Electric Lady Studios by Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix was a dynamic performer and songwriter as well as a great interpreter of other people’s songs. Needless to add, he was an innovator on electric guitar, exploring the frontier where reverb, sustain and high volume met sonic distortion.
Hendrix’s musical legacy has been in good hands since the ‘80s with a seemingly endless procession of live recordings and studio outtakes reaching listeners. Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision is among the most essential. The lavishly packaged set includes three CDs from Hendrix’s final months (the summer of 1970) in the recording studio he built, a booklet of photos and essays displaying and explaining it all, and a Blu-ray documentary filled with archival footage and present-day memories by those who knew him.
Hendrix invested his own money in building Electric Lady Studio, a subterranean facility that formerly housed a nightclub in Greenwich Village—a venue where he once played. He hired a recent Princeton architecture graduate to design what the booklet’s essay describes as “a womblike, psychedelic-styled atmosphere akin to the inside of a futuristic spaceship.” Electric Lady was the Starship Enterprise of studios, a place from which Hendrix planned to go boldly into music’s future.
The recordings collected in this set are loose and jam-like as songs were born and ideas evolved. And yet, there is nothing patchy about them, anchored as they are by Hendrix’s adventurous playing and deep feeling for his blues roots. Some of the material is familiar from other versions, including “Ezy Rider” and “Valleys of Neptune,” and others were works in progress. Billy Cox, Mitch Mitchell was present at the sessions, as was Buddy Miles, Steve Winwood and, on “Earth Blues,” the Ronettes on backing vocals.
After his death, Electric Lady became one of America’s most acclaimed studios, hosting sessions for The Who, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, AC/DC, The Clash and many other stars. Business slumped after new technology allowed musicians to record at home, yet Electric Lady survived the closing of many competitors. Perhaps the magic of Hendrix clings to those walls, encouraging sessions by Kanye West, Nas, Daft Punk and other present-day performers.
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