Seminal ‘Jimi Hendrix’ Rock Doc Captures Guitarist’s Genius By Focusing On The Music

Jimi Hendrix would have been 77 this week. Tragically, he died two months shy of his 28th birthday in September 1970. The documentary Jimi Hendrix, which is currently available for streaming on Netflix, opens with a performance of the B.B. King blues standard “Rock Me Baby,” filmed at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival, which helped break Hendrix in his homeland after success overseas. It’s amazing how current, even ahead of the times, his playing, sound and image still seem. Nevermind his well documented impact on rock, funk and metal, you can find his influence in everyone from Jack White to Travis Scott, Janelle Monae to St. Vincent.

Besides being about the greatest rock guitarist of all time – don’t @ me – the 1973 film was one of the first rock documentaries of its kind. As opposed to predecessors like 1970’s Woodstock or Gimme Shelter, which presented first hand accounts of current events in something close to real time, Jimi Hendrix was a retrospective of the guitarist’s life which tried to explain his importance using the now familiar tropes of talking head interviews and archival footage. For many young rock fans (basically anyone who wasn’t already a teenager at the time of his death) it would have also been their first and only opportunity to witness Hendrix’s legendary live prowess.

According to Joe Boyd, one of the film’s three director / producers, the genesis of the project lay in his 1970 purchase of the now-famous footage of Hendrix playing “Hear My Train A Comin'” on a 12-string acoustic guitar. Boyd, who also produced noted British folk-rock albums for artists such as Fairport Convention and Nick Drake, says the footage was to be thrown away by the lab before he rescued it. Interestingly, another of the film’s creators is Gary Weis, who directed 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, which captured the urban decay of the late ’70s South Bronx as hip hop was in its gestational stage.

In between mind-blowing live footage of Hendrix at his peak, friends, girlfriends and fellow musicians offer anecdotes and insights into the man they knew. They don’t always add up. While guitarist Eric Clapton says his “innocence” was his best quality, but left him open to sycophantic predators, drummer Mitch Mitchell says, “He knew what he was taking on…he wasn’t a naive man.” Twin brothers Arthur and Albert Allen seem unimpressed by the young Jimi they knew in Harlem before he was famous, while girlfriend Fayne Pridgon says, “He was the star when he was there and they knew it…they had no idea he was going to do what he did.”

What emerges is a portrait of not just a singular talent but a singular personality. Major Charles Washington, his commanding officer in the 101st Airborne Division of the Army says, “He was never really with us.” He means it one way, but it applies across the board. Pridgon says, “He wasn’t the average process wearer,” referring to his hairstyle and standing among other black musicians. And Albert Allen says, “He was kind of different, kind of freaky, especially in comparison to a lot of the brothers uptown.”

Downtown, in Greenwich Village, Hendrix was discovered by English model Linda Keith, and found his first success in England. In swinging London, “The stage was set for Jimi,” according to Clapton. Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger says, “We just adopted him…He was ours.” But despite the accolades and accoutrements of fame, Hendrix still didn’t fit in with his “aggressively normal” fellow rockers, in the words of writer and intellectual Germaine Greer. While he returned to America the conquering hero, the Allen brothers say he continually worried what other black people thought about him.

Hendrix’s otherness is nowhere more apparent than in his guitar playing, on ample display in the film’s face-melting full live performances. As a soloist, Hendrix combined the weight of the blues with the fury of rock and the melodic inventiveness of jazz. Breakthroughs in guitar equipment – from 100 watt amplifiers to effects pedals – enabled him to unleash the science fiction soundscapes inside his head, as he fearlessly combined perfectly executed single string runs with dissonances, noise and feedback. A version of “Red House,” his straightest blues, finds him playing a relatively traditional solo before tearing an sonic hole in reality, experimenting with sounds, at times sounding like an entire orchestra or a room full of paint cans knocked over, their colors combining in heretofore unseen combinations in puddles on the floor. As former employer Little Richard says, “He’d give it all to you and that’s what you want. You want it all or none.”

Jimi Hendrix is a groundbreaking music documentary which features some of the best and most important live performances in rock n’ roll history. Unlike contemporary rock docs, which sacrifice music for narrative, not to mention, save money on licensing fees, the film is rich in its use of Hendrix’s works, which tell as much about the artist as anyone’s recollections of the man. “I wish he was still here,” Mick Jagger says at the end of the movie. Me too, Mick. Me too.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who was given Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Are YouExperienced’ when he was 9 and told to listen to it for 2 hours every day in place of remedial reading. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Where to stream Jimi Hendrix