Jimi Hendrix Returns on the New Live at Woburn
Amps fizzle and crackle like frying eggs — and not just because of Hendrix’s firestorms of feedback or his thunderous tone — on the just released Jimi Hendrix Experience Live at Woburn.
Those ailing, wailing stacks of Marshall amps had just spent the first half of 1968 on the road behind the guitarist, bassist Noel Redding, and drummer Mitch Mitchell constantly pushed to their maximum. And they were showing severe wear by July 8, 1968, when Jimi and his crew pulled into the Woburn Music Festival to play the Experience’s first set in England since December 1967.
But Hendrix sounds like a tiger on the latest official “bootleg,” a soundboard tape of the group’s headlining set at Woburn, released by Experience Hendrix. Of course, as the preeminent rock guitarist of the ’60s Hendrix always delivered a riveting tone, whether plying one of the many Stratocasters he manhandled to oblivion or one of the three Flying Vs he used onstage in ’67 and ’68, which are still intact.
Although he apologizes to the ardent festival crowd for the broken-down amps near the close of the Experience’s set, just before launching into a scalding “Purple Haze,” Hendrix had nothing to be sorry for at Woburn. Tape problems shorten the group’s performances of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Tax Free,” but not their intensity. At this point in their brief history the original Experience were ablaze: high on the excitement of their newness and success, and playing with the telepathic sensibility of a hard-working road band.
After an introduction by BBC DJ Emperor Rosco — while the Experience tunes up in the background — there’s just a little over a minute of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” but it’s clearly a stomping precursor to the version the group would cut on stage at Royal Albert Hall the following February.
“Fire” is the first full tune, with the song’s signature bent-notes rippling from Hendrix’s fingers. The tempo is fast and drummer Mitchell seems to be rushing along to keep up with Jimi more than driving the tune. Next Hendrix introduces “Tax Free” as “just jammin’,” but of course it’s more than that. The song’s 10 minutes captured before the tape reel ran out show the group moving through tempo changes and themes, from slow stone blues to funky wah-wah soul to broiling currents of feedback, like the well-oiled road machine they were. Hendrix would record the song later in ’68 during the Electric Ladyland sessions, but that studio version didn’t surface until 1972 on the rarities LP War Heroes.
The longest song performance is “Red House,” clocking in at 11 minutes and offering a distinctively Gibson-derived tone. It’s unclear if he’s playing one of the Flying V’s or perhaps even the SG he used on stage later in Stockholm. What’s certain is that it’s a showcase for his traditional pentatonic soloing, control of dynamics, and hammering technique.
After a bristling version of “Foxey Lady,” Hendrix introduces a new tune, “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return),” which climaxes in a rumble of feedback and microphonic sizzle. The set ends with an eight-minute version of “Purple Haze,” and despite Hendrix assertion that it’s “hard to get our own sound across” with “broken amps,” the tune’s introduction creates its own distinctive cosmic playground of sound: a sculpture of feedback that builds until it swells into the number’s trademark riff at the three-minute mark.
All of which makes Live at Woburn an experience fans of Jimi or raw, free-spirited concert performances from the classic rock era won’t want to miss.
