Finally ensconced at Electric Lady.  Hendrix inaugurated his final series of sessions on June 15th, recording with friends from Traffic - Steve Winwood, Chris Wood and Dave Palmer - who were in town touring behind their John Barleycorn Must Die.  The crew jammed for nearly an hour of tape, which is usually booted under variations of names like "Traffic Jam", but includes portions of "Calling All Devil's Children", "Pearly Queen" and "Bolero" - the latter not being the Ravel piece but a new Hendrix original.  They also ran through a couple of takes of "Izabella" with guest Sharon Lane helping on vocals.  Perhaps as a contrast, Hendrix also recorded a track called "All God's Children", which was uncirculated before it appeared on the WCSB box.





Several older recordings were brought in for overdubbing work, including the BoG versions of "Izabella", "Earth Blues" and "Stepping Stone", with Mitch Mitchell adding new drum tracks, as well as "Ezy Ryder" and "Room Full of Mirrors", but for these Hendrix kept the original Buddy Miles drums but overhauled nearly everything else, creating radically new performances.  On this first day, Jimi focused on retooling "Ezy Ryder", with Winwood and Wood, along with the Allen brothers, adding background vocals.  Hendrix would continue tinkering with these overdubs through to the end of the sessions, but a mix of "Ezy Ryder" as it stood on this first day is included on the JHE box.

Quite a few of these "work-in-progress" mixes are available on bootleg (the Diggin' In The Dust sets are good samplers of these), and they can be very insightful to look at his creative process and sometimes meticulous construction afforded by its then unprecedented 32-track recording capability.  For extra scrutiny, there's a couple hours of tape recorded with an external mic in the control room (presumably by Jimi himself for reference purposes) capturing extended mixing sessions of certain songs and some overdubbing recordings.  Probably most fascinating are the takes of Hendrix adding his backward guitar parts to "Drifting" in real time, and, following a rough mix, catches Jimi's suggestion to add a vibraphone (a request which would be honored posthumously).





Two more new numbers were soon started, "Night Bird Flying" and "Freedom", (with taped mixing sessions for both) followed by work on "Straight Ahead" and "Beginnings" (the newly christened "Jam Back at the House" instrumental).  A new Dylan cover, "Drifter's Escape" may have been an attempt to rebottle that "Watchtower" lightning.  It was instead fated for release on Loose Ends and later South Saturn Delta.  On June 24th, Hendrix was in a jamming mood, with one take of "Astro Man" going to nearly 14 minutes, and another 16 minute medley (commonly named "Pride of Man") includes chunks of "Drifting", "Keep On Grooving", "Freedom", "Cherokee Mist", "In From the Storm" and "Valleys of Neptune".  A latter 6 minute edit of this, called "Cherokee Mist" was included on the JHE box.  About a dozen more takes of "Valleys of Neptune" were taped on a later date, along with another new tune called "Heaven Has No Sorrow" (sometimes called "Can I Whisper In Your Ear?", from its opening lyric).





July 1st was another busy day, inaugurating "Dolly Dagger", one of Hendrix's most ambitious of these new productions from a structural perspective.  More simply, "Pali Gap" and "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)" were finished to satisfaction, and the final take of "Beginnings", with Juma Sultan adding percussion to revive the Woodstock vibe, was completed.  July 14th saw a focus on two additional new numbers, "Bolero" and "Coming Down Hard On Me Baby".  The latter is a smoking funk-rock riff that was finished without much complication.  "Bolero" was an instrumental for which some half-hour of tape from this day was devoted, but doesn't seem to have advanced much further.  A five and a half minute mix was included on the WCSB box.  A brief take of "Midnight Lightning" has also been bootlegged from this session. 





"In From The Storm" and "Angel" were laid down at the end of July, along with overdubs and mixing for "Drifting".  A late take of "Lover Man" was brushed off, possibly for a safety spot on a double LP, which was included on JHE and a full band instrumental run-through of "Belly Button Window" was introduced.

Following the Hawaiian sojourn, Hendrix did a final round of overdubbing, sparing very few of the available numbers from touch-ups.  According to Eddie Kramer, Hendrix was most satisfied with the state of "Freedom", "Dolly Dagger" and "Night Bird Flying" at this point, but there were still murmurs of continued work.  A set of mixes from the end of August 1970 are available, but it's hardly definitive.  The final touch turned out to be Jimi's "Belly Button Window" from August 22nd, with both the official release and an alternate take, and a stray thing called "Slow Blues" tacked on at the end of the JHE box.





Electric Lady Studios officially opened on August 26th 1970, with a well-catered party, but Hendrix would soon after fly out to Britain for the Isle of Wight and further shows in Europe.  It would seem extraordinary that Jimi would mention a number of times in interviews that he was thinking of bringing his Electric Lady tapes to London to finish the album, unless we consider that Hendrix was both progressively saying diametrically opposed things about the future of his career and more discreetly expressing disgust at the sight of the sushi vomit from his guests at the opening of his baby studio.
 

I've prolonged it enough.  This is the final set of Hendrix's recorded output  This European leg of the Cry of Love tour isn't bad at all despite it having an inevitable sense of doom surrounding it.  There are only a couple of spotty shows, but the bigger problem is that only one show - Isle of Wight - was recorded professionally.  And it happens to be one of the spotty shows.





When Hendrix arrived in Britain to play the Isle of Wight show, by his own admission he hadn't slept for "two or three days", fueled by methedrine and further forced to wait several hours to play in the very early morning.  This type of dawn twilight festival vibe might be ideal for someone like Leonard Cohen (who was still miserable at the mismanagement), but it's not optimal for Hendrix's higher-octane set even if he had been fully rested.  Hendrix was not shy about revealing his disdain for his performance in interviews throughout the rest of the tour.

But it's not terrible by any stretch.  After a goofy take on "God Save the Queen" into "Sgt. Pepper", the band starts strong with "Spanish Castle Magic", "All Along the Watchtower" and a smoldering "Machine Gun".  The latter was famously plagued with radio interference from the "security personnel", but it only adds to the ambience, however it annoyed Jimi.  Some of the newer material suffers from his inability to cover all of the complex guitar parts, and the unfamiliar crowd, already sleepy, was not giving him much enthusiasm.  The crowd livened up with the more familiar "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze" and "Voodoo Chile" and his brand new show-stopper "In From the Storm" finally won them over.



Much of the show's bad reputation is also due to the rather shoddy way it's been packaged over the years.  The first LP, the UK/Europe only Isle of Wight shows its disregard in the fact that they couldn't even bother with a cover shot from the same show, and it only runs about half an hour.  The second side - "Freedom", "All Along the Watchtower", "In From the Storm" - makes a decent case.  And for years I've always admired the "atonal" version of "Foxy Lady" as a brave, bold and abrasive new take on the track.  Only to learn from the film that this extended atonal interlude was due to Jimi having ducked behind one of the amps for a pick-me-up, letting his guitar freely feedback while he got his nose around something or another.

Hendrix in the West introduced the "God Save the Queen/Sgt. Pepper" opener, but it's purely a novelty at best.

The soundtrack to A Film About Jimi Hendrix provided the first real glimpses of the show, including "Red House" on his Flying V Gibson and "Machine Gun" (although cut by nearly two-thirds).

The 1991 CD release, Live in Isle of Wight '70, is only worse, another cheaply packaged set, poorly mixed, sequenced and edited, and for Americans only available as a too-expensive import.  But it does have that fantastic "Voodoo Chile", a slightly longer "Machine Gun" (but still cut in half), and the first opportunity to hear some of the newer songs like "Dolly Dagger", "Message To Love", "Hey Baby".

All of that is moot today, of course, as Blue Wild Angel contains the entirety of the audio performance and most of what was filmed, all overseen by Eddie Kramer.

Ultimately, Hendrix and the press may have seen this as a relatively lackluster return to Britain for the artist who kick-started his career there four years earlier, and had not performed there for nearly two, since the Royal Albert Hall.  But anyone (Polydor, ahem) who cared enough could have assembled a solid single-LP live album instead in 1971 - A: Spanish Castle Magic, All Along the Watchtower, Machine Gun (probably the 7 minute edit), Freedom; B: Red House, Voodoo Chile, In From the Storm.

Hendrix still was not afforded much time to rest, and within 12 hours of flying off the Isle of Wight, he was walking on stage on Stockholm, Sweden, but he's in good enough spirits to roll out some of his cock-rock favorites - Lover Man, Catfish Blues, Come On (pt.1) in addition to "Ezy Ryder" and "Room Full of Mirrors".  Jimi would also use Mitch's drum solo as an excuse to run backstage and tell the theater manager, who had advised that Hendrix keep it under an hour, exactly where he can keep the ass he handed him.  "Sorry for the intermission, but I had to get a load off my mind."  And the very next day, Sept. 1, Hendrix was likewise back in Gothenburg for yet another performance.  After "Spanish Castle Magic", Jimi steers into "KIlling Floor (a rare number for this tour) and his first version of "Hear My Train A-Coming" on this leg.  Despite the audience recordings, these are very good shows, maybe now that Hendrix wasn't feeling the pressure that weighed over his expectations at Isle of Wight.

At a party after the Gothenburg show, Billy Cox was dosed with LSD.  Cox was not a recreational user of psychedelics like Hendrix and didn't take well to the experience.  The assumption is that the dosing was accidental, as such things happened in rock star circles at the time, but other whispers considered the fact that Michael Jeffery had always wated to see Bill out of the band, and the original Experience reinstated, and that maybe this was a form of underhanded sabotage.  Billy was ot unfamiliar with the various rumors of Jeffery's mafia ties, all of which started to fuel his post-acid paranoia.  But, for the meantime, he was able to continue to play as a professional.

But the crash had to come.  On Sept. 2 in Arhus, during his fourth show in four days, Hendrix had to cut the performance after only three songs.  He was exhausted, but at the time blamed the flu.  Billy Cox assumed he had been drugged as well, and increasingly believed that the band will not make it out of the tour alive.  Hendrix promised to return to play another show for ticket-holders, but this never happened.  More oddly, Hendrix next turned up in the Danish papers having announced a marriage proposal with model Kristen Nefer.  For anyone who knew "stone free" Hendrix, this was a sign of his increasingly bizarre behavior.  Either way, it doesn't appear that Hendrix ever saw Nefer again after he left town.  Anyway, at least he looks happy...




Hendrix was also given a surprise introduction to his illegitimate son, James Sundquist, who has since been recognized as a legitimate heir by the estate.  Hendrix was already nearing the verge of a nervous breakdown, and was certainly shook by these emerging realities.  Here's more on his Danish adventures.




By Sept. 3, Hendrix was back on stage in Copenhagen, and perhaps as a reminder, opens with "Stone Free".  This lively show is considered possibly the finest of the tour and has been semi-officially been released as a CD from the fanzine Univibes.  There are also at least six known audience tapes of the performance in circulation.

The following night's show in Berlin was also a lot more steller than circumstances would imply, with the band dipping into "Straight Ahead" and "Power of Soul" (the latter for the only time on the tour).





The Isle of Fehmarn, which would be the final concert of Hendrix's career on Sept. 6, would not be so successful, but, from a performance perspective, hardly the disaster you'd expect.  This "Love & Peace Festival" was overrun first by a huge North Sea storm and then by a German chapter of Hell's Angels (not a good mix!) who would take over the box office at gunpoint and distribute copious amounts of reds and wine.  The police who were there were content to send attack dogs into the crowd.  The Angels set fire to most of the establishment.  Billy Cox's paranoia was such that it's amazing he could still remember how to play.  The crowd boo'd thorughout the show, and when it finally came to an end, the band had to be swiftly escorted onto a helicopter as the stage was set aflame, and a roadie was shot in the leg.  I wonder if it occurred to Hendrix as he watched the burning stage from his copter that this symmetrical moment to his Monterey immolation might be a karmic omen.

Someone backstage did have the presence of mind to set up a poor but stereo mic above the stage and perserve this final Hendrix concert on a reel-to-reel tape, which eventually was released by the Estate for its obvious historical interest, if little else but morbid fascination.  The show opens again with "Killing Floor" (more Monterey symmetry?) and includes some decent versions of "Freedom", "Room Full of Mirrors" and "Voodoo Chile".

Back in London, it was clear that Billy Cox would have to return to America for professional medical care.  Despite this, Michael Jeffery was still expecting Hendrix to honor the many further dates on the schedule, including additional ones in Europe, the UK and then back to America in the fall.  But for Hendrix everything is up in the air.  In his final recorded interview with Keith Altham, it seems that on most subjects concerning his new album and the state of his touring band, Hendrix simply doesn't want to think about it.




Hendrix spent his last week laying low, usually at his new girlfriend Monika Danniman's flat to whom only a handful of trusted friends knew the number.  Jimi was avoiding Jeffery like the plague.  According to people he visited, he met with Chas Chandler to see about getting out of his contract with Jeffery, but Chandler couldn't help.  He was still telling people that he wanted to fly his tapes to London to finish the album, which baffled everyone.  He appeared to say completely contradictory things depending on who he was talking to.

The last recording of Jimi Hendrix was from Sept. 16, when he sat in with Eric Burdon and War, who were just releasing their underrated double-LP Black Man's Burdon.  The band was playing a residence at Ronnie Scott's.  Devon "Dolly Dagger" Wilson showed up, which likely didn't brighten his mood.  The entire set by Burdon and War was taped, and I think it's all very well worth listening to, even in less-than-ideal recording conditions.  AFter about two hours, Hendrix joins the band on stage for extended (approx. 30 minutes each) jams on the tunes "Mother Earth" and "Tobacco Road".  Jimi seems to enjoy playing with a more expansive line-up with sax and percussion, and obviously a very funky band.

There are a few misconceptions surrounding Hendrix's death that I'd like to clarify.  My primary source is Tony Brown's Jimi Hendrix: The Final Days which includes autopsy reports, medical records and extensive interviews.

1) Monika Dannemann is one of the main sources of misinformation.  It appears that most of what she's said about the circumstances of Jimi's death are simply not true.  I wouldn't rule out a serious mental illness on her part.  She would commit suicide in 1996 after writing a much-criticized biography of Hendrix.  Dannemann claimed to have called the ambulance and accompanied the paramedics with Hendrix to the hospital.  None of the paramedics or hospital staff that morning remember seeing her.  Dannemann has said that Hendrix was alive when the paramedics arrived, and accused them of causing his death through negligence.  Medical records show that hendrix had died several hours before the paramedics were called, and that they even had to crack open the dried encrusted vomit in his throat.  The paramedics have sworn in testimony that there was no one else present at the flat that morning.

2) According to autopsy records, Hendrix had no opiates in his system or track marks on his arms, refuting a very common myth about his substance use.  Hendrix did have amounts of amphetimine and the barbiturates that killed him (that Dannemann had supplied him with).  More peculiar, Hendrix's blood-alcohol level was negligible despite having both lungs full of red wine, suggesting that his heart had stopped before the wine was absorbed into his blood stream.

3) Hendrix had a scheduled meeting with Ed Chaplin, presumably to ask if he could help sever the Jeffery contract.  Monika Dannemann had previously been photographed with Ed Chaplin.

4) Mike Jeffery was already requesting audits of Hendrix's studio catalogue for releasable material.

5) A popular story is that Eric Clapton had bought a left-handed guitar and had intended to deliver it on the night of the 17th at a Sly Stone concert in London.  Clapton has famously claimed to have seen Hendrix at the concert, but "never got together".  Clapton is mistaken.  Hendrix was supposed to attend the concert and jam with Sly and Mitch Mitchell, and Mitch has noted out very out of character it was for Jimi to miss the opportunity to jam.

6) That same night, the 17th, Jimi attended a party with several others (including Devon Wilson).  The last time he was seen alive by anyone other than Monika Dannemann was at this party.  Witnesses say Dannemann arrived and tried to speak to Hendrix on the apartment intercom but Hendrix demurred.  Dannemann was insistent, and Hendrix left in a huff before anyone could say anything to him.

7) Mike Jeffery died in an airplane collision over France in 1973.  Given his intelligence and mafia connections, I've never completely convinced myself that he didn't fake his death.