The five songwriters that Jimi Hendrix worshipped
When people talk about Jimi Hendrix, they often start by declaring that he’s one of the greatest musicians to ever walk the earth, which is a fair enough assessment.
He both constantly pushed boundaries and changed the way that people saw music, and he was also a lover of the medium, as he would also go to gigs and have his mind blown by different artists and songwriters. You can only give as much to music as someone like Hendrix if you adore the art form, and he made it no secret that he did.
He was also never shy about giving the artists he admired their flowers. He would talk about them as if they were otherworldly, and would frequently cover the songs of people whom he believed were the best of the best. If you ever want to truly understand what music made a genius like Hendrix tick, you don’t need to look far, as he wasn’t one for secrets.
However, out of all the different artists he loved, these are the five with whom his adoration bordered on worship.
Five musicians Jimi Hendrix absolutely worshipped:
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan may well be one of the most prolific songwriters of all time, and the majority of those who work in music know it; Jimi Hendrix was no different. While many of us know him as a guitarist, he was also deeply interested in poetry and put a lot of effort into his lyrics, and one of his favourite wordsmiths was none other than Dylan himself, as he took a lot from the folk-cum-rock star throughout his life.
Hendrix was such a big fan that he covered a great deal of Dylan songs during his career, and said he felt that he and Dylan were of the same mind. “I am as Dylan,” he said, “None of us can sing normally. Sometimes, I play Dylan’s songs, and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them. I have the feeling that ‘[All Along the] Watchtower’ is a song I could have come up with, but I’m sure I would never have finished it.”
Ray and Dave Davies
When we look back on some of the most important moments in rock music, there’s no escaping that the A chord which The Kinks play at the start of ‘You Really Got Me’ was one of the most prominent A chords in all of rock. It truly inhabited the spirit of the genre, as it had a little bit of fuzz and was played with real angst. This one chord set the blueprint for rock, so unsurprisingly, it was something that Jimi Hendrix was a big fan of.
Dave Davies recalled meeting Hendrix and him saying how much of a big fan he was of the song. “I remember once sitting next to [Jimi] on a plane bound for Stockholm,” he said, “After a while, we got talking a little, and he suddenly said to me: ‘Y’know, that guitar riff you did on ‘You Really Got Me’ was a real landmark’. You can imagine how I felt. To be endorsed by Hendrix was really something. It was a great compliment.”
Eric Clapton
One of the first guitarists that Hendrix played on stage with in the UK was Eric Clapton. The two jammed together, and Eric Clapton found himself completely in awe of the guitarist. The feeling was completely reciprocated, as Hendrix would spend a great deal of his career singing the praises of Clapton and making it known how much he was inspired by the musician.
It wasn’t just the innovative guitar style of Clapton that he was drawn to, but the entire band of Cream. This trio were pushing the boundaries of rock music in the late ‘60s, and it turned the heads of artists like Hendrix who were always on the lookout for the next big thing. He loved them so much that during a live performance for the BBC, he stopped playing one of his own songs and instead opted to cover ‘Sunshine of Your Love’.
“We’d like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to Cream, regardless of what kind of group they may be in,” he said, “We dedicate this to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce.”
Paul McCartney
One night in London, just a couple of days after The Beatles had released their album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Paul McCartney went out to watch Jimi Hendrix play. To his surprise, the guitarist opened his set with a cover of the new record’s title track, just a couple of days after it was put out into the world. This is one example in many when Hendrix made it pretty clear that Paul McCartney was a songwriter that he adored.
“Oh, yes, I think it’s good,” explained Hendrix when talking about the band, “They’re one group that you can’t really put down because they’re just too much. And it’s so embarrassing, man, when America is sending over The Monkees. Oh, God, that kills me!”
Robert Fripp
King Crimson are one of those bands which people recognise as incredibly ahead of their time. The music they were putting out towards the end of the ‘60s still sounds futuristic in the modern age, so it’s of little surprise that Hendrix was jumping for joy when he first heard the band perform live. According to Patricia Fripp, she was in the crowd with him when the band was playing, and he could hardly contain his excitement. “He was jumping up and down,” she said, “shouting, ‘THIS IS THE BEST GROUP IN THE WORLD!’”
The story goes that after the show, in a bid to show his appreciation for the band, Hendrix went over to Fripp and the two reached out to shake hands. Before they could, the guitarist stopped him and said, “Shake my left-hand man; it’s closer to my heart”. Fripp has always been upfront about how much Hendrix’s endorsement meant to him. “In all due modesty,” he confessed, “That is one of the best calling cards any working musician is ever likely to be able to present”.
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