Jimmi Hendrix: biography, creativity, photo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Jimmi Hendrix is one of the most influential guitarists of the 20th century. He is consistently included in all lists of the greatest rock artists. The music magazine Rolling Stone published a chart of the best guitarists of all time twice in its history. In both options, Jimi Hendrix is in the first place. The most influential experts in the field of guitar music named him the most influential artist, whose recordings continue to inspire a new generation of musicians to create their own masterpieces.

Biography of Jimi Hendrix. Childhood

James Marshall Hendrix was born in Washington state in 1942. When he was 9 years old, his parents divorced and his father took custody of his young son.

When he was in elementary school, the boy often picked up a broom and imagined that he was playing the guitar. He did it so often that the teachers had to write toSociety for the Support of Poor Families a letter with a request to issue funds for the purchase of a musical instrument. The organization turned them down. However, the boy soon found a ukulele in the garage and learned to play by ear. The first songs he performed were compositions from the repertoire of Elvis Presley.

Serving in the army

In the early sixties, Jimi Hendrix was arrested for stealing a car. The guy was given a choice between prison and the army. Hendrix chose the latter option.

During his service, he participated in amateur performances. There, the guitarist met bassist Billy Cox, who was amazed by the young musician's playing technique. He later described the style as "a cross between John Lee Hooker and Beethoven".

Career

After returning from the army, the two musicians formed a band that mostly played cover versions of famous musicians' songs. Jimi Hendrix was soon noticed by major producers. He became involved in the recordings and concerts of such musicians as the Isley Brothers and Little Richard.

When the famous rock and roll singer and pianist fired Hendrix for attracting a lot of attention during concerts, the hero of our article formed a new group, which became known as The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The team was spotted by English producers and invited to London to record their first album. Disc titled Are you experienced? instantly soared to the top of the English charts, and only the new Beatles record "Sergeant Lonely Hearts ClubPepper" ousted him from the first places.

No less success was expected by the second work of the musician.

Many songs from these albums are invariably included in all compilations with titles like "Jimmi Hendrix. The Best".

Third album

In 1967-68, Jimi Hendrix (photo of the musician can be seen below) was busy looking for a new studio in New York. His second album, Axis Bold As Love, topped the charts. Songs from it constantly played on the radio.

The musician made a lot of rough recordings in London, and this material needed to be finalized and recorded in a professional studio. Warner paid the artist's roy alties in advance for his next album. The firm has also allocated funds for the rental of the studio. But in New York in those days, all the places where you could make a quality recording were booked

Besides, Jimi Hendrix needed a sound engineer. The guitarist often said, "When you're with a good sound engineer, you feel like a person." One of his friends introduced the musician to a young specialist named Gary Kehlgren. This engineer has worked on two Velvet Underground albums and one Frank Zappa CD.

His trademark was a psychedelic technique called phasing. It is somewhat reminiscent of an echo, when one fragment of the composition is duplicated after a short period of time. Gary first used it to record Eric Burdon's anti-war anthem Sky Pilot.

New studio

It remained to find a suitable studio equipped with modern equipment. Since all such places in New York were booked for several years in advance, Kelgren told Jimi Hendrix that he wanted to build his own studio. He dreamed of a space unlike any other recording studio of the time.

Gary wanted to make it more like a living room. Hendrix also did not want to work in a normal room. He wanted to create something like a small concert hall where you can record records, like the club where he often jammed with Jim Morrison and Eric Clapton.

On the way to recording a new album, there was another obstacle. We needed an investor who would invest in the construction of the studio. In the end, such a person was found. It was philanthropist Charles Revson who helped make the production of the musical "Hair".

Original Choice

When choosing a location for the future studio, the guitarist and his associates followed the example of Andy Warhol, who equipped his art workshop in an old abandoned garage. Jimi Hendrix and Kelgren bought a dilapidated building in downtown New York, turning it into a studio that was named Plant Records. It contained not only Jimi Hendrix albums, but also many other musical masterpieces, for example, Don McLean's single American pie.

The most modern equipment was purchased for the studio. The focus of the musicians was the mixing console, behind which Jimi Hendrix spent a lot of time,personally participating in the mixing of the album.

Because there was a concert hall nearby where bands such as "Traffic", "Jefferson Airplane" and many others performed, the guitarist often brought his fellow musicians into the studio to jam with them. Bassist Noel Redding recalls that the process of working on the Electric ladyland album was more like a party with musicians.

One of the Jefferson Airplane band members said: "Songwriting usually went like this: we quickly looked through the sheet where the chord progression was written, and then immediately turned on the tape recorder. Even 15-minute songs were recorded live with first take".

Idol

The work on Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower was less spontaneous. This single was intended for radio and required a brighter arrangement. Jimi Hendrix was a big fan of Bob Dylan. He recorded many songs of this author. But before the Electric Ladyland album, these cover versions were not included in the artist's official discs. When the guitarist heard Dylan's new record in 1967, the song All Along The Watchtower made the biggest impression on him.

Jimmi Hendrix immediately went into the studio and started working on his own version of this piece. The composition, the first version of which was recorded in England, has been reworked countless times. Hendrix constantly changed the composition of the musicians, trying to find the perfect option. He also recorded many variations of the solo from this song.

Professionalapproach

The recording of the album only superficially resembled a party with musicians due to the large number of people who were in the studio at the same time. Colleagues recall that Hendrix took his job extremely seriously. Jimmy forced the musicians from his group to repeatedly rewrite the parts, each time finding some flaws in their playing. There are cases when Jimmy himself picked up a bass guitar and recorded the part of this instrument without prior rehearsal.

The uniqueness of these cases lies in the fact that Jimi Hendrix was left-handed, and the lead singer of the group Experience was right-handed. So Hendrix had to play the instrument upside down.

He also showed diligence in processing the material. Sound engineers recalled that Jimmy could spend more than $ 2,000 a day on tape for recording. Jack Adams says: "We mixed each song for ten hours."

The work on the disc usually took place at night. The musicians gathered at 7 pm and worked until 5 am. Then there was a break for food and sleep, after which the recording process resumed.

The Jimi Hendrix songs from Electric Ladyland were originally recorded in stereo. The artist's previous discs were released on mono-LPs. From the first version of the Electric Ladyland album, the publishers removed many of the stereo effects that Hendrix and the Record Plant engineers worked so selflessly on.

However, despite this, Jimi Hendrix's album Electric Ladyland was highly acclaimed by music critics and is included in many lists of the best discs20th century.

The Record Plant still exists today. Its specialists carry out recordings both in a stationary room and with the help of mobile equipment, which is suitable for live albums. Plant Records created many of the outstanding albums of the seventies and eighties. In it, the musicians of the Eagles group worked on recording their most successful record - "Hotel California". In the same studio, John Lennon participated in the mixing of Walking On A Thin Ice on the last day of his life.

After the release of Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix disbanded the group Experience and recruited a team of the best English musicians, which was called the Band of Gypsies. With this composition, he performed at the famous American rock festival Woodstock, which was held in 1969.

During this concert, Hendrix played an improvisation on the theme of the American anthem.

Unfulfilled plans

After a triumphant concert at Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix decided to start recording a new album. His relationship with the sound engineers and producers who worked with him on the previous disc went wrong.

So Jimmy built his own studio. This brainchild of his was named after the album Electric Ladyland. But fate decreed that Jimmy was destined to work within the walls of the studio for only one month. In 1971, he died of heart failure, which was the result of drug use.

Jimi Hendrix quotes

Many of the guitarist's remarks were widelyfame. Here are some such sayings:

My guitar is my medium and I want everyone to get inside me a little… Music and sound waves are cosmic, especially when they vibrate from one person to another.

Life should be joyful. If your life really means something, then happiness will be a must. Everyone has something to give to the world. Your body is as unimportant compared to your soul as one fish is compared to the whole sea. I believe that we will live again and again until we finally banish all evil and hatred from our souls.

The soul should rule the world, not money or drugs. If you can do your own thing, just do it great. A guy can dig ditches and enjoy it. Be yourself and just give God a chance.

Music is a spiritual thing in itself. She is like the waves of the ocean. You just can't carve the perfect one and take it home with you. She is on the move all the time. Music and movement are an integral part of the human race. I don't think I'm talking about abstract things. This is reality. What's not real are the people who sit in colorless cement hives, performing, tearing themselves up for every last dollar, jostling over the millions in their wallets, and constantly playing war games and betting. They lose themselves in selfish attempts to be superior to the other person in some form. Look at pimps and congressmen. All this I can better explain with the help of music. You seem to hypnotize people, and they return to theirnatural absolutely positive state, as in childhood. And when you immerse people in this state, you can convey to their subconscious what we want to say.

Life after death

"Will I live tomorrow?" Jimi Hendrix sings in one of the songs from his first album. History gives a positive answer to this question. Thanks to this guitarist, the word "posthumous" entered the lexicon of rock music fans. This happened thanks to the numerous songs of Jimi Hendrix, which were released after the death of the guitarist.

Previously unknown studio recordings, fragments of radio broadcasts with the musician, versions of songs with the addition of sound effects, and vice versa, where they were removed - all this was periodically released on records, the flow of which continues to this day.

In 2010 fans of Jimi Hendrix's music were in for an unexpected surprise. Employees of one of the companies decided to release the musician's unknown recordings not as collections, but as albums with all their attributes - original cover, title, bonus tracks, and so on. Three such discs have been released to date. The last one came out this year and is called Both Sides Of The Sky.

Listening to these editions is no less interesting than records released during the life of the musician. This is because the main creative method of Jimi Hendrix was improvisation and the constant search for new sounds.

So, composition Mannish Boy MuddyWaters, featured on the album released in 2018, is played in the style of Chuck Berry (characteristic ringing guitar riffs) with the addition of numerous guitar effects.

This disc shows once again how huge the legacy that Jimi Hendrix left to fans of rock music.