I’ve read just about everything ever written about Jimi Hendrix but Keith Shadwick’s “Jimi Hendrix – Musician” slipped past me. Recently, I picked up a copy and I found it to be thoroughly researched with the focus clearly on the music Jimi left behind. Shadwick’s description of ‘Machine Gun’ from the Band of Gypsys LP fills more than a page and is especially good at describing one of Hendrix’s “towering achievements”.
Here are a few examples …
“What is not expected and Hendrix gives no hint of this on any previous version is the staggering guitar solo that occupies the entire middle section of the performance buttressed by machine gun drum patterns and complimentary bass lines.”
“Hendrix is playing as if directly connected to some higher plane of creative inspiration. His ideas are not just fresh they break new ground throughout. Even little patterns and motifs or devices he’s used before-like the old Blues minor-third trill, in Hendrix’s case often played in tandem with swoops on the vibrato arm-he forces into new shapes and contexts, stretching the tortured contours beyond recognition into a new form of melody that not even he had touched on before he played this solo.”
“The solo is filled with extraordinary musical discoveries mostly couched in the language of the Blues but not to the exclusion of other sources. Some of his busy upward sweeping melodic lines are of such emotional intensity and melodic inventiveness as to sound absolutely newly-minted even now over 30 years later. With this solo he is cutting the air in front of him for everyone else to follow and it remains an object lesson in improvisational power and creativity.”
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