BEFORE: Hey, that Clapton documentary was a real deal, because if you think about it, and if I treat this whole chain like one giant rock concert (which it is) then last night I got to see the Beatles performing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Clapton on guitar, then the Yardbirds did a number, "For Your Love", Cream came out to sing "I Feel Free" and "Strange Brew", then Blind Faith took the stage (unfortunately it was to perform "Presence of the Lord", not "Can't Find My Way Home"...) and then Derek and the Dominoes treated us to "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Layla" (good luck getting that last one out of your head...). Finally Clapton did some solo numbers like "Tears in Heaven".
But right now, please welcome to the stage, the master of the Stratocaster, here to perform some of his greatest hits, direct from his gig in heaven's house band, Mr. Jimi Hendrix! Don't worry, Clapton's not going anywhere, he's going to sit in on this session, as an interviewed subject.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Jimi: All Is By My Side" (Movie #2,791)
THE PLOT: A biography of Jimi Hendrix, the world-famous guitarist who died in 1970. Friends and prominent musicians comment on Jimi's life and his influence on rock music.
AFTER: It's another fine coincidence that on this date in 1967, Hendrix played the first of three nights at the Café-a-Go-Go in New York City - an event that's mentioned in the film, Jimi playing in the Village and people heading downtown to check him out. This was when the band was known as Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, backing up John Hammond Jr. After that, Jimi played at the Cheetah Club with Curtis Knight and the Squires, and that's where Linda Keith (girlfriend of Keith Richards) saw him play, and she recommended him to Chas Chandler, who "discovered" him over at Café Wha? shortly thereafter.
But the really important Hendrix performances - Monterey Pop (1967), Woodstock (1968) and Isle of Wight (1970) are represented here in this film, which weaves the concert footage in-between the interviews. It makes an odd sense, because if the film were just interviews it would be too boring, and if it was all concert footage, then there would be no context. So a balance needed to be struck, to capture the different aspects of Jimi, to remind people three years after he died what they were all missing out on.
I didn't include the concert film "Monterey Pop" in my line-up, because I'm fairly sure I've seen that one. I got this documentary last year, Turner Classic Movies ran it with the Bob Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back", which they made us watch in film school. D.A. Pennebaker directed both "Don't Look Back" and "Monterey Pop", so that makes sense too. The clips from "Monterey Pop" included here feature "Wild Thing", "Hey Joe", "Like a Rolling Stone" and of course the famous footage of Jimi setting his guitar on fire.
(Kids, remember, whether you're starting a summer campfire or putting ACTUAL flames on your guitar, NEVER pour lighter fluid on an already-lit fire. Jimi did not practice proper fire safety technique on stage in Monterey, and now we've got all kinds of wildfires in California. Jimi's a rock-star and he lived dangerously, and where is he now? Just saying. Also, don't do drugs.).
From Woodstock comes Jimi's famous rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner", something he probably got a lot of flak for (as Dick Cavett suggested in footage here) but I don't have a problem with it - it's one of my favorite covers of our national anthem. All the extra guitar noise that Jimi added just sounds like explosions and falling bombs, and that's really what the song is about. He added the sounds of war to a song about war, and then when he comes back to the tune, it's like the bombing has stopped, the smoke has cleared, and we hear the melody again and it gives proof that the flag is still there. Perfectly appropriate.
Then from the Isle of Wight Festival we've got "Red House", "Machine Gun", "In From the Storm" and Jimi's sped-up, cut-time version of "Johnny B. Goode". God, his hands move so fast on that last one, it's hard to believe he's even playing live. And then he plays with his TEETH, which probably left a lot of people scratching their heads, like are his teeth super-flexible or something, but the secret truth about the guitar is that it doesn't really matter what that strumming hand is doing, like you can hit the strings down there with anything, the secret is with the fret hand - as long as that hand is doing what it should, it's impossible to hit a wrong note.
So the guitar is just a harmonica played with your hands, once you learn the finger positions for the chords it's not that difficult. Or maybe that's just the way that Jimi made it look, I never could get that "F" chord down, largely because I didn't have the time to devote to playing all day so I could build up callouses on my fingers, which seems to be a prerequisite for playing well. I had a cheap guitar where the strings didn't require much pressure on the frets, so I pussied out. And my fingers were too big to hold down only one string on it, so I sometimes had to figure out new positions where it didn't matter if my finger covered the next string over also. Hey, I was no Hendrix.
But if you told me that Hendrix only played like five concerts in his whole life, which I know is not possible, I might be inclined to believe you because that seems to be all that was ever filmed, and we've seen these clips again and again. If he did only play five concerts, and two of those were Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock, wouldn't that be all he needed to do? I never really understood the timeline before, but thankfully Jimi's is a little easier to follow than Clapton's - the Jimi Hendrix Experience broke up in June of 1969, which means that when he played at Woodstock in August 1969, it was essentially as a solo artist, with a band that had only rehearsed together for about 2 weeks. The festival MC introduced them as the Experience, but that probably should be taken as a misnomer.
Then on the Band of Gypsys LP, he played with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles, then when that line-up dissolved, the final line-up for the New Experience got him back together with Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox, but by this time Hendrix was following in the footsteps of Hank Williams, which means showing up drunk or stoned, and eventually showing up dead, which pisses off the tour managers and the fans who had tickets for that gig. Still a good career move in the long run, though - I mean, the only place you can go after super-famous is immortal, right?
The interviews here are terrible, and let's leave it at that. I couldn't take the woman who said "you know" about five times in every sentence, and the other one with the terrible, overbearing New Yawk accent.
Jimi's going to stick around and do another set here tomorrow as a headliner, before joining the backing band. Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and Lou Reed have to split, but they'll both be back for encores before the chain is done.
Also starring Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger (both also carrying over from "Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars"), Pete Townshend, Lou Reed, Little Richard, Mitch Mitchell, Billy Cox, Frankie Crocker, Al Hendrix, Buddy Miles, Fayne Pridgon, Arthur Allen, Albert Allen, Stella Benabon, Eric Barrett, Paul Caruso, Monika Dannemann, Jenifer Dean, Alan Douglas, Germaine Greer, Harold Parker, Pat Hartley, Linda Keith, Eddie Kramer, Juggy Murray, Juma Susan, Charles Washington, and archive footage of Noel Redding, Dick Cavett.
RATING: 5 out of 10 pawned guitars
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