"Well, I float in liquid gardens,way down in Arizona's new red sands"

PART 8

 

 Jimi always relished the chance to work with other musicians, and he turned up on the following:

 

 

STEPHEN STILLS - "Stephen Stills" Released November 1970 (Atlantic SD 7202) Jimi plays lead on "Old Times Good Times". Stills was a good friend of Jimi's and a great musician. His magnificent "Manassas" album with Chris Hillman, is also an absolute must. > See below also.

LOVE - "False Start" Released December 1970 (Blue Thumb BTS 22) Jimi plays lead on "Everlasting First". Arthur Lee was another old friend of Jimi's. This is unfortunatly not one of the band's best albums. > See below also.

 

 

EIRE APPARENT - Sun Rise Released May 1969 (Buddah 2011-117) Jimi produced this album and played lead on some of the songs and most clearly on "Rock 'n' Roll Band", "Captive In The Sun", "Let Me Stay" and"Mr. Guy Fawkes"). On other tracks one hears his backward guitar at times. "Rock 'n' Roll Band" (which sounds like The Flaming Groovies) was a single. This band opened for The Experience on many occasions. A big Thank You to Régis for helping out with this !

McGOUGH & McGEAR Released October 1968 (Parlophone PCS 7047) A very rare record by two members of the comedy pop outfit The Scaffold (remember "Lily The Pink" !). Alot of big names appeared on this and Jimi played on "Ex Art Student" and "So Much". Mitch and Noel also took part. Produced by Mike McGear's brother - Paul McCartney ! Read this !

 

 

TIMOTHY LEARY - "You Can Be Anyone This Time Around" Released April 1970 (Douglas Records 1) Jimi jams on bass only on the 14 minute "Live And Let Live" (in fact a jam around Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock", with Steve Stills and John Sebastien on guitar and Buddy Miles on drums. This was organised and produced by Alan Douglas.

BUDDY MILES EXPRESS - "Electric Church" Released 1968 (Mercury SR 61222) Jimi produced the tracks "Miss Lady", 69 Freedom Special", "Destructive Love" and "My Chant". Jimi also wrote a sleeve-note for another album by Miles called "Expressway To Your Skull" (see below).

 

 

CAT MOTHER & THE ALL NIGHT NEWSBOYS - "The Street Giveth And The Street Taketh Away" Released June 1969 (Polydor 24-4001). Jimi only co-produced this album.

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THE GHETTO FIGHTERS "Ghetto Fighters" (Unreleased) According to Eddie Kramer's book, Jimi produced and played guitar on some of this album which remains on the shelf. An excerpt of one track, "Mojo Man", can be heard on the Univibes site. (The Ghetto Fighters had provided backing vocals on Jimi's songs "Freedom" and "Dolly Dagger" - now on "First Rays"). They are interviewed in "A Film About Jimi Hendrix" and the "Band Of Gypsys" video

 

Stephen Stills - NEW CD TO APPEAR !!
It has been announced that Jimi's participations in the session which led to the above "Stephen Stills" album are to released.
This has been confirmed by John McDermott and Graham Nash is mixing the tapes. Read more here.

This appeared in Billboard recently:
"He's also been working with the Jimi Hendrix family's Experience Hendrix company on a tape recordings the two guitarists made together, which Stills claims "doesn't have as much as people think is on there." There are two mostly finished tracks, though, "Old Times Good Times" and another with only a working title, which Stills says might be part of a Hendrix sessions disc for which he's also overdubbed some new bass parts on recordings Hendrix made with Johnny Winter."

Stills had already said that the sessions with Jimi did include his participation on another song titled"White Nigger". A version of this song has circulated among CSN&Y fans but it is from a later Stills session and without Jimi. However, the link that follows (to Big O) proposes a version of "White Nigger" that is possibly from the 1970 sessions with Jimi. Or is it from the later Stills session ?
> "White Nigger"

> Beware of the bootleg "Still's Basement" which features no jams of Stills and Jimi ! Well, Jimi could be on bass. The rest of the tracks are already on a number of other bootlegs.

 

Ghetto Fighters - NEW CD TO APPEAR !!
There is talk of releases of material that Jimi put together with Arthur and Albert Allen who called themselves The Ghetto Fighters. They were old friends of Jimi's since the early sixties and Jimi invited them to record backing vocals for
some of his 1970 studio recoordings. At the same time Jimi and the duo had side projects which are now destined to be released.
This will be music and animated films it would seem.
Check the info here.

Other guest appearences

• Love
This acetate turned up recently on e-bay which features recordings of Love with Jimi in March 1970. Only three tracks however: "Everlasting First" (which was on Love's "False Start" album), a couple of stabs at "Ezy Ryder" (with a vocal from Jimi) and an interesting ten minute"Jam".

Beware of the bootleg "Midnight Sun: Jimi Hendrix With Love" (Third Eye) which claims to feature 8 tracks recorded with the band in 1970. The tracks are only from an unfinished Love album and without Hendrix.

• The Last Poets also did a little work with Jimi but all that we have to go on so far is the loose jam/rap with Poets member Lighnin' Rod which was released in the eighties by Alan Douglas (who had set up the session) - see "Live albums 80s" section.

 

Here is the sleevevenote that Jimi penned for the Buddy Miles Express album "Expressway To Your Skull":
"The express had made the bend, he is coming on down the tracks, shaking steady, shaking funk, shaking feelings, shaking life...the conductor says as they climb aboard, small we are going to the electric church, the express took them away and they lived and heard happily and funkily ever after and---uh---excuse me but I think I hear my train coming." - Jimi Hendrix

 

 Not forgetting ...

 

CURTIS KNIGHT

"Get That Feeling" & "Flashing" (released in 1967 and 1968 respectively), which Jimi tried in vain to stop.
These albums contain a mixture of old Knight material from 1965 plus tracks constructed around the two reunion sessions of 1967 in New York. At the sessions, Jimi used his newly discovered wah-wah pedal and played some bass guitar.

Jimi wasn't really a "guest"on the pre-Experience material, he was a genuine member of Curtis Knight & The Squires.

> See Curtis Knight recordings released in Jimi's Lifetime

 

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Johnny Hallyday

 

This all began when I read in an old French biography of Johnny Hallyday that Jimi had played one of his songs called "Psychedelic". Then in a filmed interview on French television in 2004, Johnny Hallyday said that he and Jimi were good friends and would meet up in the early days when they happenned to be in the same town. That was confirmed quite recently by one of Hallyday's old staff. Johnny also said that Jimi was "present" when Hallyday recorded his own version of "Hey Joe" !

Investigating these claims, I asked the opinion of a French Johnny Hallyday web site (www.hallyday.com.fr) and they confirmed that Jimi didn't play on "Psychedelic" but he did play on an outtake of Hallyday's version of "Hey Joe" ! Furthermore, the "Hey Joe" outtake was offiically released in France in 1993 on a CD that was included in a luxury metal and denim bound book titled "Johnny: Le Livre" (Altinea Collectionneur/Vade Retro). The site's webmaster was kind enough to send me scans of the texte and track details which seem to confirm these facts. However, top Hendrix authority Caesar Glebeek (Univibes) does not consider this outtake to be authentic. So, true or false ?

 

"Johnny : Le Livre"
Jimi appears on a "Hey Joe" outtake here !
Alas, only on acoustic guitar.

 

Let's not forget that Hallyday had seen the still unknown Jimi in September 1966 jamming in a London club with Brian Auger (although Brian has no recollection of his good friend Johnny being there). Halliday had proposed to Chas Chandler that the young black wonder could play with him on his forthcoming short tour of the north of France. This gave Jimi his first professional engagement in Europe. Chas then sped up his search for a rhythm section to back Jimi for the tour and The Experience were born.
A friendship struck up between the musicians on the tour. The book says that during the brief October tour (only four or five dates with The Experience), Jimi would join Hallyday on stage to perform "Hey Joe" with him (though I have never read anything that confirms this). The song was little known in England and France but had been already in Jimi's repertoire since his Greenwich Village days. Hallyday liked the song and Gilles Thibault was commissioned to write new French lyrics (he also wrote the lyrics of "Comme d'habitude" which Paul Anka rewrote as "My Way").
Immediatly after the tour, The Experience went into the studio to begin recording, in particular "Hey Joe", which was set aside to be the debut single. Hallyday was also recording in London at the time, and working on his own version of"Hey Joe" ! So it is possible that Jimi might have dropped by the studio to say hello to Johnny, and ended up participating in the session …on acoustic guitar. This adds credit to the story. Jimi didn't have his axe with him it would seem, so he might have borrowed what was at hand.
This would have taken place in November 1966, only a few short weeks after the French tour. Jimi perhaps told nobody about this and the whole thing was forgotten. One must remember again, that at the time, Jimi was still pretty well unknown, having only played on the Hallyday tour and a few London club dates. It wasn't as if "The Great Jimi Hendrix" had come and played at the session, he was just a friend who came to say hello.
When Hallyday's "Hey Joe" was eventually released in March '67, the guitar accompaniement in question was absent from the mix. The outtake remained on the shelf until its rediscovery in the nineties by Universal.
On the track, it does sound like Jimi's hard strumming technique on acoustic (when compared to the acoustic "Hound Dog"* for example, some runs are identical). Hell, I think it is authentic.

 

I recently came across a Johnny Halliday fan site which lists all his 1966 sessions and Jimi is mentioned as a participant at the "Hey Joe" Olympic Studios session:

Olympic Sound Studio (Londres)
novembre 1966

Hey Joe (n° 437.304 )
Musiciens : The Blackburds.
Guitare acoustique : Jimi Hendrix.
Ingénieur du son : Giorgio Gomelsky

Source: http://www.hallyday.com.fr/Son/Sessions/ses66.html

At the time, Johnny's guitarist in the Blackburds was Mickey Jones (future Foreigner) and in a 1997 article (Juke Box Magazine, France) he stated that Jimi was there at the session but he couldn't remember if Jimi played on the song. He did rememder that Jimi had shown him the parts to play for the song.
Again, it does sound like Jimi's choppy rhythms but is he on the outtake and the single or is it Mickey Jones? The mystery persists.

 

  < An E.P. featuring"Hey Joe" by Johnny Hallyday (March 1967)

Jimi was not credited as a contributor to this released version of the song. In that book, it sort of says that the tape with Jimi was remixed to become the single and that the outtake is the "unmixed" version. I recently listened to the single version and that same acoustic guitar is on there, but a little futher back in the mix! Johnny's vocal take is different, that's all.

 

*That acoustic version of "Hound Dog" is on a number of bootlegs ("Freak Out Jam" for example) and it comes from the unreleased Gold and Goldstein film "Experience". It was filmed as Jimi relaxed on a bed, playing to friends.

> In his book Noel said that he had played with Halliday before he met Jimi. Or was him memory letting him down ?

 

 

 If your French is up to it, their is an interesting discussion
about the Hendrix/Hallyday question on this forum page :
Forum
That is the archive section of the Forum Jimi Hendrix

Trivia: In 1968, Johnny's management called in reputed session guitarist Jimmy Page to play on a song called "A Tout Casser". The driving riff that Page put down is exactly the same as what he would later play on …"Whole Lotta Love" !

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JOHN MAYALL

In a 1997 interview with Record Collector, John Mayall stated that Jimi had sat in with his band at a jam at The Speakeasy on November 2, 1967. The blues jam was recorded, and some of it turned up on his 1968 album "Diary Of A Band" on a track credited to Mick Taylor (who handed the guitar to Jimi for the number) called "The Lesson". Mayall said that Jimi was not credited on the album for contractual reasons.
However, Univibes chief Caesar Glegeek informs me that the sequence on the album (all 1m 32s of it) does not feature Jimi. That would mean that John got his (bare) wires crossed somewhere. To make matters worse, Caesar said that the original tape went up in flames in a fire at Mayall's LA home ! What a shame.
Only Volume two was released on CD.

 

 

 
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