“I’d like him to help me”: the musician Jimi Hendrix thought he could never match
Most things move forward, but over half a century on from his death, Jimi Hendrix remains unmatched. While there are no doubt seven-year-olds on YouTube who can rival his technical proficiency, that was only ever half of his magic. He was able to channel the zeitgeist and everything else that was hip and happening into his stunningly unique playing.
As Steve Vai told Far Out of his finest performance, “Although learning to play a Jimi Hendrix song for most contemporary guitarists may not pose a tremendous challenge, playing them just like Jimi has never quite been achieved. His touch on the instrument, sense of groove, choice of notes and overall ability to control audio chaos in innovative ways was remarkable.“
Vai, who is himself a master of the instrument, continues: “One such piece of guitar divinity he has performed is ‘Machine Gun’ with The Band of Gypsy’s live at the Fillmore on New Year’s Eve. For me, this is perhaps the most inspired rock guitar performance of all time. Every note is imbued with his unique musical DNA and never drops character. For this entire performance, he is deeply connected to the creative impulse of the Universe, and it manifests through him uniquely and powerfully. There is not one note that is authentically copyable as every phrase flows from his otherworldly connection.”
That sense of prowess comes from pouring his soul into his music, and there was one star he always took inspiration from on this front. Hendrix would go into a delirious blur when he was playing, barely able to recall the whys and wherefores when reality reclaimed him from the higher realm he had reached on stage, and Bob Dylan was much the same when he was writing his songs.
Dylan would rattle off masterful lyrics in 15 minutes in the back of a cab, as was the case with ‘Desolation Row’, and Hendrix claims that such inspiration is a feat he couldn’t compete with. “All those people who don’t like Bob Dylan’s songs should read his lyrics. They are filled with the joys and sadness of life. I am as Dylan, none of us can sing normally,” the guitarist proclaimed.
“Sometimes, I play Dylan’s songs and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them,” he continues. “I have the feeling that ‘Watchtower’ is a song I could have come up with, but I’m sure I would never have finished it. Thinking about Dylan, I often consider that I’d never be able to write the words he manages to come up with, but I’d like him to help me, because I have loads of songs I can’t finish. I just lay a few words on the paper, and I just can’t go forward. But now things are getting better, I’m a bit more self-confident.”
While the prospect of Dylan penning songs for Hendrix is a gloriously tantalising and tragically unrealised possibility, at least the magnificent ‘All Along the Watchtower’ gave us a snippet of how they might’ve sounded. And on this occasion, the original vagabond was equally full of praise for his guitar-playing peer.
The result of Hendrix honouring his hero is a masterpiece that Dylan even preferred to his own, and he amended the structure of his initial track for later live performances to be more like Hendrix’s, explaining: “I liked Jimi Hendrix’s record of this and ever since he died I’ve been doing it that way,” adding: “Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.”
Such was his love of the ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ star, that’s a tribute Hendrix would’ve barely been able to get his head around.
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