Jimi Hendrix, 40 Years Beyond
Written by vintage on April 18, 2010 – 3:16 am -2010 will be a banner year for the sound and vision of the Seattle-born guitarist.
By Michael E. Ross for MSN Local Edition
It has been nearly 40 years since he kissed the sky for good in September 1970, but in all that time Jimi Hendrix -- regarded by many fans and critics as the greatest guitarist who ever lived -- has never been off the radar of popular culture.
This anniversary year of his death in London at the age of 27 will mark a number of events commemorating the man and his music, some of them focused on Seattle, where he was born and raised, a city that has by turns accepted him and, according to some, held him at arm's length despite international multi-generational renown that continues to this day.
For Janie Hendrix, Jimi's stepsister and CEO of Seattle-based Experience Hendrix, the company that monitors the music and images central to Hendrix musical legacy, 2010 is shaping up to be a banner year for Hendrixiana.
"It's really about bringing this music to the generations and giving them that experience they wouldn't feel any other way, other than standing in front of the Marshall amps" that Jimi himself used onstage, she said.
A "new" album
"Valleys of Neptune," an album of Hendrix in concert and in the studio, was released March 9, 2010. The album, which includes unreleased studio material, live recordings and new arrangements of "Fire," "Stone Free" and the blistering blues-rock classic "Red House," was recorded in a turbulent period in Hendrix's life, as the guitarist made changes to the original lineup of his band, the Experience.
The three original Jimi Hendrix Experience studio albums -- "Are You Experienced?", "Axis: Bold as Love" and the epochal double album "Electric Ladyland" -- also got a makeover, with deluxe reissues in March. In mid-March, all four new Hendrix releases were among Billboard's top 100 albums, with "Valleys" entering the charts at no. 4.
"Valleys of Neptune"
For Patrick Smail, a product manager at Seattle's Easy Street Records (where the "Valleys" record has been at or near the top of store sales since it was released), the resurgence of Hendrix's popularity is no surprise. "It's a testament to the legacy of Hendrix, what he was and what he was all about," he said. "We're lucky in Seattle, he's part of the ethos here. When something like this comes out, it's special. It's just the chance to 'experience' his music in an updated way. Even folks with the old bootlegs still want to hear this new music. This stands up to the music of today."
Hendrix started playing the guitar while a youngster in Seattle, and was in a band called the Rocking Kings while a student at Garfield High School. His music career really started after a short stint in the Army, and away from Seattle. But his presence is felt in this laid-back Northwest city.
Hendrix in Seattle
For one thing, his final resting place is at Greenwood Memorial Park in nearby Renton, Wash., still a destination for many music fans who make the pilgrimage. And his life is celebrated at Seattle's Experience Music Project | Science Fiction Museum, the Seattle sci-fi and rock culture museum and concert hall, which continues its two-years-running "Jimi Hendrix: An Evolution of Sound" exhibition.
Fragment of a Strat that Hendrix famously burned at the Monterey Pop Festival (on display at the Experience Music Project).
The exhibit explores Hendrix's evolution from unknown to emerging young guitarist touring the "chitlin' circuit" in the South, from his time in the creative crucible of New York City, to his arrival as an already accomplished supernova on the London music scene in 1966. The exhibit has plenty of relics for the true fan to admire, including the Fender Stratocaster he played onstage at Woodstock, and shards from other guitars he destroyed onstage.
Also, films on Jimi Hendrix's life and legacy will be shown throughout the year at the EMP's 200-seat JBL Theater.
Elsewhere in Seattle, there's a move afoot to renovate a Seattle park, a site whose name was formally changed to Jimi Hendrix Park in June 2006 but which has largely sat undeveloped and unadorned since then. Janie Hendrix hopes to raise $1 million for the project between now and 2012.
Development of the park, which is next to the city's Northwest African American Museum, was the subject of a January community meeting. Several ideas for Hendrix remembrances were floated there, one apparently set to move beyond the idea stage: a crop-circle concept incorporating an outlined image of Hendrix that would occupy the six acres of the park's open space -- an image that could only be completely seen from high overhead. Janie Hendrix said this idea was expected to move forward, with plans for an unveiling sometime in 2012.
And she said that a dispute over whether to move a Hendrix statue on Seattle's Capitol Hill to the Hendrix park has been settled: The life-size statue, at a location near Broadway and East Pine since 1997, stays put. (See images of the statue.)
"Mike Malone [a Seattle developer and owner of the statue] has agreed to keep the statue there," she said. "He's going to create another statue of Jimi that he'll design and which we'll put in the park."
Jimi's music, live on stage
The "Valleys of Neptune" release came just days after Experience Hendrix, the fourth edition of the biennial all-star-players concert tour, kicked off in Santa Barbara, Calif.
The artists to be featured on the tour performing music written and inspired by Jimi Hendrix amount to a guitarist-heavy who's who of respected players in rock and blues. Aerosmith's Brad Whitford, Joe Satriani, Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd are involved, as well as Doyle Bramhall II, Ernie Isley, Living Colour and bass player Billy Cox, a close friend of Hendrix from Army days (they were members of the 101st Airborne Division) and throughout Hendrix's career (Cox played in both the Experience and Band of Gypsys, and appeared with Hendrix in legendary performances at Woodstock in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970).
Some tour stops include stops at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco, and the legendary Fox Theater in St. Louis, as well as performances in Denver, Chicago, Milwaukee and Atlanta.
Expect the 2010 edition to tap more of the passion of the genuine article. "Jimi said he recognized the energy of different audiences and the energy of the stage and how when they collide, it's another energy," Janie Hendrix said. "The more these guys do it, the more they gel on the tour, they establish another identity and they get tighter and tighter as time goes along."
This time out, the Experience Hendrix tour is about bringing the live Hendrix sound where it hasn't been before. Seattle, for example, where it all began, was passed over this year, Janie Hendrix said: "We decided to hit different cities than we hit before. We've never been to Atlanta or North Carolina, so we're trying to get to some different cities this year."
All of it, from the torrent of new releases to rumors about Hendrix being immortalized anew in Rock Band, from a tribute tour to a statue in a park, prompts the question: What is it about Jimi Hendrix that we can't get enough of? Why does he seem as fresh today as the day he died? Janie's answer speaks to both the music and the mythology of James Marshall Hendrix, the power of a sound and the pathos surrounding an icon who exits at an early age.
"He created over 110 songs in four years, and it's real music," she said. "It's a whole creation all its own, it doesn't fit the niche of jazz or rock or R&B, it's its own creation. Lyrically, musically and iconically as an individual, he put it all together.
"And he died so young ..."
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