Original subtitles

You have another LP coming out.

It's finished completely, finished. It will be out in about ten days.

It's called 'Eletric Ladyland".

This song is off the LP Jimi Hendrix, 'Electric Ladyland'.

The title of the LP, 'Electric Ladyland'.

Directed and produced by Jimi Hendrix.

Photography, Linda Eastman.

Engineers, Gary Kellgram and Eddie Kramer.

Recorded at the Record Plant. 321 West 44th Street New York City.

We would like to make an apology for taking so very long to send this...

but we have been working very hard indeed...

doing shows and recording.

When that album came out, man, I mean, it just...

stitched it for him. He was...

he was absolutely...

the man on the scene.

He made the leap in 68, you know 20 years...

When you heard that record you were thrown into the future.

There was no question about it, Jimi was tremendously gifted...

and he was meant to play guitar, but by hell he worked at it.

I always felt with Jimi, that he was...

a very major...

artist, as a musician and as a composer.

I knew that he was going to sort of take the whole form somewhere else...

and I believe that he only just began to do that with 'Electric Ladyland'.

Well, all the albums with Jimi ran into one anyhow...

as we were doing 'Are You Experienced'...

we're messing around with songs that became part of the 'Acts of Love'...

and we were doing songs that ended up on 'Electric Ladyland'.

Wejust kept rolling...

and as soon as we had enough songs for an album we'd put that one out.

I was quite grateful to get into the studio.

It was never like it was planned.

This is the next album. There was never time enough to...

to do a complete plan of campaign.

'Electric Ladyland', I'd say was, if you play it now...

is well ahead of its time, and it's still valid musically.

Beautiful album, I think it's a well balanced album...

and it definitely broke some rules and it pushed...

the boundaries way out there.

That's probably the most experimental album that Jimi had ever done.

The whole LP means so much. It wasn't just slot together...

every little thing on there means something...

it's not a game that we were playing.

The morning is dead

And the day is too

There's nothing left here to greet me

But the velvet moon

All my loneliness

I have felt today

It's a little more than enough

To make a man throw himself away

I continue

To burn the midnight lamp

Alone

Quite an accomplished keyboard player. I think it's the first time he played...

harpsichord on a record.

The idea for the harpsichord was right there from...

literally as soon as the playback...

Yeah, it needs something there.

Harpsichord? That would be nice.

This is a combination track with...

guitar and a very strange sounding instrument...

it sounds like a mandolin but it's not really a mandolin.

Its Jimi playing electric guitar that's been recorded at 7,5 IPS...

and played back at 15, otherwise recorded half speed. So you get this...

very strange mandolin effect.

Now the smiling portrait of you

Is still hangin' on my frowning wall

But it really doesn't really Bother me

Too much at all

It was the first time we'd worked with Gary.

It was just one of them things we were in New York...

and the studio was free. Tom Wilson had recommended the studio.

And so wejust went down there and tried it, it was good.

I met Gary Kellgram when he was still at Mayfair.

He of course was the creative genius who was working with Jimi Hendrix...

and Tom Wilson and Bob Dylan and all those guys...

and on April 18th, 1968...

I'll never forget it, Eddie arrived in New York with his black cape...

and we picked him up at the airport.

We were fortunate enough to meet up with Eddie Kramer...

who really did know his stuff. He had quite a classical background.

He came swishing into the New York record plant.

That was also the night we'd had the first real session with Jimi...

and of course 'Electric Ladyland' was our very first big hit.

Bass Guitar, played by Noel Redding, a very funky, dirty sound...

growling away in the background.

For most part a pretty distorted sound but...

when it's mixed in with the drums...

A pretty hard driving force.

And here are the angelic voices...

of Cissy Houston & The Sweet Inspirations...

this was Aretha's background vocal group.

They all thought it was quite strange...

and 'Midnight Lamp' sort of threw them a little bit but they liked it...

and did a great job on it.

For a man who really thought that his voice stunk and was so embarrassed...

this is an amazing vocal performance.

About the circus and the wishing well

And someone who will buy And sell for me

Someone who will toll my bell

And I continue

He was always laughing and carrying on in the sessions.

You can hear there's a very jovial Hendrix...

that underlying the intensity of his vocal at the end...

he would just explode into laughter and make ajoke about something.

One of the things that annoys me most...

you know, since Jimi died...

and people around his estate prior to this...

always made out Jimi to be some kind of tragic character...

and sort of gloomy, mystical and all the rest of it.

If I think of Jimi, I think of him with a smile on his face...

cos he was full of fun all the time.

A lot of humor.

For him was in what he did with his music...

and if you watch him on stage...

you can see when he's laughing to himself...

when he's playing something.

We'd go up to his room and he'd have all the curtains closed...

all the lights off and he'd put scarves all over all the lights.

So you couldn't see anything in the room...

and he'd have the telly on so we called him the Bat.

He was a great mimic...

he used to have us in stitches with his imitations of Little Richard.

He had one tale after the other of Little Richard coming out.

You had to see him to believe it, hejust became Little Richard.

There was so much joking around and jokes and goofing...

just so, doing voices, imitating people, so much fun stuff.

Jimi James, what's my man doing today? I say, you know what...

go look in the mirror, look at your hair.

Your curls don't come undone, brother.

He said, "Well, I tried Bryl Cream...

but it don't seem to work these days."

Thank you very much.

The 'Electric Ladyland' sessions started way back in England...

at the Olympic studios in Barnes, London...

where we cut the basic tracks for 'Crosstown Traffic'...

and 'All Along The Watchtower'. Of course written by Bob Dylan.

Whenever I mentioned...

or whenever somebody mentioned Bob Dylan's name...

just his name...

I mean, the man's eyes and body and mind would just like...

he's like, "where is he?

He's like, he's my messiah."

He liked the latter day Dylan and I liked the early day Dylan...

but between the two of us there was so much meeting of minds.

He would keep in his flight bag a Bob Dylan song book...

and refer to it on a daily basis.

He loved Bob Dylan.

He did 'All Along the Watchtower'.

There must be some kind of way out Of here

Said thejoker to the thief

There's too much confusion

I can't get no relief

Jimi obviously just heard...

'Watchtower' and just fancied doing it.

I'd never heard it before, it was just like a quick play through...

maybe of the original.

It was just the usual thing: The strum guitar and this is how it goes.

This is a great example of Jimi's ability to orchestrate...

direct and really focus the attention on all the intricacies of the song.

Jimi played the six string...

and wejust sat opposite each other.

And there was just us, and Mitch...

so wejust put it down with just the acoustic guitar and Mitch Michell.

I think Noel was over the road...

at the Red Lion or the Green Cow or whatever it was.

It's great how Jimi is telling Mitch where to put the bass drum part...

because he knows instinctively what the rhythm should be.

All along the watchtower

Princes kept the view

While all the women came and went

Bare-foot servants too

We obviously had a visitor...

none other than Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones.

Stumbled by the session...

decided to help out and play some piano...

but I think he valiantly tried for a couple of takes...

but as we can hear it was abandoned...

and they went back to cutting the basic track without him.

I think Brian Jones was involved in some of that kind of deal...

for the percussion effects.

It was anyone that was around, here, hit this, let's try and see what works.

He would just take a cab to the studio...

and it was when he was doing the 'Electric Ladyland' album.

The cab driver said to him, "Hey, ain't you Jimi Hendrix?"

He said, "Yeah". "Where you going, man?"

"I am going to the studio." Cab drive says, "I play congas."

He says, "Well go and get them, come down."

So the cab driver went home and got his congas...

and came down and played in the studio that night.

He was a cab driver.

But that was pretty typical.

If somebody could play something, they could play.

Jimi Hendrix playing bass.

Probably Noel's P bass, his Fender precision bass played upside down.

That's when we were having a few problems...

within the band already...

and I said didn't like the tune.

I saw Jimi frustrated...

running around to get a sound out he had in his head...

and grabbing different bottles, beer bottles, soda bottles...

knives and everything, trying to get that...

middle section where there's an Hawaiian guitar sound.

Hejust played that with a cigarette lighter.

He loved Dylan.

I think this became the definitive version of the song.

I prefer Dylan's version.

On the 16th of April...

we went back to America.

There was no major plan, just...

Jimi was an American and naturally...

an American wants to be big in America.

So wejust went there.

We played sort of like Toronto one night and then...

Texas the next night and then New York and then...

Seattle and then...

Florida.

It wasn't planned, it was silly, really.

I'm glad I'm still here.

I think it's giant stupidity...

from management's point of view...

from agent's point of view.

You've got bands going from one side of America to another.

And more or less you're told to be grateful...

because, "Hey in my day it used to be on a Greyhound bus."

And they put him on at one side of the country for one day...

and you're supposed to be 3 thousand miles away the next day to another gig.

No one seemed to think of a schedule where...

he could go from one place to the other, quite, in a normal manner.

And I think we did something like 9 weeks worth of gigs...

and we didn't have too many days off in those 9 weeks, maybe...

4 or 5 days.

I think I have recorded in my diary 19 thousand miles of driving alone...

and that doesn't include flying.

When you're in a band and you're on the road you don't get tired.

You don't get tired from playing, you get tired from partying.

Going to bed at 4 and getting up at 8. Getting on two airplanes.

And doing another show, doing a press reception in the afternoon...

and thank you very much.

You get half an hour off, you can go and have a beef burger.

And gig, club, bed, airplane.

Thank you very much for about 3 months.

We were sort of going on the road like 3 or 4 days...

coming back into NY, going to the studio for like 2 to 3 days...

which isn't very good, I don't think.

It's like if you're gonna try and get some work done...

you should sit and think it at least...

and without running around playing all the time.

I have a certain amount of bitterness.

Especially, from my friend Jimi. It's giant stupidity.

You can't do that, you must take some time off to write, to do a record.

You can't do 2 or 3 or 4 things at the same time.

I think pressure is an over used word in the industry.

What's a musician really doing?

Doing want he wants to do more than anything else in the world.

It was Michael Jeffries who said, "Would you like to come down to Miami...

and record Jimi at the Miami pop festival?"

The first night Jimi did the show and it was alright.

The second night it got totally swamped out, it rained in buckets.

There was a draught in that whole part of Florida...

which had gone on for about a month...

and I guess sometime the night before the show they sent some...

planes out to see the clouds over the Everglades.

And it worked.

And the whole show was cancelled.

And I remember I got in the limo with Jimi and Mitch...

and Jimi was furiously scribbling in the back of the limo...

and I glanced over and I could see, 'Rainy Day, Dream Away.'

Alright.

When you hear the beginning of'Rainy Day' you can hear...

some changes being played and that's basically just us talking about...

different sections of the tune.

And there's not a whole lot of changes to it.

A lot of it just is... it's just copying in "d".

And then later on, on a cue, I remember we talked about doing this...

that kind of thing. There's a section there...

I think...

You go...

Freddie Smith?

- Freddie Lee Smith on sax. - He's not with us, unfortunately.

And then I was playing...

drums.

And this tune itself was one...

of the highlights of my career. Most definitely, just in...

Do know who was on bass?

- There was no bass. - Just the organ?

Mike Finnegan was playing, was... as we know it, shamming.

The first I did as far as the bass line, was...

that kind of feel...

so that was cool.

I think a couple of times I did some walking lines...

and he said, "No, don't be walking, just keep pumping."

We would check out the words, "Rainy day...

rained all day, ain't no use to get up tight.

Lay back and groove on a rainy day."

And that's just the thing you do on a rainy day.

If he had a lyric, I didn't know about it.

If he had like...

a form, he kept it to himself because it was a very loose construction.

The first half was like mellow...

and the second half was insane.

As I told you, there is no bass player at the end of the tune, we get into a...

and everything is going...

and then...

doing those things. It was all head cues, hand signals and eyebrows and...

It was easy for me because one of my specialties is playing a shuffle...

which they call "gut bucket"...

to where you can really float with time...

and you kinda get that imaginative, like in other words...

like when you float with time, you back like this.

Man, it's cool.

It wasn't like this, wild party scene that a lot of people...

might have associated with Jimi Hendrix.

All this mad, mad moving, lots of women, people getting high.

Nothing like that. It was like real kind quiet and thoughtful.

What's he saying in the background?

- Lay back the harmony. - The harmony thing.

"Lay back and dream on a rainy day."

Something like that.

I think we were playing like...

the ugliest thing we could find.

I didn't know that was gonna be on his album.

Hell, I never got paid for the session, man.

If you're out there listening, I want my money.

I am proud of it, I'm proud of the fact that I was able...

to be...

on a record with him.

Because of the fact that he is so important in it...

it has more to do with be in the right place at the right time...

than it does with my ability, you know.

I'm glad I was able to be there. I'm glad I was good enough...

to hold up my hand.

But it wasn't something, "Hey, I'm gonna do this, get Finnegan."

This was the time where...

it was his time after going back to New York, after doing the circuit...

and the times he would go to New York were...

it wasn't really under his terms...

of doing the Cafe Whap really struggling in Greenwich Village.

Now the guy is back under his own terms...

and I can't say know New York is his.

But...

he decided to make it...

a base.

You've got to remember that Jimi's first success was Europe...

then he went to America.

And it had to be great satisfaction for him there...

he was a black kid and suddenly...

thousands of white guys were coming to see him play.

It was the first artist that had done that in America...

in real terms, in modern Europe. It had to be tempting...

to wanna go out and do the rounds...

the lap of honor at every opportunity.

Everywhere he went he took his guitar.

Everybody after a while knew the best to see Jimi Hendrix...

was in a club, after the show.

So it don't matter where you went...

he would always go out that night and play with somebody.

We had like the Scene Club just around the corner, two blocks away...

where some of thejam sessions...

if you want, ever took place...

and it was breaking down a lot of barriers at that point.

You'd find people like Gabor Szabo playing with Albert King...

who was in a road with a 400 foot lead playing outside in the street.

And it's a tiny little cub, in a basement.

And it was a real crossover period...

people would play with anyone.

When things got a bit silly in the studio...

we'd all go down the scene club at 3 in the morning...

because it was still open until 6 in the morning.

And it was like our second home, actually.

It was like a Paris disco, in that it was a cave style.

It had 3 rooms that focused in like across on a stage...

and as a subterranean basement...

it had this Paris cave disco style to it.

There were some great nights there.

I think it was the night with Dylan and Hendrix...

just jamming one night. A lot of people would just...

walk in and go, "God, look at that band."

It'd be rock n' roll heaven up there.

I like to hear what you played originally, it's kinda fun.

That slapping of string which gives it that front edge.

The session itself was...

after a rather long evening...

and I believe it was somewhere around daybreak...

around 7 o'clock or something when we started working on that song.

And Stevie Windwood was there and my buddy, Mitch Mitchell...

a comrade in rhythm and in sanity.

And...

with Jimi, and it was...

a great experience, a lot of fun...

and very close. Lots of fun.

It was a musical highlight.

That's one thing that he always kept and kind of returned to as concept...

was the idea of getting together with Stevie Windwood...

and starting a band and playing.

But every time he would go to the phone or just about...

at the point that he would make the move and be really determined...

that that's what he was going to do...

he'd chicken out of the idea...

he'd get frightened of the idea of calling.

And he'd say, "He's not going to play with me, he'd never play with me.

Would he? What do you think?"

He was always kind of exploring a bit...

and I think he was ready to do...

lots of different things...

and maybe one of the things was...

he might have an idea to do something with me.

We would have killed...

at any time...

night, day, month year...

to have been able to persuade...

under any circumstances...

Steven to be any part of any situation.

What I liked about Jimi...

is he conducted it very naturally, very open...

he had his ideas and he conveyed them pretty clearly...

without a lot of talk...

and what was nice about his approach...

it sort of reminded me of some...

of the musicians I had grown up with in Washington DC.

Was that you just basically go in a room to do some pickening, do some playing...

communicate that way, so it really didn't take a lot of talk.

Just paying attention to each other.

Which is sort of the essence of playing together.

There was a kind of a sense of camaraderie...

of all being in it together, really...

and often we would jam together...

and bands would play and we were maybe setting up or...

what you would call sound checks today...

we would just set up and trying out instruments...

and someone would come and Jimi would kinda play.

It's interesting hearing this so many years later...

and it's still fresh, it still feels that...

it was done yesterday.

You're revisiting something you've done...

and I put the faders up when...

- it feels it falls under my fingers. - It's really a little creepy, isn't it?

It's like were entering into the vaults or something.

Well, we are.

But it's amazing.

I can really remember...

the feeling on the floor, of the studio.

When it comes down to it it's the music...

and that night or morning...

the music worked.

The voice in him...

He had so much rhythm in his voice.

An all he could hear was his voice...

all he could hear was his rhythm and...

that's where all the rows came in.

If we had a constant row in the studio...

when I say "row" it was disagreement...

it was where his voice should be in the mix.

He always wanted to have his voice buried...

and I always wanted to bring it forward...

and he would say, "I've got a terrible voice."

And I'd say, "You might but you've got great rhythm in your voice...

and it's as important to the song...

your diction and the way you deliver words."

And there was always a controversy between us.

Which I always won by pulling his voice forward.

Backing vocals were done by me and Dave Mason of all people.

- You know what else is on here? - No.

- That's Jimi with the comb. - Comb and paper.

The kazoo is an instrument that has always been associated...

with He Ha and Hill Billy music.

And he was on 'Crosstown Traffic' and...

couldn't seem to get the sound he was trying to express across...

and to someone in the studio Jimi said...

"You got a comb on you, man? Somebody get me some cellophane."

And if you take a comb and put cellophane across it...

and blow through it it gives a kazoo sound.

So the guitar track on... the solo...

on 'Crosstown Traffic' is, the guitar is lazed by the sound of the kazoo...

and that's Jimi with this particular comb.

Which I just though was amazingly brave of someone to do.

Jimi would reach and grab anything he could possibly could get his hands on...

if he thought it would produce the desired sound for him.

Guitar and bass together. What were we doing?

There must have been some good reason.

We'd probably ran out of tracks.

Excellent rhythm player.

I think a lot of that had to do with the time that he spent...

backing other people and playing with Little Richard...

and Isley Brothers and people like that.

Like your basic R&B chops...

learning how to fit into a band in a subordinate role...

and there's a lot of guys that can play...

a handful of solo kind of things...

that don't have the first clue of how...

to comp changes and stuff. And he certainly knew how to do that.

He played rhythm in parts...

but it was really a lead but it was rhythm.

Hejust had these great big arms. To do it all.

That piano track, the chords for that...

I was messing around with thosejazz chords...

and Jimi came in the studio and said, "Wow, what's that chord?"

So I showed him the chord and he said, "Well, you play it."

I've never heard it was specifically ajazz chord, Eddie.

It was ajazz chord.

The great thing of recording with Jimi w there were no rules.

That's what made it interesting. That's what made it exciting.

22nd April, 68 recording.

Went to the studio, did 'Little Miss Strange'.

A couple of nights I went in and Hendrix didn't turn up at all.

So on one night, that's when I did 'Little Miss Strange'.

I'd written a song...

and there was no one there, so I thought, "Why not?"

Such an English sounding track. I mean, only as Noel could do it.

He's a great rhythm guitar player.

Before he was the bass player in 'The Experience'...

he was a rhythm guitar player and it shows on this track.

He's playing acoustic guitar and the two...

electric 12 string rhythm parts.

28 of April, 68 with a session at 2 o'clock.

Finished mixing 'Little Miss Strange'.

Did nothing else finished at... 10 o'clock.

Jimi, on the other hand, is playing the wah wah...

with that strange sound.

I put the bass on top of it...

and I put another rhythm guitar on top of it...

and then Hendrix, whenever he turned up the next day or whatever...

I played it to him, he liked it and I put the guitar on it.

So it was like...

I think Jimi was really taken with the quirkiness of this track...

and he wanted it on the album I think as a...

nice shot to Noel.

"Here you are, mate. Have a song on the album."

Noel found this whole period very difficult.

He had a certain frustration because Noel...

before hejoined Jimi, was a guitar player.

And he started playing bass for them.

He more or less got thejob because of the way he looked.

And Jimi started doing a bit of the bass himself in the studio etc.

Noel didn't want to sit there all night waiting to...

maybe not even working at all that night.

I used to get to the studio at 6 o'clock to go to work...

and Hendrix wouldn't turn up until three in the morning.

So we were expected to sit around and wait for him...

which I wasn't prepared to do.

By the time we got into the middle of'Electric Ladyland'...

we were working on songs we'd never worked on...

in terms of rhythms or anything. They werejust outline ideas.

So the songs started getting almost written in the studio...

which takes an awful long time, it's very boring for a producer.

Well I realize I've been hypnotized

I love you gypsy eyes

I love you gypsy eyes All right

Gypsy

Way up in my tree I'm sitting by my fire

Wonderin' where in this world Might you be

lmagine doing 40 takes of this.

A lot of them.

In real terms, I think he was losing his nerve a bit, you know.

Didn't quite believe what he was doing...

and it was like he wanted to do it over and over again.

By the time we started doing 'Electric Ladyland'...

he always had hangers on in the studio.

And he couldn't say no.

He found it very hard to say no.

And of course, when he went round to the Scene tojam...

and then come back dragging an entourage of 20 people...

into the control room, it became out of hand and I think...

in the beginning Chas said, "Look, this is not gonna happen, Jimi...

you can't have all these people partying and cluttering up the control rooms".

New York is the capital of hangers-on...

and by the time we get in there was 10, 20, 30 people...

and he started playing for them, not for the recording machine.

So he'd play a thing and...

his 20 hangers-on would laugh at something he did and he'd do it again.

And again and again.

So I used to go in there and sort of go into the booth and say...

"Excuse me, can I sit down?" and they'd say, "Hey man, who are you?"

I'd say, "Well, I'm just the bass player in the group, thank you."

If you were a car mechanic...

you wouldn't take your friend along to watch you repair a car, would you?

Chas didn't the hangers-on, but they were Jimi's hangers-on...

and so it was Jimi's decision to have them around...

and I don't think Chas liked any of that.

Many, many takes of this.

I think that by the end of about the 45th take...

Chas, who was producing this track said, "Seee yaaa".

I just said, "I'm going.

I've had enough, you're not listening to us like you used to.

When you've decided to start listening to me again, I'll be there.

- Goodbye for now." - Chas had quite a valid point.

Time is money, and "The House Of The Rising Sun"...

was done for 10 dollars, at first take.

A lot of the sessions werejust...

you know, an expensive way to...

have some fun.

I was exhausted...

I needed to get away from telephones and everything.

My first wife was pregnant...

she told mejust at the time. I thought, "Let's get the hell out of here."

I asked Jimi one day at a restaurant we used to go...

called the 'Ten Angel '...

what that song was about.

And he explained to me that the song was about a lot of things...

but specifically it was about the Watts riots.

I think, a sense of despair really...

it was like killing all the good guys.

Martin Luther King had died in April, something like that...

and that certainly left a huge mark upon everyone.

First of all, it was about the insanity...

of people burning their own neighborhoods up.

And, you know, why you're burning your own brothers house down?

It was about the outrage and the anger...

that the inner city folks felt at that time...

about having a leader like Martin Luther King killed.

And then, a couple of months later...

Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

In one way everybody was...

a lot more serious about what they were doing by the end of that year.

Guys were getting gunned down and you were, "Well, nothing's changed."

There started to be a lot of changes for him...

and I imagine a lot of soul searching on his part like for everybody.

The band itself was political.

The very fact that in 1966 that someone would even have a band...

was integrated as a political statement.

At the end of the song there's...

something that Eddie does, a guitar sound...

that sounds like a cat purring.

The sound of a panther at the end of it...

can mean a lot of things. There were some political groups at that time...

that were extremely, extremely...

powerful and potent in the consciousness of this country.

Once Chas left, Jimi took over and began to experiment with sounds...

in 1983 in 'A Merman I Shall Turn To Be'...

which is an 18 minute sci-fi epic...

which is the complete opposite...

of the Chas influenced 4 minute pop structured song.

And any sound that Jimi could dream up, we included.

Listen to this, this is Jimi...

making air sounds with his mouth.

Pretty neat sci-fi effect.

He was always writing lyrics or what looked poems, I think...

on scraps of paper. Even writing pads.

He wrote in restaurants. I've seen him write in cars, limousines.

I saw him write in clubs, at bars. He was constantly writing...

and he had these little pads that he used to carry around with him.

He was always making notes all the time.

He was always talking about psychedelic things...

space ships and all that sort of stuff.

That's Jimi doing all the background vocal parts.

Fantastic gospel sound that he's created with...

just two voices. And with...

Al Cooper on the piano doing great gospel parts.

And even if the harmonies sound a little strange...

when you put it in with the whole band it is just a wonderful blend.

Hejust had this incredible ability to be able...

to pick the strangest notes and harmonies, stack them, and it just fits.

And here comes the rest of the band.

Wednesday, the 7th of August, 1968.

Went and did some photos in Central Park with Linda Eastman.

Dear Sirs, here are the pictures...

we'd like you to use anywhere on the LP cover...

preferably inside and back...

without the white frames around some of the black and white ones.

Please, use the color picture of us...

an the kids on the statue for the front or back cover.

The sketch on the other pages is a rough idea of course...

but please use all the pictures and the words.

The photos were by Linda Eastman, Linda McCartney.

Wejust said we'd go into Central Park...

and wejust sort of sat there and did the photo session...

and got all these kids sitting about and we had a bit of fun.

"We have enough personal problems...

without having to worry about the simple yet effective layout.

Thank you. Jimi Hendrix."

The guy called David Kind, who's art director at...

Sunday Times color magazine.

He called me up and he said...

"We got this idea to do Jimi Hendrix 'Electric Ladyland'...

and the idea is a bunch of nude girls.

There was the artwork that came out in England...

that Kate Lambert and Chris Stamp put together.

As far as I was concerned it was in the grand old tradition...

of "let's see who we can upset." I didn't care.

I think David and Stamp went to night clubs in London...

and got these girls to come down.

I think saying that Jimi was gonna be here.

Jimi had a great love of women and the idea of that sleeve...

was they werejust beauties from the street.

And they were all sitting there posing and they all loved Jimi.

I mean that was the idea, it was meant tojust show...

a sort of freedom, the nakedness was like a freedom...

it wasn't sort of a sexual pose or anything.

When Jimi saw the final artwork of the English cover...

which he had had no control over...

was very, very annoyed, because it was...

the antithesis of what he wanted. He thought that the naked ladies...

was an insult.

It was down here, it started looking like a ladies shower room.

Someone said there had been a big thing in the papers about...

'The Experience' had got this album out with all these women on the front of it.

And there was this huge outcry. But it was great publicity for us lot.

They still had their knickers on and their underwear.

So I say, "You gotta take those off" and they say, "No way."

So I think they are making about 5 pounds each.

I say, "Ok, another 3 pounds."

What was that, some kind of statement?

When Jimi got hold of the reference acetate...

which was a test of what the final disc was going to be for...

'Electric Ladyland', it had been cut over at CBS studios.

Now the while coated technicians over there...

in their infinite wisdom...

got the name wrong and it came back on the label written Electric Landlady.

I'm sure he he wasn't pleased about that...

after all the hard work we'd put in.

And the sound of the acetate was not what was represented on the tape.

It was pretty awful in fact.

You've got Jimi playing backwards guitar...

a Lesley guitar, regular guitar, bass guitar...

and Mitch doing speeded up drums.

It's full of feeling and emotion.

There is a slight difference between a virtuoso...

and a musician and he was both.

You know, he was great accompanist, he had an understanding of...

arrangement, voicing, chord or movement...

and he was a virtuoso as well.

He was cutting tracks with just guitar and drums.

The only track I saw him do with the band is the track we did.

Jimi played quite a lot of bass, on this...

and from a drummers point of view...

I wish that I'd been there right from the start...

instead ofjust rhythm guitar and drums.

By itself it doesn't make any sense, one would think...

and yet you put the drums to it...

and it becomes a wonderfully complex rhythm track.

He didn't read music.

He didn't use musical terms like arpeggios, and all that stuff.

Those types of terminology. Jimi talked about colors and sounds.

He said, "Make it sound like the ocean"...

or, "I want it to sound like the wind here."

There was nobody else doing what he could do on the guitar.

There was nobody else...

at all.

He seemed to get inside the guitar...

with his personality, he didn't seem to be...

you can hear all his influences.

In some hejust steps aside of all that and...

it melts together and produces new things.

The public's perception of him was based more on this wild guy...

than it was based on this innovative musician.

There's 3 beautiful falsetto background vocal parts...

as well as the lead voice on top.

He still has...

this charming grace about his music

that peoplejust still adore.

And it's just relentless, man.

I heard him as a guy coming out of the Blues...

I mean, a really good Blues player but he'd gone...

taken it to another place.

Similar to Charlie Parker...

or Louis Armstrong or John Coltrane or any other great...

people in jazz that...

were responsible for the innovations that occurred.

In a classical sense, I think he was like a young Mozart.

He actually was just beginning to sort of express his gift.

That's a mark of a true genius.

It's someone who creates a generic form, all his own.

I miss him, man.

I need him so bad.

He's a very special person...

I've yet to meet anyone who had the same energy.

I miss him very much.

It's gotta be right up there.

I put it right up there with Sgt Pepper.

I do.

Records like 'Electric Ladyland'...

will be accessible to all ages...

and young people will always seek out good music.

Considering it's still selling 25 years later...

I think everybody's got their money worth and...

only being frustrated by the length of time.

It's definitely a classical album.

It'll completely stand the test of time.

His music will last forever as far as I'm concerned. I think that...

in the next couple of 100 years you're still gonna be hearing Hendrix's music.

I don't think it will ever die.

Hendrix is obviously a wonderful guitar player...

and a wonderful writer who I still think about.

I miss him a lot.

There are certain times I think of him a great deal.

Most of the time it's with a lot of laughter.

It's a kind of connotation that people think of this morose character...

which is not true, I mean, the man was a lot of fun...

to be around.

Jimi, what's it called?

- What? - What's it called?

'Electric Ladyland'.