This is War Heroes, my newly-assembled album, and, chronologically, the final one in Hendrix's core catalogue of finished recordings. When Hendrix died, he left a huge wealth of studio material in varying states of completion, and in this fan's humble opinion, not a single official posthumous studio release has been up to par with the three incredible studio albums he released during his lifetime. Because of this, I have taken it upon myself to assemble the best collections as is possible out of the stuff he never got the chance to put out, and this is the second installment in that series. War Heroes (along with Smash Hits and several more soon-to-come albums) is meant to complement and sit alongside Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, and Electric Ladyland, so as a result there are no overlapping songs between them. Most importantly, the track sequence has been laboured over to create the most satisfying and cohesive collection of music as is possible with the material at hand, to the point where it sounds like a normal, cohesive studio album.
History
I'll start with some background info. After finishing their psychedelic magnum opus Electric Ladyland in the summer of 1968, the Jimi Hendrix Experience reentered the studio a few months later to begin work on their next project. Sessions were drawn out and although huge numbers of songs were recorded, very few were hashed out to any releasable degree. By late March the quality had picked up, but this spurt was shortlived because it was bang in the middle of April that the full Experience made their final studio recordings together. Hendrix then had to find new bandmates to record with, and the quality dropped back to where it was before the spurt came. That's not to say there weren't any exciting performances - there certainly were - it's just that nothing else was finished.
At the end of May, Hendrix went off on a summer vacation and wrote a bunch of new material, before getting an expanded band together to headline Woodstock and a few other gigs, as well as make some more studio recordings. Backstage at Woodstock, he connected with producer Alan Douglas, who he began working with, mostly to do with buisness matters as opposed to music. Unfortunately, the six-man lineup (including two precussionists and a second guitar) folded after only a few weeks. Jimi eventually decided to go back to the good old power trio, this time with drummer Buddy Miles and bassist Billy Cox, all of whom he'd made a few recordings with in May. They experimented, rehearsed, and recorded extensively from November 1969 to January 1970, and performed 5 shows, the selections of which came out on Jimi's final album before his death, the excellent Band Of Gypsys. Buddy Miles was fired backstage in late January.
After that, Hendrix formed another trio with the best of both former worlds; the Gypsys' Billy Cox on bass and the Experience's Mitch Mitchell on drums. This lineup was never given a definitive name. Between gigs they hunkered down in the finished room of Jimi's still-under-construction Electric Lady Studios, sorted through all the old tapes, and got to serious work on the next studio album. The more polished recordings from those sessions will be on an album I'll be posting this coming fall, but it's the rougher, older stuff, mainly from October 1968 to January 1970, that this album is made from.
Several years after the guitarist's untimely demise in September 1970, afformentioned producer Alan Douglas gained control of Hendrix's catalogue. Four studio albums (and a number of live ones) had already been released at that point (before Jimi's original manager had died in a plane crash), but there were still a large number of songs that had not yet been released in any form. Because of subpar playing on many of them, it made sense to overdub most (but, importantly, not quite all) of these musicians' parts. Douglas assembled a band of superb session musicians and had them carefully play along to Hendrix's performances. While highly controvercial, Crash Landing (1975), the first of the two albums made this way (the other being Midnight Lightning from later that year), reached number 5 in the US and Canada, which has to say something about the quality of the material within it.
While initially very sceptical about these "overdubs by musicians who never met Hendrix" (as the critics are prone to repeating), once I gave them a real chance I found out how wonderful they really are. Alan Douglas finished these sketches and rehearsals, and turned them into polished, commercially-viable songs, which they would never get to be otherwise. One could say he rescued them. If you play most of the songs on these albums next to the original versions, the improvements are striking. Besides the new rythm section, a second guitarist was added, who fills out the sound but is always clearly second to Hendrix, and in certain places female backing vocals are added. These are all contributions which Hendrix added to his own recordings while he was alive (in fact, the Ronnettes back him on Earth Blues).
These two albums aren't perfect, though. On Crash Landing, Douglas (falsely) put himself down as co-writer, and although he claimed he did it for legal reasons to protect Hendrix's assets, stated afterwards that it was wrong, and never did it again, it's not a great move to make in the first place. As well, instead of following industry practice and doing edits on copies of the original tapes, Douglas chopped up the original Hendrix tapes, so bits of the performances are rearranged, added in, and others just gone. This is shown on the songs "Message To Love" and "Power Of Soul," where modern remixes of those songs have maintained the structures of Douglas' versions as opposed to the original performances (which, thankfully, still exist intact in pleasant early mixes Hendrix made himself). As well, certain songs such as "Stone Free," "Hear My Train A-Comin'," "Message To Love," "Power Of Soul," and "Come Down Hard On Me" didn't need to be overdubbed, so I've included/will be including the original versions on my other Hendrix collections.
Anyhow, back to the music in question. This is Hendrix's heaviest band. It's also the only hint at what his recordings may have sounded like with that mid-1970s polish. Overall, Hendrix's singing is looser than on his other albums, which makes sense considering that none of these performances were ever intended to be released. Tasteful and never-overbearing effects were added to his voice and guitar to polish things up. The guitar playing is just as exciting as ever, especially on the solos during the instrumentals and the climax of "Once I Had A Woman." All songs are taken from the official 1980s Japanese CDs of Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning, although certain tracks come from the alternate West German mastering of the former, decided on a case-by-case basis (some songs had the first second cut off, among other issues).
The album cover and title originates from the third posthumous studio album from 1972. That one is highly uneven, and it and this album don't have any overlap apart from the fact that "Somewhere" was under consideration for the 1972 album at one point. The same day that I first uploaded this post, I gave this collection, then called Nine To The Universe, another listen and noticed for the first time the littany of war references splattered throughout, such as "I can see frustrated souls of cities burnin'/and all across the water, baby/I see weapons barkin' out the sting of death" from the afformentioned "Somewhere." I don't even need to bring up "Machine Gun," which opens with a callback to its' sister war song "Izabella." Although it's an instrumental, the title of "Peace In Mississippi" surely alludes to some of the violence taking place in the United States earlier in '68, perhaps the D.N.C. riots. Even "Crash Landing" could be linked to war, although not directly; it's just that so many veterans' lives have been, and continue to be, wracked with drug issues. And of course "M.L.K." surely refers to the civil rights monolith who was assassinated earlier that year. It's also juch a beautiful album cover, and is reminiscent of one-time-potential-collaborator Miles Davis' Tutu cover photo, although that album followed this one by over a decade.
Track-By-Track
"Trash Man:" This is a thrilling opening instrumental full of energetic soloing by the man himself. Hendrix's parts were recorded with the dying Experience at New York's Olmstead studios in very early April 1969, only a few weeks before they'd cease recording in the studio as a group ("Midnight" was also recorded during these sessions). As the original recording from the Hear My Music sessions compilation shows, the drum mics were faulty on this recording, which only justifies this overdubbing even more.
"Somewhere:" The full original recording of this song, from an early 1968 Electric Ladyland session, has never actally been released, although a version with a new drum track by Mitch Mitchell from the early 1970s (found in the 2000 box set), and another made up of an edit of alternate takes of the backing track with the final lead vocal placed on top (found on 2013's People, Hell And Angels), are available to buy. Those closer-to-original versions have a much weaker, more unstable sound from the rythm section than this one does. I believe this song evolved into Earth Blues, but the lyrics don't have a huge amount in common.
"Midnight Lightning:" The original summer 1970 live-in-the-studio recording of this has never come out, although that will soon change with the forthcoming (at of time of writing) Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision box set. This version of the song has very different lyrics compared to the solo electric blues version that was officially released on the South Saturn Delta leftovers collection, which I'll be including on a forthcoming collection.
"Crash Landing:" This song with somewhat wonky lyrics was first recorded with two members of the Cherry People, who backed Hendrix at his first and third sessions with Billy Cox in late April 1969, while Hendrix was still looking for a new drummer. Precussionist and future record executive Al Marks recounted his experience recording it:
The first number we did was "Bleeding Heart". We did about fifteen or sixteen takes and it seemed to work out fairly well. It was the same line-up as the previous session. Jimi then wanted to try another song so Chris and I took the opportunity to switch instruments. My leg was so damn sore that I couldn't keep doing it anymore so I took over tambourine and Chris picked up the maracas. Jimi then started to play "Crash Landing". There were no vocals at first. He was focusing on the track itself. This went really well and after ten or fifteen takes he asked everybody to leave the studio. I asked him if we were being thrown out and he explained that he would not allow anybody to be in the studio while he recorded vocals on a track. In the control room, Gary Kellgren told us that it was just an idiosyncrasy that Jimi had. Gary went out and constructed a booth around him. Jimi had a sheet with lyrics and he stood behind there and sang beautifully. We were bug eyed in the control room.
Then, all of sudden, [Cherry People member] Punky Meadows, who had been sleeping in the back of the studio, woke up and started walking across the room. Jimi saw him and literally flipped out. He threw down the papers in his hand and yelled, 'What the **** are you doing in the studio when I am doing vocals?' In the control room, Gary Kellgren put his hands to his head. Apparently, that was the worst thing anyone could do on a Hendrix session. He yelled to us, 'Get him out of there!' We hustled Punky out to the bathroom and Jimi regained his composure and started doing vocals again. When he finished, he walked in to the control room and said, 'Man, no one walks through that studio when I am doing vocals. Didn't Gary tell you that?' We explained that Punky had been asleep and we didn't know where he was. Jimi laughed. 'Punky? What kind of name is Punky?' Punky came out from hiding and they met. All Jimi kept asking him was what kind of name was Punky? It was funny. At the end of the session, he thanked us and hoped that we would run into each other. We drove back to D.C. after that.
The full interview can be found at https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/jimi-hendrix-new-dagger-records-release-burning-desire.95748/page-2. It offers a little window into Hendrix's state of mind at the time.
"Blue Suede Shoes:" This cover of the rock and roll classic is one of the very last songs the Band Of Gypsys ever recorded together, only a few days before the band's fifth and final late January 1970 performance at Madison Square Gardens, where Hendrix walked offstage after only a few songs and drummer Buddy Miles was fired backstage. The original take of this song broke down partway through, so the band started again after the guitar solo and finished it, with the intention of editing the two parts together. The only official release of the Band Of Gypsys version was on the 1974 Loose Ends album includes over two minutes of studio chatter (including Hendrix asking for more grass and doing funny voices - he was high for this) and fades out right before the song breaks down during the guitar solo.
"Once I Had A Woman:" This is one of the strongest songs on War Heroes. It's a great blues cover with rousing guitar and some harmonica, and the original version of it was released on Alan Douglas' early 1990s Blues collection. It builds into a rousing climax near the end. An album highlight.
"Machine Gun:" The original recording of this has never been released, but it was made with Hendrix's Woodstock band during their brief time in the studio together at the end of the summer of 1969. It's not nearly as entrancing as his masterpiece performance on January 1, 1970 found on the Band Of Gypsys live album, but is still very interesting.
"Peace In Mississippi:" This is a thrashing instrumental originally recorded by the Experience during their October 1968 sessions at T.T.G. Studios, their first following the completion of Electric Ladyland. There's whistling on the overdubbed version that isn't present on the official Experience Hendrix take, and I don't know if it was muted in the latter or overdubbed by somebody onto the former, anthough I suspect that it being muted is much more likely.
"M.L.K.:" This song originates from a rough edit of several unrelated experimental guitar recordings assembled by John Jansen, an engineer who worked with Eddie Kramer on most of the Hendrix posthumous albums from the early 1970s (even doing the final one, Loose Ends, alone). The story goes that when Kramer, who had worked closely with Hendrix since "Purple Haze," caught him assembling it he ordered him to put it down because of how revisionary it was. Producer Alan Douglas must have later on found that rough edit and overdubbed it.
The opening portion is said to have been from some unreleased version of "Cherokee Mist," but the main portion comes from a 20-minute jam with the Band Of Gypsys that started off on "Ezy Ryder." The name on the tape box was "M.L.K.," which leads me to assume that Hendrix may have been playing something here inspired by his long improvisation performed just after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It went unrecorded, and his performance at the Generation Club a few days after that was filmed by D. A. Pennebaker but remains unreleased.
The final portion of the song is from "New Rising Sun," a studio experiment with Hendrix doing everything, even drums, from those October 1968 T.T.G. Studios sessions. A larger portion of it was released on Alan Douglas' final Hendrix album, the wonderful Voodoo Soup (1995), and the full thing came out 15 years after that on the West Coast Seattle Boy box set in 2010.
Coda
Despite being a posthumous album, I think that War Heroes is surprisingly solid. It's no Electric Ladyland of course, but it is full of great rock and roll with a bit of other stuff thrown in. The flaws and incompleteness of the original performances are entirely masked by this new band and the fantastic production, and if there isn't any other reason to listen to it, Jimi Hendrix being backed by a completely different band of excellent musicians is really, really interesting to hear. I'm sure any Hendrix enjoyer will find something to like here.
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