Jimi Hendrix - Let's Talk About How We Would Have Put Together His Posthumous Albums!

A few years ago I made my own version of First Rays using Jimi's notes, a tape box label, and a few guess' of my own. I still like it better than anything that has been released under the First Rays moniker. I gave myself a limit of about 20 minutes per side. I used only Cry Of Love, War Hero's, Rainbow Bridge, and Loose Ends. I think it makes a nice album.

Side A
Dolly Dagger
Night Bird Flying
Room Full Of Mirrors
Belly Button Window
Freedom

Side B
Ezy Rider
Astro Man
Drifting
Straight Ahead
Pali Gap

Side C
Earth Blues
Drifters Escape
Beginnings
Come Down Hard On Me Baby
Angel

Side D
Stepping Stone
Bleeding Hart
Izabella
Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
In From The Storm

 

Looks very similar as what @soniclovenoize did on his Blogspot a while ago. Flows very well.

 

I would be curious to see his also.

 

Like your playlist.
A bit on the heavy side for my personal taste, although I love Calling All Children and Trash Man.
As a soothing coda, I put the long Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) from October 1968.
Of course, it would make it too long for a LP in 1969.

 

Thanks much for the kind word my friend.

 

VERY similar...a slight order change, and the inclusion of Pali Gap & Come Down Hard On Me.

 

IIRC Jimi made a rough mix of Lonley Avenue (rec w/ Buddy in 11/69) during the marathon mixing sessions in the days before he left the US for good. Perhaps this was a track he planned to continue work on. Great performance and fits quite well with the other First Rays material.

Speaking of has EH credited Doc Pomus yet for this track? I remember it was described as a 'blusey original' in the box set liner notes lol.

 

You're welcome

 

Come Down Hard On Me is a must for any historically accurate approximation of the LP. Jimi spent as much time on that one as several other tracks in the running. Ditto Drifter' s Escape.

I don't think the track list is that much a matter of conjecture really, not when one looks at what tracks were worked on from June-August 1970 and, especially, what tracks Jimi mixed during his final 3 days at Electric Lady - sessions wholly devoted to mixing. More on that later..

 

Oh, I think the list is dang near perfect. I'm curious which version of Come Down Hard On Me was used...the Loose Ends or Purple box set version.

 

Purple Box has Jimi's 8/70 mix which imo is far superior to the 1972 John Jansen composite(?) edit/mix.

The rough mixes from Jimi's final sessions simply groove harder and conjeal better than the posthumous mixes - even the ones EK completed the months following Jimi's death. The drums and bass are always slightly discombobulated on the later mixes. That and Juma's percussion is buried if not mixed out all together.

That is one of my biggest gripes with Kramer's mixing, mixing the percussion down if not out. Percussion Jimi wanted there. For ex, the 5/69 BOG Hear My Train from PH&A has the congas mixed out. Not cool. The track suffers because of it, the groove Jimi was playing against included congas!

Not using mixes Jimi was involved with for a project as important as First Rays is simply disrespectful. They are the closest we can get to how Jimi envisioned these songs to sound. That and they are better.

An exception would be if the final mix we have from Jimi's lifetime lacks things like the guitar solo, vocal punch ins, etc. I don't think there are many of these if any...

 

Drifting with vibes may be another exception....not sure if rough mixes from Jimi's final week at EL circulate.

The solution is obvious, a Complete First Rays Sessions box. Disc 1 represents the final work done during Jimi's lifetime on each track, Disc 2-3 are sessions, remixes, etc. Disc 4 is summer 1970 jam sessions*, Disc 5 is home demos. Hardbound book of tape boxes, Jimi's handwritten track lists all photos of Jimi at Electric Lady Studios, so easy.

*Richie Havens, Chris Wood, Astro Man jam, 26 min medley, etc)

 

I’d buy that box. It makes perfect sense

 

I posted this...wow...nearly 4 years ago now. I'm sticking to it.

Crawdaddy Magazine, December 18, 1970 Interview with Jimi Hendrix upon the release of his new LP “First Rays of the New Rising Sun.”​

First Gifts of a New Year: Jimi Hendrix Finds Freedom and Peace of Mind with New LP and More
By David Morane​

It’s December in New York and snow is on the ground. The sidewalks are bustling with holiday shoppers; taxis bark and bleat as always, yet the air is positively silver with the sounds of tiny bells ringing above shopkeeper’s doorways. New Yorkers will always be New Yorkers, as they push and skirt around each other at a frantic pace. This holiday season, however, the shoves are a little softer and the scowls a little brighter, which suits Mr. Jimi Hendrix just fine as he gazes out the window of his sparse apartment, watching the carnival scene skate by in yuletide colors. Everything is quiet and peaceful in Jimi Hendrix’s world. He smiles, lights a cigarette, then moves over to his stereo, taking the needle off of the turntable, asking me if I would mind if we spoke in silence for a while. "Of course," I tell him, "That’s fine;" after all, I’m the presence of bonafide deity; who am I to question the whims of his domain? That’s when it truly dawns on me that this isn’t the same Jimi Hendrix I knew less than a year ago. The Jimi I had interviewed in January rapped in hurried sentences as if he were desperate for you to hear what he had to say—who perhaps felt that his words would disappear—vanish forever—if the interviewer didn’t flip over the tape fast enough. Yes, this Jimi Hendrix is quite the opposite of the buzzing traffic noise coming from outside. Instead, he simply lounges back on a velvety purple davenport by his window (quite the regal furnishing in a room so bare that there’s not even a single guitar in sight), sipping an orange soda and depositing his ash in an empty Pabst can. He can’t seem to keep a grin off of his face, which makes one wonder if the industry rumblings last summer were true: that the guitar-wielding voodoo magician was close to financial ruin; that rapid band breakups and a nebulous paternity case might have taken their toll on the Rock & Roll giant. Then came November and out of the blue a smash hit single Dolly Dagger b/w Earth Blues, hit the airwaves, the title track a clarion call of sleek muscular-street-funk, exhibiting a musical scope only hinted at with this year’s “Band of Gypsys” live album. The Band of Gypsys had since disbanded, but in their place, the new Jimi Hendrix Experience, with Mitch Mitchell on drums, and Billy Cox on bass, ended Hendrix’s silence, further punctuated a month later by Jimi’s first new album of studio material since 1968’s “Electric Ladyland. The new LP, “First Rays of the New Rising Sun,” hit the racks on December 7, just in time for the holiday season, but with little fanfare. Why, one might ask, would one of the world’s top-grossing acts put out a new album, only to sell a few hundred copies on the first day of release? I’ll let Jimi explain.

“Oh, that?” He laughs, “Oh, that was really a gas, you know, because we didn’t tell anybody the music was coming out! Like Pearl Harbor, it might have been a real orchestrated attack by us, you know, to drop some bombs while nobody was looking! Look out below!”

“First Rays of the New Rising Sun,” saw its official release on December 11, but Jimi went on to explain how they had subverted the record company by renting a truck loaded with albums and driving them to Bobby’s Happy House, in Harlem, New York’s oldest record shop, and basically selling the new record out of the back of the vehicle.

“Really, we weren’t doing anything like spies games,” Hendrix explained further, “We just wanted to give it back to the people, like maybe you only had a dollar in your pocket, but you got an album anyway, see? I mean, Christmas…Christmas should be year-round, man, because when I was kid dirt had better homes than we did. You show up for Christmas in my house and we got whoopin’s just to get our minds right for the New Year.”

Jimi and I laugh about that, but the reality is that Jimi Hendrix is doing something new, and he knows it! It isn't just the new style of music either – although the music is sublime – Jimi recounts how they also decided to press a few hundred 45s of “Little Drummer Boy” b/w “The Star Spangled Banner” as a Christmas single, a gift, just to give out to shoppers if they purchased a copy of “First Rays.”

“We had to give them away, otherwise who would buy it!?” Jimi grinned, devilishly, referring to the “Little Drummer Boy” single.

The album, itself, is what Jimi really wants to talk about, though. Every time we broach the subject, Hendrix appears to be beside himself with giddiness…and for good reason! With the album’s 11 tracks (again, released on December 11) Jimi runs the listener through a gamut of electric-blues workouts, gossamer-winged ballads, funky soul shuffles and astronaut voyages, all in the span of a lean 40 minutes, quite the opposite of his last double-album effort.

“Yeah, I don’t know…we really didn’t want to do that anymore. I mean, we do, but we don’t, you know?” He speaks about “Electric Ladyland, with fondness.” “With this one, it really is just the first rays; it’s how the sun comes up, not all at once, but like slowly, so you don’t get burned out in your eyes. And that’s the trip, because I was getting burned out, really bad, man, if you’re recording for like a million years and you’ve got ten-million songs. So, we said we’re going to do this one like we used to do, in the grandpa and grandma days. Chas [Chandler] comes in and [he’s] like, ‘Okay, how many singles have you got?’ So, I hitched a ride back from Europe and we were just listening to music, but it’s like that old saying, or something like that, ‘if a tree falls in the woods, you know…?’ But of course it makes it a sound! We had lots of sounds! Only if there’s no cat around to pick up the wood how’re you going to build a fire, you know? Maybe that’s what Chas did, what he helped us do…like looking at a piece of coal for a long time, then finally you see it from a different angle and it’s been a diamond this whole time!”

Jimi told me that the new album was constructed out of what the majority considered to be hit single material, but nobody wanted to release a bunch of non-album tracks. “So, logically – at least what they tell me,” He laughs, “We put together the best songs for an album that lets you know this is only the beginning of what’s to come. It’s only the ‘first,’ dig? More like, we’ll have another album, maybe a double- album, out by the summer, but how come everybody has to wait to use the bathroom? Just go, man, and you’ll feel lighter! I know I do!”

So, I ask Jimi if he would walk us through the album tracks and let us know where he was coming from and what the songs had to say. This posed a problem for both of us, though, because “First Rays of the New Rising Sun,” doesn’t have a Side A. and a Side B., only a list of songs on the back of the album jacket in seemingly random order.

“That’s what I like about this one,” Hendrix said, “This is another first for me, because every since I was in the backup bands, as a sideman, or whatever, everything’s been dictated for me…even the first three album, I never had any input on what went on the cover – and don’t get me started – because the package, the whole thing is supposed to really create a certain vibe for the music…if not you can use the album covers as picnic plates for all I care. Really. Then we decided to just make the cover a mirror so that you can really see yourself in the music and not have anybody tell you to listen to this one first, then the next one, or whichever side you should put on first, you know? There’s some sort of personal experience you should dig with music to make it all your own. I mean, once I’m done with it, it’s yours, am I right? That’s what I think, anyway.”

People, this is the new Jimi Hendrix. You’ve never heard Jimi Hendrix until you put your ears to “First Rays of the New Rising Sun.” Take the song, Freedom, for example. Music lovers had their own idea about freedom back in the flower days on 1967, but now Jimi has a message, and it’s from him to you, and vice versa, that even if you take the chains off, unless you get rid the chains, themselves, they will be a reminder that you’ve been in bondage for too long. Room Full of Mirrors, is light-speed fast-blues, vibratory in its energy that tells the story of a person who is suddenly free, but what they find out is that the world only changes one person at a time and it’s up to you to “take your spirit and smash your mirrors” – as Jimi sings – to embolden yourself with enough power to listen to the next track…and you’re going to need it! Night Bird Flying, Jimi explained, is how country music might sound like on “Nebula-7” (wherever that is). The song is positively layered with a mix of smooth and twangy guitars; still, don’t listen too fast, because in Night Bird Flying the guitar playing is merely a vehicle to express a sense of songmanship that is rivaled by only few in rock.Drifting comes next, in what can only be described as what angels might sound like if they had guitar strings for vocal chords. Drifting is a liquid ballad, wrapped silkily with vibraphone notes that blend perfectly with Mitch’s drumming and the soft feedback of Jimi controlling your journey into soundscapes, wide and spacious. If it were not for the next song, Astro Man, you might drift away forever; but Astro Man is a wakeup call, infused with Jimi’s clever sense of humor, coupled with guitar playing, into the stratosphere, that is the louder equivalent of its predecessor. Somehow Jimi makes it all make sense. While Astro Man takes you into the splashdown phase, Bleeding Heart, the next track (on Side B. or Side A. – whichever you prefer), brings us back to earth in a wah-wah soaked melody of regret and heartache, the guitars literally crying to be back among the clouds. Bleeding Heart is one of Jimi’s finer vocal performances on the album, in a sea of great expressionism; it’s no wonder, then, that the next track, Ezy Ryder, has to ease us back in gently, with padded bongo accompaniment and other percussive instruments before kicking in with a testosterone-laden guitar riff beneath a blistering solo. Like Freedom, Ezy Ryder is anthemic in its approach, but this song is freedom in practice, for a new “beat generation” who doesn’t go on the road for self-discovery, but instead for freedom’s sake, alone. That, alone, makes the trip worthwhile. It is only then, when we reach the song, Angel, that we seek a companion to take our trips with – a man of woman - as Hendrix, once again, shows us how heavy a ballad can be, because love is always the heaviest journey of them all… but it’s the right journey! As often the case, as soon as we find love, though, it lets us down, which is why Stepping Stone is the perfect fit for the next track – full of multi-layered guitar stabs, with a down-home swing, this was a track released on an abandoned single this year, but now it has a decided focus in the context of the whole, where love might be the doormat of your heart, but it’s okay because Mr. Jimi Hendrix knows how to guide us through it…into, Izabella, an ode to the opposite side of love and war. Izabella shies away from the angst-ridden protest mentality of last summer, as Jimi explains, “Well, that’s how our history is defined, isn’t it? As a human race, by the wars we fight and the religions we keep." Izabella just happens to be the height of this album’s soul driven street-sound. The raw, focused, guitar playing, again, serves the song perfectly, with one of the best guitar solos on “First Rays of the New Rising Sun.” Finally, we come to the last song on the album, In From the Storm, which might as well have been the first track, since it appears that it comes from a place within Jimi that brought us the whole album from the very first notes. Yes, it is soul searching; and yes, the song is a typical of a Jimi Hendrix album closer; yet its far-from-typical approach of melding acid rock riffs with soul searching voices, gliding over all, makes one truly hunger to flip the disc and start all over again with Hendrix at the helm.

“Yeah, I think maybe, I don’t know, we’ve got a really good album here,” Jimi reflects. His obvious attempt at modesty is tempered by the glints in his eyes, which twinkle like holidays lights at the entrance of a candy store. “Maybe next year we’ll put together an LP of long jams and different takes, but we don’t need any speech writers today, not this year. If next year takes a different fork in the road, then well… then I might be at the head of the class, on a soapbox made of bubbles, but who knows, right?”

I press the stop button on my cassette deck and the room falls back into silence. Outside, children’s voices sparkle with energy and Jimi asks me if I’d like to go throw snowballs with them. Unfortunately, I’ve got a deadline to meet so I ask if I can take a rain check. “Who says it’s going to rain, man?” Jimi quips. “Evidently the weatherman took the year off.”

As I reflect upon my interview with Jimi Hendrix it hit me that no matter how many people adore the man’s music, and no matter how many albums he sells (at date “First Rays of the New Rising Sun” sits at #2 upon the Billboard charts), Jimi Hendrix is still just one person, trying to make a way for himself like the rest of us. Only Jimi makes it all seem effortless. There’s no doubt that a lot of time and effort went into releasing this record; still, for a man who didn’t set out to make a statement with his new album, Hendrix has an uncanny ability – like a magnet – to attract any statement, any artistic interpretation to himself, making it all fit together seamlessly, from his world to yours, as if the symbiosis between intention and perception are as natural as the bee is to a flower. This, alone, I believe is what makes an artist a truly great one: that the painter knows that his canvass is the people, and he’ll color you any shade you like...when the time is right. The house doesn’t knows that it needs a fresh coat, but when it gets one, it’s all the better for it.

Jimi Hendrix knows that you can’t have a snowball fight alone. So he’ll wait until you're ready.

Are you?

First Rays of the New Rising Sun

Side:
Freedom
Room Full of Mirrors
Night Bird Flying
Drifting
Astro Man

Side:
Bleeding Heart
Ezy Ryder
Angel
Stepping Stone
Izabella
In From the Storm

Running time: 40:22

 

Everything was perfect up until the ending...

 

I was in high school when Jimi died and Cry of Love was released. Other folks may remember things differently, but at the time, the general consensus seemed to be that Hendrix and "lost it." I remember liking Rainbow Bridge more than Cry of Love.

When I got a cassette deck at the end of the decade I started toying-around with compiling a hypothetical double album. It took a long, long time, but eventually the densely-layered recordings stopped sounding cluttered to my ears and his final chapter became my favorite of his career. His riff-based songwriting may not be as rich as the mix of material that graced the three Experience albums, but in the long run, I think it's the most influential period of his career.

 

Speaking of Jimi at ELS photos, something that's been running through my mind lately. Are there any photos of Jimi (or anyone) at the Official Studio opening party? There's an account that some food fight broke out or something and Jimi left disgusted. This was the last time he was at his studio. I dont recall ever seeing any photos from this party and you would think something like this would be photographed by a few people at least. I've also read that Yoko Ono attended this. I never see Lennon's name mentioned. I assume he just wasnt in the mood to be around a bunch of people or something. But it's a little strange to read that Yoko would go to something like this alone. Or was she there with someone she knew? Curious about that whole party, if anyone has any info/pics.

 

Seemed like John and Yoko were still joined at the hip at this point so it is odd that he wasn't there.
Someone should ask Yoko while they can.

 

I doubt he would have used the FROTNRS title for a single album (since he planned the name/concept as a double) not to mention using the name for a single album that also excluded the (semi) title track.

 

@hodgo

Here you go. This was my first post on this site and it's still my prefered ways to listen to the posthumous material.
Great thread, OP

Jimi Hendrix - a posthumous discography "redo"

 

What was your actual track listing? I never liked the sequencing of The Cry Of Love and Rainbow Bridge as albums. Tracks were held back for future albums and I don't like the live Hear My Train A Comin' on basically a studio album. I am not really a fan of mixing live and studio tracks on albums. They should have put it on In The West instead of weaker tracks like The Queen , Sgt. Pepper and maybe Lover Man or Blue Suede Shoes

 

I'm on mobile right now but in my link I posted all of my tracklistings. It might be on page 2 or 3.

 

I'm pretty sure you missed the point. According to the article, reuniting with Chandler took a lot of pressure off of Jimi, which, in turn, allowed him to be more receptive to Reprise wanting a new album to fill the Christmas void. Knowing what we know, Reprise was beginning to tighten the screws on Jimi. Not as much as they could have, but promises weren't being met, in a day when album sales still accounted for a great deal of an artist's profit.

Enter Chandler, who was able to make both Jimi and Reprise happy, by helping Jimi focus, thus conceptualizing better. Therefore, First Rays...became just that, the very first "rays" of a grander concept, and not the double album that he had set out to create.

In fact, in September of 1970, the tracks recorded for this supposed double album were still in various states of composition, and only a few of the tracks, like the ones I mentioned above, received proper mixes because they were closer to being complete. Those "complete" songs were few and far between. Indeed, Jimi could write whatever tracklist he wanted before September 1970, but there's little musical evidence to suggest that these fragments and jams were even acceptable backing tracks to be overdubbed later.

As for the "title" track, it too suffered from various stages of composition at the time of his death. Was it going to be "Hey Baby" or "Gypsy Boy" a combo of both, with one as a reprise? Nobody knows with 100% certainty. I'm 99% certain that the only fully extant "Hey Baby" that we have right now, was not the master take, or you would have had microphone bleed into the other mic'ed instruments.

We know Jimi had at least one conversation with Chandler shorty before Jimi died. One must ask themselves, given all of the disjointed fragments that Jimi left in the can, if he had lived, how long could he have kept recording in order to finish his original vision, without the record company coming down on his back? 1971? 1972?

At his pace, with the concert obligations and all, I'm saying 1972 before he put out a double album, assuming that the record company didn't intervene in the interim.

 

1972? Nah, this album, double or otherwise would have been out by 1971 at the latest. He was making track listings, marathons mixing sessions. Kramer says, "The end was in sight." His concert commitments were slowing down to give him more time. Doubtful he would have needed another 16+ months.

 

He had at least three concepts in mind (more or less simultaneously). IIRC they were:

Strate (sic) Ahead - a single album (or was it a double?)
FROTNRS - a double album
PH&A - a triple album

As far as whether he could have managed to complete a double album in time for Xmas 1970. I never said he would - it was *possible* of course but probably not likely. Plus if he did miss a Xmas deadline, I don't think the record company would be that bothered if he still made a first quarter of 1971 release date. Its not like new records only sell if they're released at Xmas time.

But if the FROTRS was that important to him (enough to have TWO songs - Hey Baby and Izabella mention the album title within its lyrics) then the concept/title would likely have been saved for a followup album (whether a double or single) to the possible single album that he might have been pressured to release for Xmas 1970.

His pace had picked up considerably once he'd delivered the BOG live album to Capitol to settle his dispute - and even more so once Electric Lady Studios became operational. There's no way he would have needed until 1972 - another year and a half (or nearly 2 and a half years if you mean the end of 1972) to deliver a studio followup to 'Electric Ladyland' - whether a single, double or triple album.

By the way this:

"Therefore, First Rays...became just that, the very first "rays" of a grander concept, and not the double album that he had set out to create."

....of yours, is just you putting words into Jimi's mouth/thoughts in his head (that stretch the bounds of believability)

I understand that this was a work of fiction, but historical fiction does need to have enough basis in reality to be "believable" - one can only be expected to suspend disbelief so far - there are limits.

PS - "very first rays of a grander concept"? what does that even mean/refer to?