ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
Alex Lifeson: “I always loved Manic Depression, but I think All Along The Watchtower is really special, even though, funnily enough, it’s not one of Hendrix’s songs. The arrangement is so striking and beautiful. Whenever I hear it on the radio or in passing, I’m instantly transported to a certain time in my life. When you listen to those acoustic guitars and the way it’s recorded – and this goes for the whole album too – there’s something that’s so creamy and warm and enveloping. It’s the sound of that song and the way all the parts cross over. It’s just a fabulous example of Hendrix at his best.” Bob Dylan said All Along The Watchtower was “a small song of mine that nobody paid any attention to”.
Released in September 1968 as the lead single from Electric Ladyland, All Along The Watchtower was not so much a cover as a song entirely reinvented. To hear it was to almost forget the existence of the original, which now seemed a mere blueprint by comparison. The single reached No.5 in the UK and No.20 in the US, making it Hendrix’s breakthrough success in his homeland. To date it has been streamed on Spotify more than 560 million times – more than twice the total of the song in second place, Purple Haze.
As for Dylan, he was magnanimous. “It overwhelmed me, really. [Hendrix] had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took licence from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.”
ANGEL
Six months after his death, Hendrix lived again in March 1971, as Angel led out the first posthumous album, The Cry Of Love, and announced that the late guitarist’s catalogue would be a going concern. As you’d expect of Little Wing’s sister song (for a time the two tracks even shared a title), Angel was a peerless moment of glisten and shimmer, with a valedictory chorus that seemed purpose-made for the star’s passing (although Hendrix had actually written it about a dream that foresaw his mother’s death). With a chorus that punctured the mainstream consciousness, for many Angel is his greatest ballad.
ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?
The Experience’s debut album might have opened up with Foxy Lady’s chart-tooled swagger, but the final straight had a bolder trick up its sleeve, with a title track that signposted the epic studio productions to come. Mitch Mitchell’s military drum tattoo was the anchor of a free-form sonic tapestry that bent to Hendrix’s will, sweeping up backwards guitars that were more raga than rock, a solo seemingly beamed in from another track, and a woozy call to arms that urged the listener to ditch the denizens of their ‘measly little world’ – far better, Jimi suggests, to ‘hold hands and watch the sunrise from the bottom of the sea’.
BOLD AS LOVE
Uli Jon Roth: “Bold As Love is not really a rock song, it’s just a masterpiece, an artistic masterpiece of the first order. It is completely unconventional. Everything about that piece is unconventional. It doesn’t follow any established pattern. It is a complete one-off, which is the hallmark of quite a few of Hendrix’s best pieces. It has got magical chord changes and a magical key and even more magical guitar solo at the end, and the lyrics are amazing too.
“It is his most beautiful guitar solo, if not the most beautiful solo of all time. What can we learn from this song? We can learn the simple realisation that the greatest songs of all time have not followed the established patterns – very rarely have they followed established patterns, and Bold As Love is in that league – as are many of the greatest Beatles songs. So that’s a lesson to learn right there.”
Axis: Bold As Love’s semi-title track was redolent of Little Wing in the opening measures, but the revelation came at 2:50, when engineer Eddie Kramer unveiled the stereo phasing that he and tape operator George Chkiantz had used to treat the drums. “When Jimi first heard that,” Kramer recalled, “he fell off the couch, yelling at me: ‘Oh my god, this was in my dream!’” Rising to the occasion, for the outro Jimi played a soulful, album-best solo that climaxes with frantic tremolo picking and, according to Experience bass player Noel Redding, was created on the fly: “The ending and the build-up was all spontaneous between the whole band.”
CASTLES MADE OF SAND
Mark Tremonti: “You can’t not stumble across a Hendrix lick when you’re learning to play guitar. Everybody’s been influenced by him in one way or another. Being a guitar player, everybody was always saying he was the ‘best guitar player in the world’, so at first I was too intimidated to learn his stuff, because I thought it would be way too difficult. When I actually did try it, I realised that it wasn’t the technical side of his playing that made people consider him the best, it was his feel, his approach, and all the things and sounds he pioneered.
“Are You Experienced was probably the first album I was exposed to, but I think Purple Haze might have been the first song I tried to learn on guitar, and of course I’ve learned Hey Joe and a few others over the years. My favourite now would probably be Castles Made Of Sand. That’s one of those songs that you put on and it just makes you feel good. It’s got a lot of emotion and soul. Just a feel-good song.”
Eddie Kramer saw this late addition to Axis: Bold As Love as “Jimi’s imagination run wild”. Certainly that’s true of the production – the burbling backwards guitar still sounds revolutionary – but the lyric is
