H is for…HIM! ‘Dark Light’

To Hell-sinki and back? Nordic noir, ‘goth’n’roll’ or ‘Scandinavian blues’? Finnish band HIM explored the dark side of rock music for over twenty years, fusing the melancholy of their land’s folk music traditions with modern rock music…

Originally conceived as His Infernal Majesty, the band became HIM in 1997, when founder member, singer and songwriter Ville Valo ‘realised that the satanic associations implied by the name His Infernal Majesty were inappropriate to the group.’ [1.]

“The name ‘His Infernal Majesty’ was intended as a joke,” he explained, “But people thought – because of our name and the fact that we’re from Scandinavia, that we were satan worshippers! And that, of course, attracted the wrong crowd!” [1.]

“Early on in Finland, we were considered to be pretty satanic, which I disputed in the press…So all these black metal kids bought tickets to our gigs just to stand at the front wearing corpse paint and spitting on us…” [1.]

The name was abbreviated to HIM, avoiding all those specific associations and easy to recognise and pronounce in most languages. The band did hit some trouble when first trying to ‘break’ in the United States, as there was a band called HiM there already – a dub/world music influenced  group formed in 1995 by Doug Scharin, drummer for the bands Codeine, Rex and June of 44. After some legal work and an agreed financial payment from the Finns, the US combo added a suffix to their name, resolving the situation.

Ville Valo grew up in Oulunkylä, a suburb of Helsinki. He formed the original HIM in 1991 with his childhood friend Mikko “Mige” Paananen, both unusually playing bass. The first incarnation ended in 1993 when Mige had to start his national service, but Valo and guitarist Mikko “Linde” Lindström reformed the band in 1995.

Reinhardt Haydn, in his 2007 biography ‘HIM – His Infernal Majesty’, explains how the band created their own sub-genre:

“As a means of defining their ethos, image and sound to an often uncomprehending media, HIM have fabricated their very own sub-genre: love metal. “When we started out with the band in ’94 or whatever, we started to call ourselves ‘love metal’ because people had trouble categorising what we did…It’s a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing,” Ville explained to NME journalist Dan Silver, “We’ve got more sentimentality in our music than most of the metal acts and our songs are not based on hate, but on love – so that sounded funny – and it shows that we can laugh at ourselves.” [1.]

A progression of four studio albums preceded ‘Dark Light’, HIM developing their ‘Love Metal’ subgenre to great effect, mostly through songs written by Ville Valo, with a smattering of carefully-chosen cover versions added to the mix. They set out their stall with the EP ‘666 Ways To Love: Prologue’ in 1996, first album ‘Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666’ following the year after. Over two years later came second album ‘Razorblade Romance’, with ‘Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights’ and ‘Love Metal’ released in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Musically, there is evidence of a progression, from the raw, dark gothic tones on the debut, through more technical playing, layering and production on the second and third albums to a more upbeat metal sound on ‘Love Metal’, their self-proclaimed sub-genre. The concepts are consistent throughout this journey to ‘Dark Light’: the contrast between dark and light, good and evil, romantic and dangerous – love songs versus 666 (the number of the beast), razorblades versus romance, shadows versus highlights…Valo’s lyrics explore a number of romantic and gothic themes in the songwriting and there is a balance of mood and tempo in the performances, creating light, shade, calm and energy. ‘Dark Light’ is arguably the pinnacle of HIM’s recordings, certainly to this point in their career if not overall, achieving consistently high quality in terms of writing, performance and production.

Ville describes what HIM wanted to achieve on ‘Dark Light’:
“I wanted them to be cool live songs, straight in the face kind of stuff. But it’s really melodic at the same time,” explained the vocalist. “It’s crazy, surreal, it’s weird, it’s David Lynch, it’s Tim Burton, but with all those things happening within the AC/DC context. You can still shake your hips to it, bang your head, or play air guitar.”

“My last name, Valo, means ‘light’ in Finnish. And the word ‘dark’ if you translate it straight, it just means ‘the crazy being’. ‘Dark’, in Finnish, meaning kind of ‘losing the plot’…So it’s like a kind of pun,” explained Ville. “And ‘Dark Light’ is nice because we had albums called ‘Deep Shadows and Brilliant Highlights’ and ‘Razorblade Romance’, so we’ve always had these opposites.”

‘Dark Light’ was the debut album for Sire records and the first of the band’s recordings to be released worldwide simultaneously, on 26^th September 2005. The record was produced by Tim Palmer, the British music producer whose pedigree includes mixing ‘Ten’ by Pearl Jam, amongst a number of ‘alternative’ rock acts and hugely successful bands like U2.

‘Vampire Heart’ opens the album, the song possibly influenced by Valo’s family background: His mother, Anita, had ancestral roots that could be traced back to Hungary: “My grandmother, who was of Hungarian/Romanian origins, did claim that we are descendants of Dracula,” Ville revealed. “But she is dead now and I can’t ask her about that anymore. I am doing some research on it, because it would be very cool to be a relative of a vampire.”

‘You can’t escape the wrath of my heart
Beating to your funeral song (You’re so alone)
All faith is lost for hell regained
And love dust in the hands of shame (Just be brave)

Let me bleed you this song of my heart deformed
Lead you along this path in the dark
Where I belong ’till I feel your warmth”

Valo was certainly mining the gothic tradition of the vampire in that first verse, then breaking into this catchy refrain:

‘Hold me
Like you held on to life
When all fears came alive and entombed me
Love me
Like you love the sun
Scorching the blood in my vampire heart’

“We’re a Goth band, more or less, so be careful! We’re super-miserable and super-mysterious.” – Ville Valo [1.]

The majestic ‘Rip Out The Wings Of A Butterfly’ follows, deserved of world-wide recognition. The song was the first single of the album, backed by a cover of The Ramones excellent ‘Poison Heart’, written by Dee Dee Ramone and expressing his lowdown and negative view of the world, based on true-life experiences on the streets.

One of a number of rock songs with butterfly references, the song compares well to great tunes like The Mission’s ‘Butterfly On A Wheel’, Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ and ‘Catching The Butterfly’ by The Verve. The famous line ‘Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’ forms line 308 of the 1735 ‘Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot’ in which Alexander Pope ‘responded to his physician’s word of caution about making satirical attacks on powerful people by sending him a selection of such attacks.’[2.] It was re-used by the press when reporting on the Rolling Stones’ notorious summer of 1967, when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were sent to prison for drug offences after a police raid on a party, describing the UK establishment’s determination to punish the Rolling Stones, ‘Britain’s most insolent pop group’ : ‘It was a time when sex, drugs and rock’n’roll were becoming the normal lifestyle of the youth of the nation and the establishment saw the Rolling Stones as leading the charge.’ [3.] So, the butterfly reference continues to be used as a metaphor in rock, and HIM continue the tradition:

‘Heaven ablaze in our eyes
We’re standing still in time
The blood on our hands is the wine
We offer as sacrifice

Come on, and show them your love
Rip out the wings of a butterfly
For your soul, my love
Rip out the wings of a butterfly
For your soul’

‘Killing Loneliness’ was another single from the album, but, as is the case for much of HIM’s material, Valo’s lyrics could hardly be considered mainstream pop, even when delivered in his beautiful melody:

‘Memories sharp as daggers
Pierce into the flesh of today
Suicide of love took away all that matters
And buried the remains in an unmarked grave in your heart

With the venomous kiss you gave me
I’m killing loneliness (killing loneliness)
With the warmth of your arms you saved me
Oh, I’m killing loneliness with you
I’m killing loneliness that turned my heart into a tomb
I’m killing loneliness’

Like the poetry of the Romantics, Valo’s imagery is very evocative and dark, as demonstrated in all of the tracks on the album, holding it all together like a volume of verse. This is one of the reasons that this album in particular lifts above the others in HIM’s catalogue. Here is Valo exploring ‘Behind The Crimson Door’:

‘Covered the carcass of time with flowers
To send the scent of blame to the grave
Set the darkest thoughts on fire
And watched the ashes climb to Heaven’s gates

We hide behind the crimson door
While the summer is killed by the fall
Alive behind the crimson door
While the winter sings:
“Your love will be the death of me” (Death of me)
“Your love will be the death of me” ’

Not bad for a poet writing in their second language!

The album’s artwork was designed by Ville Valo, who explains:
“There’s a big high-rise Gotham City kind of building with a HIM logo on top and then the windows being lit, or the only windows being lit form the heartagram, and then it’s in the middle of a raging sea so it’s like post-apocalyptic, like a ‘Day After Tomorrow’ kind of thing,” he explained. “We wanted it to be really cinematic, as the music is, so it looks more like a movie poster than an actual artwork for a rock band.”

The artwork is a perfect complement to the music, building on Valo’s previous graphics and creating a coherent vision. The black slipcase features the ‘heartagram’ the trademarked symbol of the band, which was created by vocalist Valo on his twentieth birthday in 1996. A combination of a heart and a pentagram, according to Valo, the heartagram is meant to represent the juxtaposition of ‘the soft and the hard, the male and the female, the yin and the yang’. Valo has also explained that the heart represents the softer musical side of the band, while the pentagram symbolizes their heavier influences.

Three further studio albums were released after ‘Dark Light’: ‘Venus Doom’ in 2007, ‘Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice’ in 2010 and ‘Tears on Tape’ in 2013. On 5^th March 2017, HIM announced the band would be disbanding following a farewell tour that same year, Valo stating: “After quarter of a century of love and metal intertwined we sincerely feel HIM has run its unnatural course and adieus must be said in order to make way for sights, scents and sounds yet unexplored. We completed the pattern, solved the puzzle and turned the key. Thank you.”

‘Dark Light’ – band personnel:
Ville Valo − lead vocals, art direction
Mikko ‘Linde’ Lindström − guitar
Mikko ‘Mige’ Paananen − bass
Janne ‘Burton’ Puurtinen − keyboards
Mika ‘Gas Lipstick’ Karppinen − drums

‘Dark Light’ tracklisting:

1. Vampire Heart
2. Rip Out The Wings of a Butterfly
3. Under the Rose
4. Killing Loneliness
5. Dark Light
6. Behind the Crimson Door
7. The Face of God
8. Drunk on Shadows
9. Play Dead
10. In the Nightside of Eden

References and quotes:

1. Haydn, Reinhardt (2007). ‘HIM – His Infernal Majesty’. London: Plexus
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_breaks_a_butterfly_upon_a_wheel%3F
3. https://beaconfilms2011.blogspot.com/2012/02/who-breaks-butterfly-upon-wheel.html

Lyrics and music:
HIM ‘Dark Light’ CD

Photographs:
HIM ‘Dark Light’ CD

H is for…The Jimi Hendrix Experience! ‘Electric Ladyland’

The psychedelic electric gypsy, playing guitar left-handed, dressed in flowing colourful gear, creating fluid guitar sounds that take the listener from their earthly home into outer space, a cosmic spiritual groove derived from blues and jazz…

psychedelic Hendrix by Bill Notopi

Born in Seattle, Washington State, in the north-western United States, on 27^th November 1942, James Marshall Hendrix had, as Charles Shaar Murray said “the entire history of his nation imprinted in his genes”, being of black, white and Cherokee blood…His father Al and mother Lucille divorced when he was eight years old. Tragically, when his mother passed away in Canada in 1958, his father refused to allow Jimi or his brother to attend her funeral. Hendrix often told interviewers that his mother had died when he was ten. He found his refuge in music…

After years as a freelance sideman, including a stint with rock’n’roll legend Little Richard, Hendrix continued to earn his musical chops in New York with hard-working club bands like The Isley Brothers and Curtis Knight and the Squires. Discharged from the ‘Screaming Eagles’ (the U.S. 101^st Airborne Division) after suffering a training injury, plucked from Harlem by Animal Chas Chandler and transported to London, England.

“Within weeks of his arrival in London, Jimi Hendrix’s legend was secured. Here was a guitar player that turned the world of rock music on its head and left contemporaries Pete Townsend and Eric Clapton weeping in disbelief at his virtuoso skill…”
[3.]


“In November 1967, a star-studded but unlikely assemblage of psychedelic, rock and soul bands set out in a fleet of cars, Transit vans and coaches on a 21-date tour. They would play theatres and civic halls the length and breadth of Britain, in a vague attempt to emulate the traditional ‘package’ tour of yesteryear…Featuring some of the craziest, most pioneering and – it would turn out – most influential bands of all time: The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pink Floyd, supported by The Move, The Nice, Amen Corner, Eire Apparent and The Outer Limits.”
[3.]

“Despite his 1966 Top 10 hit ‘Hey Joe’, Hendrix was still largely unknown in the provinces before this tour hit the road, having played very little in his own right outside of London up until then…That, however, changed very rapidly. With the release of two further singles – ‘Purple Haze’ in March and ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ in June – Jimi was rapidly building up momentum. In the months that followed, he steadily increased his international following, first in the US and then in Europe. He had turned in an explosive set at the Monterey Pop Festival in June that left his co-stars The Who (and most of the audience) dumfounded…Come the tour, Hendrix did not disappoint. A sold-out Royal Albert Hall felt the full force of his set as the Experience powered through ‘Foxy Lady’, ‘Fire’ and ‘The Burning Of The Midnight Lamp’…This was Hendrix, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell at their best: a short, snappy, blazing set – a power trio with the world at their feet.”
[3.]

a star-studded but unlikely assemblage of psychedelic, rock and soul bands – the 1967b tour

According to his peers, Hendrix was unpredictable and wild on stage:
“Keith Emerson was blown away: “Everyone involved in the tour, they’d all come back in the wings and watch him because every night he played he’d do something different. And a lot of times he astounded Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, because they didn’t always know what he was going to do. He was certainly trashing a lot of speakers. I remember him playing the Flying V guitar for the first time, and he threw it and it actually landed like an arrow into the speaker cabinet, and us backstage watching from the wings were just completely “Wow!”

[3.]

“It was a showcase for bands riding on Hendrix” said DJ Pete Drummond who was on the tour “I think he got half the gate and everybody else was on fixed fees. I think Noel Redding and the drummer, Mitch Mitchell, were salaried. I was on £25 a night and, apart from Hendrix, I had more money than anybody. Even though Pink Floyd were second headliners on this tour, they weren’t earning the money.”
[3.]

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’ debut album ‘Are You Experienced’ issued in August 1967, was followed up by ‘Axis: Bold As Love’, released in the UK in December 1967, fulfilling the band’s contractual obligations to release two albums that year! The first album is a very strong collection, opening with the powerful ‘Foxy Lady’ and including such Hendrix classics as blues ‘Red House’, the spaced-out ‘Third Stone From The Sun’ and rocking ‘Fire’. ‘Axis’ is patchier, but contains gems like ‘Spanish Castle Magic’, ‘Little Wing’ and ‘Castles Made Of Sand’. The third LP ‘Electric Ladyland’ took the music to a new level and showcased Jimi’s inspirational ideas over four sides of black vinyl.

‘Electric Ladyland was released in the US in October 1968. It was in the charts for thirty-seven weeks and reached #1, the only Experience album to achieve top billing. Jimi recounts recording the album:

“I’m kind of proud of ‘Electric Ladyland’ because I really took the bulk of it through from the beginning to end on my own, so I can’t deny that it represents exactly what I was feeling at the time of production. It was really expensive to produce, about sixty thousand dollars, I guess, because we were on tour at the same time, which is a whole lot of strain on you. It’s very hard jumping from the studio on to a plane, doing the gig and then jumping right back into the studio.

We were always having to go back to the studio again and redo what we might have done two nights ago. We wanted a particular sound. We produced it and mixed it and all that mess, but when it came time for them to press it, quite naturally they screwed up, because they didn’t know what we wanted.

There’s a 3-D sound being used on there that you can’t even appreciate because they didn’t want to cut it properly. They thought it was out of phase. See, when you cut the master, if you want a really deep sound, you must always remix it again right there at the cutting place, and 99 percent don’t do this. They just say, “Oh yeah, turn it up there, make sure the needle doesn’t go over there, make sure it doesn’t go under.”

We didn’t get the chance to complete it because we were on tour again. When I heard the end result, I thought some of the mix came out muddy. Not exactly muddy, but kind of bassy. Then the engineers retaped the whole original tape before they pressed the record for Britain, so much of the sound that existed on the American album was lost. Now I’m learning more about this kind of thing so I can handle it myself.”
[2. p169]

“By the spring, the Hendrix operation had based itself in New York City as work commenced on the third Experience album. The problem was that everyone concerned had different ideas of what that work was going to be. Hendrix was becoming more and more frustrated with the tight structure of the Experience set-up: Noel on the bass, Mitch on the drums and Chas Chandler behind the control board. He was growing increasingly bored with the format of those endless shows, as well: the emphasis on showmanship, the same old Greatest Hits (though the ‘Axis’ album had added a few welcome new songs to their repertoire) and the demands of an audience which would rather see him enact wil-black-stud routines and photogenic guitar stunts than listen to him tell them his story through the instrument. All those attention-grabbing stage tricks which had served him so well in the past were becoming his own private ball and chain. More and more, he wanted to produce his own records, he wanted to play with musicians other than – or, at least, in addition to – Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, and he wanted to take his music into areas more challenging than three-chord, three-instrument rock…”
[1. p64-65]

“His recording sessions grew more and more unmanageable: he would suddenly show up at The Record Plant (at the time New York City’s most expensive and sophisticated studio) with half a dozen musicians and all their friends in tow and start recording lengthy jams that lasted all night. He quarrelled more and more frequently with his English personnel: they felt themselves increasingly marginalised, and with good reason.

Hendrix had become steadily more and more impatient with Noel Redding, and they had come to blows on more than one occasion. Redding resented having his bass lines fed to him note for note, and occasionally Hendrix had overdubbed the bass on to certain tunes himself. The eventual double-album ‘Electric Ladyland’ featured Jack Casady playing bass on one track, and the ever-more ubiquitous Buddy Miles occupying Mitchell’s drum stool on another, as well as an assortment of other ‘friends and passengers’ on various instruments – including Stevie Winwood, Dave Mason and Chris Wood of Traffic, and Al Kooper. Halfway through the recording, Hendrix suddenly took off for Los Angeles, where he hung out with Buddy Miles…mixed and overdubbed ‘Electric Ladyland’ in local studios, indulged in highly uncharacteristic public drunkenness, bought expensive cars…and had to pay out a substantial sum of hush money…to buy off a girl whom he’d beaten to the point where hospitalisation was necessary. This was certainly not the shy, placid Jimi Hendrix his English friends knew.”
[1. p64-65]

Jimi had his own ideas about the album sleeve, but others overruled him:
“The new album, ‘Electric Ladyland’, seems to have got me into a bit more trouble with people. It seems that folks in Britain are kicking against the English cover. Man, I don’t blame them. I had no idea they had pictures of dozens of nude girls on it. I wouldn’t have put that picture on the sleeve myself, but it wasn’t my decision.

Over here there’s just a picture of me and my boys. First I wanted to get this beautiful woman, Veruschka. She’s about six-foot-seven, and so sexy you just want to, hmmm…We wanted to have her leading us across the desert and have these chains on us. But we couldn’t find a desert because we were working, and we couldn’t get hold of her because she was in Rome. Then we had this one photo of us sitting on ‘Alice In Wonderland’, a bronze statue in Central Park, and we got some kids and all.

Jimi’s instructions for the LP sleeve

I didn’t know a thing about the English sleeve. Still, you know me, I dug it anyway. Except I think it’s sad the way the photographer made the girls look ugly. Some of them are nice looking chicks, but the photographer distorted the photograph with a fish-eye lens or something. That’s mean. It made the girls look bad. But it’s not my fault. It’s the other folks, you know, the people who are dying off slowly but surely. Anybody as evil as that dies one day or another.”
[2. p170-171]

Side A

‘Electric Ladyland’ and ‘And The Gods Made Love’

“Some groupies know more about music than the guys. Some people call them groupies, but I prefer the term ‘Electric Ladies’. My whole ‘Electric Ladyland is about them. It starts with a ninety-second sound painting of the heavens. It’s typifying what happens when the gods make love – or whatever they spend their time on. I know it’s the thing people will jump on to criticize, so we’re putting it right at the beginning to get it over with.”
{2. p146]

“I want to show you different emotions
I want to ride through
The sounds and motions
Electric woman waits for you and me

Good and evil lay side by side
While electric love penetrates the sky
I want to show you…
I want to show you.”

Jimi was angry about decisions made by the record company, describing the flow of the album and ‘Crosstown Traffic’ in ‘Starting From Zero’:
“You’ll have a whole planned-out LP, and all of a sudden they’ll make, for instance, ‘Crosstown Traffic’ a single. See, ‘Electric Ladyland’ was in a certain way of thinking, and the sides were played in order for certain reasons. It’s almost like a sin for them to take out something in the middle to represent us at that particular time. They always take out the wrong ones. It shows you how some people in America are still not where it’s at.”
[2. p171]

“I get mad when I hear about people dying in wars or ghettos. Sometimes I’d like to say ‘fuck to the world’, but I just can’t say it because it’s not in my nature. And I can’t let it show, because it’s not really a good influence on anybody else. People just make me so uptight sometimes. They don’t give me inspiration, except bad inspiration to write songs like ‘Crosstown Traffic’. Because that’s the way they put themselves in front of me, the way they present themselves.”
[2. p156]

Jimi recalls the recording of ‘Voodoo Chile’:

“On ‘Voodoo Chile’ we just opened the studio up, and all our friends came down after jam sessions. Steve Winwood is on one track. Al Kooper is on another, but his piano is almost drowned out. It just happened that way, so the piano is there to be felt and not heard. A lot of my songs happen on the spur of the moment. I start with a few notes scribbled on some paper, and when we get to the studios the melody is worked out and lots of guys kick in little sounds of their own. It’s satisfying working this way. We don’t want anything too carefully planned.”
[2. P148]

In ‘Crosstown Traffic’, Charles Shaar Murray outlines the context of Jimi Hendrix casting himself as the ‘Voodoo Chile’:
“In Hendrix ‘Catfish Blues’, he improvises in (rather than on) the (blues) tradition, demonstrating his unrivalled ability to create unison guitar and vocal lines…The following year, Hendrix recorded ‘Voodoo Chile’, a rambling fifteen minute jam co-featuring Stevie Winwood on Hammond organ and Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Cassady deputizing for Noel Redding on bass…Its opening vocal and guitar statements, performed out of rhythm before the entrance of the band, refer back explicitly to the earlier performance and, by extension to the entire wealth of Delta-gone-to-big-town blues lore from which his ‘Catfish’ was in turn derived. The relationship between the blues and Voodoo as a hold-over from West African religious and mystical practice and philosophy has been the subject of at least one first-class book-length study,…but in the context of the life and work of Jimi Hendrix, it is worth reiterating that his self-identification as the Voodoo Chile functions as his statement of black identity: a staking of claim to turf that no white bluesman could even hope to explore, let alone annex. Whether Hendrix intended ‘Voodoo Chile’ as an explicit challenge to the hegemony of Western rationalism and Black American Christian culture is ultimately not the point. That Hendrix was announcing , explicitly and unambiguously, who he thought he was, is.
[1. P181-3]

Side B

The second side of the album is probably the weakest of the four, starting with the disappointing ‘Little Miss Strange’ featuring Noel Redding delivering the mostly puerile vocal lines, but is does conclude with the blistering, heavy, distorted masterpiece ‘Burning Of The Midnight Lamp’, going a long way to its redemption!

‘Long Hot Summer Night’, ‘Come On (Part 1)’ and ‘Gypsy Eyes’ take the listener on a journey with the ‘Electric Woman’ to bridge the two extremes, as Charles Saar Murray describes:

“In 1968’s ‘Electric Ladyland, she is the Electric Woman who can cast out all doubt and fear. ‘I’m so glad that my baby’s coming to rescue me’, he shouts in ‘Long Hot Summer Night’. Where he has been suffering in her absence; a plight similar to that endured in his beloved ‘Gypsy Eyes’, who again arrives to save the day. ‘My gypsy eyes have found me and I’ve been saved, yeah!/Lord, I’ve been saved/That’s why I love you…’ She is conspicuous by her absence in the desolate ‘Burning Of The Midnight Lamp’: life without her is pointless, banal, empty.

“Now the smiling portrait of you
Is still hanging on my frowning wall
It really doesn’t bother me too much at all
It’s just the ever-falling dust that makes it so hard for me to see
That forgotten earring lying on the floor
Facing coldly towards the door…”
[1. p92]

Side C

After the stoned out blues ‘Rainy Day, Dream Away’, the third side drifts into the amazing futuristic opus ‘1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)’, as Jimi narrates his fictitious life in an Atlantis-like world….

In ‘Starting From Zero’, Hendrix tells us about his thoughts behind the creation of ‘1983’:
“The way I write things, they are just a clash between reality and fantasy. You have to use fantasy to show different sides of reality. It’s not a little game that we’re playing, trying to blow the public’s mind and so forth. For instance, ‘1983’ is something to keep your mind off what’s happening today but not necessarily completely hiding away from it, like some people might do with certain drugs and so forth…”
[2.]

Listening to this certainly keeps your mind off ‘what’s happening today’ – It’s a dreamy piece (probably my favourite on the double album), around twelve and a half minutes long, starting with spacey effects, then beautiful layered electric guitars over bass and tasteful drumming in the left channel, before Jimi’s graceful multi-layered vocals enter after thirty seconds:

“Hurrah I awake from yesterday
alive but the war is here to stay
so my love Catherina and me
decide to take our last walk
through the noise to the sea
not to die but to be re-born
away from a life so battered and torn….
forever…”

…the bridge section – more aqua/space dreams… “So my darling and I make love in the sand….starfish and giant fish…walk the outer star…”  Dropping down to just cymbals, percussion and effects, introducing some more guitar arperggios and picking, with overlaid backwards guitar, bass plucking below…guitar freakout…then back into the tale:

“So down and down and down and down and down and down we go,
Hurry, my darling, we mustn’t be late for the show.
Neptune champion games to an aqua world so very dear
“Right this way!” smiles a mermaid, I can hear Atlantis full of cheer…”

Jimi takes us out with some more spirited layered guitar, infused with wah-wah, accompanied by some jazzy cymbals, bass and spaced-out effects….

A noise generator builds the pitch up and up, then a guitar arpeggio, more effects, like a machine taking off into space, more arpeggios and picking, sounds to fade out, less than a minute and a half…the track Jimi titled ‘Moon, Turn The Tides…gently, gently away’, bringing the third side to a close.

Side D

Lulled into a psychedelic wilderness by Side C, the Experience bring us back into the blues groove on the last side with ‘Still Raining, Still Dreaming’, a reprise of ‘Rainy Day, Dream Away’, plenty wah-wah guitar and squelching Hammond organ…A chorus over the end jam “Rainy day, lay back and dream on…Still rainin’, still dreamin’….”

The awesome ‘House Burning Down’ is next – “Look at the sky turn a hellfire red!” Indeed! Hendrix rocks on in the choruses, narrating the verses over a more military beat, and responding to his own guitar calls throughout…

“Hendrix didn’t so much ‘get involved’ in the black and anti-war struggles as come to terms with the extent to which, like it or not, he was already involved.

“Oh baby why d’you burn your brother’s house down…”
[1. 115]

Says Jimi of the track:

“We’re using the same things anyone else would, but we use them with imagination and common sense. In ‘House Burning Down’ we made the guitar sound like it’s on fire. It’s constantly changing a dimension, and up on top of that lead guitar is cutting through everything. For the record’s benefit we just try to take you somewhere – as far as the record can go.”

Then straight into Jimi’s homage to Dylan, the pounding ascending and descending acoustic guitar chords of ‘All Along The Watchtower’, taken to a new level by the brilliant lead intro over the band’s groovy backing…This version easily outstrips Bob’s original recording from December 1967, becoming the definitive version of the song…

Saving the best ‘til last? Hendrix pulls out all the stops on the final track ‘Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)’ – not really any return at all to the slow blues ‘Voodoo Chile’ on Side A, more like a wild orphan child, untamed and fearless…The intro is now so iconic, that muted rapping across the strings, with wah-wah pedal, such beautiful tone, guitar tuned down to Eb…that riff, before Hendrix takes on a spiritual guitar journey, the groove locked down at the first position as his fingers flit up and down the neck between phrases and the vocal melody follows the guitar parts:

“Well, I stand up next to a mountain
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I stand up next to a mountain
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand
Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island
Might even raise a little sand
Yeah

‘Cause I’m a voodoo child
Lord knows I’m a voodoo child, baby”

So there it is, an amazing end to an amazing record, four sides of black vinyl brimming with musical ideas, a veritable witches brew of effects, jams and spaced-out electric guitar sounds, Hendrix narrating tales of far away and taking off into musical hyperspace, as his friends, fellow musicians and band mates try to hold it all together back on planet earth…

Jimi Hendrix died in London, England, on 18^th September 1970, aged 27, after aspirating on his own vomit, intoxicated by barbiturates, probably due to having taken too many sleeping tablets. He remains a musical legend, his inspirational guitar playing has been copied but never bettered and his influence in many genres is widespread…

‘Electric Ladyland’ tracklisting:

Side A
And The Gods Made Love
(Have You Ever Been To) Electric Ladyland
Crosstown Traffic
Voodoo Chile

Side B
Little Miss Strange
Long Hot Summer Night
Come On (Part 1)
Gypsy Eyes
Burning Of The Midnight Lamp

Side C
Rainy Day, Dream Away
1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)
Moon, Turn The Tides…gently, gently away

Side D
Still Raining, Still Dreaming
House Burning Down
All Along The Watchtower
Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)

References and quotes:

1. Shaar Murray, Charles (2001). ‘Crosstown Traffic – Jimi Hendrix and Post-War Pop’. London: Faber and Faber
2. Hendrix, Jimi (2013) ‘Starting At Zero – His Own Story’. London: Bloomsbury
3. Povey, Glen (2019). ‘The Cosmic Variety Show’, published in Classic Rock Magazine – ‘Legends Of The 60s’. London: Future.

Lyrics and music:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience ‘Electric Ladyland’ CD and vinyl LP

Photographs:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience ‘Electric Ladyland’ CD and vinyl LP
[1., 2., 3.}