inspired.
What projects are you currently working on?
I'm working on a new CD. I have some cool new pieces. I will have some of the greatest guest guitarists on it. I am so excited!
What advice would you give to people who are trying to overcome obstacles in their own lives — like. maybe trying to figure out a Jason Becker solo?
Well first, don’t bother learning my solos! Put your own new sauce on your noodling.
I know life can be tough. I don’t feel qualified to give people advice. I am not perfect. We are all at different stages in life. I think my story alone, without me saying a word, might have more of an impact on people rather than me trying to give advice.
James Wood is a writer, musician and self-proclaimed metalhead who maintains his own website, GoJimmyGo.net. His articles and interviews are written on a variety of topics with passion and humor. You can follow him on Twitter @JimEWood.
Below, check out a video of Nirvana performing "Scentless Apprentice" from their December 13, 1993, Live and Loud concert at Seattle's Pier 48.
The performance is from the band's upcoming Live and Loud DVD, which will be included with the Super Deluxe Edition of the upcoming 20th-anniversay reissue of In Utero. The DVD also will be available on its own.
Both will be released September 24 via Universal Music.
To say that Nirvana's third and ultimately final studio album, In Utero was 1993's most polarizing record would be an understatement. The unadorned sonic rawness of Steve Albini's recording laid bare every primal nuance of the most confrontational yet vulnerable material Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl would ever record.
And with its 1991 predecessor Nevermind having sold 30 million copies, returning honest rock to the top of the charts, In Utero was the first record Nirvana would make with any expectations from the public. So from the opening quasi-shamble melodics of "Serve The Servants" through the bittersweet closing strains of "All Apologies,"In Utero was the sound of the most incredible yet conflicted rock band of the era at the peak of its powers coming to terms with a generational spokes-band mantle they'd never seen coming—and ultimately surmounting these struggles to make the record they needed to make.
D’Addario, the world’s premier music accessories manufacturer, has introduced new additions to two of its popular string lines for guitars, including the new Balanced Tension Singles and ProSteel Electric Guitar Medium Gauge Set. These new offerings are the result of listening to customer feedback.
“D’Addario continues to listen to its customers to answer needs of players everywhere,” says Brian Johnson, D’Addario Product Specialist. “D’Addario consistently expands its product offerings in an effort to inspire guitarists across genres to higher levels of performance. These line extensions answer a variety of requests for multiple types of players, and we’ll continue to keep our ear to the pavement for future additions.”
With demand to already expand the new Balanced Tension line from D’Addario, singles are being added to the offering. D’Addario XL Nickel Wound Balanced Tension sets have been optimized to have a comparable tension string-to-string, allowing for greater dynamic control and a more evenly balanced effort while fretting, bending, strumming and picking.
Comprised of mathematically optimized string gauge combinations, each Balanced Tension set was extensively tested with players and experts in order to ensure not only that they were balanced, but that they retained all of the inherent properties expected of a D’Addario XL Nickel Wound set. Responding to demand for additional guitar string gauges, .025 .037, .040, .050 for guitar will be available. .025 will retail for $2.35, while .037, .040 and .050 will retail for $2.85.
D’Addario is also expanding its ProSteel Electric Guitar line with the new EPS515 ProSteels Medium, in gauges .11 - .50. D'Addario XL ProSteels utilize an exclusive corrosion-resistant steel alloy that delivers super-bright tone without shrill overtones.
These strings offer a palette of harmonically rich, brilliantly penetrating highs combined with pronounced, tight-and-tough lows. EPS515 is for those looking for moderate flexibility and rich, full tone in a medium gauge. EPS515 ProSteel Medium Electric Guitar Strings will retail for $10.95.
For more information on D’Addario, visit daddario.com.
Long Island hardcore activists Stray From the Path have returned with Anonymous, an in-your-face offering further solidifying the band as one of the genre's most dynamic artists.
Anonymous is available everywhere now. Check out the official trailer video, featuring sections of all the songs off the new effort, below.
Also, check out the stunning new video for “Badge & A Bullet” right HERE.
Stray From the Path just completed a successful run across North America this summer on the “AllStars” Tour and will now set their sights on another US run this fall, headlining their own trek, with Backtrack, Gideon, No Bragging Rights and Rescuer rounding out the package.
The tour kicks off October 3. Check out the dates below or visit their Facebook page.
10/03 - Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
10/04 - Poughkeepsie, NY @ The Loft
10/05 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Gators
10/06 - Chicago, IL @ Reggies
10/07 - St. Louis, MO @ Fubar
10/08 - Oklahoma City, OK @ Conservatory
10/09 - Ft. Worth, TX @ Tomcats
10/10 - Houston, TX @ Walters Downtown
10/11 - Birmingham, AL @ The Forge
10/12 - Savannah, GA @ The Dollhouse
10/13 - Orlando, FL @ Backbooth
10/14 - Douglasville, GA @ 7 Venue
10/15 - Nashville, TN @ The End
10/16 - Ringgold, GA @ Cloud Springs
10/17 - Carrboro, NC @ Local 506
10/18 - Springfield, VA @ Empire
10/19 - West Chester, PA @ The Note
10/20 - Long Island, NY @ Revolution
10/21 - Albany, NY @ Bogies
Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive premiere of "No Hope," a new song by Red Fang.
The song is from the band's upcoming album, Whales and Leeches, which will be released October 15 via Relapse Records.
The new album, the band's third, finds them further maturing into top-notch songwriters and musicians. The Portland, Oregon-based group have delivered an epic record for fans of guitar-driven rock. In October, they'll kick off the first leg of their fall headlining US tour. Stay tuned for more details!
Last week, we shared a photo gallery of every Guitar World magazine cover from our first six (technically seven) years of publication — 1980 to 1986.
Today, we present the next chapter in the Guitar World story — every magazine cover from 1987 to 1993.
The biggest change? For starters, in 1987, Guitar World made the jump from six issues to eight — and things just kept escalating from there. There were plenty of new faces to add to the ever-growing list of Guitar World cover artists (Oddly, the omnipresent Eddie Van Halen was missing in '87).
As you'll see below, Yngwie Malmsteen ushered in this new era, but you'll also find a host of brand-new cover stars, including Steve Vai & Billy Sheehan, Chris Squire and Trevor Rabin, Mark Knopfler, The Edge, Joe Perry and — well, just check out the gallery below!
By the way, during our first six years, Van Halen appeared on the most Guitar World covers. Who do you think made the most cover appearances from 1987 to 1993?
Enjoy! The next gallery is coming soon!
NOTE: Remember, you can click on each photo to take a closer look.
The guy holding the guitar in the photo shown at left is none other than comedic actor Eddie Murphy.
Murphy — star of Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places, Raw, Tower Heist, Bowfinger and Vampire in Brooklyn (Yeah, I liked that one) — has released a new song, "Red Light," and you can check it out below.
The bass-heavy reggae track (which features a guest appearance from Snoop Dogg, aka Snoop Lion) is from Murphy's new album, 9.
Will it be as big as Murphy's mid-'80s hit, "Party All the Time"? It's simply too soon to tell. Regardless, enjoy the new song — and seeing Murphy playing a Fender Strat!
Sometimes I share random things that appear in my inbox in the morning. This is one of those times.
Here's a YouTube video — posted in 2010, it seems — of Ozzy Osbourne performing "Crazy Train" at Ozzfest with a talented 10-year-old Japanese guitarist named Yuto Miyazawa.
Miyazawa, who is 13 now, was named "The Youngest Professional Guitarist" by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2008. He also managed to perform with Les Paul before the guitar legend's death in 2009.
