‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’: The song that saw Jimi Hendrix bumped for Jimmy Page
If you asked many music lovers, particularly those who enjoy rock, if they could revisit a particular moment in music, many would ask for the first time that crowds got to experience the music of Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix was unlike anything that people had seen before, not only in what he could play but also in how he played; as people were subject to guitar excellence and flamboyancy, few left his gigs feeling anything less than overwhelmed.
He was only a mainstream artist for around four years, but in that time, he managed to completely take the world by storm. Though his approach to music as a whole led to his success, there is no denying that Hendrix’s guitar-playing ability stood out the most, as people today still refer to him as the greatest guitarist to ever live.
His skill was so objective that he wasn’t a genius who was recognised after his time; he was undeniable. The moment those fingers hit the fret and guitar pick connected with strings, the sounds that came out were some of the most exciting that rock music fans were privy to. When you have a man with so much talent, it’s hardly comprehensible that his guitar-playing talents would be sidelined for another, but that’s precisely what happened… sort of.
For non-guitar players out there, it’s worth knowing that the power chord is at the forefront of most rock songs. This chord uses just three notes instead of the four, five or six that you hear in other genres of music. The power chord is important because it works better with distortion and gives the song a more… ahem… powerful feel.
Many early rock guitarists pioneered the power chord, including Jimi Hendrix. When you hear the aggressive progression on a track like ‘Purple Haze’, that’s all power chords, and it’s a sound that people soon became addicted to. One of these people was Donovan, who was keen on using power chords in his song ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’. As a fan of the sound of the chord, he was subsequently a fan of Hendrix, so he asked for his help with it, but the guitarist wasn’t available.
As a result of the scheduling conflict, Donovan opted instead to use another up-and-coming guitarist on the track: Jimmy Page. He and John Paul Jones both worked on the song together, providing guitar and bass for Donovan. Though it would have been interesting to hear Hendrix on the song, having Page and Jones work in a studio together gave them good practice for when they would eventually start making material with Led Zeppelin. Inadvertently, this session contributed a great deal to the rest of rock history.
“I was developing a story-telling thing, and I wanted power-chords because I’d obviously heard Dave Davies [of The Kinks] and [Jimi] Hendrix, and knew Pete Townshend,” said Donovan, “Originally, I wanted to give ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ to Hendrix, but he couldn’t come in. So [producer] Mickie Most suggested Jimmy.”
It makes sense that Jimmy Page was available, as he had done a lot of session work for other musicians in the past, in fact, it was his primary source of income for a while. Donovan might have been disappointed that he couldn’t work with Hendrix, but he was actually lucky he managed to catch a session with Page when he did, as he was on the verge of releasing music with Led Zeppelin, which would see him and his fellow band members projected into the stratosphere of rock greats.
The song ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’, though it may not be considered a peak moment in rock, represented a time when the genre was learning to walk and those who would help it run were on the precipice or breaking the mould. The power chord in all its glory, not played by the man who pioneered it, but by someone who would champion it.
