Where do you start with Hendrix? Well years ago as a seven year old kid I started here. My dad already had the first two Jimi Hendrix Experience albums and I went out with my second round of pocket money and bought my fourth ever album,though the copy I has came with the original cover that my mother covered over with brown paper which to her credit kept the album in nice mint condition till I took it when I got to art college.
At the time as such a young kid listening to Hendrix was like learning a new language and I’ll credit him at least partially with opening my eyes to all kinds of music. 50 years on Electric Ladyland is rightly still considered a benchmark for Rock music, today there are precious few artists with fraction of Hendrix’ vision and when you revisit this album 50 years after its birth, it really brings that home with a bang. Even more so with all the demos, outtakes and not least the ’68 show from the Hollywood Bowl.
It would be churlish to try and review the actual album here, after all there are hundreds of great reviews out there, the best though in my opinion are the ones written contemporaneously, without the benefit of hindsight or context, they are the reviews that show the excitement of the moment, the feeling that anything was possible.
What gets me most about Electric Ladyland though is its imperfection, its rawness, like its just been hewn from stone, and there it stands surrounded by shards, just born, newly visible. It’s self-indulgent, it’s clearly improvised in parts, but yet its all held together by the sheer force of will and chemistry of Hendrix and his band, well that and the absolute quality of the songs.
50 years later Ladyland stands the test of time wonderfully well, it’s soulful, it’s charismatic, its full of seemingly boundless energy and its relentless, there may be no final destination but there’s a journey and as journeys go this is the one you will always remember and the one all others will be measured against.
My only concern with the remastering of this 50th anniversary release is that whereas when you listen to the original vinyl you hear that raw and at times muddy sound, particularly the bass and deeper drum tones; cleaned up you lose the bleed of Hendrix’ guitar which seemed to seep into every track of the recording like the lifeblood of the album. So on one hand its great to have the separation of the other two players but on the other you lose that real sense of excitement that you feel wen you drop the needle into the grove.
I’d argue thought that isn’t the real draw here, its the bonus material that comes with the release that will make this essential. That material runs to over two hours and most interesting for me at least are the multiple takes of certain songs which I guess are the closest to understanding the feeling in the studio and the interaction of the players as were ever likely to get. Maybe even better than the studio outtakes and demos though is the Hollywood Bowl show recorded a few days before the release of the original album which sounds like it’s not been tweaked too much at all. It’s the perfect accompaniment to this set.
