Experience Hendrix, the group headed by Janie Hendrix, the adopted daughter of Jimi Hendrix’s father Al, oversees Hendrix’s body of work and recently struck a new agreement with Sony after years of working with MCA.
The first joint venture from the two entities is Valleys Of Neptune, 12 previously unreleased tracks by Hendrix, most recorded in the spring of 1969 with The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s original members, Mitch Mitchell, drums, and Noel Redding, bass. Bassist Billy Cox is also featured on several tracks to good effect, wiping out one of Redding’s efforts, and various percussionists are employed.
But essentially this is the main group starting to work on its followup to the artistically and commercially successful double LP Electric Ladyland from 1968. It would be short-lived. The Experience broke up in June, which basically means Redding announced he was splitting. Although Hendrix had obviously greased the skids by finding and working with Cox almost exclusively after April. Mitchell continued to play with Hendrix until his death in 1970 and Cox, Mitchell and Hendrix played as The Experience in 1970.
Experience Hendrix, and for that matter also Alan Douglas who previously handled the Hendrix catalogue, has been roundly criticized for exploiting the Hendrix goldmine and doing anything but a bang-up job of remixing and remastering the material to the level that it deserves. However, some of those criticisms are overblown and most of the previously unissued material and/or reorganized tracks such as one can find on First Rays Of The New Rising Son and South Saturn Delta, are in the end worthy projects, albeit not without flaws, that have enhanced the Hendrix legacy.
It seems rather remarkable that the amount of material available is still not exhausted. Some would say let it rest, the quality is not up to Hendrix’s lofty standards. But Jimi virtually lived in the studio, his only oasis from the storm of his public/business life, and what he left is not only an indication of where he was going but also in fact where he had arrived and it was miles ahead of many of his comptemporaries. Jimi Hendrix was a true original and most of what continues to be released only reinforces that.
Experience Hendrix stated in conjunction with the new deal with Sony that recent finds in the Hendrix vaults guarantee that still many more Hendrix recordings will be released in the future — evidently at least 10 years worth — many never heard before.
One area I will agree with the critics is the unending re-releasing of the three studio albums that came out during his lifetime — they are being re-released yet again in conjunction with Valleys — and the usually mediocre results of the remastering of those records. You may be one of the lucky ones if you purchased the very first CDs in the 1980s because some of those still sound the best.
Valleys Of Neptune indeed has 12 unreleased tracks but many of them are songs you’ve probably heard before. Eight of the 12 have been released in some form or other: demos, previous studio recordings, live concert material. And the title track appears in demo form on the Dagger Records official bootleg release Hear My Music and on a partial studio demo with band on Lifelines, a somewhat rare and out of print U.S. release of a European radio program from about 1990.
Started in September, 1969 and completed nearly seven months later in May, 1970, Valleys is an interesting composition that fits in with the funkier, soulful direction Hendrix had already started heading. It’s a relatively low-key track with a moderate tempo and clean, rhythmic chording in contrast to the crunching distortion and wild, ripping lead lines for which Hendrix had become quite well known. There’s also a hint of Dylan, whom Hendrix admired, in the tune’s phrasing and lyrics. Although there is a finished vocal it doesn’t appear to be one Hendrix would have settled on if he had released this track on his next album.
This melding of R&B, soul and rock, which before and after yielded songs such as Freedom, Straight Ahead, Ezy Rider, Night Flying Bird, Izabella and Dolly Dagger, among others, appears to be the groove Hendrix was feeling most comfortable with and settling into, and perhaps what he would have continued to develop had he survived.
There’s much more of interest on the disc, starting with a reworking of Stone Free, one of Hendrix’s earliest tunes. Hendrix revisits this classic with a much funkier guitar track and new arrangement, which includes an interesting arpeggio-patterned tag. Redding started the bass part in April, ’69 but Billy Cox was brought in a month later to replace Redding’s part with extremely good results. The track is one of the most complete sounding on the disc with a very good lead vocal, a typically concise, melodic and piercing solo and vocal background parts by Family’s Roger Chapman and Andy Fairweather Low, which improve on the original as well.
Three of the earliest recordings on Valleys come from a February session at Olympic Studios in London: Lover Man; Sunshine Of Your Love; and Crying Blue Rain, all with Redding on bass. This is one of the best recordings of Lover Man, a track previously available in live renditions, because of its slower tempo. In a live setting this tune, based on B.B. King’s Rock Me Baby, was always attacked at breakneck speed. But this offering has a much more soulful feel in the rhythm track, one of the original trio’s best renderings here.
Sunshine Of Your Love was a Cream tribute that was becoming a live staple. Here is the only studio track of the song I’ve heard with quotes of Blue Moon from Clapton’s original solo and further segments from Outside Woman Blues in an arrangement that stretches to nearly seven minutes.
Crying Blue Rain along with Lullaby For The Summer and Ships Passing Through The Night, both from April with Redding, fall into the category of demo recordings, and although are certainly of interest are curious selections on this release, which seems intended as a what-if type of album that may have followed Electric Ladyland as most of the tracks are complete or close to it and chronologically make sense as a follow-up because of the time frame.
Crying Blue Rain has a slow to moderate tempo with a vocal track but no lyrics that jumps to double time midway through. Lullaby is an early version of Ezy Rider with no vocal track, and Ships is an early rendering of what would become the exquisite Night Flying Bird, with a vocal but different lyrics, changes and melodic structure. The inclusion of these three, although as noted is interesting, is one of the set’s shortcomings in its attempt at cohesion.
Two further recordings come from Olympic in February as the group prepared for two nights at Royal Albert Hall and these sound like live-in-the-studio rehearsals for the upcoming gig. Fire is a burning version of the track from Are You Experienced? and Red House takes on the long, live arrangement that had evolved since the explosive three-minute debut of the blues tune on Smash Hits. A different take was used for the U.K. release of AYE?
Hear My Train A Comin’, which although it was around since ’67 became a live standard at later Hendrix concerts, is showcased here as another example of the first Experience trio at its best, playing Jimi’s take on modern blues. The other track with Redding is the earliest on the disc, Mr. Bad Luck from May ’67 during the Axis Bold As Love sessions, which would eventually become Look Over Yonder, a tune that has been heard on live and studio recordings before.
Finally Bleeding Heart with Cox on bass from late April is another example of the future, funkier and tighter rhythm section sound, although this one actually doesn’t feature Mitchell but Rocky Isaac on drums.
In all, a nice although slightly disjointed first release from the Hendrix Archives by Sony. I have no qualms with any track on the disc and I’m happy these are seeing the light of day, and although obviously a lot of thought went into the preparation and construction of the package, the producers didn’t hit the mark as far as the grouping of these tracks. Yes, they come from roughly the same time period but they range from completed tracks to demos to live-in-the studio to what are essentially rehearsals. That wouldn’t be so bad if the album was marketed for what it actually is — a collection of tracks that time-wise have more in common than theme-wise.
