How Jimi Hendrix changed music forever with $40
Jimi Hendrix was only a mainstream artist for four years. Take a moment and let the statement sink in. The man who is still called one of the best and most revolutionary guitarists of all time decades after initially picking up a six-string was only in the public eye for four years. The magnitude of Hendrix truly knows no bounds, and very few people could come close to matching what he did.
I’ve always been against the majority of posthumous albums. Granted, if somebody was working on a record just before they died, then it’s a good idea to release it, as that’s what they would have wanted. However, when records are put together using incoherent snippets, and the final product is nothing like what the artists themselves would have produced, it’s always felt a bit gross to listen to them.
Hendrix is one of my only exceptions to this rule. Since the guitarist’s passing, a number of Jimi Hendrix albums have been released, and while listening to them might go against my ethos for other artists, the nature of these records makes them slightly more palatable than most other posthumous records.
The albums that have been released are jam sessions between recording albums and live records. While many artists might not want this work to be released, Hendrix’s musical spontaneity is one of the things that sets him apart from other artists. He didn’t just play his songs; his songs provided a loose backdrop for his sets, which he danced around freely.
His ability to take to the stage, play improvised sets and eccentric solos, and genuinely leave the audience in suspense about what would happen next is what separated him from many other artists. Subsequently, listening to albums that capture that element of his music, even if they were released after his passing, feels like a justifiable way to consume his music.
It wasn’t enough for Hendrix to just play shows this way and be considered one of the best musicians in the world, though. He found it hard to find the right platform at first, as while what he was doing was impressive, it wasn’t seen as something marketable. It wasn’t until The Animals bassist Chas Chandler saw Hendrix perform that someone in the industry recognised his true potential, and his advice to Hendrix changed his life and music: Go to London.
$40. That was the price of Hendrix’s plane ticket to the Big Smoke, which he had to borrow from a friend. This got him across the pond and led to him starting to play in the thriving London scene. It was here that people started really talking about Jimi Hendrix, and once that word spread, his career skyrocketed.
“I was embarrassed because I thought, ‘God, that should be me up there’,” said Jeff Beck when reflecting on one of Hendrix’s earliest shows in London. People were utterly mesmerised by Hendrix the moment he started playing, and word soon spread about the wonder kind from overseas who you just had to watch. “I just hadn’t the guts to come out and do it so flamboyantly, really,” said Beck, “He just looked like an animal, played like an animal, and everybody went crazy.”
People were starting to recognise just how important the lead guitarist was going to be in rock ‘n’ roll, but Hendrix cemented that idea. The guitar and music as a whole completely changed the moment he became mainstream, and it wouldn’t have happened without $40 and a flight to London. Who knows what might have happened if his friend hadn’t lent him the money? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
