The Isle of Wight Festival, created in 1968, reached its peak in 1970, when nearly 600,000 spectators gathered on this piece of land in the south of the United Kingdom. Fifty years later, Europe 1 looks back on the various concerts given for what was, one year after Woodstock, one of the last great hippie meetings. This Wednesday, Europe 1 looks at the short but legendary career of Jimi Hendrix.
A concert strewn with incidents
It is a man with only 19 days to live who takes the stage on Monday August 31, 1970. Jimi Hendrix is the ultimate headliner on the Isle of Wight and he is expected as a hero by the hundreds of thousands of festival-goers. But his mind is already elsewhere: too many requests, too many drugs, hazardous artistic choices. On the surface, all is well but behind the curtain, the man is depressed.
The year before, at Woodstock, he had stunned the world with his napalm cover of the American anthem.
Around two o'clock in the morning, it is with a "so British" introduction that the demigod of the electric guitar starts. A cover of The Beatles, Jewels in the Crown, after a very personal rereading of God Save The Queen .
A sign that this festival did not take place in a very serene atmosphere, Jimi Hendrix's concert was strewn with incidents. Various projectiles were launched on stage including a flare which briefly set fire to the stage and caused a few moments of panic among the organizers. Hendrix will leave the 600,000 spectators with these ironic words: "Thank you, I wish you peace, joy, and all the usual bullshit."
A god of the guitar
And yet, three years earlier, an alien had landed on the rock planet. His first real album wasn't released until 1967, but it forever revolutionized the way we play guitar in public. With your teeth, behind your back, doing the splits, or simulating masturbation.
The notes come out and are linked as if by magic before the final ceremony, that of the sacrifice which made him known to the whole world in Monterey. That evening, Hendrix felt that he had exhausted all the possibilities of his instrument. He doused it with gasoline and immolated it in the middle of a concert, making the hitherto unknown sound of a dying electric guitar gush forth.
The king of improvisations
Born in 1942 in Seattle, in the northwest of the United States, Johnny Allen Hendrix is a child despised, even mistreated by his parents. Her mother, half Indian, is an alcoholic. His father beats him. He finds refuge in music: harmonica, ukulele, acoustic and then electric guitar, all self-taught. Too bad for school.
Once released from his military obligations, he will be free and a musician. First in Seattle, then accompanying big names such as Sam Cooke, Ike And Tina Turner or Little Richard. But his incessant improvisations and his sense of spectacle quickly get on the nerves of the stars in question.
He therefore took the direction of New York and Greenwich Village where he was spotted by the bassist of the famous English group The Animals, who offered him to come and record in Europe. Hendrix agrees but only if he can meet Eric Clapton, which happens in early October 1966.
Jimi Hendrix, first part of Johnny Hallyday
A few days later, when the group formed around him is just beginning to roam around, Jimi Hendrix, still anonymous, plays four concerts in France. And this, in the first part of Johnny Hallyday, in Evreux, Nancy, Villerupt and at the Olympia in Paris, on October 18, 1966. There he will sing the song Hey Joe .
"This song, it's not us, it's just a draft," said Jimi Hendrix of this title which will climb to sixth place in England. The bet is already won. Accompanied by Noël Redding on bass and the formidable Mitch Mitchell on drums, the guitarist recorded two albums almost in quick succession in 1967, Are You Experienced then Axis: Bold As Love , two immense successes.
A very particular style
Hendrix creates his own kind of music, plays with effects and reverb like no one has ever done before. His records are an invitation to travel, not always comfortable, but sprinkled with moments of grace. Like on Little Wing , a song where even the guitar is very soft. It is a tribute, he said, to the Monterey festival and to the young girls he had met there. Little Wing , or the hippie ideal seen by Jimi Hendrix and his Experience.
A revered artist
Adored, not to say revered, Jimi Hendrix then lives at 100 per hour. His next project is a double album, Electric Ladyland . The original English cover features a myriad of naked women. It will be censored and will haunt the dreams of a whole generation of teenagers. It is now highly sought after.
Last effort of the trio, Electric Ladyland contains a Bob Dylan cover, All Along The Watchtower , revisited and generously electrified by Jimi Hendrix.
Number one in the United States, number two in France, Electric Ladyland is already Jimi Hendrix's last studio album during his lifetime. The guitarist multiplies collaborations without a future and sinks into drugs. His latest project, Band Of Gypsys (Une Bande de Gitans) results in a live recording. The music is rougher, less original, less inspired too.
The 27 club
Shortly after his visit to the Isle of Wight, a disillusioned Jimi Hendrix told a Danish journalist "not knowing if he will turn 28". It also evokes the creation of a large group mixing blues and classical music.
On September 18, 1970, the day after the writing of his last text, entitled "The story of life", he was found dead in his hotel room in London, probably due to a mixture of alcohol and barbiturates. Jimi Hendrix was only 27 years old, like many rock stars of that golden then shattered generation who will pass away at the same age.
Its influence has never wavered, helped in this by more or less unpublished recordings which continue to come out, as if by miracle, 50 years later.
Find all the other episodes of our series "The Isle of Wight Festival, 50 years later":
> Episode 1: the last notes of Morrison's Doors
> Episode 2: Mighty Baby, talent without glory
> Episode 3: the unexpected concert of Brazilian exiles
> Episode 4: the Rory Gallagher revelation
> Episode 5: Tony Joe White's springboard
> Episode 6: Joni Mitchell's legendary concert
> Episode 7: the second Woodstock of Ten Years After
> Episode 8: The Who reign supreme at home
> Episode 9: the awakening of Sly and the Family Stone
> Episode 10: Free, a group touched by grace and then by misfortune
> Episode 11: Donovan, the "flower power" musician par excellence
> Episode 12: The Pentangle, the unclassifiable group