Jimi…
A musical big bang. Same as when I try to describe the impact Tom Waits had on me, when it comes to Jimi I have no adequate words.
And he looked so cool too. 
Jimi had a huge impact on my circle of friends and I. We were paying close attention when he first showed up on the scene. I was only a teenager at the time, and to me his music seemed to be coming from another world. It was also hard to believe all that sound came out of one guy’s guitar.
Axis Bold as Love was his masterpiece; it was like the flip-side of Sgt. Pepper’s and happened to be released the same year. I think it belongs side by side with Sgt. Pepper’s for being monumentally influential.
Fantastic musician. I’ve have never heard anybody in Australia or Britain speculate about his being gay. (I also know women he picked up and others he tried to pick up who would have found that suggestion surprising. 
)
There were other sensational guitarists around at his time and had been for 20 years prior to his arrival on the scene. A lot of those guitarists crying and drooling had a lot to offer. What made him different was that he could play blues as well as anyone, rock as well as anyone, soul as well as anyone and he could also play new stuff that nobody had even thought of and he seemed to have an endless supply of new ideas. I first heard him when I heard ‘Hey Joe’ on the radio for the first time. I still remember the impact of hearing his guitar for the first time. Other fine guitarists didn’t become inconsequential overnight but I don’t think he had any serious rival as the best rock guitarist then or now.
There was quite a bit of doubletracking on those records, but he could certainly hold it together on stage brilliantly.
There is a very good case for Axis being the best single Hendrix records. I don’t think there is any case for Sgt. Pepper being in the same league as Revolver or Rubber Soul but I know a lot of people won’t agree with that call.
I won’t disagree. I never knew how to take Sgt. Pepper.
Rubber Soul was the best Beatles LP, as far as I am concerned.
M
Actually, I misstated; I should’ve said the army, not Viet Nam. But it’s not my speculation (I’ve read quite a bit about his womanizing), it’s in a recent biography. The thing that brought it to mind is, the headline of the article I read about the book said, “'Scuse me while I kiss this guy,” same as Jack’s post.
I miss Jimi terribly. I often think of what he might have created if he wasn’t taken from us so soon. As it is, what he left behind is monumental. He turned the electric guitar into a whole new instrument.
I am a HUGE Beatles fan, and I agree with you 100% (sorry Jack!). Rubber Soul was their “transition” album, when they went from the candy coated stuff to what they became. It’s not my favorite, but I feel that it was far more influential for it changed their own music, and seemed to change the face of Rock in the process.
By far, my favorite Beatles album was Abbey Road. It was brilliant. Although there were a couple of songs on Sgt. Pepper’s that I did love as well, like “She’s Leaving Home” and I can’t help but love “When I’m Sixty-Four”.
I love Abbey Road too…some of my favorite pieces by the Beatles are on that album…
on top of that, When I proposed to my wife I was playing Something on the piano, so _Abbey Ro_ad holds special significance to me.
When I was a wee lad the Beatles were one of my bigger influences; back then I really liked the poppy sugar coated stuff, but as my musical tastes progressed I became more a fan of their oddities and one-off style that came to characterize some of their transitional stuff… I really liked Sgt. Pepper’s and some of the other strange stuff…
As great and transitional that Revolver and Rubber Soul were, it was still Sgt. Pepper’s that made the world of popular music at the time stop everything they were doing and be forever changed. Sgt. Pepper’s also introduced the concept of the LP having a theme that carries almost seamlessly through the recording from beginning to end. I’ve heard stories of bands that were involved in recording projects that received a pre-release acetate, and after listening putting their own project on hold while they re-think what they’re doing. In this same way Hendrix caused guitar players to stop what they were doing and re-think how they play. For that reason I see the Hendrix masterpiece along side the Beatle’s masterpiece.
I don’t know about anywhere else but I agree with Jack about how it impacted us at the time (Axis Bold as Love). I remember two or three records that basically were played over and over again in my house, Axis is one, the Cream record (with Sunshine of Your Love), Steppenwolf and others I guess. By that time, though, acidheads like my brother were sorta beyond the Beatles, which I was more likely to play. The Beatles were a bit soft for some, while the Stones, Cream, Jimi and other SF acts were harder, maybe more dangerous. A lot of the drug culture around where I grew up had been and remained big on Motown and blues, too, so Jimi, once again really resonated.
I didn’t see it mentioned above but frankly, Jimi was perceived as one of the few and first black hippies, so to speak. Culturally, hippies were pretty middle class and blue collar types (especially blacks and Hispanics) were likely to play along for the drugs and the sex but not go paisley, while Jimi bridged that gap. That was a big deal in those days, with the only others I can remember being Sly and the Family Stone as making that crossover… Jimi was mysterious to many, almost Sphinx-like in a way…
I really get strong memory flashbacks when I hear Jimi’s music. My 15-yr old son got into him this last Spring, did a report at school, got the t-shirts etc, which was kind of eerie for me…
I really don’t think Sgt. Peppers was a coherent concept album, as fans of it typically claim. In any event, the only ‘concept’ that has ever interested me in albums was to find a bunch of very good songs with no filler, sequence them well, and put them together. I think other albums have better songs, on average, than Sgt. Pepper’s, which isn’t to say I don’t like it.
I’m a bit surprised at how many American critics and fans took straightforward English concert hall fodder for originality in rock groups. As an album with lots of concert hall nods, Sgt. Pepper’s is backward looking not forward looking although the innovative tracks on it are genuinely very good. The Kinks are another band who sound original if you don’t know where they got their cliches although again their genuinely original songs are good. It’s astonishing how many British rock groups were influenced by the concert hall in particular and variety in general; loads of groups with top ten hits played pantomine at Christmas throughout the 60s. Elvis is bagged for doing something similar in his Holywood period yet English rock acts who played watered down schlock are praised for making genuinely ‘English’ rock music. I really don’t get it.
Obviously Sgt. Pepper’s isn’t bad; it’s obviously very good and has some great moments. Around that period, my favourite track is Strawberry Fields Forever. I just think, as do a lot of others, that they peaked a bit earlier.
Right, Wombly, that music hall sound is what was kinda soft to some American ears. Still is to me. I think McCartney had to be de-sweetened by Lennon and his later solo stuff proves it. But I am not objective anymore about the Beatles. I think that people just get too crazy about 'em and while I recognize their originality and greatness, there are limits as expressed by George Martin’s influence, the music hall thing, the blues mimic-ing and overall excess. Like that White Album, which is more than one album too big in my opinion…
But the Kinks were awesome.
I have favorite tracks as well from both Hendrix and the Beatles that aren’t from the two recordings I’m talking about, but my point is that those products were the artist’s single-most best exponents of their brilliance and genius that both happened to be released within months of each other. Both of those recordings changed a tremendous and overwhelming amount of what followed in popular music terms. I don’t know if there are a few, if any, other recordings that would merit membership in that club.
Concert hall references in British pop were for me a charming thing, underscoring the cultural backdrop from which the musicians came. That sort of thing wasn’t part of my world --the musical cultures of American Vaudeville and Burlesque theatre had a different feel to them, I think, so such albums from the British scene provided a peek into a world unknown to me and yet somehow recognisable. Veddy British. To this Yank it was an innovation that a lovingly wry nostalgia would work in modern pop. Made me think of dusty shafts of light in a cozy flat, tea and cabbage roses. I’m not sure how a similar approach would have succeeded in such a big way in the American scene, referring to its own.
As for “'Scuse me while I kiss this guy”, that would have been Prince.
But that’s precisely my point. The things Americans liked about this stuff were cliches but the critics were largely unaware of this so took for original music that was anything but. English critics were less gullible. How would the Stones have gone down if they’d performed in blackface? Well that’s what the musical hall cliches sound like to me.
Not that all the Englishness was unoriginal. Recently I decided to listen to the early Kinks albums to see what, if anything, I had been missing. I have long liked a double LP called Kink Kronichles or something like that with most of their singles and selected album tracks. That’s very strong with good songwriting throughout. But albums like Village Preservation Society and Face to Face seem to me to be full of undistinguished filler. To me that’s Ray Davies practicing.