Trivia / Jimi Hendrix

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• Approval of God: Bob Dylan liked Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" so much that he began performing the song in his style.
• Archive Panic: He only released a handful of (very influential) studio albums in his lifetime, and one all-original LP recorded live (Band of Gypsys), but the amount of released demos, live recordings, alternate takes, rehearsals, runthroughs and incomplete studio outtakes seems staggering. New Hendrix releases still arrive on store shelves more than 40 years after his death, a staggering amount given his short lifespan.
• Breakthrough Hit: "Hey Joe".
• Chart Displacement: While his one Top 40 hit, "All Along the Watchtower" is iconic, the second highest charting track, "Crosstown Traffic", is easily overshadowed by "Purple Haze", "Hey Joe" and "Fire", among others.
• Creator Backlash: Fans requested that the Experience play "Hey Joe" so much that he was utterly sick of the song.
• Died During Production: Hendrix died in the middle of putting together a double album titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun. The material recorded for it was subsequently released over three posthumous albums: Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge, and War Heroes. In 1995, producer Alan Douglas attempted to complete the album as Voodoo Soup. Two years later, the Hendrix family regained control of his estate and withdrew these albums, putting out a re-compiled First Rays of the New Rising Sun (based mostly on Jimi's notes) as an "official" Hendrix album. Thanks to the longer storage capacity of the Compact Disc format, both Voodoo Soup and the 1997 version of First Rays of the New Rising Sun are on one disc each.
• One-Hit Wonder: "All Along the Watchtower" was his sole Billboard Top 40 hit, peaking at No. 20. Averted in the United Kingdom, where all of his first three singles were successful, and where his debut album peaked at No. 2, behind only The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: A persistent legend about Hendrix is that he was once asked in an interview what it was like to be the best guitarist in the world, and his response was "I don't know, ask [another guitarist]." The most persistent version is that the guitarist Hendrix named was Phil Keaggy, who at the time was playing with the psychedelic band Glass Harp and would later become a respected Christian rock finger-style guitarist. Keaggy, for his part, says the legend isn't true and there's no way Hendrix could have heard him play because Glass Harp only used Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios shortly after his death. Other names that have been bandied about for the quote include Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher, Terry Kath and Billy Gibbons, the latter of whom's early band the Moving Sidewalks had opened for Hendrix. In actuality, there is no evidence that Hendrix ever said this quote, and it doesn't appear in his interviews on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Dick Cavett Show where it's often claimed he said it.
• Sequel First: In the video game world, the Rock Band platform to be specific, Axis: Bold As Love was released before Are You Experienced (though the latter's track list is a little different from the original LP).
• Short-Lived, Big Impact: One of the most influential guitarists of all time; the "burn the strings" guitar solo was invented by him, and just about every hard rocker since has imitated it. He was also dead by age 27.
• Tyop on the Cover: Jimi successfully sued his British distributor when an early pressing of Electric Ladyland was released as "Electric Landlady."
• What Could Have Been:
  • It's well-known that he was planning a collaboration with none other than Miles Davis before his death. It also emerged that Hendrix had also contacted Apple Corps, to ask Paul McCartney (of the then-rapidly-disintegrating The Beatles) to play bass on the proposed Hendrix-Davis album.
  • When the Experience was looking for a drummer, they narrowed the choice down to Mitch Mitchell and session great Aynsley Dunbar. When they couldn't decide on who to pick, they tossed a coin... and Mitchell won. One can only imagine how the Experience would have sounded with Dunbar.

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