In my opinion, Hendrix just sounds better than everyone else by miles. It's so amazing how he wasn't around that long but every guitarist that exists after him will be compared to him. He's the greatest. The only one that comes close to me is SRV. His tone was spectacular.

Graycap23 said:

To fully get into Jimi I think its important to know your history a bit...things like..what else was around at his time..what changed after he hit the scene..what other people have taken from him..ect ect ect..If you like Prince which u obviously do..There is NO WAY that you could not dig hendrix..Purple rain era Prince is HENDRIX....the clothes..the hair..The white guitar...Black man rockin out...
Purple rain/Purple haze..the guitar solo's the ruffles..the moustache..it goes on and on...



[Edited 1/17/07 0:17am]

StillDirrty said:

SRV wasn't nearly as innovative as Jimi, but he had the most beautiful tone of anyone, IMO.

god I hate jimi was overrated topics

PurpleJam said:

I don't think your opinion is insane or absurd, we all hear things thru different ears.

In my opinion, Jimi Hendrix wasn't primarily a guitarist in the sense that we see them today. He was a composer, and he used the guitar as his main tool to realise his ideas. His style was totally unique, and at the top of the heap because of his command of the instrument, which went beyond simply playing the correct notes on the fretboard, since as a composer with just the one main instrument, he had to create all kinds of sounds from the guitar in his hands. The revolutionary nature of his playing stems from this endless searching to fulfil his ideas with the skills and technology at his disposal. I think this aspect of his playing is really exemplified by his knack of playing multiple parts simultaneously, like on Killing Floor from the BBC Sessions, and by his sonic experiments like the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock.

There's a million guitarists with better 'conventional' technique, but none that come close to his ability to paint such complete musical pictures with two hands and one instrument. I listen to Hendrix, and I hear a total natural - genuinely instinctive playing - you can hear it in his not note-perfect but context perfect bends, his bizarre rhythm phrasing etc

It's telling that no-one has ever done a Hendrix cover that has improved on the original.

Miles said:

Just out of curiosity, what do you think are some examples of the formula/progression of which you speak, particular what are some good examples of his "Wes Montgomery" and his "eastern" solos/solo sections.

Hendrix was the master composer. There's better players but they can't make albums like he did!

Listen to south delta; some of the playing is beautiful.

He was THE riff master and a good bass player as well. Vai, halen, etc are all more advanced but they came along later and had him and page to emulate.

jacktheimprovident said:

check out the album Crash Landing..also "May this be love" from are you experienced...and If you can check out the "live at woodstock DVD" there's an extended solo improvisation near the end of the show where he whips out his full bag o tricks !

Isle Of Wight was bad??? Nah. I thought Jimi kicked ass at that show. He did pretty good considering he didn't sleep for a few days (and being tired or high as hell). Jimi's solo on "Red House" is killer.



....brutha B where you at????

prettymansson said:

I have always enjoyed hearing his playing on 'Villanova Junction' from Woodstock. I think that one reviewer had pointed out that his playing on that song was a bit in Wes Montgomery's style.

I was thinking of the 'Woodstock Improvisation' (or is 'Villanova Junction? Haven't watched it for a while) as one example of Jimi opening up his trick bag, and very impressive it is.

As to the Wes Mongomery influence on Hendrix, that shows up all over the place. He'd often slip in a Wes-style passage or two (sometimes faster or more 'warped' than Wes would have played it) into his solos live or when jamming, esp. in a more mellow, jazzy piece.

One major example might be 'Third Stone From the Sun' from 'Are U Experienced?', where Jimi's lead playing is clearly echoing Wes. But I say that, and yet it also sounds kind of surf guitar influenced, like Dick Dale, 'King of the Surf Guitar' (he of 'Miser Lou' from the 'Pulp Fiction' soundtrack), who is imo possibly an unmentioned influence on Hendrix. They did meet apparently earlier in the '60s.

Another good example of Jimi doing his 'Wes thang' is on the jam 'Larry Young Jam' from 1969. Wes octaves ahoy!

As to an example of Jimi playing 'Eastern', or Spanish style, that's in 'Woodstock Improvisation'/ 'Villanova Junction' too. Also, the lovely intro to 'Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)' 2nd Berkeley live version in 1970 has Jimi playing evocative 'Spanish' style figures.

It's fun talking about Hendrix's less obvious works. He's just so deep.
[Edited 1/18/07 15:40pm]

Miles said:

I'll have to listen to some of those again side by side with some Wes. I had always thought that the Woodstock Improvisation intro did sound vaguely eastern, I'm not an expert on identifying scales or modes (I'll admitt that I can't really easily distinguish an Arabic from an Indian scale although I do have somewhat of an ear for microtones), but certainly a lot of Hendrix's passages sound evocatively "eastern" in the way that a lot of psychedelic music does. I guess among many speculations about the directions Hendrix would have gone if he'd lived, one can ask if he would have immersed himself further and become more technically accomplished in eastern musical traditions in the way that other western musicians like John McLaughlin or Jonas Hellborg have.
[Edited 1/18/07 17:05pm]

Miles said:

You are right about 'Hey Baby' from the 2nd Berkeley show. That is what made me want to buy the whole album was hearing Jimi playing those Spanish style guitar phrases! I just love those sounds to death!

Also with you mentioning 'May this be love' on your post, makes me want to say again how surprised I was, after reading a book that was reviewing the songs of Hendrix, about the author saying how the ending guitar solo has a tropical, almost Hawaiin feel to it. After reading that, I could not believe that I hadn't noticed it before. Its probably why I enjoy hearing the song so often.

jacktheimprovident said:

There were actually plans by Hendrix, a few years before Woodstock took place, to do some recording with Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, who you might remember played the haunting sitar throughout their song 'Paint It Black'. He himself was also getting into exploring new and exotic sounds from the east, I believe mostly from Morocco(though I'm not quite sure if Morocco is in fact consided to be eastern music or not) whose sounds Jimi was really into also I once read.
Anyway, he and Brian had planned on jamming together with Brian playing the sitar on a few of Jimi's songs, that may have been intended for an actual release. I would love to know if any of those tapes actually still exist today. I know Brian had played sitar on an outake version of 'All Along The Watchtower' with Dave Mason on the track as well.

Personally, I think that it would have been an excellent collaboration between Jimi and one of the most versatile and often forgotten about musicians of the entire 1960s.
[Edited 1/18/07 22:11pm]

People fail to understand that nobody was before Hendrix in terms of the many things he innovative. Like boogie monsoon said on the p funk documentary Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under A Groove - “before Jimi Hendrix if you had feedback coming out of your amp you had a big problem, but when Jimi came out he was actually controlling that". Not to mention Jimi Hendrix is the quintessential learning tool for all guitarists. You can hear elements of just about every genre in his music. Every song sounds or is played completely different, certain songs you can tell belong on certain albums, but when you sit down and actually try to learn the songs, this is when you truly get a sense of just how diverse this man was. Few guitarist transfer that kind of emotional range in their music..

Lenny Kravitz on Machine Gun..

“You are truly hearing a mans soul” “it’s like hearing a guitar play a man, not a man playing a guitar”

Allmusic.com –

“In his brief four-year reign as a superstar, Jimi Hendrix expanded the vocabulary of the electric rock guitar more than anyone before or since.”

Read what Pete Townshend has to say about Hendrix, it only makes me wish I cold have seen him live...


I feel sad for people who have to judge Jimi Hendrix on the basis of recordings and film alone, because in the flesh he was so extraordinary. He had a kind of alchemist's ability; when he was on the stage, he changed. He physically changed. He became incredibly graceful and beautiful. It wasn't just people taking LSD, though that was going on, there's no question. But he had a power that almost sobered you up if you were on an acid trip. He was bigger than LSD.

What he played was fucking loud but also incredibly lyrical and expert.He managed to build this bridge between true blues guitar -- the kind that Eric Clapton had been battling with for years and years -- and modern sounds, the kind of Syd Barrett-meets-Townshend sound, the wall of screaming guitar sound that U2 popularized. He brought the two together brilliantly. And it was supported by a visual magic that obviously you won't get if you just listen to the music. He did this thing where he would play a chord, and then he would sweep his left hand through the air in a curve, and it would almost take you away from the idea that there was a guitar player here and that the music was actually coming out of the end of his fingers. And then people say, "Well, you were obviously on drugs." But I wasn't, and I wasn't drunk, either. I can just remember being taken over by this, and the images he was producing or evoking were naturally psychedelic in tone because we were surrounded by psychedelic graphics. All of the images that were around us at the time had this kind of echoey, acidy quality to them. The lighting in all the clubs was psychedelic and drippy.

He was dusty -- he had cobwebs and dust all over him. He was a very unremarkable-looking guy with an old military jacket on that was pretty dirty. It looked like he'd maybe slept in it a few nights running. When he would walk toward the stage, nobody would really take much notice of him. But when he walked off, I saw him walk up to some of the most covetable women in the world. Hendrix would snap his fingers, and they followed him. Onstage, he was very erotic as well. To a man watching, he was erotic like Mick Jagger is erotic. It wasn't "You know, I'd like to take that guy in the bathroom and fuck him." It was a high form of eroticism, almost spiritual in quality. There was a sense of wanting to possess him and wanting to be a part of him, to know how he did what he did because he was so powerfully affecting. Johnny Rotten did it, Kurt Cobain did it. As a man, you wanted to be a part of Johnny Rotten's gang, you wanted to be a part of Kurt Cobain's gang.
He was shy and kind and sweet, and he was fucked up and insecure. If you were as lucky as I was, you'd spend a few hours with him after a gig and watch him descend out of this incredibly colorful, energized face. There was also something quite sad about watching him. There was a hedonism about him. Toward the end of his life, he seemed to be having fun, but maybe a little bit too much. It was happening to a lot of people, but it was sad to see it happen to him.

With Jimi, I didn't have any envy. I never had any sense that I could ever come close. I remember feeling quite sorry for Eric, who thought that he might actually be able to emulate Jimi. I also felt sorry that he should think that he needed to. Because I thought Eric was wonderful anyway. Perhaps I make assumptions here that I shouldn't, but it's true. Once -- I think it was at a gig Jimi played at the Scotch of St. James [in London] -- Eric and I found ourselves holding each other's hands. You know, what we were watching was so profoundly powerful
.
The third or fourth time that I saw him, he was supporting the Who at the Saville Theatre. That was the first time I saw him set his guitar on fire. It didn't do very much. He poured lighter fluid over the guitar and set fire to it, and then the next day he would be playing with a guitar that was a little bit charred. In fact, I remember teasing him, saying, "That's not good enough -- you need a proper flame-thrower, it needs to be completely destroyed." We started getting into an argument about destroying your guitar -- if you're going to do it, you have to do it properly. You have to break every little piece of the guitar, and then you have to give it away so it can't be rebuilt. Only that is proper breaking your guitar. He was looking at me like I was fucking mad.
Trying to work out how he affected me at my ground zero, the fact is that I felt like I was robbed. I felt the Who were in some ways quite a silly little group, that they were indeed my art-school installation. They were constructed ideas and images and some cool little pop songs. Some of the music was good, but a lot of what the Who did was very tongue-in-cheek, or we reserved the right to pretend it was tongue-in-cheek if the audience laughed at it. The Who would always look like we didn't really mean it, like it didn't really matter. You know, you smash a guitar, you walk off and go, "Fuck it all. It's all a load of tripe anyway." That really was the beginning of that punk consciousness. And Jimi arrived with proper music.

He made the electric guitar beautiful. It had always been dangerous, it had always been able to evoke anger. If you go right back to the beginning of it, John Lee Hooker shoving a microphone into his guitar back in the 1940s, it made his guitar sound angry, impetuous, and dangerous. The guitar players who worked through the Fifties and with the early rock artists - James Burton, who worked with Ricky Nelson and the Everly Brothers, Steve Cropper with Booker T. -- these Nashville-influenced players had a steely, flick-knife sound, really kind of spiky compared to the beautiful sound of the six-string acoustic being played in the background. In those great early Elvis songs, you hear Elvis himself playing guitar on songs like "Hound Dog," and then you hear an electric guitar come in, and it's not a pleasant sound. Early blues players, too -- Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Albert King -- they did it to hurt your ears. Jimi made it beautiful and made it OK to make it beautiful.
[Edited 1/19/07 11:31am]

Break it DOWN MELOH !!!!!

prettymansson said:

Seriously! Thanks for posting that Meloh!

AS with any artist, Jimi had his moments of brilliance and moments of otherwise. I think his solos on things like Maching Gun, Watchtower, Who KNows, etc are transcendant, while I think the solo on Purple Haze is a piece of shit. Artists can't be on all the time, but Jimi was definitely on a lot, and even when he was considered "off" he was STILL playing great stuff. (I love the Isle Of Wight show even though many consider it not so great.)

guitarslinger44 said:

even on Purple Haze his use of the octavia effect was brilliant and ahead of it's time. their are licks in Purple Haze that guitarist still use to this day. but I know what you mean, we all have our favorite moments that we like over others

Meloh9 said:

Yeah. I dig the octavia but the actual stuff he played....he sounds like a 5 year old on that. Which sucks because the riff is just so badass and sexual, and then for this limp-dick solo to come in like that....it almost ruins the track for me in a way.