JH(DU)
Jimi Hendrix DVD (deluxe edition) – This DVD has a combination of live cuts and interviews, all filmed before 1973. Neither is really satisfying, because the interview clips don’t form a story (although on their own they are often notable, whether they are from people who knew him before he got famous, or if they are people who knew him when he was famous – people such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend), and the live clips go on for too long, as they are usually the fill clip (and thus feel like filler) and are mainly from shows that we’ve all seen before anyway.
The disc starts off well, with a long quote from Pete Townsend, ow he couldn’t believe what he was doing. Then Eric Clapton talks about ho he had missed Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire, “must ahve been fantastic.” Townsend tells an anecdote – Janis Joplin, Brian JOnes, Eric Clapton were all there, Jimi got up on a chair and played an amazing guitar bit, he said “If I’m gonna go on after you, I’m gonna pull out all the stops.” On Dick Cavett show he comes out in a kimono. Little Richard goes crazy. Fayne Pridgeon, one of his first girlfriends, calls him a “cutie-pie with a guitar, the in thing at the time.” Arthur and Albert Allen, twins, “Ghetto fighters”, talk about knowing him at the time, but we don’t know who they are, or why they’re significant, except that Fayne mentioned them once. In music segments, all cameras are focussed on Jimi. Long, incomprehensible interviews. Jimi with no moustache at one point. Long interviews with the scrumptious, high class Linda Keith (I’d read about her in bios of the Rolling Stones – she had been Keith Richards’ girlfriend, then also Brian Jones’ – what a babe). She introduced him to her manager, former Animals bassist Chas Chandler. Interviews with Mick Jagger, he’s suffering from bad bed head as he notes that when Jimi showed up in London “we just adopted him.” Jimi idolised Bob Dylan. When he first started this crazy, he brought a Dylan LP home, played it for Fayne, she said Bob who?” Jeff Beck told Pete Townsend that there’s some guy called Jimi Hendrix who was ripping off his moves. Townsend watched Hendrix, but not in contempt but in awe – like he was way better than Townsend. At that time, he also got a call from Eric Clapton, who’d never spoken with Townsend before; they went to a French movie, and at one point talked about Hendrix, agreeing that they liked him, but they were threatened by him. Jenifer Dean interview. A chat with a very young-looking Lou Reed. “He played 24 hours a day.” Smokin’ a joint in the limo. Clapton saw Jimi as pulled every which way, gullible, preyed-upon, so many hangers-on. Mitch Mitchell: Jimi knew what he was in for, he was not naive. Isle of Wight “Red Rooster” psychedelic blues on a flying V.
I think, in many respects, he changed the sound of rock far more than the Beatles. They brought some variety to rock ‘n’ roll, but Jimi changed the sound of the guitar. He turned it into an instrument, which – all right, people like Buddy Cline, Chuck Berry, T-Bone Walker had done previous to that, but none of them had brought it out and sold it to the public, and sold it to people like me, who believe in it as an instrument. People like Clapton were too ethnic, they kept themselves to a fixed groove, but Jimi unashamedly wanted to reach as many people as possible.
Extra feature “From the Ukulele to the Strat” is pure uncut interviews, including all of the same names from the film, plus a few more. Al Hendrix, Billy Cox, Fayne tells her kitty on the subway anecdote. Jimi idolised Elmore James’ songs “The Sky Is Cryina”, “It Hurts Me Too”, “Cryin’ Heart”. Fayne notes how he changed 180 degrees after London. Buddy Miles tells a story about how, after the Monterey Pop Festival, he and Jimi and Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Bruce Palmer and Neil Young
went to jam together for 36 hours. Linda Keith talks about how she first met Jimi. They played him Dylan, he said that if Dylan can form a band and sing and do it on his own, so could he. But he was not confident about his creativity. He dressed and looked like Dylan, they all did. Clapton notes that the firs time he saw Jimi, he was wearing a suit. Clapton gushes. Pete Townsend: “Eric was much closer to Jimi than I was.” Jimi had the edge on Clapton, but couldn’t figure Townsend out. Eddie Kramer of Electric Lady Studios talks about recording the Experience. Jimi had heard a phaser sound in a dream, they re-created it for him. Kramer describes how he’d mix songs for 10-14 hours a day. He also tells of the genesis of the Electric Lady studios in New York, how they’d wanted to create a studio/nightclub, so that Jimi could record by day, then move over and play by night, but they saw the space and realised it could only be a studio.
The DVD also contains an interview of Eddie Kramer, explaining the multiple tracks (including boot kicks) of “Dolly Dagger”, as well as a clip of “Stone Free”.