From this interview it sounds as if he was genuinely interested in making classical music at some point in his life, possibly when he became more learned & rained. It was obvious he was concerned with making more 'serious music' in the latter stage of his career but I wonder if he would have had what it took to make classical? You can't fake the funk in classical or jazz, and while he probably would've done well in the latter I'm not sure how successful he could've been in the former had he still remained unable to sight-read.

Supposedly "classical" in the same sense as many 70s prog bands did. A mix of rock, classical and who knows what. Many artists were making similar statements about making "symphonies" and so on, but it just turned into prog. Before his death he was considering becoming member of a super group that became Emerson, Lake & Palmer ("Hendrix, Emerson, Lake & Palmer" in that case). The "classical" fad of that time was also closely connected to what was considered "experimental" at the time. A lot of weird electronic noises mixed up with classical style passages. If you've listened to ELP albums, you'll have a good idea of that thing. It didn't always result in very good music.

I had a weird dream of Jimi a few nights ago. He was onstage with a huge modular synth system that he controlled with his guitar and he had no real idea how to use it to his benefit. I'm afraid something similar might have happened in real life too had he lived through the 70s - gotten gear crazy, done some fairly aimless doodling and forgotten his strengths.

He seems to mix up the word "psychedelic" with "metaphor" in that interview.

Well, I'm really glad he didn't.

It would have sucked.

I read somewhere that he wanted to work with an orchestra, as in he would solo over classical pieces or maybe feature an orchestra on a later album. I highly doubt he would have actually wrote compositions for an orchestra at that stage of his career, but a few years training and learning how to read/write music and how the different instruments are tuned it could have been possible

novabrkr said:

Supposedly "classical" in the same sense as many 70s prog bands did. A mix of rock, classical and who knows what. Many artists were making similar statements about making "symphonies" and so on, but it just turned into prog. Before his death he was considering becoming member of a super group that became Emerson, Lake & Palmer ("Hendrix, Emerson, Lake & Palmer" in that case). The "classical" fad of that time was also closely connected to what was considered "experimental" at the time. A lot of weird electronic noises mixed up with classical style passages. If you've listened to ELP albums, you'll have a good idea of that thing. It didn't always result in very good music.

I had a weird dream of Jimi a few nights ago. He was onstage with a huge modular synth system that he controlled with his guitar and he had no real idea how to use it to his benefit. I'm afraid something similar might have happened in real life too had he lived through the 70s - gotten gear crazy, done some fairly aimless doodling and forgotten his strengths.

He seems to mix up the word "psychedelic" with "metaphor" in that interview.

Thanks novabrkr once again with an inciteful post. Certainly one of my fav members. Question I heard he was partly or nearly deaf but judging from this (last interview) it seems that was a slight exaggeration as he seems to understand the journalist just fine?