The songwriter Jimi Hendrix compared to heaven: “I think I’ll record her”
Most of Jimi Hendrix’s best songs feel like some divine musical god crafted them. While Hendrix never claimed to be the greatest guitarist in the world, his fluidity when playing was enough to make every one of his contemporaries gawk in amazement at what he was doing, to the point where he genuinely seemed like some strange musical spirit. But for all of his flashiness, Hendrix knew that there were more people out there who could tap into those divine harmonies when they wanted to.
Because when you think about it, Hendrix wasn’t doing anything that other guitarists hadn’t tried before him. He certainly blended R&B and blues together in a way no one had seen before, but whereas the riffs may have been slightly familiar, no one was ever going to perform them as he could. He spoke the same language as everyone else, but he used a different tone every single time he performed.
Take his version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ from Electric Ladyland. Anyone even remotely thinking of covering Bob Dylan had to have a good idea behind them, and while Hendrix wasn’t trying to ape Dylan’s acoustic original, his guitar skills helped contextualise the song for the Love generation, almost like he was trying to pull genuine emotion out of his instrument right after he talks about the wind beginning to howl.
It might have been strange to see Hendrix thinking about music in terms of singer-songwriters, but neither form was mutually exclusive to him. A great folk tune could mean as much as a dirty blues jam or a rock and roll song, and when it came to painting pictures with sound, Joni Mitchell had been doing for the singer-songwriter genre what Hendrix had done for the world of guitar.
Outside of inventing new tunings that made people figure out the limits of the guitar, Mitchell was looking to deconstruct how most people thought about the traditional rock and roll love song. She had far more depth to her work than the typical puppy love song, and listening to albums like Blue and The Hissing of Summer Lawns, she was ready to break down barriers even after Hendrix shuffled off this mortal coil.
It’s not like Hendrix didn’t see the power the Canadian songwriter wielded at the time, though, writing, “Talked with Joni Mitchell on the phone. I think I’ll record her tonight with my excellent tape recorder (knock on wood)…hmmm… can’t find any wood… everything’s plastic. [She’s a] fantastic girl with heaven words.”
And given her penchant for phenomenal stories, those heavenly words have been helping other songwriters for generations. Although not every one of her songs was meant to be taken seriously, hearing tracks like ‘Woodstock’ and ‘California’ gives people both a snapshot in time and also a gripping story about one woman’s life, whether it’s preparing to see her name in bright lights off of Sunset Boulevard or trying to document the very festival that Hendrix turned into a religious experience in Rochester, New York.
Although Mitchell always had the same level of respect for Hendrix, it was understood that both of them were approaching music in similar ways but through different means. Mitchell had a great knowledge of music theory and the way in which words are used, and Hendrix had the kind of technical prowess that most guitars would kill for, but the most important part of their music was what they did to your heart as well as your mind.
