When Eric Clapton covered Jimi Hendrix song ‘Little Wing’
Although Jimi Hendrix penned many iconic tracks in his time, one of the most cherished is the mellow ‘Little Wing’. An embodiment of the ice-cool that the Seattle native invariably espoused in everyday life, it is so coveted as it is one of the most outstanding examples of the emotion that fuelled his guitar-playing and just how effective he was when he turned it down.
A necessary foil to the rip-roaring heights of tracks such as ‘Voodoo Chile’ and ‘Purple Haze’, the song is an undoubted masterpiece, augmenting R&B for the modern audience. Noted for its slow tempo, studio effects and use of the glockenspiel, it is arguable that no other Hendrix piece strikes right at the heart as his work here, being one of the most concise works he ever recorded.
It is said that the ‘Little Wing’ can trace its origins back to the 1966 recording session of ‘(My Girl) She’s a Fox’. The guitar hero then developed the song when cutting his teeth playing the clubs in New York’s Greenwich Village before the fateful moment he met Chas Chandler, the man who made him.
It was eventually completed in October 1967 when The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded it as part of their second album, Axis: Bold as Love. In what seemed like an instant after the record dropped, it became hailed as one of the finest Hendrix had recorded, setting a precedent for all laid-back R&B numbers in the future and inspiring the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Rory Gallagher.
Per Hendrix’s own account, although the song started as an idea that came to him when he was performing in New York as Jimmy James, he was inspired to finish the piece during The Experience’s legendary set at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival.
He recalled: “I got the idea like, when we were in Monterey and I was just looking at everything around. So I figured that I take everything I see around and put it maybe in the form of a girl maybe, somethin’ like that, you know, and call it ‘Little Wing’, and then it will just fly away. Everybody’s really flyin’ and they’re really in a nice mood, like the police and everybody was really, really great out there. So I just took all these things and put them in one very, very small little matchbox, you know, into a girl and then do it. It was very simple, but I like it though.”
The song is so powerful that it has been covered by a host of greats, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, with one of the best renditions coming from one of Hendrix’s most eminent contemporaries and psychedelic brothers, Eric Clapton.
Clapton has performed ‘Little Wing’ on many occasions across his career, and famously, this trend started when he was fronting the short-lived Derek and the Dominos back in 1970.
The English guitarist explained his love for the song in the 2010 book Clapton, Beck, Page: “I found that his lyricism when he was writing ballads, like ‘Wind Cries Mary’ or ‘Little Wing,’ was so different, in a way, that it was powerfully attractive to me. (It was) much more structured than some of his other things, and more melodic, too. (‘Little Wing’) stands up so well that anyone could do it.”
With the late southern rock pioneer Duane Allman on the second guitar, Derek and the Dominos recorded their version of ‘Little Wing’ shortly before Hendrix’s death on September 18th, 1970, and it eventually made it onto their only album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. It has subsequently been noted that Clapton intended it to be a tribute to a living legend, however, following Hendrix’s untimely death, the cover held a much different, more profound meaning, confirming it as the ultimate rendition to many.
After Derek and the Dominos split in 1971, Clapton continued to keep the song in his repertoire, and his performances of it can be found on live albums ranging from 1973’s Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert to 2009’s Live from Madison Square Garden.
