Could Jimi Hendrix read music?
Is there anything that Jimi Hendrix couldn’t do? Based on his unique guitar-playing ability, word spread about how everyone needed to listen to him and almost overnight, he had taken the music world by storm. He was a viral sensation before the days of the internet and helped shape the way rock music continued to be made.
When he first moved to London, legends at the forefront of rock music were desperate to see him in the flesh, and Hendrix developed the ability to pack a room with only a couple of days’ notice.
Ask any lover of guitars and rock music, and they will likely reel him off as an influence before you can even ask them who they listen to. His ability to create controlled chaos with solos, chord progressions and feedback was inspired. Tracks like ‘Foxey Lady’, ‘Voodoo Child’, and ‘Purple Haze’ shaped how the guitar could be played and are milestones for anybody looking to learn. Pair that with the soulfulness of ‘Bold as Love’, ‘Little Wing’ and ‘Hey Joe’ and you have one heck of a guitarist.
Given how much of an influence he was, it’s surprising to hear that Jimi Hendrix could not read music. He was asked in 1969 whether or not he was able to read music, to which he said, “No, not at all.”
Though unexpected, it’s not unheard of, quite the opposite. Many rock legends cannot read music as it isn’t necessary when it comes to playing. It’s a genre based on energy, and when you break the majority of rock and roll bangers down to their fundamentals, they aren’t that complicated.
They are made up of a few chords and a good rhythm; the complexity comes in largely improvised solos, especially in the case of Hendrix, who liked to play around with the pentatonic scale. So long as he had that committed to memory, he could make the kind of music everyone loved.
It wasn’t just Hendrix either; many different rock legends were unable to officially read music. Some more surprising than others, but all of which prove that it is simply not necessary to have the ability to read music when it comes to playing rock. The main things that various rock guitarists need to know are basic chords and then standard guitar scales. These include the major scale, major blues scale, major pentatonic scale, and minor scales. A large amount of the genre is built around improvisation and variations on these.
Rock musicians who could not read music:
- Jimi Hendrix
- Paul McCartney
- Hans Zimmer
- Irving Berlin
- Elvis Presley
- Eric Clapton
- Prince
- Eddie Van Halen
- Michael Jackson
- Bob Dylan
- Slash
