STORY
There was a before, there was an after. Fifty years ago, the Woodstock wave swept the world. Europe 1 makes you relive, at the time of the festivals of the summer, the history of this revolution, not only by what it brought, but also by those which incarnated it. Today, Jimi Hendrix.
Star Spangled Banner, the Guernica of Music
In this wet and bleak morning of August 18, 1969, imagine what the Woodstock site looks like. Of the 400,000 festival-goers present during the weekend, there are only 30,000 left, exhausted, exhausted, who press against the stage and reveal all around them a landscape of desolation. Everywhere, mud, empty cans, abandoned sleeping bags, campfires that turn into ashes.
It is in this post-apocalyptic setting that the absolute genius of the electric guitar goes on stage. Between two classics, and even his musicians are unaware, he embarks on an unprecedented replay of the American anthem. The first notes repeat the melody that everyone knows but soon, the maelstrom of his Fender Stratocaster is transformed into a striking imitation of the American bombs that fall on Vietnam, machine guns and sheaves of napalm. The painting had its Guernica, the music will have its Star Spangled Banner.
A revolutionary style
Hard to believe listening to this pure inspiration that the guitarist has already more than a year to live. At the time, Jimi Hendrix is considered a sort of alien when his first real disc was released in 1967. With teeth, behind the back, doing the splits, or simulating masturbation he has forever revolutionized the way of playing the guitar.
The notes come out and follow each other as if by magic before the final ceremony, that of the sacrifice that made it known around the world in Monterey. Considering that he had exhausted all the possibilities of his instrument, Hendrix sprinkled it with gasoline and immolated it in the middle of a concert, bringing out the hitherto unknown sound of an electric guitar dying.
From abused child to guitarist loving freedom
Born in 1942 in Seattle, northwestern United States, Johnny Allen Hendrix is a kid despised or even abused by his parents. His mother, half Indian, is an alcoholic and her father beats him. He then finds refuge in music: harmonica, ukulele, acoustic guitar and electric, all in self-taught.
Sacrifice the school and once released from his military obligations, he will be free and musician. First in Seattle, then accompanying such big names as Sam Cooke, Ike And Tina Turner or Little Richard. But his incessant improvisations and his sense of the show quickly hit the nerves of the stars in question. He then took the direction of New York and Greenwich Village where he is spotted by the bassist of the famous English group The Animals, who offers to come to record in Europe. Hendrix agrees only to meet Eric Clapton. It was done in early October 1966.
A few days later, while the group around him is just starting to roam, Jimi Hendrix, still anonymous, plays four concerts in France, in the first part of Johnny Hallyday. Evreux, Nancy, Villerupt and l'Olympia, October 18, 1966, where Europe 1 immortalizes it thanks to the show Musicorama. Another famous archive sees the two men in full battle of smoke rings.
A first single in December 1966A life at 100 per hour
The first single of the guitar prodigy comes out in December 1966. In front of A, Hey Joe , a song that we can never listen without thinking of him. "This piece is not us, it's just a rough draft," said Jimi Hendrix of this title that will climb to sixth place in England.
Accompanied by Christmas Redding on bass and great Mitch Mitchell on drums, the guitarist recorded two albums almost in quick succession in 1967, Are You Experienced then Axis: Bold As Love .
Hendrix creates his own kind of music and plays with effects and reverb like nobody ever did. His records are an invitation to travel, not always comfortable but dotted with moments of grace. In the song Little Wing , the guitar is sweet for a tribute he said, at the Monterey Festival and the girls he had crossed.
Adulated, not to say revered, Jimi Hendrix then lives at 100 per hour. Hardly this recorded song that he is already working on his new record in New York. Since everything is possible with him, it will be a double album: Electric Ladyland. The original English cover, featuring a myriad of nude women, will be a scandal and haunt the dreams of a generation of teenagers. She is today very sought after. Electric Ladyland is an hour and a quarter of music where the "Experience" opens to many other artists.
The descent into Hell
Hendrix sees the limits of his trio and group will separate soon. But it also pays tribute to the one without whom the 1960s would not have had the same flavor. The penultimate title of the album is indeed a cover of Bob Dylan. All Along The Watchtower is revisited and generously electrified by Jimi Hendrix.
Number 1 in the United States and Canada, number 2 in France, Electric Ladyland is already the last studio album of Jimi Hendrix during his lifetime. Once the separation of his group consumed, the guitarist fumbles, multiplies collaborations with no tomorrow and sinks into drugs.
His latest project, Band Of Gypsys ("A Band of Gypsies"), will result in a live recording. The music is rougher, less original, less mixed and less inspired too. In a final European tour in September 1970, a disillusioned Jimi Hendrix says he does not know if he will celebrate his next birthday. Two weeks later, on September 18, 1970, he was found dead in his hotel room in London. No doubt a mixture of alcohol and barbiturates.
The guitarist was only 27 years old, like many rock stars who will go out at the same age. Its influence has never wavered, helped by more or less unpublished recordings that continue to come out miraculously fifty years later. All highlight the talent of a truly unique artist, the one who closed the book of the biggest rock festival of all time and incidentally, that of our series of portraits around Woodstock on Europe 1.
Find all the other episodes of our series "Woodstock, 50 years later":
> Episode 1: The origins of the most iconic festivals
> Episode 2: Richie Havens, the story of a fate that topples
> Episode 3: Tim Hardin, dubbed by Bob Dylan, destroyed by drugs
> Episode 4: Joan Baez, the consciousness of a generation
> Episode 5: Santana, and the legend was created
> Episode 6: Canned Heat, as long as the blues live
> Episode 7: Creedence Clearwater Revival, the essential casting error
> Episode 8: Janis Joplin, the pearl of the sixties
> Episode 9: Sly and the Family Stone, downtown funk
> Episode 10: The Who, the rebirth in Woodstock
> Episode 11: Jefferson Airplane, the group of origins
> Episode 12: Joe Cocker, English soul and blues
> Episode 13: The Band, the veterans
> Episode 14: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young