How Jimi Hendrix Raised the Bar For... Everything Gibson Guitar Preserves Legacy of the Most Creative and Influential Musician of the 20th Century

[ctcost]

How Jimi Hendrix Raised the Bar For... Everything
Gibson Guitar Preserves Legacy of the Most Creative and Influential Musician of the20th Century

Jimi Hendrix was the greatest guitarist of the rock 'n' roll era. He never said
that, of course, but such reliable sources as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Pete
Townshend did.

Thirty-nine-years after his death Hendrix's list of innovations and accomplishments
remains unequaled by any other rock star. Set to paper, they appear exactly as
staggering as they are - and they cross all kinds of musical and cultural lines.

Hendrix's pyrotechnic stage and studio performances are his most obvious legacy, but
he also changed the reference points for all guitarists with his explorations of
volume, feedback, and effects, and the extended technique he coupled to an
improvisational sensibility akin to jazz giant John Coltrane's.

Truly, his influence extends beyond guitar. Hendrix inspired daring horn players -
Miles Davis and Morphine's Dana Colley among them - to play through amps and
effects. Electric violinists and cellists, synthesizer players, and a host of others
who stretch sonic boundaries still bow to his lead.

Jimi and John, Paul, George, and Ringo were the first artists to build their own
commercial studios - the better for Hendrix to master the recording innovations that
made albums like Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland cornerstones of the
psychedelic era.

And yet, it's possible that Hendrix's most
important contributions weren't musical. With his Technicolor clothing,
expressionist sound, conked and Afro'd hair, and grounding in chitlin circuit blues
and R&B, he crossed all sorts of cultural lines to become a living symbol of the
personal and social freedoms the Woodstock generation hungered for.

Nonetheless, it was the nuts and bolts of Hendrix's music that first captured the
imagination of his fellow virtuosos and the public. Guitarists had employed
distortion since the birth of rock 'n' roll, when Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm
cut "Rocket 88" in 1951. But nobody harnessed the sound of overdriven amps like
Hendrix.

"Purple Haze," his first self-penned single in 1967, and that year's debut LP Are
You Experienced struck the international music scene like bolts from Zeus. Feedback
swelled to introduce solos and melodic lines. "Purple Haze" 's intro was the
heaviest riff recorded to date, opening doors for both the hard rock and metal
revolutions to come. The layered and reversed guitars in the title track were the
most ambitious excursions in overdubbing and tape manipulation since Les Paul's
multi-tracked showpieces of the early 1950s. And Jimi's studio version of "The Star
Spangled Banner" remains a textbook example of the technique.

All of this wouldn't have occurred if Hendrix wasn't consumed by curiosity. The
original guitar hero's guitar hero was driven to expand his creative palette, so
access to the latest gear was as important to him as oxygen.

Before Hendrix walked into his shop in 1966, Jim Marshall was a small music-store
owner and struggling amp manufacturer. A year later Marshall's amplifiers were
becoming the new standard for rock thanks to Hendrix's quest for warm, powerful
distortion and easily conjured and controlled feedback. Today, Marshall remains one
of the most popular brands and the foundation for modern high gain amplification.

Of course, Hendrix didn't let his Marconi-tubed stacks of 4x12 cabinets rest on
their own laurels. Early in his quest for sonic thrills he met British electronics
guru Roger Mayer. Wah-wah, volume, and distortion pedals were already a familiar
part of the guitar vocabulary. But Hendrix desired more interesting sounds to match
the rainbows he heard in his head, as well as distortion pedals that wouldn't just
disappear into the howl of a Marshall.

Hendrix took Mayer's Octavia - a UFO-shaped box that produces a tone an octave
higher than the one being played, thereby doubling the struck notes - in the studio
to cut "Purple Haze." The device played a prominent role in "Little Wing," "One
Rainy Wish," "Fire," and the epochal "Machine Gun," too.

Mayer also developed the fuzz box Hendrix used on "Axis Bold As Love," the Uni-Vibe heard at the beginning of Jimi's Woodstock
performance of "Star Spangled Banner," and a host of other effects. He remains a
major player in the business today thanks to Jimi's endorsement.

The Mosrite Fuzzrite and Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face were also staples of Hendrix's toy
box. And occasionally he used a Leslie cabinet in the studio for whirlwind tremolo.
Electric Ladyland's scalding blues-rock masterpiece "House Burning Down" is an
especially thrilling example of the latter.

But it takes more than amps, effects, and a fleet of guitars - primarily
Stratocasters, SGs, and three magnificent Flying Vs that still survive today - to
make a great guitarist. Hendrix was so devoted to the instrument that he slept with
guitars as if they were Teddy Bears and often fiddled with licks and riffs as he
conversed with friends. He played constantly, and had a hard-working apprenticeship
on the chitlin circuit fomenting his own fiery take on blues, R&B, and soul with
Chuck Jackson, Slim Harpo, Little Richard, and even his own King Kasuals, a band he
formed with his bass playing Army buddy Billy Cox. Thanks to his extreme practice
regimen, Hendrix took that vocabulary - which included the most ferocious hammer-ons
and pull-offs ever displayed - to frightening levels of speed, duration,
articulation, and intensity.

He blended that style with the chordal structures of Bob Dylan, whose writing
Hendrix idolized, and the attack of the garage rock he'd played with bands as a
fledgling guitarist around his native Seattle. And then Hendrix upped the ante by
developing the whammy bar as a melodic tool and extending his playing to picking
above the nut, slamming his guitar into his hips to generate a roar, and tricks like
playing behind his head and picking with his teeth.

While stunts like that were a requirement for wowing hard-to-please chitlin circuit
audiences, they were unprecedented in rock 'n' roll. The sheer physicality of
playing behind his back or somersaulting as he soloed raised the bar for live rock
performances to a level that's never been topped.

And Hendrix was well rewarded for his innovations. By the time of his historic
Woodstock performance on August 18, 1969 he was the highest paid musician on the
planet, commanding $100,000 for major concert appearances.

This was an astounding figure for any African-American to earn at the time - just a
year after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis while defending
the rights of Black sanitation workers who earned an average of $1.80 an hour.

The boiling troubles of the era - the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights struggle -
bubbled in Hendrix's soul and in his music. And he addressed them eloquently and
fearlessly, giving voice to the vast, integrated, progressive audience who
considered him their champion.

Two epochal live performances captured this best. When Hendrix played the "Star
Spangled Banner" at Woodstock he rekindled the conflict of the song's - and of the
nation's - birth. And the bombs he yanked out with his whammy bar, the shimmering
rockets of feedback that burst from his Marshalls, and the incoming fire of strings
bent to the breaking point were channeling more than a century-and-a-half of
history. Slavery, Jim Crow, the Klan, San Juan Hill, two world wars, Japanese
internment, two slain Kennedys and a King, Vietnam, and - most important - the sheer
beauty of hope all came spilling from his fingers. And again he tapped into the
violence of the war abroad and in the American streets on New Year's Eve 1969 at the
Fillmore East when he played the instrumental epic "Machine Gun" with his Band of
Gypsys. There Hendrix used his guitar to conjure battlefields, and concluded the
song with a simple wish: "No more bullets."

Jimi Hendrix received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1992, but this musical
giant's achievements had already earned him the highest honor: immortality.
Hendrix's music and his message will surely endure forever through a unique and
exclusive partnership between Gibson Guitar and Authentic Hendrix. News of the
collaboration will be announced this week. Please check back on
www.gibson.com throughout the week for further details.