Jimi Hendrix Dies—And Lives On

Hendrix on the cover of his album Electric Ladyland.

It was on this day in 1970 that Jimi Hendrix died in London as a result of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Those who knew him were not wholly surprised by his passing.

In fact some speculated that he had always known his time was limited and pushed himself to perform and record as much as possible as a result. Others suggested that the weight of the legend he had created in just three years was crushing him. The constant tension between public expectations and the direction he wanted his music to take lay heavily on him. And his drug use became heavier and darker as he grew more frustrated.

Nonetheless he left a musical legacy that was as influential and lasting as a musician could hope for. As his page on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website puts it, “He expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. . . . More than any other musician, he realized the fullest range of sound that could be obtained from an amplified instrument.” When the rock superstars Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend first saw him play, in a London club, they were so awed that they feared their careers were over. In 2003 Rolling Stone named him the greatest guitarist of all time.

He exploded onto America’s radios and TV and movie screens in the mid-sixties, but only after he had been playing and honing his craft for some time. Born in Seattle in 1942, he lived with his Cherokee grandmother in Vancouver after his parents divorced in 1951. It was after his mother died of cirrhosis in 1958 that he first picked up the guitar. In 1961 an alleged car theft led to two years of mandatory service in the Army. Not surprisingly, a less than enthusiastic Hendrix lasted less than a year as a paratrooper. After his discharge, he worked the “chitlin circuit” of the South, backing up acts that included the Isley Brothers, King Curtis, and Little Richard. This was when he developed his onstage theatrics, which came to include playing his guitar behind his back and with his teeth. He drew his sense of showmanship from the R & B acts he worked with, but as Little Richard would later recall, he couldn’t stay with them and play the sideman forever.

After striking out on his own, he was discovered and taken to London by the producer Chas Chandler, the former bassist of the Animals. In London Chandler helped him form the Jimi Hendrix Experience, with the British musicians Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. The Experience’s debut album, Are You Experienced, ignited his meteoric rise with such hits as “Hey Joe,” “Foxey Lady” and “Purple Haze.” He first caught on with British audiences; not until his American debut, at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, and the feature film that captured it, did he become a household name in this country. Following the Who’s mass destruction of instruments and amplifiers at Monterey, Hendrix felt he needed to do something really special there.

After being introduced by Brian Jones, of the Rolling Stones, he launched into an old Howlin’ Wolf blues song, “Killing Floor.” The seemingly unorthodox opener showcased his ability to make a cover completely his own. He pushed his Stratocaster—turned upside down and restrung because he played left-handed—to the limit as his unusually large hands created everything from lightning-quick solos to feedback that contained searing melodies rather than simply distortion and dissonance.

Later in the set he took on Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” It takes chutzpah to adopt a song that is a current hit, let alone one that just introduced the world to folk rock. But Hendrix’s version left the audience floored by adding white-hot solos within the compact framework of Dylan’s original. During the finale, a reworking of the Troggs’ garage-band classic “Wild Thing,” he doused his guitar with lighter fluid and watched it go up in flames.

For quite some time blues guitarists like Buddy Guy had been performing stunts such as continuing to play as they left the theater, but Hendrix’s showmanship, coupled with his immense talent, took the stage act to a new level. His Monterey set, just like his performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” that closed out Woodstock, is one of the unforgettable moments in entertainment in the 1960s.

His almost overnight fame after Monterey left audiences calling for repeat performances at every show. But he refused to stand still and constantly pushed his music forward. His second album, Axis: Bold As Love, contained more complex compositions like “If 6 Was 9,” later featured in the film Easy Rider, and the widely revered (and covered) ballad “Little Wing.”

His third and sadly last studio offering was the double album Electric Ladyland. It realized his vision of a complete work that was more than a collection of singles, and it contained classics such as “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return),” which can still be heard everywhere from bars to baseball stadiums to car commercials. His interpretation of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” drew praise from its composer as superior to the original and contains some of the most torrid guitar work ever captured on record.

After the breakup of the Experience, he assembled acquaintances from his Army stint, including the bassist Billy Cox, for rehearsals in a house in upstate New York. The resulting impromptu band would close out the Woodstock festival, in 1969. It wasn’t the first time Hendrix had played “The Star Spangled Banner,” but it was certainly the most publicized. As at Monterey, the film cameras were rolling. He didn’t intend for his rendition of the National Anthem to become a symbol of protest, but as Dick Cavett reminded him in an interview afterward, it is impossible to tinker with the song in any way without attracting attention. That still stands true today.

After Woodstock he formed a trio retaining Billy Cox and adding Buddy Miles on drums. They would record the album Band of Gypsys over four shows at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve 1969. The shows, the loosest of his career to that point, showed traces of every conceivable style. There is now a DVD of the surviving black-and-white footage. “Machine Gun,” with which Hendrix was now actually protesting the war, was a 12-minute tour de force. With the bass and drums establishing a “jungle groove,” his guitar simulates a barrage of bullets and bombs. On a song that uses just one chord, he showcases sustain, over bends, double stops, behind-the-neck tapping, and spring manipulation. Once when Miles Davis met Hendrix, the first words he uttered in that unmistakably raspy voice were simply, “That machine gun.”

Hendrix’s posthumous legacy is also bolstered by hours of sessions he recorded at the now-famous Electric Lady Studios, in New York. Since 1970 around 300 recordings, including an almost completed fourth studio album, have been released under his name. Some of them contain no more than germs of songs, but others provide evidence that he was looking to create music more steeped in jazz and blues than before. There are recordings of jam sessions and impromptu club appearances with artists as diverse as B. B. King and Stephen Stills and Taj Mahal.

Miles Davis met with Hendrix frequently, and the two giants planned to record at least one album together. Countless musicians cite Davis as a major influence, but with Hendrix it was the other way around. Davis always credited him as a chief inspiration for his seminal 1970 Bitches Brew album, which marked the birth of jazz fusion. The track “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” is a tribute both to Hendrix’s love of jazz and blues and to the funk that he was dabbling in during the last years of his life.

In fact, entire collections have been dedicated to Hendrix’s exploits in different genres. His music has been called everything from psychedelic to hard rock. And yet he still resists classification. He stands astride the various genres of music he touched and inspires and influences musicians in all of them.

—Ross Warner writes often about popular music.