The artist who was too drunk to work with Jimi Hendrix: “He valiantly tried for a couple of takes”
The music of Jimi Hendrix never seemed to be truly from this world.
As much as he liked the idea of making bold new creative inventions that no one had ever heard before, there was always that one extra factor that made every one of his songs sound like they were being beamed in from outer space. It takes a lot for anyone’s music to harness that kind of creative energy, and not even the biggest stars in the world could manage to come anywhere close to him and his classics.
Then again, The Jimi Hendrix Experience was always a band for a reason. Although Hendrix was one of the finest guitarists to ever walk the Earth, getting a drummer like Mitch Mitchell behind the kit was one of the biggest strokes of genius to come out of the music industry. Even if Hendrix and Noel Redding also worked well playing off each other, everyone was determined to first cater to what the guitar-slinging madman was doing behind the fretboard.
There are still a handful of tricks Hendrix had up his sleeve that even the most seasoned guitarists have a hard time trying to figure out. A lot of the most insane runs in the history of the instrument have come out of his guitar, but whereas it would take most of us days to figure out what the hell is going on in any one of his solo tunes, the fact that he looks so at ease while doing it is an even further indication of his genius.
He could play this fantastic music as if it were coming right off the top of his head, but when he entered the studio, he was a different animal. He wanted to make sure that everything he wrote could be built from the ground up, and when working on Electric Ladyland, he had found the balance between him trying to capture the live sound of the band and playing around with the same studio tricks people like The Beatles were doing.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t find time to have some fun as well. The idea of using a kazoo as one of the main features of ‘Crosstown Traffic’ was always going to be a strange choice, but the fact that it works so well is him knowing the right instrument for any occasion. The record did have everything and the kitchen sink thrown into it, but it turned out one of Hendrix’s good friends was too wasted to even perform on it.
Although Brian Jones was a fantastic guitarist and was planning on moving on to a new chapter in his life after The Rolling Stones, his performance on ‘All Along the Watchtower’ got thrown away after sounding too chemically enhanced, with producer Eddie Kramer saying, “None other than Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones stumbled by the session, decided to help out and play some piano. I think he valiantly tried for a couple of takes, but it was abandoned, and they went back to cutting the basic track without him.”
While that could have easily been a slap in the face to one of the most in-demand guitarists, it’s not like Hendrix was trying to put him down. There might very well be a mix somewhere in the vaults of Jones and Hendrix jamming together, but the guitar wizard knew that the best way for him to work was to be faithful to what suited the song, and if that meant wiping off a fellow rock legend, that was what needed to happen.
Hendrix and Jones might not have been long for this world after that recording session, but the fact that it managed to happen at all is already enough to get people talking. And for all of the conspiratorial whispering over those who joined the ‘27 Club’, there’s a good chance that Hendrix and Jones are jamming away in the afterlife.
