Got this from my E-verse Radio newsletter – thought it was a cool quote:
“Fired by Little Richard. Fired by Ike and Tina Turner. Terminated by numerous now forgotten blues and rock bands. You would think this was the résumé of a second-rate back-up guitar player, but it’s the precelebrity track record of no less than the late, great Jimi Hendrix. Often hired and often fired. In the end the reason was always the same: Hendrix’s guitar solos that became, as Ike Turner said ‘so elaborate they overstepped the bounds.’ Yet those flashy, raucous, but elegant electric guitar solos would revolutionize rock music. They became Hendrix’s trademark: colorful sounds that painted the anarchistic spirit of the late sixties. Hendrix described the sound he was reaching for as ‘electronic church music.’ However, while he was relatively unknown, many fellow musicians described his performances — the sexual gyrations, the gimmicks, such as demolishing his guitar — as ‘too much.’ But Hendrix was a guitar virtuoso. His imagination was boundless, and, for better and for worse, by the late 1960s, nothing anybody could imagine was too much.”
– Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
I’ve got this yin/yang thing with Hendrix. I always appreciate him, but his music wears thin on me pretty quickly. With the exception of a couple of songs (Little Wing, Castles Made of Sand off the top of my head), I have to take long breaks between listening to him.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I do think that his skill, though – can’t be denied. It’s almost like – skill like that transcends the level of the word “skill”. It’s when you become so skilled at a certain thing that – It’s like breathing. I suppose you could say that breathing is a “skill” as well – haha – but it’s instinctive, intuitive, we have to do it. Hendrix’s guitar playing seems to me to be like that. Is that genius? I am sure he worked hard to be that good – but isn’t there genius at work, too, in skill like that?
Oh, absolutely. He was amazing, there is no denying that. And he had a distinct vision … I definitely think that’s musical genius at work.
What’s unfortunate today is that there are people like this, musical geniuses, who go unrecognized in the mainstream. I believe it’s because of a mainstream music industry that is more interested in promoting something they know is going to sell rather than anything truly creative and new. Twists are acceptable, but not anything revolutionary.
I hope that the proliferation of internet music will change this. Who knows?
Hendrix as a guitar player aside (more later!), I LOVE this post! Thanks, Red! I’m going to have to make my kids read it. It’s such a great life lesson.
Hendrix is like a lot of blues, or Jazz for that matter; I can be fascinated, as a musician and in a clinical sense, by technical virtuosity – but if something about the song doesn’t grab me in the liver, it can get old, fast.
(And it’s driving me nuts – on Little Steven’s Underground Garage radio show the other night, he played some obscure Hendrix song that I’m just ape-wild crazy about, and I can’t find what it is!)
Doh.
“Love Or Confusion”, from Electric Ladyland.
Cooool.
For rock-blues, Hendrix set the bar with Little Wing. Not many players have touched that kind of songwriting. Great, great song.
It’s just this fucking simple- there is Hendrix and there’s everybody else.Now- don’t get me wrong-
I’m not negating other players and their impact- but Hendrix was doing things musically that no one still can touch……His love of all music was profound,and had he lived would have brought a whole new audience to jazz ,as he was starting to work with people like Gil Evans and Miles Davis….
He also put together an all black rock band that
was confronting to record companies and black audiences……..To really get a sense of Jimi- read Bill Graham’s autobiography and the section on Band of Gypsies on New Year’s Eve at the Fillmore East…….