YouTube comments

[westen44]

And so many people seem to forget what a great rhythm player Hendrix was.  It's not just about flying fingers.

Definitely. 

[uwe]

I think there must be a complete disconnect with some people on the difference between being able to play something and being able to create something in the first place.  You've also got people out there chiding Paul McCartney for his less than stellar technical skills, in their opinion.  Please go out, write some Beatles-level songs, sing them as well as Paul, come up with bass lines out of thin air the way he usually did, THEN, maybe then, people like that can brag how they're better bassists than Paul McCartney.  The same goes for Muse.  Being able to play the bass line to "Hysteria" does not automatically qualify someone as a replacement for Chris Wolstenholme.  It is he--not anyone else--who created that particular bass line. 

Macca was and is rhythmically meat and potatoes (all in all, he probably doesn't have more than 10 rhythmic variations) and not very fast (neither am I), but he was harmonically and melodically in the sixties already lightyears ahead of what 95% of all bassists do today. Sometime in the midseventies - advent of disco? though I would hate to blame it for dumbing down bass playing as regards melody - there was a cut as regards the development of melodic and harmonically adventurous bass playing and the root note reigned for evermore, the bass enslaved by the bass drum. Since then, bass playing has become rhythmically more complex, but melodically and harmonically more simplistic. The advent of the 5-string didn't help things either, now bass players would just play a low D where before they had to play an F or an F# for the lowest notes to go with a D, the result was a harmonic loss - many bass players get harmonically complacent with a 5-string in their hands. McCartney's approach to bass playing (when he was still hungry) is more akin to playing cello in a classical orchestra than to traditional double bass.

Hendrix to me, otoh, was never a technically breathtaking player, but all about feel, tone and innovation. I don't believe he was obsessed with his left- or right hand technique at all. He had huge hands which did enable him to do some adventurous voicings, but that was more "because I can do it without discomfort" than consciously I believe.

[exiledarchangel]

This is pretty much how I feel.

What? No "all of the above" option?

[westen44]

Macca was and is rhythmically meat and potatoes (all in all, he probably doesn't have more than 10 rhythmic variations) and not very fast (neither am I), but he was harmonically and melodically in the sixties already lightyears ahead of what 95% of all bassists do today. Sometime in the midseventies - advent of disco? though I would hate to blame it for dumbing down bass playing as regards melody - there was a cut as regards the development of melodic and harmonically adventurous bass playing and the root note reigned for evermore, the bass enslaved by the bass drum. Since then, bass playing has become rhythmically more complex, but melodically and harmonically more simplistic. The advent of the 5-string didn't help things either, now bass players would just play a low D where before they had to play an F or an F# for the lowest notes to go with a D, the result was a harmonic loss - many bass players get harmonically complacent with a 5-string in their hands. McCartney's approach to bass playing (when he was still hungry) is more akin to playing cello in a classical orchestra than to traditional double bass.

Hendrix to me, otoh, was never a technically breathtaking player, but all about feel, tone and innovation. I don't believe he was obsessed with his left- or right hand technique at all. He had huge hands which did enable him to do some adventurous voicings, but that was more "because I can do it without discomfort" than consciously I believe.

You've pinpointed exactly what I tend to dislike about modern bass playing, the rhythmic being advanced at the expense of the melodic and harmonic.  It's timing which has always been what I've been best at.  I hate to say it, but I probably would have made a better drummer than a bassist.  Being rhythmic has never been something mysterious to me.  But being able to come up with those beautiful melodies the way McCartney and a few others have done, that's what's impressive to me.  Sometimes the lack of melody I hear in modern music makes for very frustrating listening on my part.  This doesn't just apply to bass, either.  Speaking of Hendrix, in an interview which comes at the end of Disc 4 on the Winterland box set, he does very briefly discuss how he feels about the melodic in music.  I've been meaning to go back and listen to that again. 

[nofi]

particularly in a music context comments usually include:


very nice, i like it.

f*** you, you suck

bible quotes

a f*** you to the bible guy

faggot

i like the old stuff better

my cousin is better than that guy.

you shred, dude

i'm so stoned

bible guy strikes back and is countered with satanic nonsense

many misspellings and references to genetalia and your relatives

yo' nigga'

mind blowing comments that have nothing to do with anything.

there are more but...

[dadagoboi]

Hendrix to me, otoh, was never a technically breathtaking player, but all about feel, tone and innovation. I don't believe he was obsessed with his left- or right hand technique at all. He had huge hands which did enable him to do some adventurous voicings, but that was more "because I can do it without discomfort" than consciously I believe.

 It would be very difficult to tell how good Picasso's technique was from his later work.  Unlike Picasso, very little remains of Hendrix' early stuff.  I don't know what you consider 'technique' but to me he had it in spades.  He CHOSE to play what he did.

[uwe]

I'm not saying he was bad or less than good, but he wasn't any better than Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Peter Green, Frank Zappa or Eric Clapton were at the time to name a few. He had enough technique certainly, but it is not what made him outstanding, which he certainly was. He was certainly a better guitarist than a singer though! But even his voice, limited range and all, was unmistakeable.

I've heard a lot of Jimi Hendrix stuff pre-Experience, Germany was flooded with bootlegs and icky "official" releases of his older work in the seventies. I even heard stuff of him with that US Army band he played in. He played like a pro, but a sideman pro in those line ups. Nice choppy rhythm guitar too. People may sniff att Redding's and Mitchell's bass and drum skills all they want, but it was those two that gave Hendrix the foil for his groundbreaking stuff. And groundbreaking he was. When the Experience conquered England, Clapton, Beck, Page and Blackmore all checked him out. And when Blackmore asked Beck how the new black cat on the block was and whether the accolades were true, Beck, who had just witnessed a concert, said: "He went straight between the eyes." A phrase Blackers memorized and would use for a Rainbow album in the early eighties. Hendrix certainly influenced Clapton, Beck and Blackmore - all three were Gibson players when they saw him, all three would become Strat guitar heroes not so long after. And Blackmore's seventies style owes a heap to Hendrix, he has similar playful drama in his playing. If you listen to old DP records you can hear that come 1969 Blackmore changed his style and sound radically and he was not afraid to cop some Hendrix mannerisms either. When it comes to white guys emulating Hendrix, people tend to think of the usual suspects such as Robin Trower and Frank Marino, but it was Blackmore in fact who incorporated parts of Hendrix style into his own first, the hard rock Hendrix so to say. There is not so much of that evident today anymore, much of that has to do that Blackmore hardly uses bendings with Blackmore's Night anymore, just trills, because he is of the view that renaissance music did not know bendings. Hey, and Clapton, by his own admission even copped Hendrix' 'fro in Cream!

[westen44]

^
Through sheer coincidence, I've become friends with a guitarist who knew Noel Redding well.  I'm sure Noel would have been appreciative of the comment you made about him.  Not everyone has been so kind.  As for myself, I always liked his style, even though that has sometimes put me in a minority.  He wasn't a virtuoso, but I don't think he ever pretended to be one, either.  I do think his timing was superb, however.  And even though Mitch and Noel didn't get along well in the later years, I think even Mitch acknowledged at one point that Noel was the timekeeper in the band.  On the "Are You Experienced" album, that's Redding playing Chas Chandler's Gibson EB-2 on most of those songs.  With the dark, deep, mellow tone that it gets, it's now hard to imagine those songs being played with anything else. 

[Psycho Bass Guy]

There are exceptions to the Youtube comments' lack of intelligence. Remember this?

[uwe]

I've never subscribed to the "white guys with Hendrix didn't know how to play and had no groove"-thesis. People tend to forget that part of Hendrix' initial appeal was that he and the Experience did not sound black. That is why you hear Hendrix today still on rock radio stations while black radio stations have always been on the verge of disowning/ignoring him. The guy had been playing black RnB for years in the circuit, going nowhere. So it was his outlandish look, dress sense and exuberant playing that made the Experience kickstart a new era in rock, but all of that on the back of Mitchell's and Redding's "white boy groove, firmly Brit Beat entrenched playing". Had Hendrix released his debut with a couple of Motown or Stax black studio cracks, I'm sure the success wouldn't have been the same. The timing might have been neater, the grooves tighter, the whole rhythmically more adventurous, but it would not have hit as hard commercially.

[westen44]

I've never subscribed to the "white guys with Hendrix didn't know how to play and had no groove"-thesis. People tend to forget that part of Hendrix' initial appeal was that he and the Experience did not sound black. That is why you hear Hendrix today still on rock radio stations while black radio stations have always been on the verge of disowning/ignoring him. The guy had been playing black RnB for years in the circuit, going nowhere. So it was his outlandish look, dress sense and exuberant playing that made the Experience kickstart a new era in rock, but all of that on the back of Mitchell's and Redding's "white boy groove, firmly Brit Beat entrenched playing". Had Hendrix released his debut with a couple of Motown or Stax black studio cracks, I'm sure the success wouldn't have been the same. The timing might have been neater, the grooves tighter, the whole rhythmically more adventurous, but it would not have hit as hard commercially.

If you ever find yourself in the midst of Hendrix fans, you may find that there is still an unusual emphasis on the part of some on the post-Electric Ladyland music.  At first, this really baffled me and still does.  I had always been under the impression that Are You Experienced, Axis:  Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland were the three landmark albums.  Not so with many people, evidently.  They'll focus on Band of Gypsys songs, or songs from the Isle of Wight concert, whatever.  Not too long ago I was having a "discussion" with someone who informed me that Noel Redding would not have been able to play the bass to "Ezy Ryder" the way it really should be played.  Then the guitarist friend I mentioned came along and pointed out (and proved) that the song was actually built on a proto-Ezy Ryder song that Noel Redding himself had written.  As you have said, it was that big break in the UK that really got everything started for Jimi Hendrix.  That was with Redding and Mitchell as his British sidemen, and with the Beatles, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, and others in the audience.  I also question how famous Hendrix would have become or even if he would have become famous at all if Chas Chandler had not taken him to the UK. 

[uwe]

Band of Gypsies had their undeniable qualities, but were they a singles band?  I was there when my older brother (nine years older than me) started buying one Hendrix single after another. Stone fre(m)e, but to the wider public Hendrix is known for Hey Joe, Gypsy Eyes, Purple Haze, Manic Depression, Fire, Wind cries Mary, All along the Watchtower etc and not that seventies self-indulgent Band of Gypsies jammy stuff which I as a musician like too, but try having a hit with it! Before Hendrix the guitar god, there was Hendrix the pop and cultural phenomenom, this extremely cool-dressed, tall and handsome black cat with a deep laid-back voice that performed sexual acts with his weird wrong side up Strat in a trio with two whiteys, all of them with fluffy shirts. That was what was transmitted into the living rooms and caused people to buy those singles that cemented his success.  



I think the German audience cheering him at the end of that vid had no idea whether he played guitar well or not so well, but he sure looked and acted like no other guitarist they had seen before. Hank Marvin he sure wasn't.

[westen44]

I'm not sure if I've even seen that video before.  Mitch Mitchell looked even more foppish than Noel Redding in that, and that took quite some doing.  I'm one of those left--probably in the minority--who can say I liked the so-called "pop" music of Jimi Hendrix.  I never became so cool and sophisticated (like many others I suppose) that I couldn't enjoy it.  Seriously, though, I do think a lot of this has to do with guitarists who focus almost exclusively on Hendrix's actual guitar playing itself rather than how good (or not good) the songs themselves were when he was in his final phase.  Some people seem to think they were great; I do not.  To me it looks like he was literally running out of ideas and creativity. 

[gweimer]

To be honest, I came late to the Hendrix party.  I liked a lot of the first album, and still do, but I've never been a big fan of either Axis or EL.  I just found them too trippy.  I perked up for Band of Gypsys, but not for "Machine Gun".  It was the shorter, and more structured songs.  The album that I always loved, if you hadn't figured it out, was Cry of Love.  It was cleaner, more intricate, more soulful and better structured.

My understanding of the real phenomenon of Hendrix was his ability to remember every solo and part he wrote, to the point where he could play them backwards perfectly.  I seem to recall an interview with Eddie Kramer that talked about recording songs like that to invert to sound envelope.

[nofi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FuMd1_8t38&feature=related