Wick's Review

Summary - Great 4.0

“Are you experienced?” Rock fans of a certain age recognize that bold question as cover for “Do you dig Jimi Hendrix?” Ya dig. For those of us in that cohort and for rock and blues fans of all ages, Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train a Comin’ is a 90 minute documentary well worth viewing, turned up to 11 of course.

It opens with Jimi soloing live on stage, appropriate because he was a guitarist unlike any who came before. A parade of his contemporaries then get introduced in voiceover before we ever see who they are. It turns out they include family and friends from before he was a superstar, and rockstars like Paul McCartney who were his biggest fans as he exploded in the seminal Sixties rock music scene. High points include:

• A strong sense of his broken-home boyhood in Seattle
• His time as a journeyman guitarist with the Isley Brothers and other big names
• His somewhat incongruous journey to Swinging London, where he became a star
• His London debut with “hardly anyone in the club”, but the Beatles and the Rolling Stones!
• His explosion onto the Sixties rock scene, with the Stones and Beatles as his Number 1 fans
• How he opened with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the Saville Theatre one week after the album debuted. Paul McCartney describes standing in the wings of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s Saville that night. Legendary!
• Playing Wild Thing at the Monterey Pop Festival, where he essentially had sex with his guitar, grinding it against the amps. The nearby video is 100 proof reality of the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
• His iconic Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock – in the dawn’s early light – caught the moment.

Jimi Hendrix was most of all a tribune of an anarchic America and an anarchic world, a singular talent and sensitive hedonist who blazed a deadly trail for himself and countless others who followed in his wake.

Acting - Really Great 4.5

Jimi Hendrix appears in archive footage only, having overdosed in 1970 after an ever-so-brief four year career as a solo artist. The film has countless highlights of his singular talent, including Jimi M. Hendrix playing Johnny B. Goode, which could have been written about him. He was a guitarist without compare.

One contemporary says he “looked like an exotic bird”, an accurate description if ever there was one.

Mitch Mitchell & Noel Redding – the pale skinny Brits who completed The Jimi Hendrix Experience – talk to us down thru the years via archive footage.

Al Hendrix appears. He raised Jimi after his Mother went off to sow her wild oats. Yes Jimi Hendrix’s Father – a good man – speaks through an archived interview. Bob Hendrix, Jimi’s cousin, appears presently, telling of growing up with Jimi and then meeting him again after he became a rockstar.

Muddy Waters & Chuck Berry flash by to show Jimi’s influences, including Chuck on stage.

Fayne Pridgon, Jimi’s uptown girlfriend, talks extensively, hypnotically beautiful after all these decades. Groupies get no better.

Linda Keith & Colette Harron – other girlfriends – describe how he was never without a guitar, never. And that his other obsession was girls.

Billy Cox replaced Noel Redding as Jimi’s bassist, after which they formed Band of Gypsies.

Chas Chandler – onetime rockstar as a member of the Animals – discovered Jimi in New York and brought him to London, where Paul McCartney and the rest of the British rockstar royalty were interested in him because another rockstar had brought him from America. Then John, Paul, George and Ringo, along with Mick, Keith, Brian, Charley and Bill became his biggest fans.

Dave Mason appears 18½ minutes in, just before Paul. Unfortunately Dave doesn’t get a chance to describe how he and Brian Jones made All Along the Watchtower with Jimi. Steve Winwood also gets a 21st Century interview.

Other Notables

• Chris Stamp – of The Who fame, also ran Track Records – signed Hendrix in London during 1966. 2015’s Lambert & Stamp gives him his due.
• Lou Adler describes bringing Jimi, a relative unknown, to the Monterey Pop Festival he produced.
• Billy Gibbons of Z.Z. Top speaks authoritatively about axeman stardom
• David Fricke wrote about Jimi for Rolling Stone magazine and looks like a Rockstar.
• Vernon Reid of Living Colour speaks as perhaps only the second great black axeman.
• Dweezil Zappa talks about the original eccentric rockstar, his Father being a subsequent one.
• Janie Hendrix talks about her Brother. She also produced this documentary.
• Dick Cavett inerviews Jimi on The Dick Cavett Show in ’69.

Film - Very Good 3.5

Dings

• Doesn’t explore the legendary recording of All Along the Watchtower, Jimi’s most famous track. This even though Dave Mason contributes some comments to the documentary and contributed the pulsing acoustic guitar intro to Hendrix’s iconic cover of Dylan’s trenchantly foreboding song.
• Winks at Jimi’s drug usage, even while more fully covering his sexual exploits. So the doc is kinda Sex and drugs and Rock n’ Roll. That said, it does purport to explain how he fatally overdosed on his girlfriend’s sleeping pills.

Edge - Tame 1.5

Guitars and girls were said to be Jimi’s twin obsessions. He was never without a guitar, even when going out. He was rarely without a girl either. Rockstar living, ya dig.

Reality - Natural 1.0

Jimi Hendrix was a singularity: Black Elvis.

Like Elvis, he was the first and the biggest of his kind, an African-American superstar of super-powered rhythm & blues. Since only one can be first, there will never be another Jimi.

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