John Perry - Jimi Hendrixs Electric Ladyland

Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch.... The series... is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebrationThe New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enoughRolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planetBookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerdsVice

A brilliant series...each one a work of real loveNME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon

Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithfulBoldtype

[A] consistently excellent seriesUncut (UK)

We... arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way... watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com

Electric Ladyland

Also available in this series:

Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes

Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans

Harvest by Sam Inglis

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller

Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh

Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli

Electric Ladyland by John Perry

Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott

Sign O the Times by Michaelangelo Matos

The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

Let It Be by Steve Matteo

Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk

Aqualung by Allan Moore

OK Computer by Dai Griffiths

Let It Be by Colin Meloy

Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis

Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno

Exile on Main Street by Bill Janovitz

Grace by Daphne Brooks

Murmur by J. Niimi

Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli

Ramones by Nicholas Rombes

Endtroducing by Eliot Wilder

Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese

Low by Hugo Wilcken

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper

Music from Big Pink by John Niven

Pauls Boutique by Dan LeRoy

Doolittle by Ben Sisario

Theres a Riot Goin On by Miles Marshall Lewis

Stone Roses by Alex Green

Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth

The Who Sell Out by John Dougan

Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti

Loveless by Mike McGonigal

The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck

Court and Spark by Sean Nelson

69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol

Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy

Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard

Daydream Nation by Matthew Steams

Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier

Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier

Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor

Aja by Don Breithaupt

Rid of Me by Kate Schatz

Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite

If Youre Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef

Lets Talk About Love by Carl Wilson

Swordfishtrombones by David Smay

Forthcoming in this series:
Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr
and many more...

John Perry

2010

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright 2004 by John Perry

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Perry, John.
Electric ladyland / John Perry.
p. cm. (33 1/3)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-2959-8

1. Jimi Hendrix Experience (Musical group). Electric ladyland.

2. Hendrix, Jimi. I. Title. II. Series.
ML421.J55P47 2004
782.421660922dc22
2003026508

Printed in the United States of America by Thomson-Shore, Inc.

For Maureen

This book is drawn for the most part from my own memories and from conversations with Jack Bruce, Steve Cropper, Kathy Etchingham, Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter, Roger Mayer, Mitch Mitchell, Carol Price and one or two other first-hand witnesses. My thanks to all of them.

With such a book, solitude was essential. For the use of houses as remote as the Russian River and as near as Norfolk, Im grateful to Maureen and Robert Hunter and Nick Saloman.

As always, The British Newspaper Library at Colindale proved an invaluable resource.

Many friends helped with tapes, CDs and advice. My thanks to Ed Hanel, Clinton Heylin and Stephanie Za-charek; to Manny Vardavas for the rare recordings, and to David Barker at Continuum for his patience.

Special thanks to my primary caregivers.

London, November 2003

Chaos, in a work of Art, should shimmer
through the veil of Order

Novalis

Blah blah, woof woof

Jimi Hendrix, Monterey, 1967

Jimi Hendrixs recording career lasted less than four years. Had Bob Dylans career been equally foreshortened it would have ended with 1965s Highway 61 Revisited. No Blonde on Blonde, no John Wesley Harding. No Blood on The Tracks. Beatles albums would have stopped at Revolver and the Stones career would have fizzled out after their 1967 bust, leaving Aftermath as a farewell. It seems almost fatuous then to speak of major landmarks in a career as short as Jimisyet landmarks there are, and prominent among them is the third studio album, Electric Ladyland.

With this album he reached full artistic maturity, outgrowing the expectations and controls of his producer/managers and emerging as a musician/writer fully capable of directing every stage of the recording process from first demos to final mixes. He knew it too, making sure the Electric Ladyland credits read Produced and Directed by Jimi Hendrix.