GYPSY BLOOD by Dave Thompson
Rock guitar has always turned up heroes. From Scotty Moore to Eddie Van Halen, from Eric Clapton to Joe Satriani, the history of rock is littered with players who didn’t simply change the way people played the guitar, they changed the way people looked at it. Each and every one of them, however, will admit that there was one master towards whom they all looked up, a musician who impacted so hard on all of them that he didn’t simply play the guitar, he reinvented it. And today, 35 years after his death, he still looms larger than life over every person who ever picks up the instrument.
Hendrix was good, and he knew it. No matter that he spent the vast majority of his career strumming more-or-less unnoticed behind a succession of band leaders - who themselves seem not to have noticed his abilities until after he’d left their employ. From the moment he landed in London in September 1966, under the aegis of former Animals bass player Chas Chandler, Hendrix made people sit up and listen. His first ever live performance found him jamming onstage with Clapton and Cream, just a few months after that band was greeted as the greatest line-up any group could have.
Yet, in the space of just two songs, he had caused even that belief to be re-evaluated, and would continue to do so until the end of his life. Indeed, at the time of his passing, Hendrix was on the verge of forming a new group with one member of Cream itself, bassist Jack Bruce. “It was Jimi, myself, and Tony Williams,” Bruce recalled in July 2004. “But Jimi died and that was the end of it.” Instead, the surviving duo recruited guitarist John McLaughlin, and formed Lifetime. But history still wonders what might have happened.
The question of how rock’n’roll would have progressed had Hendrix lived, the maze of alternate universes that could have unfolded had he only awoken that morning in September 1970, was a unifying theme of the first volume of this tribute to Hendrix, the much-praised Voodoo Crossing. Of course, it is one that we can never answer definitively, but still it is a lot of fun trying - as the contents of this second volume prove.
The players come from across the rock spectrum to pay their own homage to Hendrix, and it is indicative of sheer breadth of Hendrix’s genius that, though all draw their inspiration from the same man, not one of them plays the same way. From the redoubtable Scott Finch’s signature reinvention of “Spanish Castle Magic,” to Pat Travers’ dynamic “Ezy Rider,” the track listing for Gypsy Blood reads like one of the greatest Hendrix albums you could ever compile, played by some of the most visionary guitarists you could ever hear. There are moments, in fact, when… no, we’ll leave you to discover the solos that can make the hairs stand up on your neck, or the riffs that make you catch your breath; and hunt down the songs that might not quite eclipse Hendrix’s own renditions, but which would certainly never have disgraced him, because they retain in their present guise all of the adventure and penchant for surprise that Jimi himself valued so highly.
Talking of his version of “Purple Haze,” for instance, Larry Coryell (who, as a younger man, was both a contemporary and an acquaintance of Hendrix’s) reminds us that the original - Hendrix’s second ever single, and the first to prove that he wrote songs as well as he performed them - was one of Jimi’s “flag wavers, replete with loudness and distortion.” Purposefully, then, Coryell turned it completely round, opening with acoustic guitars, before sliding effortlessly into a mélange that combines Hendrix’s original chords with “Toy Soldiers,” a theme that Coryell composed with his sons Murali and Julian.
Arlen Roth, meanwhile, revisits “The Wind Cries Mary,” that gorgeous ballad that Hendrix composed for his girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham, and which has always cried out for a dramatic reappraisal. Roth supplies that, leaning towards a country vibe that brings out a whole new plain of emotion across an already heart-rending number.
And Mark Doyle draws out such a sensitive reading of “Little Wing” that Hendrix’s own greatest performance of the song, the gorgeously soaring rendition that highlighted his In The West live album, is surely the only version you could ever compare it to - which means there’s a lot of other versions, by a lot of other people, that simply pale alongside it.
It’s moments like that (and there are so many more besides) that make Gypsy Blood such a joy to listen to… not just once, which is the sadly the fate of many tribute albums (to Jimi Hendrix and everyone else who’s been treated to one), but again and again. Across the almost 40 years that have elapsed since Hendrix first exploded onto the scene in a blaze of burning guitars, psychedelic finery and vibrant electricity, his music has become so familiar that listening to it is almost akin to taking a drive down a favourite country road, to a village you’ve loved your entire life. Play Gypsy Blood, however, and suddenly you start noticing things you’d never seen before - a tree here, a stream there, and every so often, an entire new road, winding away from the one you’ve loved for so long. So you make the turn, take the journey - and, though you might still end up in the same place you were heading for, your mind explodes with the joy you’ve just been introduced to.
It is often said that you can never hear a favourite record for the first time more than once. Gypsy Blood and its companion volume, the aforementioned Voodoo Crossing, suggest that sometimes, you can. |
HZ 024/2 DREADNAUGHT - LIVE AT MOJO - 2 CD
CD 1
1. Popeye (Lord, Walton, Habib, Bessei, Trippi) 3:00
2. Tiny Machines (Lord, Walton, Habib) 4:26
3. Tombstone Every Mile (Fulkerson) 3:43
4. The Jester’s Theme (Lord, Walton, Habib) 6:47
5. Deneb (Lord, Walton, Habib) 2:44
6. Tournament (Lord, Walton, Habib) 2:48
7. I’ve Been Away (Entwistle) 2:42
8. James Tresher Industries (Lord, Walton, Habib) 0:59
9. Welding (Lord, Walton, Habib) 4:31
10. Red Light (Lord, Walton, Haney) 4:48
11. Clownhead (Lord, Walton, Habib) 5:18
12. Dark Star (Garcia, Hart, Hunter, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir) 3:46
13. Bunnaschidt (Lord, Walton, Habib) 7:00
14. Excitable Boy (Marinell, Zevon) 2:41
15. Nag Champ-A-Laya (Lord, Bessey, Habib, Trippi) 6:57
CD 2
1. Gulf Of Tonkin (Lord, Walton, Habib) 1:08
2. The Boston Crab (Lord, Walton, Habib) 2:18
3. The Drill (Lord, Bessey, Habib, Trippi) 1.09
4. Danny (Lord, Bessey, Habib, Trippi) 4:27
5. Rats And Me (Lord, Walton, Habib) 4:39
6. Sophia Standalone (Lord, Walton, Haney) 2:37
7. Peaches En Regalia (Zappa) 3:03
8. Illinois Enema Bandit (Zappa) 1:29
9. The Torture Never Stops (Zappa) 4:21
10. Ballbuster (Lord, Walton, Habib) 4:23
11. Whole Lotta Shakin’ (David, Williams) 2:26
12. Women Are Kryptonite (Lord, Bessey, Habib, Trippi) 3:11
13. I Am A Lonesome Fugitive (Anderson, Anderson) 3:40
14. Clean Your Act Up (Son) (Lord, Bessey, Habib, Trippi, Goodwin, Marcalus) 4:54
15. Derby Days (Lord, Walton, Habib) 9:40
Recorded in USA 2004
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