Jeff Beck and the only “bad stuff” that Jimi Hendrix ever did
Ever since he first emerged in the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix was cited as a one-of-a-kind guitarist and offered a playing style that hadn’t been demonstrated by anyone else before him. While his career was cut tragically short, he’s still regarded as such today, with very few having been able to emulate his ability on the six-string successfully, and many players of a rock and blues persuasion today idolise him as a totemic figure who changed the world of guitar-oriented music.
Alongside Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, he formed his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, in 1966, and quickly began to gain notoriety for his electrifying ability on the fretboard. His playing style was freakish, noisy, but in its completely freewheeling nature, it sounded completely limitless. There was no questioning that Hendrix was a prodigy when it came to playing, but just as remarkable was his ability to write songs.
The band’s self-titled debut album, released in 1967, is virtually flawless, and the third album, Electric Ladyland, while released less than two years later, was an even more astounding record. There were hits spread across these two albums, with tracks such as ‘Hey Joe’ and ‘Purple Haze’ gracing the former and ‘Crosstown Traffic’ and his Bob Dylan cover, ‘All Along The Watchtower’ being among the highlights on the latter, but in the midst of all of these raucous singles were striking feats of godlike guitar playing.
Even the album that is sandwiched between these two releases, Axis: Bold As Love, is an astounding record, and while it doesn’t get as much recognition from fans and critics as being on the same level of greatness as his other two studio albums, it’s still a resounding achievement and worthy of gushing praise. There are virtually no misses in the main album discography of Jimi Hendrix, and if we were to judge his career solely on this trio of releases, then there would be little to complain about.
However, one other notable titan of rock guitar believed that there were a number of missteps in Hendrix’s career that often get brushed under the carpet, and in between albums, there was an immense pressure placed on the Seattleite to continue performing at the highest level, which at times was insurmountable. Speaking about the patchiness of his live recordings, Jeff Beck noted that not everything Hendrix touched turned to gold, and there are a number of howlers in his repertoire that are best left forgotten about.
While Beck is by no means a critic of Hendrix’s, he had enough status about him to nitpick over the slightest errors in the work of his peers. “There was also some bad stuff that he did,” Beck once claimed about his contemporary. “That ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ on the Isle of Wight album, that business where I think his mind was gone a bit because of the intense pressure on him. That shook me. I said to myself, ‘Jimi, c’mon, go back into the studio and start some new stuff,’ because playing live to people expecting miracles every night was just too much for him, really.”
It’s difficult to predict whether these bouts of succumbing to intense pressure would have had a longterm effect on Hendrix’s output had he not passed away at such a young age, but Beck wasn’t wrong when he identified there being some faults in his performances that were caused by the immense weight placed on his shoulders. However, the legacy that he left behind with his studio releases, and some of the more impeccable live releases, has done little to tarnish his status as one of the greatest guitarists to have ever lived, even if he didn’t have long to prove himself on this earth.
