The unreleased projects Jimi Hendrix took to the grave
When Jimi Hendrix was just a young whippersnapper in the US Army, Sgt Louis Hoekstra recommended that he be discharged by virtue of chronic distraction. He wrote: “Pvt Hendrix plays a musical instrument during his off-duty hours, or so he says. This is one of his faults because his mind apparently cannot function while performing duties and thinking about his guitar.” For Pvt Hendrix, it was the six-string or bust.
And for a strangely long time, ‘bust’ seemed like the inevitable fate for the greatest guitar player there ever was. Even his first-ever gig, way back on February 20th, 1959, when the prodigy was only 17 years old, somehow ended with him swagging with such virtuosity that he got canned mid-show by bandmates unable to keep up. For years, he struggled to make it thereafter.
Things finally changed for Hendrix when he met Chas Chandler at the Cafe Wha on July 5th, 1966. It was this moment that would send both men into the stratosphere. In truth, the world has Linda Keith, a fashion model, to thank for the introduction. It was Keith who managed to convince the Animals bassist to head on down to Greenwich Village to catch a glimpse of the new guitarist everyone was talking about.
“It was so clear to me,” Keith told The Guardian about her first experience of Jimi Hendrix. “I couldn’t believe nobody had picked up on him before because he’d obviously been around. He was astonishing – the moods he could bring to music, his charisma, his skill and stage presence. Yet nobody was leaping about with excitement. I couldn’t believe it.”
Sadly, it was only four years on from this fateful night that Hendrix would die. With such a brief window open to create music and art, Hendrix tragically wasn’t able to bring many of his frenzied ideas to life. We’ve collated some of the most damning losses below.
Jimi Hendrix’s unreleased projects:
Frank Zappa
While Hendrix had a love of the Baroque composer George Frideric Handel – and even lived in his former London home – a classical approach to guitar playing was a point of contrast between him and Zappa. This gave the latter axeman a clever idea. “I had written in articles at that time,” Zappa once said in an interview, “that I thought what should be done, seeing that he wasn’t musically literate and he couldn’t write it down himself, that he be put in some sort of working relationship with someone who could write his ideas and have them scored for instruments other than the electrical guitar.”
He continued: “I think that would’ve been something worthwhile to do, but no, he was too busy doing other things to sit down and take that approach.” Sadly, as Zappa hinted, Hendrix passed away before the orchestral utopia could ever come to fruition. As Zappa bluntly put it: “I knew Jimi, and I think the best thing you could say about Jimi was: there was a person who shouldn’t use drugs.”
Jimi Hendrix supergroups
Miles Davis and Paul McCartney:
The first musical threesome he had his eyes on was a collaboration with Miles Davis and Paul McCartney. Davis was the jazzman who turned the genre towards rock, and McCartney was always one of Hendrix’s heroes, with the star admiring his complex orchestration. As far back as 1969, the guitarist had tried to persuade Macca to be part of a group. Although, he did so in a typically slapdash fashion.
During the week, Hendrix sent the following telegram to The Beatles’ offices: “We are recording an LP together this weekend. How about coming in to play bass stop call Alan Douglas 212-5812212. Peace Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Tony Williams.” Sadly, McCartney was on vacation at the time, so it’s unclear whether he even saw the message. However, you’d imagine he would’ve certainly been interested given that he places Hendrix as the best guitarist in history, and he would perfectly bring his compositional nous to the virtuosity of the would-be group.
Arthur Lee and Steve Winwood:
Alas, this wasn’t the only attempt that Hendrix made to form a supergroup. On another occasion, he reached out to Love songwriter Arthur Lee and English R&B maestro Steve Winwood, who was in Traffic at the time (the band, not vehicular congestion), and an assortment of other stars. As Love’s Johnny Echols told Mojo: ”Jimi was an acquaintance of mine, but he was a friend of Arthur’s.”
“After Love had gone their separate ways, Jimi and Arthur recorded together again [three tracks at London’s Olympic Studios in March ’70],” he continued, ”And they were talking about putting together a supergroup with Stevie Winwood as the vocalist, Buddy Miles on drums, and some other players, but it never got any further because Jimi passed away.”
Hendrix’s sci-fi movie dream:
Hendrix always loved sci-fi and welcomed it into his own music. However, there was one occurrence too grand and awesome to fit into a single track. And as such, Hendrix got busy with a screenplay. The movie would be called Moondust, and it would tell the tale of how Hendrix encountered a UFO during his childhood.
One night, Hendrix was gazing out of the back window of his old Washington state house with his brother Leon. What they saw that night would stay with them forever. Some mysterious lights whizzed through the sky and had them both standing agog. With Hendrix being such a huge fan of Flash Gordon that he insisted on being called Buster Crabbe, this sci-fi apparition was manna from heaven. He was still thinking about it enough years later to get all proto-Spielberg about it.
The handwritten script was scribbled by Hendrix between 1969 and 1970. In a rock opera that coupled the powerful effects of rock ‘n’ roll music with extra-terrestrial encounters, the truly original work was set to be a movie like no other. Featuring scenes where an “innocent little girl” first hears a rock band while cautiously sheltering behind the rock and envisions the music as dragons and mystic beasts duelling in the air, the fanciful screenplay offers a great insight into the mind of Hendrix himself.
Over the 38-page journey, lights flash over strange fields, Arabian tents display mystic connections, and a string of other stratospheric developments unfurl. Sadly, however, Hendrix would pass away before he could stretch his vision beyond the mere barebones of his imaginative thoughts. Nevertheless, it shines a light on the innocence and adventure that coloured his rock with a wholesome sense of profundity, which is often lost amid the highwire tales of his tearaway life.
