Watch Jimi Hendrix’s incredible performance of ‘Voodoo Child’ at Woodstock
There isn’t much left to say about the multitude of talents Jimi Hendrix held within his guitar-playing hands. An icon of the counter-culture movement, what Hendrix could say with his twirling notes and screeching chords landed more heavily than any poet could have hoped for, and with them, he became one of the greatest musicians the world has ever known.
With only three albums to his name and a comparatively small amount of songs, considering his musical impact, it can be easy to exhaust the novelty of hearing such a performer do his thing. It means when the opportunity to hear something new from Hendrix arises, one should grab it with both hands. Below, we have that opportunity.
Hendrix’s performance at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 is widely regarded as the gig that defined the ’60s and shaped culture for years to come. The festival itself became a pivotal moment in popular music history when around 500,000 people flooded Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, to watch incredible artists like Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead.
But one act was bound to draw more attention than any other: a young guitarist known to the world as Jimi Hendrix. While he had already been gathering critical acclaim and contemporary appreciation in England for some years, his native America had been a little late to Hendrix’s party. However, by 1969, the guestlist for that particular event had begun to fill up, and with the Woodstock crowd waiting to be wowed, Hendrix would not disappoint.
By the time Hendrix actually arrived on stage, the 500,000 strong crowd had dwindled to 30,000, with the showman’s headline performance arriving at 8.30am Monday morning. However, those who did wait around received one of the greatest displays the music world as ever known. He delivered a classic rendition of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and ‘Purple Haze’, but there’s a particular joy to listening to his performance of ‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return).’
The final song in Hendrix’s time with The Experience is certainly one of his most iconic. The song he and the group had sketched out earlier on in their final LP, Electric Ladyland, comes back with full force as ‘Voodoo Child’.
Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding liked the track and went about learning it right away as Redding explained, “We learned that song in the studio… They had the cameras rolling on us as we played it”. The cameras were that of ABC’s, and they were intent on capturing the band in their magical flow. Hendrix added: “Someone was filming when we started doing [Voodoo Child]. We did that about three times because they wanted to film us in the studio, to make us—’Make it look like you’re recording, boys’—one of them scenes, you know, so, ‘OK, let’s play this in E, a-one, a-two, a-three’, and then we went into ‘Voodoo Child’.”
It’s a furious song that deserves its spot in the top ten of Hendrix’s esteemed work. Potent and powerful, the song is a reminder of the talent Hendrix possessed from the beginning to the end of his time with The Experience. It is given its moment of glory when performed at this seismic gig.
