“I would like to think that even without the foresight of Chas, Jimi would have made it ultimately, but there is always that doubt. So much of it was a matter of alchemy, timing, luck or whatever.”
— Mitch Mitchell
There is a very human tendency to see success as inevitable, if not foreordained. We are all far readier to discount good luck as opposed to bad luck. Nobody would have thought Jimi’s life a fortunate life until he met Chas. Is there any good reason to suppose it would have become a fortunate one if he never had?
Several of the musicians Jimi had gathered around him at the Cafe Wha? went on to better things. Randy California joined the much underrated Spirit. Jeff Baxter helped launch adult-oriented rock with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. And Jimi might have made name for himself playing blues. The sharp-eared Roger Mayer had already noticed Jimi’s guitar work on the only significant recording he made before he came to London, Don Covay’s “Mercy Mercy.” So it is certainly possible—albeit maybe not probable—that Jimi would have made a reputation of some kind for himself whatever had happened to him after 1966.
Jimi Hendrix was fortunate to find London. Almost as soon as his reputation emerged, it was said in jest that he represented a reverse British invasion, and that he had crossed the Atlantic to storm Britain in the same way the Beatles and other British bands had stormed America. The joke ignored the fact that Jimi Hendrix was a British act, as Jimi himself said when asked by British journalists if he represented New York music.
In New York Jimi had found himself out of step with his contemporaries through his love of the blues and the contempt he felt for Motown. In London there was still an audience for the blues, and, more helpfully still for Jimi, an audience with an interest in guitar virtuosity due to the competitive rivalry of a talented generation of guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, and Brian Jones, among others.
Jimi’s appeal was his virtuosity rather than his authenticity as a bluesman. London allowed him to sidestep some racial expectations that had limited him in his own country. When Chris Welch first saw Jimi perform, he was surprised to see an African American playing rock rather than what in Britain was known as soul music, but it was something that Welch and everybody else easily accepted.
Jimi also arrived at a time when London’s recording studios were at their best. Technically they lagged behind American studios, but the technical limitations had created an innovative generation of recording engineers. British record labels still thought of themselves as largely in the business of recording and selling classical music. Their executives did not understand popular music, and did not want to, which gave record producers a free creative hand.
Left to himself, Jimi might never have become a front man at all, because he did not think much of his singing. The initial inspiration came from Chas, and it was Chas’s contacts that smoothed his way into London. Kathy’s contacts were helpful too; it was through her that he met Brian Jones and secured the interest of the Beatles.
Yet London was fortunate in finding Jimi Hendrix too. There was a hunger for experiment among London musicians, partly inspired by avant-garde jazz and partly inspired by a general desire to explore new possibilities. There were, however, no musicians capable of great originality. The skilled, such as Eric Clapton, were in awe of the bluesmen who had inspired them. The daring, such as Pink Floyd, were scarcely musicians at all. Jimi’s knowledge of music theory was limited, but he was a highly skilled musician (his skill is still often underestimated: even when jamming he could repeat any phrase he had played or play it backwards if asked to). He was also a swift and eager learner who adapted and adopted new sounds very quickly. He had a great deal to say for himself musically, and had had very few opportunities to say it before he moved to London.
There was much in Jimi’s life that could have caused a different man to feel bitterness, resentment, or grievance. Jimi drew on his experiences to bring greater emotional depth to his music. After Jimi was gone, many rock musicians attempted to emulate classical music by increasing the scale, the complexity, and the length of their performances. They failed, because what rock lacked in comparison with classical music was not complexity but feeling. While Jimi’s songs are unlikely to become central to the classical repertoire, he is today admired by classical musicians such as the violinist Nigel Kennedy.
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Had Jimi not died in 1970, what would he recognize in contemporary London? All the places where he lived still stand. The flat in Brook Street is now the offices of the Handel Trust, which are occasionally opened for short tours on weekends. The Speakeasy and the Scotch have long since closed, but the buildings that housed them remain. The site of UFO has been redeveloped. The interior of Olympic Studios have been rebuilt beyond recognition, De Lane Lea Studios have been demolished. The site of the tiny Regent Studios on Denmark Street is now a music shop, where passersby are welcome to drop in and take a quick look.
Jimi’s ghost might be pleased to find that Jimi’s life is commemorated in London. There is a blue commemorative plaque on the house in Brook Street, one of those plaques installed by the English Heritage organization to mark the homes of distinguished former residents of England. The auditorium of the Central Polytechnic is now the Law School of the University of Westminster. Its glass doors are engraved with a memorial to Jimi’s first London appearance. Ronnie Scott’s, where Jimi made his last appearance on stage ever, is still open for business on Frith Street.
Jimi’s unmistakeable image crops up in all kinds of unofficial sites, too. He remains a gift to visual artists, and I have seen his haunting face staring from the window of backstreet poster shops, on decorative mirrors, even as a limited-edition table lamp. No caption seems to be required to explain who he was; he remains emblematic of a time and a place, but free of nostalgia. As I write, there is a revived interest in progressive music, and just as I rediscovered Jimi as the father of Funk, there will be inquiring ears searching him out for the first time as the founder of that, in formats that were beyond imagining in the 1960s.
In a playful film clip in 1967, Mitch and Noel interview Jimi. “Is it true,” he is asked, “that you play guitar with your tongue?” “No,” Jimi replies, “I play the guitar with my ear.” And it is by the ear he would have preferred to be remembered. And he will be.