Content provided in partnership with
Jimi Hendrix
St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by David B. Wilson
By the end of 1967 Hendrix's relationship with Chas. Chandler had deteriorated, and he took over the production reins himself for his next album, Electric Ladyland, at the same time keeping to a heavy touring schedule. Released as a double LP in October 1968, the set's sprawl offended some critics, and the UK cover, featuring photos of 21 nude women, caused some controversy, but it went to the top of the charts (the only No.1 album Hendrix ever had in the United States) thanks to hard rock classics including "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" and the Bob Dylan cover "All Along the Watchtower." Despite their commercial success the Experience was having problems.
- Most Popular Articles in Arts
- Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism
- Free-standing cardboard sculpture
- What makes a successful business person? Business people who are tops in ...
- Take advantage of local advertising: TV, newspaper or magazines? If your ...
- Tino Sehgal at the ICA
- More »
Hendrix was arrested in Sweden in January 1968 after smashing up his hotel room, a lawsuit by unscrupulous producer Ed Chalpin was holding up the band's royalties, and Noel Redding was more interested in his side project, Fat Mattress. The Experience broke up in June 1969 after abortive attempts at a fourth album, and Hendrix went into seclusion in upstate New York while he tried to figure out his next move.
Even without a steady band, Hendrix's mystique was enough to earn him headliner status at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. Unfortunately, being the final act at a chaotic three-day show meant that he and his barely rehearsed rag-tag group finally went on stage at eight o'clock on Monday morning when most of the crowd had already left. If not for the sound and film crews on hand, Hendrix's performance might have gone virtually unnoticed. As it was, his ear-splitting rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" became the symbol of the peace-and-love counterculture celebration. Offstage, however, Hendrix was overwhelmed by problems. He was busted for bringing drugs into Canada; his Band of Gypsys group with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox fell apart shortly after forming; nearly every dollar he made touring was sunk into the building of his own state-of-the-art recording studio, Electric Lady Studios. Several more attempts at recording went sour, even though a new band stabilized around Cox and Mitchell, and it wasn't until mid-1970, after the studio was completed, that Hendrix was able to make a serious push to finish a new album, tentatively titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun. Recording was complicated by a judgment awarding Ed Chalpin rights to one album's worth of Hendrix material. The award was based on a 1965 contract Hendrix had signed with Chalpin that Chandler had inadvertently failed to buy out--not a bad return on a one dollar investment--and several songs intended for First Rays wound up on a hastily assembled live recording, Band of Gypsys, released in April 1970. Though seriously flawed, the album did include "Machine Gun," an anti-war number with a lengthy, breathtaking guitar solo. Band of Gypsys was the last album Hendrix would live to see released.
In August 1970, Hendrix reluctantly left New York, where the new album was nearing completion, for a European tour. He played in front of his largest audience yet at the Isle of Wight Festival, but the tour fell apart a few days later after a bad LSD trip sent Cox into paranoid delusions. On September 18, after spending several days visiting friends, Hendrix took several prescription sleeping pills belonging to girlfriend Monica Dannemann, fell asleep and never woke up--he choked to death in the ambulance en route to the hospital. Though Rolling Stone Brian Jones had died prematurely in 1969, Hendrix was the first well-known rock star to die of a drug overdose. What seemed a tragic isolated accident at the time soon became just another cliché surrounding the fast-paced rock 'n' roll lifestyle: Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose two weeks later, and Jim Morrison followed in less than a year, giving anti-hippie pundits plenty of ammunition to attack rock music as hedonistic and self-destructive.
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, 2002 Gale Group.
