How Jimi Hendrix “made the guitar sound like it was on fire”
Electric Ladyland was the third and final album from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the only one with production credited entirely to Hendrix. It was the band’s most commercially successful release; its creation charged with an electricity that made it a revolutionary rock record, spawning a best-selling single out of ‘All Along the Watchtower’.
With a sound so frenetic it verged on explosive, the material resulted from various approaches in the studio, depending on who you asked. While Hendrix was infamous for spontaneous jams, it was actually his searing perfectionism and attention to detail that led to its unique tone.
Despite his position as an unconventional countercultural icon, Hendrix was methodical when it came to album production, which was somewhat at odds with his desire to indulge in the psychedelic excesses that his position afforded him.
While working on Electric Ladyland, bassist Noel Redding said the studio was always teeming with people, so much “you couldn’t move”, which made the entire thing seem like “a party, not a session”. Redding, who formed Fat Mattress outside of the band in the mid-1960s, found it increasingly difficult to balance the hectic recording with his own commitments, so Hendrix filled in on some bass elements.
The fact he could fill in where Redding’s touch was needed while entertaining his many studio guests speaks to Hendrix’s talent. “You have to go on and be crazy,” he once said of his erratic playing. “Craziness is like heaven”. He took that approach to the recording of ‘House Burning Down’, a “spur of the moment” recording as many of his songs were.
“On some records, you hear all this clash and bang and fanciness, but all we’re doing is laying down the guitar tracks – then we add echo here and there, but we’re not adding false electronic things,” he said. “We use the same thing anyone else would, but we use it with imagination and common sense. Like on ‘House Burning Down’, we made the guitar sound like it was on fire. It’s constantly changing dimensions, and up on top, that lead guitar is cutting through everything.”
What appeared effortless was actually down to his incredible perfectionism, which was coupled with a slight insecurity about the quality of his voice when the sessions started. He and drummer Mitch Mitchell recorded ‘Gypsy Eyes’ over 50 takes, spread across three sessions as everyone in the studio no doubt got increasingly frustrated with Hendrix’s demand for flawless takes. But his efforts paid off. Although there’s some doubt over if, as he insisted was the case on all his other songs, ‘House Burning Down’ happened “spur of the moment”, he gave it so much sonic depth, it didn’t matter if the fire was slow burning.
