Electric Ladyland: Jimi HENDRIX's Psychedelic Portal to Infinite Soundscapes

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Oct 13
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Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland LP cover

October 16, 1968 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland is released.

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Electric Ladyland is the third and final album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released on October 16, 1968 in the US (October 25 in the UK). It topped the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart for two weeks in November, 1968. In 2003, it was rated #54 on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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LINER NOTES (reissue)

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE

ELECTRIC LADYLAND

“There are so many facets of Jimi’s character that haven’t been used yet,” Chas Chandler said in 1968, “he has much more talent to explode then we’ve seen yet. When we started on the Electric Ladyland album I may as well have not been sitting there, he wasn’t listening. So I just said, ‘Well, I’m not gonna sit around for the ride’.”

“My initial success was a step in the right direction,” agreed Jimi, “but it was only a step, just a change. Now I plan to get into many other things. This year we’re really going to make it in a big way. Above all our records will become better, purely from the point of view of recording technique. We haven’t been happy with a single one! Our producer up ‘till now, Chas Chandler, hasn’t had the right feel when he turned the wheels in the control room. Before sometimes I’d finish a thing and somebody else would come along and goof it, in the cutting of the record or in the pressing, they’d screw it up. In the future, we’ll take care of that detail ourselves, together with Dave Mason who has quit Traffic to spend time on this, among other things. He thinks in a different way, he’s got new ideas in recording techniques and a good ear for new sounds. I know exactly what I want to hear. I’m going to take Buddy Miles and Paul Caruso into the studio. I want to write songs and produce stuff. And Noel’s going to take some people in by himself, too.”

“I wanted to work with Fat Mattress,” explains Noel, “because that was giving me an outlet for writing. And I thought I should co-produce, ‘cause I got ideas, but Jimi wasn’t lettin’ me do it.”

“I plan to have more instrumentals and longer tracks on the next album,” Jimi continues, “‘cause you just can’t express yourself in two minutes in every song. I want to make it a double LP, which will be almost impossible, it’s a big hassle, the record producers and the companies don’t want to do that. I’m willing to spend every single penny on it if I thought it was good enough. I’ll do that and then they’ll leave me out there (laughs). We decided the best way was to just cool the recording scene until we were ready with something that we wanted everyone to hear. Sometime around the end of the summer, we’ll becoming out with a completely different concept of pop music than has ever been heard before. I can’t tell you what we’ll be doing. We’re the only ones who know. You’ll hear it when we spring it on you.

“I’m very inconsistent, it all depends on how I feel. Sometimes I write in a rush, but the things I’m writing now take a little longer to say. It might be more primitive. I’ll be experimenting with different instrumentation. We’ll keep the basic trio but add other musicians temporarily when we want a different sound.”

Mitch and Noel left for London on April 8 and Jimi moved into New York’s Drake Hotel. During the month he recorded portable-deck sketches of Voodoo Chile, Gypsy Eyes, 1983, and Long Hot Summer Night.

“Our next LP is going to be exactly the way we want it,” he predicted, “and it calls for two or three of those funky tunes which I call down-to-earth real tunes. What we do sometimes is lay down what I might have written by day in my mind, all the changes, then we go out there and do a take of it, regardless of how sloppy, then we go back and listen and take the best cuts and talk about what you want to do with it.”

Electric Ladyland was cut during Jimi’s “hat period”, which ran from mid-December 1967 until the following summer. His hat was to 1968 what his military jacket was to 1967, and what his headband became in 1969. But the hat-period encompassed Jimi’s massive ‘68 American tour.

“Touring sure is hurting our new LP,” he complained. “As a matter of fact, that’s the reason it’s not released yet. It was supposed to be out on July 21. We’re in the process of recording now, some tracks are getting very long. I’ve written three things about 17 minutes each for the LP, a double LP, that’s why you can only get about 20 tracks – our type of tracks anyway – onto two records. We’ve got maybe 5 tracks and when we get about 15 or 18, we’ll release it. The reason why we did this is we had so many good songs. I don’t know if they’re commercially good. But time was going by and we’re playing more and more. Our sound was changing and here were these songs you haven’t ever heard. And if you wait six months and put out a single LP and wait another six months for another single, it’s going to be out of style. We’re trying to give as much of us from six months back until now that we can. Because we’re constantly changing, evolving. All the tracks are very personal, they’re us. That’s why we want to get them out as soon as possible because this is how we are now. I want them to be heard before we change. But like for the blues, man, I wrote millions of them, and like if we would’ve used them all the whole LP would have been a blues LP.

“We’ve been together for about two solid years, we’ve been going through a lot of changes. That’s why we haven’t released anything for a while, because there’s too many people that are tryin’ to work with our image, instead of listenin’ to the sounds. What we’re doin’ now is using the three-piece and exhausting it until we can get all we want out of it. We want to augment maybe a few things. But there’s some things that you just don't want to put a whole lot of junk on top of, like violins unless it calls for it.”

Asked about the album cover, Jimi revealed, “First I wanted to get this beautiful woman, about six-foot-seven Veruschka, she’s so sexy you just wanna hhmmmm. Anyway, we want to get her and have her leading us across the desert, and we have like these chains on us, but we couldn’t find a desert ‘cause we was working and we couldn’t get a hold of her ‘cause she was in Rome. But we have this one photo of us sitting on Alice In Wonderland, a bronze statue of it in Central Park, and we got some kids and all.”

“Linda Eastman took that,” said Noel. Jimi sent Linda’s pictures to Warner Bros. and wrote a note saying, “Dear Sirs, Here are the pictures we would like you to use anywhere on the LP cover preferably inside… next to each other in different sizes and mixing the color prints at different points. For instance please use the color pictures with us and the kids on the statue for front or back cover – outside cover. And the other back or front outside cover use three good pictures of us in B&W or color… Any other drastic change from these directions would not be appropriate according to the music and our group’s present stage. And the music is most important. And we have enough personal problems without having to worry about this simple yet effective layout. Thank you. Jimi Hendrix.”

When the English sleeve came out, Jimi was pissed. “I didn’t have nothing to do with that stupid LP cover. I don’t even want to talk about it. That album, when it was released over here (US), had a picture of me and Noel and Mitch on the cover and about 30 nice new photographs inside. But people have been asking me about the English cover, which seems to have gotten me into a bit more trouble. I don’t know anything about it. I had no idea that they had pictures of dozens of nude girls on it.”

As Jane Simmons explained in a newsletter for the JHE Fan Club, Jimi’s own cover designs “didn’t get to Britain in time for pressing so all the lads at Track had to think of something original. The boys thought it was a huge giggle.”

But as Jimi noted, “Folks in Britain are kicking against the cover. Man, I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t have put this picture on the sleeve myself but it wasn’t my decision. It’s mostly all bullshit. Still, you know me, I dug it anyway. Except I think it’s sad the way the photographer made the girls look ugly. Some of them are nice looking chicks but the photographer distorted the photograph with a fish-eye lens or something. They messed about and although the girls were pretty they came out disfigured. That’s mean. Anybody as evil as that dies one day or another. Our scene is to try and wash people’s souls. We’re in the process of tryin’ to make our music into a religion. It’s already spiritual anyway, and we want it to be respected as such. We call our music Electric Church Music. It’s like a religion to us. Some ladies are like church to us too. Some groupies know more about music than the guys. People call them groupies, but I prefer the term ‘Electric Ladies.’ My whole Electric Ladyland album is about them.

“Now let’s talk about the album. First, I’m happy with the content of the record. Only a couple of the tracks came from British sessions. The rest was all recorded at the 12-track Record Plant in New York. It’s a new studio, the engineer was really together. We were all learning at the same time. It’s great, I dig it.”

When the Record Plant opened in 1967 it housed one of two existing 12-track tape machines in the country.

“I guess we started there specifically to work on Electric Ladyland around the middle of April 1968,” recalls Mitch. “We went there because Gary Kellgren, who we’d worked with at Mayfair, had raised the money with a partner and managed to start the Record Plant. It was a good studio to work in, different from Olympic, which was a big cathedral-like space. The Record Plant was much smaller, but had an excellent sound.”

“I came to the States in April of ‘68,” said Eddie Kramer. “The history of Electric Ladyland, some of the tracks were recorded four-track in England prior to my departure and brought to the States and were worked on at the Record Plant and transferred to 12-track machine, worked on at the 12-track machine, which was a real bastard. Then 16-track came along because 12-track was only a stopgap measure. So then they went to 16-track and it was finished that way. It was the first time he’d worked with a 16-track and he must have gone bananas.”

“Everybody was telling me that (Record Plant) is supposed to be obsolete ‘cause it doesn’t add up with today’s figures of the tracks and all that,” said Jimi. “I don’t know, for what we was tryin’ to get across at the time, it was perfect. You can get 16 tracks in the States, but who needs 16? You need only 4, really. It depends what kind of music you go into. If you’re going into something straight, only occasionally do we need more, like some of the things we did on the new LP. That’s what I call expression music. That whole LP means so much, it wasn’t just slopped together. Every little thing that you hear on there means something. It’s not a little game that we’re playing, tryin’ to blow the public’s mind and so forth. It’s a thing that we really mean, it’s another part of us.

“We had some very well-known cats with us. Some of the sessions were like superjamming. Al Kooper is on one track. Steve Winwood is on another. They just happened. There were also some cats from Kansas who hung around while we were recording, they were just on a couple of tracks. The album is so personal because, apart from some help from people like Steve Winwood and Buddy Miles, it’s all done by us. Noel kicked in one of the songs, but mostly they’re mine, electric funk melodies, and it goes into blues and hard rock, it goes into complete opposite, complete fantasy. I don’t say it’s great, but it’s The Experience. It has a rough, hard feel on some of the tracks, those funky tunes, some of the things on it are hungry.”

“As regards to Electric Ladyland as an album,” said Mitch, “it’s a concept that was never really completely finished as we would have liked it, because we had to go back out on the road and get out to audiences, we could have spent a year in the studio and it still wouldn’t have been finished. As it was I think we spent about four months, although at the time seemed to take forever.”

“Jimi liked to take his time over his tapes,” noted Noel. “We sometimes spent all night on a backing track. Nothing was happening, or if it was happening it took so long that you couldn’t tell it was happening. Sometimes seemed a bit messy to me.”

“Dear Sirs,” Jimi wrote to Warner Bros. when he sent the finished tapes in September, “We would like to make an apology for taking so very long to send this but we have been working very hard indeed, doing shows AND recording…”

“We wrote the songs, recorded and produced it,” said Jimi. “I did the production. Why I’m kinda proud of it is that I really took the bulk of it through from beginning to end on my own, so I can’t deny that it represents exactly what I was feeling at the time of production. We was getting our thing together with Axis and with Are You Experienced, but most of those were predominantly handled by Chas. This is the first time I did it my myself, Eddie Kramer and myself. We wanted to handle the editing and mixing ourselves.”

When Eddie arrived in New York he found the sessions had no real schedule and Jimi was unconcerned with cost. “It became apparent that we were into the next era,” said Eddie, “because things started to get a lot more complicated. We were spending a lot more time in the studio and Jimi had much more time to develop his ideas.”

“It was a question of block-booking the Record Plant,” notes Mitch. “He was beginning to spend so much time in the studio because we were starting to make some kind of money that we could afford to indulge. Noel wasn’t particularly happy with the amount of time being spent in the studio… someone should have had more overall control… there was far too much wasted time and energy.”

“It was really expensive,” admitted Jimi. “I guess about $60,000, because we was recording and we were on tour at the same time, which is a whole lot of strain, so therefore we have to always go back in again and re-do what we might have done two nights ago, which is a very hard way of recording. It’s very hard jumping from the studio on to the plane, do the gig and then jump right back in the studio. You want to do your best on an LP, you want to play and sing to the best of your natural ability and your natural talents.”

Author Harry Shapiro reports that when the Swedish band Perhaps recorded at the Record Plant in July ‘68 they were “allowed to visit the studio where Jimi was working. There were his guitars and in a case lay a brilliant feather garb, which Indian chiefs wear in old western movies. Apparently Jimi put it on when he wanted to ‘get into the groove’.”

“As the recording process got stretched out into marathon twiddling sessions,” wrote Noel, “an audience grew in the studio, legions of hangers-on who contributed nothing to the music but were there solely for the trip.”

“About the hangers-on,” agrees Mitch, “some of that just got completely out of control, in those days there was no security at the Record Plant. It was OK for one or two nights here and there, but it got out of hand. A stop was put to it by Chas and by Jimi, eventually, but it did take some doing. Bear in mind, here’s a guy, he’d just made it in America, and here he is in New York with all the people that he knew from the past, and there’s that side of Jimi, he didn’t want to be rude to people. And he was reveling in being successful and wanted to show a good time to all his friends as well. But it did get in the way of work at one point. You’ve got to concentrate and you can’t have lots of people hanging around, and he realized that.”

“All I did was just be there and make sure the right songs were there, and the sound was there,” said Jimi, “we wanted a particular sound. It got lost in the cutting room, because we went on tour right before we finished and actually cut it. We were unable to spend time on it. The engineers re-taped the whole original tape before they pressed the record for Britain and so much was lost. Some of the mix came out kind of muddy, not exactly muddy, but kind of bassy. I think it’s cloudy, the sound of it, because we didn’t get a chance to do it complete. We mixed it and produced it and then when it was time for them to press it they screwed up because they didn’t know what we wanted. There’s three-D sound on there that you can’t even appreciate now because they didn’t cut it properly. They thought it was out of phase.”

He’d even had the box of master-reels scrawled on with the warning “Special phase effects on this tape. Do not change phase!”

“A lot of the sound that existed on the American album was lost,” complained Jimi. “Now I’m learning more about this kind of thing so that I can handle it myself. You have to have time. You can’t rush through things.”

April and May of ‘68 were the main months for Electric Ladyland, with a few sessions scattered before and after. While on tour in Vancouver on Sept. 7 Jimi told reporters that his new LP was “completely finished, it’ll be out in about ten days.”

Electric Ladyland entered American charts on Oct. 19 at #179. The following week it jumped from #98 to #9 and earned a Gold Disc for sales in excess of $1 million. A review in Eye described the sound as “spontaneous and brilliant excursions into the farthest regions of contemporary rock ‘n’ roll… combines traditional rock with imaginative extensions of the original form.” In Rolling Stone Jon Landau considered 1968’s other double record sets (by Cream and The Beatles) and wrote “Electric Ladyland was the only two-record set of the year that made it in my book… Hendrix is tops and 1968 was his year.”

By mid-November Ladyland pushed Janis Joplin’s Cheap Thrills from #1 and topped the charts. Ladyland remained listed for the next 37 weeks. The English version was released on Oct. 25 and appeared on the charts for 12 weeks, reaching #5. Disc & Music Echo dubbed it “rock music at its sublimest level… a completely different entity.” For Record Mirror Tony Palmer wrote “Track Records have a major triumph on their hands not only commercially but, more importantly, artistically… a pop work of genius.”

The day after the album was released Melody Maker readers voted Jimi the third most popular musician and The Experience the fourth most popular band. “The Electric Ladyland album was good for the time when we did it,” said Jimi, “but we really got about half of what we want to say in it. It would’ve taken about two more LPs. Now we’re on to other things. Our next LP is going to be exactly the way we want it, or else.”

MCA Records, Inc.

NEW LINER 2022

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE: ELECTRIC LADYLAND

HE SHALL GROW NOT OLD, AS SOME WHO ARE LEFT GROW OLD.

Posterity has taken care of Jimi Hendrix and it is the real man who lives on, and not just the legend, though God knows that is a flaming beacon and a pounding sound and light show of many colours and unmistakable rhythms

Shakespeare and his interpreter Lord Buckley were wrong: now and again, the good jazz that a cat blows wails on long after he’s cut out and it’s the bad that is stashed with his bones. So it has been with Jimi.

As with all great stars, the imagery is immediate, evocative, headily omnipresent and there is always a need to know more. To want to have another look, another listen, is a clarification of stardom. Is it defined too by the power to survive one’s era?

Jimi Hendrix lives on for today’s young on record and in books, posters, memorabilia, film and videotape. Those of us who were there have instant recall of that unmistakable smiling self-invention of the later sixties, somewhat Cherokee, mostly Afro-American, entirely musical, driven by his imagination, a soul-rooted, rock solid, Dylanesque fire-and-feathers, bluesy all-in-all unique guitar pirate who paid his dues in America and got his first rewards in “swinging” London, into which confident colourful city he was flown by the blunt amusing Geordie visionary Chas Chandler, lately of the Animals, by now peripatetic starmaker.

Long distance, Jimi Hendrix told his beloved father, Al of Seattle, who had gardened fit to bust to feed his motherless family: “It’s me, Jimmy. I’m in England, Dad. I met some people and they’re going to make me a big star. I’ve changed my name to J-I-M-I.” Within a few months, with his own divine drive flair and ambition, finding real nutrients in London’s rich “underground” he enabled “them” to “make” him into a star. A star’s star indeed, wearing the best threads that supra-national psychedelic counterculture could conjure from British imperialism, native America and countries far beyond.

He was much painted, postered, photographed, decorated and dressed. He became the embodiment of artistic compulsions; his own and those of contemporaries. He set himself free.

My own powerful memory and outline is of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival when he was hatless and very intense; full of fire and purpose with much at stake. This could be – was to be – his homeland breakthrough. For others, it will be a more relaxed smiling Jimi, daring to cheek and curse an audience delighted to hear it. There is the vision with the hat with the metal rings on it. The many-scarved, through-a-hedge backwards, electrified Dylan-haired Jimi with eyes almost closed either in concentration or on something else or both.

People who go a long way back will remember a short haired boy-man out of the Army, on the road as a sideman with Little Richard, Sam Cooke, King Curtis and the Isley Brothers. There are lucky people who were around Chas Chandler when he found Jimi at the Café Wha? in Greenwich Village where he then lived. Growing his hair and blowing his mind as the constraints of being a sideman had not allowed him.

You have to be lucky, but you have to be good coin to be “found,” picked up, pocketed and polished. You have to be luckier still, no matter how good, not to be misspent or misused. I always felt – am I even more naïve than I know? – that until the last terrible time of confusion and death, Jimi had a good fulfilling life. Absorbing far more as a world figure than any poor boy – but not dirt poor – from Seattle had a reason to expect.

There was an absolute rightness in his timing. Maybe above all in his positioning in the “pop scene,” just as there is with all the mightiest of modern music, be it Armstrong, Ellington, Crosby, or Frank Sinatra. Or the blues men of the ‘20s to ‘50s or Elvis and Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly or the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Byrds and all the flash San Franciscans. The thing with Jimi – as with all of the foregoing – was that he was absolutely his own man. He had such intelligence and sensitivity that he knew what to do and when and where. During the years as obedient back-up guitarist he knew he had more to offer than most. All stars are aware of this specialness – usually as children they know it – and when the right moment beckons, they jump.

He trusted people to help him realize his potential. He picked up on blues and soul and – according to his friend Miles Davis – on hillbilly, yet! And now, as someone in his early twenties when black-based music in England didn’t mind getting whiter, thrown around the mind by hallucinogens and psychotropic drugs. He saw real potential in becoming a brand new one-and-only Jimi Hendrix with both first name and last ambiguous in their spelling and wonderfully commercial in their aural and visual impact.

But above all this imagery, this cat could play. And that, as Mitch Mitchell (a drumming soul mate with an intelligent part in the evolution of the Jimi Hendrix Experience) would say, was what it was all about. That is what it came down to: the music. Many remembered quotations from Jimi bear witness to his intense, mature desire to make music, voice and instruments – take him and his audiences to new places.

(He could have done it in a brown mohair suit but it wouldn’t have been quite as much fun.)

I have written elsewhere – not too often I hope – of having woken one morning in L.A. to find myself a founder of the Monterey Pop Festival, and that Paul McCartney – both fan and a mentor of Jimi – said that he should be booked for the Festival. I remember an American star and friend being very rude to me about Jimi whom he thought had little to offer.

Both attitudes somehow explained how in the zeitgeist Jimi came to leave America at 23 and offer his genius to the British who had always been very appreciative of the best American talent, particularly those from left field.

It was in Britain in 1966-67 that Jimi Hendrix became a “pop star,” irresistible to women – the feeling was mutual – and a hero to men. It was after Monterey that he got to the cutting edge and for some in the late ‘60s he was the cutting edge. Without the musical vision he would now have been a few nice pictures, a bonfire or two and footnotes playing guitar with his teeth, playing it backwards, taking acid and leaving a retrospective CD.

People are so cruel. His early death would have been a quick mind-muddle... “Oh yeah… I remember. Died of drugs.” But as a guitarist he had such respect, freely offered then, since and right now, that he is a crowned jewel of a man, which is why we’re all here today, celebrating Electric Ladyland and much else. Maybe this is some consolation to Al Hendrix who lost such a good son so soon, so badly.

After Jimi’s British success, guitarists queued to praise him. Over the years the tributes mounted. Albert Collins: “He didn’t play nobody else’s stuff… Jimi was original.” Buddy Guy: “One of those guys that was so explosive… Jimi basically played the blues but added to it.” Eric Clapton: “He liked Freddie and B.B. King, Robert Johnson and Buddy Guy. We liked all the same people... it was such a thrill because it was all secondhand for me. It was something I learned from records. This guy had been among them and was one of them.”

After Woodstock, Neil Young said that Jimi was “absolutely the best guitar player that ever lived; there was no one even in the same building as that guy.” Miles Davis said: “He had a natural ear for hearing music… it was great. He influenced me and I influenced him and that’s the way great music is always made. Everybody’s showing somebody else something and then moving on from there… Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away… he was a great blues guitarist.” In the illuminating new film on the making of the groundbreaking Electric Ladyland, Steve Winwood, an artist much admired by Hendrix, makes the key point about Jimi the motivator – that he could establish a mood of camaraderie, in his quiet nice way, by jamming, by playing – the simplest way to do it.

Jimi Hendrix was a great bringer together of people. He made a fine happy unit of the Experience with charming adroit and funny Noel Redding – inspired casting – and brave, reliable Mitch Mitchell. Gered Mankowitz, who took splendid pictures of him, says today, “He was charming, unassuming and funny, and often laughing, his face lighting up: a happy person, pleasant and accommodating. Many will testify to his liking/love of people. He really dug hangers-on. (“his hangers on” says a friend in the film).

Rock music (as it was becoming, the best was “pop” no longer) was surpassingly segregated then sometimes by lax custom, sometimes because of outright prejudice and Jimi’s eclecticism did a lot to change that mode. When he went back a hero to the U.S., there were unprecedented white audiences. He would make New York his base until his death in 1970

I spent an evening with him there, in a club, not many people. I wish I could remember more. Only the vibes remain, man, only the vibes. But what vibes! And what a man.

– Derek Taylor

COVER

Hendrix had written to Reprise describing what he wanted for the cover art, but was mostly ignored. He expressly asked for a color photo by Linda Eastman of the group sitting with children on a sculpture from Alice in Wonderland in Central Park, and drew a picture of it for reference. The company instead used a blurred red and yellow photo of his head, taken by Karl Ferris.

Track Records used its art department, which produced a cover image by photographer David Montgomery, who also shot the inside cover portrait of Hendrix, depicting nineteen nude women lounging in front of a black background. Hendrix expressed displeasure and embarrassment with this "naked lady" cover, much as he was displeased with the Axis: Bold As Love cover which he found disrespectful.

ORIGINAL BEAT INSTRUMENTAL UK REVIEW, DECEMBER 1968

In Billboard magazine, they called this Electric Landlady, which could be a better description or what's in the record. Jimi produced the double album himself, and it's presumably as near as he can get to a musical demonstration of himself. It 's all been said before about Jimi . Of course, his guitar is wonderful , of course he's full of imagination, of course Noel and Mitch are one hundred percent behind him, of course this is a chart and artistic success. And let us not forget the cover with all those lovely ladies there upon . Saturday night at the bath house and a fine record.

ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW

Being a bit fed up with music as "reactive noise" ("God man, the world's a drag, let's play loud and drown it out"), I was sort of set not to dig this LP, but I had to. Hendrix is a good musician and his science fiction concepts surmount noise. There isn't really a concept (no Sgt. Pepper trips here)—instead there's a unity, an energy flow. The LP opens with an electronic track using tape loops and phasing (think of "Itchy Coo Park" by the Small Faces for an example of phasing) called "And the Gods Made Love." Hendrix said in an interview, "We knew this was the track that most people will jump on to criticize, so I put it first to get it over with."

The "I" in that sentence is true—Hendrix produced and directed these sides himself. Following is "Electric Ladyland," a fairytale trip that serves as introduction to the rest on the LP; "I want to show you the angels spread their wings." Next is "Crosstown Traffic," a stomp under with a heavy beat. "90 miles an hour is the speed I drive, girl," sings Hendrix as he compares the woman with a traffic jam—"It's so hard to get through you."

Then a live cut, which sounds as though it was recorded late at night in a small club, at one of the jamming sessions Hendrix is known for. It features Stevie Winwood on organ and Jack Casady on bass, and is called "Voodoo Chile." It begins with a very John Lee Hooker-like guitar intro, and keeps a blues feeling all the way through, although Hendrix's lyrics ("My arrows are made of desire/From as far away as Jupiter's sulphur mines") are a far cry from "Rolling Stone" (the Muddy Waters song that's an ancestor to this track, as well as a lot of other things). After some feedback screech, a listener says "Turn that damn guitar down!" and the track ends with Hendrix and a chick discovering that the bar in the club is closed. "The bar is closed?" she says unbelievingly.

But yes it is. Side B opens with a song by bassist Noel Redding, "Little Miss Strange," probably the most commercial of the numbers included. Basically hard rock, the best thing about it is some nice unison guitar lines, probably an overdub, unless Hendrix has grown another couple of arms. "Long Hot Summer Night" is next, a song set in the "Visions Of Johanna" scene, although Hendrix has a way out—"my baby's coming to rescue me—." An Earl King number, "Come On," follows. Mostly rock/soul, the guitar break in the middle is one of the nicest things Hendrix has done.

"Gypsy Eyes" begins with a drum thumping, a simple bass line and a compelling guitar line, it's a light groovy tune that really sticks to your synapses. (If it was possible to hum or whistle Hendrix, this would be the tune you'd most likely do.)

The side ends with "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," which was Hendrix's last single in England, released a year ago this summer. It's a freaky ballad, with particularly nothing lyrics and on the whole a drag ... it goes nowhere. Side C is the sea or water side. It opens with "Rainy Day, Dream Away," using a small group that includes Buddy Miles from the Flag on drums. In it Hendrix does a lot to restore the grooviness of rainy days, previously much maligned in many songs.

This fades to "1983: A Merman I Should Be" (a merman is a mermaid's mate, of course). Hendrix's vision of the future shows a world torn by war, on the verge of destruction as he and his lady go for a walk by the sea, and dream of living in the water. With tape loops, melancholy guitar and the flute of Chris Wood (also from Traffic) Hendrix structures a beautiful undersea mood — only to destroy it with some heavy handed guitar. My first reaction was, why did he have to do that? Then I thought that he created a beautiful thing, but lost faith it , and so destroyed it before anybody else could—in several ways, a bummer.

Another electronic track, "Moon Turn the Tides Gently Gently Away," heals some of the rent in your head, and the side ends peacefully. Side D opens with a continuation of "Still Raining, Still Dreaming," only heavier and funkier—maybe just a bit too much so (iron raindrops hurt, man.) "House Burning Down" could be taken as Hendrix's first socially conscious statement, but it ends in typical Hendrix fashion; "an eerie man from space ... come down and take the dead away."

Then comes the new single, Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower"—in many ways one of the most interesting cuts here. On Hendrix's original numbers, it's sometimes hard to see the structure at first; the rhythm starts and stops, the changes are a bit hard to follow sometimes. But here, if you listen to the rhythm guitar track, and keep the original song in your mind, you can see the way Hendrix overlays his beautifully freaky sound on the already established framework of the song. He is true to its mood and really illustrates the line "the wind began to howl." Last is "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," done this time with his usual backup men in a studio cut, heavier and more driving.

In other words, an extended look into Hendrix's head, and mostly it seems to have some pretty good things in it (who among us is totally free of mental garbage?) A few random thoughts to sum up; Hendrix is the Robert Johnson of the Sixties, and really the first cat to ever totally play electric guitar. Remember, he used the wah-wah pedal before "Brave Ulysses," and he's still the boss. And it's nice to see that he is confident enough so he can play some blues again—I'd like to hear more.

Hendrix, psychedelic superspade??? Or just a damn good musician/producer? Depends on whether you want to believe the image or your ears. (And if you wanna flow, dig this on earphones, and watch the guitar swoop back and forth through your head.) Hendrix is amazing, and I hope he gets to the moon first. If he keeps up the way he's going here, he will.

~ Tony Glover (November 9, 1968)