Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 143

Record label: Track

Produced: Jimi Hendrix and Chas Chandler

Recorded: Olympic, London; December 20, 1967–January 28, 1968; Record Plant, New York; April 18–August 27, 1968

Released: October 25, 1968

Chart peaks: 6 (UK) 1 (US)

Personnel: Jimi Hendrix (g, v); Noel Redding (b, v); Mitch Mitchell (d); Mike Finnigan (o); Freddie Smith (horn); Larry Faucette (congas); Buddy Miles (d); Stevie Winwood (o on Voodoo Chile); Jack Cassidy (b); Al Kooper (p)

Track listing: … And The Gods Made Love; Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland); Crosstown Traffic (S); Voodoo Chile; Little Miss Strange; Long Hot Summer Night; Come On (Let The Good Times Roll); Gypsy Eyes; Burning Of The Midnight Lamp (S/UK); Rainy Day Dream Away; 1983 … (A Merman I Should Turn To Be); Moon Turn The Tides … Gently Gently Away; Still Raining, Still Dreaming; House Burning Down; All Along The Watchtower (S); Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) (S/UK)

Running time: 75.29

Current CD: MCA MCD 11600

Further listening: Experience Hendrix: The Best Of (1997)

Further reading: Jimi Hendrix: Electric Ladyland 33 1/3 (John Perry, 2004); www.jimi-hendrix.com

Download: iTunes; HMV Digital

‘We call our music Electric Church Music,’ said Hendrix. ‘It’s like a religion to us. Some ladies are like the church to us too. Some groupies know more about music than the guys. People call them groupies but I prefer the term “electric ladies”. My whole Electric Ladyland album is about them.’ Physically, eight months and the Atlantic Ocean divided the first and last sessions for Electric Ladyland; spiritually, a lifetime sundered the set. The soft soul of the title track was only the first of the surprises in store, as Hendrix pulled away from the visceral sex-rock of his first two albums and began daubing from the broader, expressionist palette of subsequent experience. The sessions could have produced two great single albums. But blended together, they were heart-stopping. Wild experimentation blurred into solid rocking grooves. All Along The Watchtower not only reinvented Dylan’s original for the audience, it reinvented it for Dylan as well – he subsequently performed the song as a de facto Hendrix cover. The two Voodoo Chiles offer first a funkadelic jam with Winwood and Cassidy, then a screaming guitar exorcism (based around Cream’s Sunshine Of Your Love riff, played backwards); and Burning Of The Midnight Lamp is spectral moodiness grafted to a mid-period Stones arrangement.

Yet bassist Redding recalls, ‘The stuff we did in America, apart from Midnight Lamp, didn’t work as well. I’d say we all preferred working in London. While we were at Olympic, the Stones were next door. We used to go and hang out, have a smoke, all that stuff, and it was a good atmosphere. If Chas wanted to do a bit of mixing, he’d go “alright lads, go down the pub,” and we’d troop off. It was very relaxed. Whereas American studios were always so clinical. It wasn’t such a good environment to be working in.’

Chandler’s withdrawal from the sessions, sick of constantly rowing with Hendrix, only exacerbated the discontent. Indeed, says Redding, ‘By the time we recorded Little Miss Strange (on April 20/21), the band had already broken up.’ They would carry on gigging for another year, but only because their work schedule was already mapped out that far in advance.