Disc of the day
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
Features Disc of the day
Jimi Hendrix Experience
Are You Experienced
(Track/Polydor, 1967)
Hats still off, and flags at half-mast for the mini-magician of rock drumming.
Chas E Foote, the doyen of London drum dealers, liked to tell a story about Mitch Mitchell, remembering how the then-unknown urchin bopped into his Golden Square store in the mid-’60s to try out some drums. “These sound good,” the future Hendrix time-bomb told Foote, “but can my mate have a go? I’d really like his opinion…” Mitchell popped out, popped back in and, Foote’s jaw dropped. His “mate”, now sat on a drum stool socking out paradiddles was… Peter Sellers.
Mitchell’s child-actor background guaranteed that little would awe him in the world of showbiz, and it served him serenely in the service of Jimi Hendrix, the locus of sometimes paralyzing outbreaks of awe among his peers. Manic Depression, the track that had me running back to Are You Experienced in mourning last week, is its perfect encapsulation. It’s hard to say who the star is of this track: Hendrix’s dark, thrill-filled riffing or Mitchell’s lurching, rolling, ride-cymbal-clanking drum attack. As the track ends, in what is basically a drum solo with a Hendrix-Noel Redding vamp sparing its blushes, you’re forced to acknowledge – if you were ever in doubt – that this was anything but a vehicle for Hendrix’s axe-heroics, but a miraculously melded team reimagining the protean rock template.
Jazz was Mitchell’s mother’s milk, and the trashy, slightly “out” feel he brought to R&B owed something to Ginger Baker, but as much to the great Coltrane quartet’s Elvin Jones. In fact, there’s something of the Jones/Coltrane dialectic in Are You Experienced’s Third Stone From The Sun – which rides in on Mitchell’s classic bop tish-kertish, before Hendrix’s tripped-out sheets of sound kick in and the trio head spacewards, kept on course by Redding’s selfless, Suicide-style boogie. (Incidentally, has anyone else pondered the similarity between Third Stone...’s dreamy riff and the Coronation Street theme?)
For all the heavy goings-on, there’s an element of airiness to the Experience – a space within their sound – that marks them out from The Who and Cream and survives even an out-and-out proto-metal assault like Purple Haze (also available on this album’s modern reissues). In 1967, there was still much more to come, but the Experience’s bid for Best Ever Rock Band status was already in. The title, if it’s to be theirs, belongs as much to Mitchell as as it does to Hendrix himself.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 18/11/2008
Further Listening
Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland (Track/Polydor, 1968)
Cream – Disraeli Gears (Reaction, 1967)
John Coltrane – Giant Steps (Atlantic, 1960)
Previous Disc of the day
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Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
6:00 AM GMT 20/11/2009
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Isley Brothers - The Brothers: Isley
The Cincinnati siblings bed into their heavy period.
6:00 AM GMT 18/11/2009
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Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land
The trumpeter's most soulful excursion entrances MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 16/11/2009
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Blinding post. Well said.
Posted by www.jimpress.co.uk at 6:52 PM GMT 27/11/2008 Report Abuse
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